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Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing / Re: DNA test to find unknown GGGrandad
« on: Thursday 12 November 20 06:23 GMT (UK) »My GG grandad was “unknown “ and I was wondering if there’s any way to use my dna test to try and find that branch of the family. Does anyone have any tips please?
Hi Caitie - I had a mystery gg-grandfather too. Maybe my story will help you, or at least encourage you to keep searching!
My gg-grandmother gave birth to g-grandfather in a poorhouse in Scotland. She was unmarried and no father was listed. She already had a one-yr-old son at the time of 2nd child's birth in the poorhouse. I tried to find a trend using autosomal results from my Dad (he's the descendant), but it was too big a task, I could quickly see that it could take years to sift through and identify a common surname among the autosomal matches.
So, I had Dad take a Y-dna test for me. As you know, these results gave me only dna matches from his paternal line, and it was his father's grandfather that I was searching for. Everyone told me (including on this forum) that I wouldn't be able to identify the individual man who fathered my g-grandfather using dna. I was determined, however, so I pressed on.
When I got Dad's y-dna test results from FamilyTreeDna, there were, if I remember right, 36 matches and I think it was 13 of them that had the surname McLaughlin or similar spelling. When I contacted these matches to ask about their paternal lines and checked the trees that were available on FTDNA and some of them were also on Ancestry, I found that all of their McLaughlins were from Northern Ireland and most were from Londonderry Cty. So I knew I probably had a gg-grandfather named McLaughlin or close to it and who came from Londonderry or at least from the area of Ireland now known as Northern Ireland.
From there, I went back to Ancestry, where Dad's autosomal dna results are. I plugged in the surname McLaughlin and started looking closely at the trees of the matches that came up who had that name in their tree. I made a list of male line individuals, alphabetically by first name and then by date of birth if there was more than one McLaughlin with the same first name. I was looking for more than one match who had the same individual McLaughlin on their tree. I also contacted many matches from FTDNA and Ancestry for more info on their McLaughlin lines.
After several months of this, I had three of my Dad's dna matches who had the same Daniel McLaughlin in their tree, and he was of an age to have fathered my g-grandfather. Was this a coincidence? I started going through all available documents on Daniel, to see if he'd emigrated to Scotland at any point or just gone there to work. He did, in fact, work for about a year in Scotland, and one of his children was born while he was there. But that was several yrs prior to my g-grandfather's birth, and he had other children born in Ireland at the same time as g-grandfather's birth. From what I could tell, he wasn't in Scotland at the crucial time, but I still had the dna matches, and I even found a few more of Dad's matches also descended from Daniel as time went on. (I now have 15 in total)
Then a census abstract record appeared on Ancestry that hadn't been there before. It had Daniel, same birth year, same town as his other records, and his parents and a list of siblings, which I'd not had before. Two were brothers, Dominick and James. From what I could tell, James, who was a blacksmith, remained in Ireland all his life and raised his family there. So I focused on Dominick.
I found his baptismal record on RootsIreland, so I knew his DOB. I searched the area of Scotland where my g-grandfather was born and FINALLY I found him in the census, which happened to have been taken in the exact month my g-grandfather would have been conceived. He was living about a half mile away from my gg-grandmother's last known address! BINGO!
Turned out that Dominick married in Scotland 4 mos after my g-grandfather was conceived. He and his wife had 2 daughters, both of whom died young and didn't have any children. That's why my McLaughlin matches were coming up only to Daniel, his brother's descendants. My theory is that my gg-grandmother was probably making some money in the streets to support her baby and got pregnant a second time. I doubt if Dominick ever knew he had a son, and my gg-grandmother probably didn't even know who her son's father was. But I do! DNA is a wonderful thing.
So, don't give up! This process took place over 2.5 years, and I'm still getting new matches and corroborating clues that support my conclusion. It is possible! As others here have said, you need determination, investment of a lot of time, and a bit of luck. You'll get there.
Kat
