After having an atDNA test in early mid 2018, after that first flush of hyperactivity working with my top matches, to extend my tree, I did what sensible genetic genealogists do, I transferred to Gedmatch, and then My Heritage and FTDNA. On Gedmatch one of my very top matches was someone who I have failed to trace up 'til last night, though over the time I got an idea of where they fitted in, approximately, that is somewhere in my maternal grandfather's family tree. I have comparatively few useable matches on Gedmatch, so, their version of 'ICW' doesn't really help me, as apart from my first cousin who I loaded myself to Gedmatch, we only had one shared match that I knew, who is a 3C1R. That's how I knew which grandparents ancestors the match belonged to.
However it is a closer relationship than that, matching me at 135cM, and my cousin Jane at 165 cM, which brings him ( I think of it as him, but I still don't actually know) into the realms of some sort of 2nd cousin relationship. I have spent a lot of time searching, especially when he later turned up as a match on My Heritage, and the one joint match that was significant, was again in that same Duffy quarter of my tree.The picture/icon on this match did not indicate gender either.
For a longtime after I started doing my tree, I could not trace my Grandfather's sister, Mary, I could not find her death, but, with help from here, or perhaps another genealogy forum(!!), I discovered she emigrated to New York, and sadly died in about 1943 from memory, with 4 or five children born here, and a couple USA born. I have made contact with a number of her descendants, firstly from my generation, and more lately from the one below me. So anyway last night I was trawling through ancestry hints for members of this branch, looking for hints I could actually view, as, as I only have the most basic ancestry contract, I can see USA (and others obv.) hints, but I cant actually open them. I was looking at one of the sons born in the USA, who I had had fairly recent notice of having died ( though it was in 2007!), and what did I see but a picture of a funeral/death notification cut out of the paper. Pictures I can look at! It went through the family litany, sons, daughters, with married names, and husbands first names in brackets, these notices, which are not common here anymore, are great for filling out lateral branches. I nearly missed it, I nearly didn't open it, but when I read through, one of the daughters was listed as Cindy Pappas. She would be my 2nd cousin. The email from GEDmatch was jpappas@xxxxx. It is quite an unusual surname, in the correct part of the family tree, at the exact 'distance' it should be...bingo. So at 1.30 am, last night, I entered Cindy Kane and her son(!!) to my tree, copied the segment details from Gedmatch, and painted it to my chromosomes on DNA painter, where they overlapped with more distant matches, and my common ancestors to them, and indicated where that segment had been descended from, before I got it from my great Grandfather Henry Duffy or his wife Catherine Curran - and in fact, it came from the Curran side, well at least that segment did.
It would have been so easy to miss this, and I wonder how many times I may have missed it previously. My motto now must be, if you see something interesting, look at it now, don't think, ah, I will come back to that, because you don't always remember to do that. Well I don't!
So, now I have solved that 3 year old mystery, I will have to find another to 'gnaw' at!
PS - I recently 'met' another of 'his' second cousins on line , from one of the other children of Mary Duffy, I will message him and see if he can put me out of my misery, is J Pappas male or female?? Also, does anyone know if you can add a neutral family member to Ancestry? Looking at it, looks like you can only add a spouse, son, daughter, brother or sister, yet I think I have seen neutral relatives on other people's trees??
Oh, and yes I tried emailing the match, more than once, but 'he' never replied!
