need help working this match out

[fiddlerslass]

Hi,
I need a bit of help to see if I have thought this through correctly....

I've got an ancestor, 4th gtgran Dorothy Thompson b abt 1785 Gateshead or Newcastle from the census records, and some of her children's baptisms. There are several candidates, so going by naming patterns I picked William Thompson and Mary Arkless and added them to my tree to see what would happen. Dorothy was christened about 2 years after their marriage, followed by Ann Thompson

There is one match suggested by "thrulines" which comes direct from Mary Arkless but not via William and suggests that this person (5th cousin onnce removed with a 14 cM match ) is descended from Ann Thompson, daughter of Mary Arkless b. 1786 and gives the relationship of Ann to me as half 4th gtgrandaunt.

William and Mary continued having children till 1801, so neither has died and remarried between Dorothy and Ann's birth.
Does this imply that either Dorothy or Ann is the result of a liaison with someone other than William? I am the only person shown to stem from William, if he is Dorothy's father.

Hope you can follow this!

[Pheno]

No, it is most likely that no-one else either knows about William and therefore he is not included in their trees or that details about him in other trees just don't correspond exactly to yours - maybe a slight change in spelling or a slight difference in dates.

In that case Ancestry doesn't recognise them as the same person and therefore all relationships from his spouse are shown as half siblings, cousins etc.

You need to use the evaluate function on the trees which Ancestry offers to check out the details.

Pheno

[fiddlerslass]

Thanks.
I think in that case it is likely that nobody else knows either, as looking at the evaluate section for Ann, no-one has a definite parent for her. One has gone with William and Mary and another has gone with Robert and Mary. My match has not got any further back from Ann Thompson. There are no instances of the name Robert coming down the family via my Dorothy. There are so many William Thompson's around, that pinning him down date wise and origin is very tricky, although as some of his children had non conformist /Presbyterian baptisms there may be some Scottish ancestry.
I suppose I could pop Robert and Mary on my tree if I can find out more about them and see what happens.
It is just a bit frustrating to be stuck on Dorothy-if she had been born a few years later the Durham baptisms are so much more informative.

[hurworth]

Unfortunately Thompson is a very common name in that area - my grandmother's younger siblings have Thompson ancestors from that area and even with a few descendants having taken DNA tests we're still struggling to build the tree back of my grandmother's "step-father" (they barely knew him - he scarpered when his youngest daughter was an infant).

I'm always hesitant to try a name in the tree to see what Thrulines brings up.

[melba_schmelba]

Thanks.
I think in that case it is likely that nobody else knows either, as looking at the evaluate section for Ann, no-one has a definite parent for her. One has gone with William and Mary and another has gone with Robert and Mary. My match has not got any further back from Ann Thompson. There are no instances of the name Robert coming down the family via my Dorothy. There are so many William Thompson's around, that pinning him down date wise and origin is very tricky, although as some of his children had non conformist /Presbyterian baptisms there may be some Scottish ancestry.
I suppose I could pop Robert and Mary on my tree if I can find out more about them and see what happens.
It is just a bit frustrating to be stuck on Dorothy-if she had been born a few years later the Durham baptisms are so much more informative.

Sometimes these mysteries involving common surnames some way back have a chance of being solved if you can get cousins on the relevant lines tested and have them share their DNA with you. You can then look for patterns in smaller shared matches than Ancestry shows to you (they only show above 20cM on shared matches) working through matches systemically down to the lower cM levels. If you then find a 'hidden' shared match group, look at the trees, and if they are patchy, fill out the trees of all those in it as much as you can, and you may then find a likely common ancestor. Some of those shared matches may be on another line via the ancestor or spouse of the person with the common surname, which you can then link to the common surnamed descendant or spouse.