DNA breaks down brick wall

[guest189040]

One of my xGGP's has been a brick wall.

There are three options for parents for him and despite what other trees have I remained sceptical.

This afternoon I just typed in the surname Ruck in the DNA Window search box and a DNA match came up that I had not looked at.

His tree had one solitary member of the Ruck family an Anne b1738.

With some detective work I found and created the link from Anne into my tree and hence through to my DNA match.

One more thing, this DNA match is the one and only that link via my Paternal Grandmother so it is particularly satisfying to find.
Yep, DNA can unlock doors.

[Albufera32]

Congrats on your success.

[hurworth]

Wow - 1738 is going back a bit!

Surnames in matches trees can be especially useful for names such as Ruck.  I find it less useful for popular surname such as Fitzgerald in Ireland or Henderson in Scotland, but it's always worth looking.  I spotted a Holmes cousin the other day that Thrulines wasn't picking up, but only because I was looking by village, not surname.  Holmes is another one of those popular surnames.

Due to some incorrect trees Ancestry has created some fictitious Thrulines based on siblings my ancestors didn't have.  Sure, one of them did have a brother William, born in an Irish city, but he must have died (and probably is the William named on a very worn and almost illegible headstone where his parents are buried) as 20 or so years later his brother was described as only surviving son in the newspapers.  So he's not the William, an agricultural labourer, who married 20 miles away, but numerous tree have him as the cityborn William simply because the dates are close.

[Petros]

The number of errors in Ancestry trees is indeed frustrating but DNA has pointed me to finding what become of the youngest son of my 4 x great grandfather.  Born 1812 with a surname very common to the West Midlands I had stopped looking for him, but a couple of DNA hits and perusal of a number of trees were all consistent with the individual having emigrated to the US

[hurworth]

We found descendants of the younger half-sister of my gtgtgtgt-grandfather with DNA.  At MyHeritage two second cousins were matching a few of us, through two of the gtgtgtgt-grandfather's children. 

We've also found descendants of siblings of his wife (who was a Henderson) and connected a few dots.  One of her nephews went to Ireland and none of the records there indicated that he was Scottish, as he's not on any surviving census records.  He was a gardener on a large estate, as had been his father.  Another brother also went to Ireland.

[Rena]

Congratulations Biggles, onwards and upwards eh?

I imagine it was a source of great satisfaction when you connected all the dots.  -

[brigidmac]

Great find Biggles and great detective work following it thru