Illegitimate Father

[larkspur]

My friends father was illegitimate. She has had her DNA tested with Ancestry.She has a well researched tree. She  has one match at 220cM.(2nd to 3rd cousin) This woman's family are all from Somerset.  ( Another match at 59cM (4th to 6th cousin) has some of the same people) My friends maternal line on her fathers side is  from Leicestershire and her lines on her mothers side from Newcastle and Nottinghamshire. Will this automatically mean her missing paternal grandfather was from Somerset? Should she be checking out the "double" names on these two ladies tree's? Sorry if I am being very thick here.
Her half brother (same dad) is waiting for his dna results. Her cousin, dads half sisters child (same mother) is also just doing a test. Hopefully this will get her dads line. Wondering where to go from here?

[davidft]

I would wait for the other results to come in, especially the brother's (with the same father) as the more people with the same ancestor the better and allows you to triangulate results on sites like My Heritage and gedmatch which can rule out false positives.

Unfortunately Ancestry does not have a chromosome browser which would be useful in situations like this and you might have to ask the potential match if they are on My Heritage or Gedmatch or would be willing to join.

So in the meantime whilst waiting for the brother's results to come in I would look further at the potential matches tree and see if there is anything you can potentially match to your friends father

Good luck

[matt8]

I have done a similar thing with my dad because his father was illegitimate. I would recommend starting a new private tree on ancestry and adding the people who are common to the two ladies you mentioned. Use ancestry hints/searches to add census records to these people and the tree will automatically expand as you add the new records. Try to expand the tree as much as possible. The match which is 220 is quite high, when you click on it and select shared matches, look at the trees for those matches and see if there are any further people in common. In my case, there was lots of matches which linked back to the same family. It was quite an unusual surname and I found a descendant from that family basically living next-door to my great-grandmother. Eventually I narrowed it down to 2 brothers.
Another thing you can do is link your friend to the new tree and ancestry, searches and finds common ancestors in other trees( I think it takes 24 hours).
Hope this helps - good luck!

[TheBam]

Hi, I’m far from an expert but if this is her fathers paternal line, then the link to the match at 220cm should be closer than 2nd or 3rd cousin.
DNApainter points to possibly half 1C 1R So shouldn’t have too look too far back.

I have an identical situation ongoing but with both my parents who were illegitimate...fun and games!,

Hope this helps, good luck.

[larkspur]

Many thanks everyone for the replies, much appreciated. I did start a new tree for her and managed to find the link that  joined up the two ladies mentioned in my opening post. My friend and her dad and her grandmother are on there as a floating trio.
My friend only has 8 matches with the 220 cM lady- oddly the 59cM lady is not one of them. Five of those eight do not have trees. She has 5 matches with the 59cm lady again the 220 cM lady is not one of them. Not sure how this works as they both have the same names in their trees. They only share 2 common links to my friend, one at 103cM and the other at 73cM. I am more confused than ever 

[matt8]

This seems perfectly consistent. What I've learnt is that matches are very much down to probabilities and randomness. I read somewhere for example, that an actual 4th cousin only has about a 50% chance of showing as a match.

Also, two 3rd cousins who are descended from the same ancestor, will both have dna from that ancestor, but have got different parts with no overlap and hence don't show as a match to each other. I think this is what is happening in the case you describe.

I have some reasonably high cM matches who, when I worked out the connection, were much further back in time than I was expecting. It seems that sometimes large segments are passed down a long way by chance.

Personally, I would work on the common people in the trees and start looking for siblings/aunts/uncles and then start working downwards. You might get lucky and there is someone who moved to Leicestershire or find some links that would be worth investigating.

You said the 220 and the 59 both have the same people in their tree. How many generations is each back to their common ancestor? 220 is a high match and I would guess that your friends grandparent and the 220 matches grandparent could be siblings (other relationships are obviously possible; ancestry gives you the percentages for the different possible relationships but this one is a good working hypothesis).

Hope this helps (but I'm not an expert, just observations from my own search).

[larkspur]

You said the 220 and the 59 both have the same people in their tree. How many generations is each back to their common ancestor?

The 220 is 4 generations back and the 59 is 4 also. But lets call their joint Gt Gt grandfather George to ease things along. George married twice and both DNA ladies are from different wives. Just to complicate matters the two wives were sisters. Gets better and better this don't you think 

[matt8]

Yes, interesting!
I would concentrate on the 220 match. Look for siblings of the grandparent of 220 on that line. I would guess that one of those siblings is the person you are looking for.

[larkspur]

Looked at grandparents siblings. They are all too young- eldest would have only been 12 years old when her dad was born. I have gone a generation further back and am looking at great grandparents siblings. As there are 12 of them- plenty of searching needed!! Thank you for your interest, its much appreciated.