DNA to solve brickwalls?

[brigidmac]

definitely can help with brickwalls tho the more collaberation you get from matches the better

i have also posted on this subject have helped 2 distant matches identify their birth fathers   one was a war baby from my smith branch ,the other is from jones branch and his father could be 1 of 2 brothers who are 20+ Years older than his mother ...spent a long time looking at wrong generation

more recently helped a frenchman identify his mothers birthfather she was a WW1 baby

my 1st success was identifying my grandmothers birth parents..i think its one of the longest threads on here

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=702286.msg6082485#msg6082485

started 2014 ..how many pages before a dna match proved the theories ?
 we Found the correct birth father before the birth mother

biggles  posts are wonderful btw

[coombs]

Like if you find an illegitimate ancestor, and found a suspected father, the only way to be 99.999% sure is to take a DNA test.

I have a 2xgreat grandmother born Dec 1863 whose parents wed in mid 1864 when she was a baby and the baby was then baptised as the daughter of the new husband. Turned out he was still married when his future 2nd wife was pregnant, and his first wife died in November 1863 of a long illness just weeks before the 2nd wife gave birth. Autosomal DNA testing would be definitive, it is the father of my maternal line 2xgreat grandmother.

[Zaphod99]

Further to what I said earlier, and what Coombs has just said, DNA testing has shown that two of my 16 great great grandparents had illicit children. I don't think that's untypical.

Zaph

[Biggles50]

Sadly with DNA one can get a high probability that ones hypothesis may be correct but one will never likely get the paper trail to substantiate the matter or even a cM level in the right ball park.

As an example in a tree that I am researching where there is an NPE, both the potential Father’s are deceased and there is no records that one of them ever got married. 

The Grandchildren of one of the Potential Father’s are in themselves likely to have inconclusive cM levels with the person that I am researching. 

Hence there is another brickwall on the other side of the demolished one.

[coombs]

Further to what I said earlier, and what Coombs has just said, DNA testing has shown that two of my 16 great great grandparents had illicit children. I don't think that's untypical.

Zaph

Yes, human behaviour has always been rollercoaster.

I know some stuff about DNA testing but I get confused with all this centimorgan data, and also know that it may not answer all your prayers as it is not as cut and dried as seems. I have been doing my family tree for almost 30 years but with DNA testing I am a novice, and have not even tested yet.

[Biggles50]

Further to what I said earlier, and what Coombs has just said, DNA testing has shown that two of my 16 great great grandparents had illicit children. I don't think that's untypical.

Zaph

Yes, human behaviour has always been rollercoaster.

I know some stuff about DNA testing but I get confused with all this centimorgan data, and also know that it may not answer all your prayers as it is not as cut and dried as seems. I have been doing my family tree for almost 30 years but with DNA testing I am a novice, and have not even tested yet.

Coombs

There are plenty here to help, if and when you are ready to take a DNA test, pm me and I can send some files that I sent to help my Cousins understand what I have been doing.

Yes there can be pitfalls, but there are benefits, I am in contact with DNA Cousins (2C’s) who I never knew existed and they in turn have supplied plenty of family information.

The book by Blaine Bettinger is a good place to start.  He is the guy behind the DNA Painter website that you will have seen commented on and suggested here many times.

[Wexflyer]

Further to what I said earlier, and what Coombs has just said, DNA testing has shown that two of my 16 great great grandparents had illicit children. I don't think that's untypical.

Zaph

I am far from convinced that you can tell.

My parents are tested. Their 16 great-grandparents typically date from the 1700s or very early 1800s.

My parents each have over 20,000 DNA matches, but I can't identify positive DNA links to all 16 great-grandparents for them. Indeed, we don't even know who some of them were. That far back, DNA matches become quite random - which I can see with many examples of  match/no match between family members, and also highly varying levels of match where matches do exist.  I don't conclude from this that that there were "illicit children".

[dobfarm]

I've always been sceptical on some DNA reports I've heard about getting no near connections but a lot of general stuff like, descend from Norman, Saxon. Druid, Asian, African and or other descent. I have seen a programme of late on unknown male sperm donation fathers  and they have had success being able to track the father or at least his family connection with DNA for the child that was born from a sperm donation for/when that child has grown up wanting to know who was their biological fathers. ( I believe the father or his family were contacted first to see if they wanted the fathers identity passed to the child of the sperm donation first though)

So DNA does solve or help breaking down walls.

 

[PrawnCocktail]

So DNA does solve or help breaking down walls.

 

Yes, but that's very recent. Once you get further back, it's not so easy.

I have two groups of matches who match each other on my paternal side, and one on my maternal side. They are largely full of matches who don't have trees, or have private trees. The ones who have private trees don't turn up in any search for any locality my family lived in, and the few who have useful sized public trees usually turn out to be based in the States, and not have managed to cross the Pond yet.

And two of my paternal brick walls are in parts of the country which have no group of unknown matches to even look at. My great grandmother (an only child) came from Oxfordshire, and should have several matches of a reasonable size, but there's absolutely nothing from her locality at all.

Just not that simple, and very dependent on who has tested.