Paternity of Illegitimate Ancestor

[rebeccaclaire86]

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction or tell me if I’m barking up the wrong family tree here!

My great-great grandfather, Reuben, who was born in 1884 was illegitimate. My granddad is a male line descendant, he did a 67 marker Y-DNA test and came out with one match in the US with the surname Cross, who hasn’t been able to trace his line earlier than the mid 1700’s in the US.

Recently my granddad and another descendant of Reuben (he had children with two different women) took autosomal tests on Ancestry. They have around ten shared matches, which in theory should be along either Reuben’s mothers line (which I have researched) or his unknown fathers line.

One of these shared matches has a Cross family (not a common name in the Herts/Beds area) living ten miles from where Reuben was born. I’ve since found a number of DNA matches between my granddad and this family:


Parents - Thomas Cross & Elizabeth Winters:

• Matilda b. 1837 – Granddad shares 49cM across 4 segments with her great-granddaughter
• Thomas b. 1839
• Maria b. 1842 - Granddad shares 24.1cM along 2 segments of DNA with her 2x great-grandson – his cousin is also a match.
• Cornelius b. 1844
• Elizabeth ‘Betsey’ b. 1846
• Letitia ‘Lettey’  b. 1849
• Kate ‘Kitty’/ Caroline b. 1851 – Granddad shares 44cM with her 2x great-granddaughter
• Joseph b. 1853
• Sarah b. 1856
• Evangeline b. 1857
• Anne ‘Annie’ b. 1860 – Granddad shares 26.2cM across 2 segments with her great-granddaughter
• William b. 1866

So my current theory is that Reuben could well be the son of Thomas, or of one of his sons (none had male children old enough to be his father in 1883), or equally the connection could be much further back with one of Thomas’s male Cross family members… or we connect to the family in another way, and the Cross surname from the Y-DNA test is just a coincidence.

Where would you go next with this line of research?  I realise it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever be able to pinpoint his father, but it would be amazing to work out which family he connects to.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Nanna52]

Sorry can't help, but I am in a similar situation so will be interested to see the suggestions that come up.
It does seem to my untrained eye that you are on the right track.

[Gadget]

I've recently encountered a similar puzzle with a new found living relative who is estimated to be at the 1st-2nd cousin/removed level. The person matches 3 known relatives (including me)  at this level and all the more distant matches (3rd-5th cousins), who have trees,  point to a descendant of our great grandparents. Unfortunately, they had 10 surviving children, most of whom also had large families. We are going through each line to find out who might have been in a certain place (and likely age)  at the time of this new relative's conception. We're still working on paper trails but, with the size of the families and lack of info about whereabouts at a particular time, it's proving extremely difficult.

The only thing I can suggest is to keep chipping away at the available genealogical and dna evidence and upload the various tests to as many sites as possible.