In search of a 2nd Great Grandfather.

[Stanwix England]

Thank you Larkspur, that is helpful guidance.

[larkspur]

 

[Rossdal3]

Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone here can talk me through how I might sort this issue out. I might be talking nonsense so apologies in advance.

I'm trying to find out who a missing 2nd Great Grandfather was. This is not the same man as my other post in the DNA section, this is a different branch, different man. I'm going to use hypothetical names here as I don't want to upset anyone who might see this.

Basically I'm descended from a woman called Mary Carson.

Hi there,
My sister and I successfully identified our “missing” Gt Gt Grandfather about 12 months ago, using our combine DNA lists. I’m happy to share our methodology with you.

Please DM me and I’ll send you my email address.

Kind regards,
Jill


Mary Carson married John Forest and they had a couple of children, however because of what was clearly a troubled relationship - I'm not certain of the parentage of any of their children.

However the marriage broke down. John Forest left and joined the army. He lied on his sign up papers and claimed he was single. We know it's the same John Forest, because he gave his mother as next of kin, with the correct address she definitely lived at.

During, or perhaps because of the break up, at least one of the children, we'll call Tom Forest was sent to Canada by a charitable organisation. As far as I can tell, Tom Forest never had children.

I've found John Forest's army papers and had them verified by an expert, who was able to look at the movements of where John Forest would have been stationed. He was definitively abroad for a long period of the 1880s, and of such a low rank that he would not have been able to return home.

After John Forest had left the family, Mary Carson claimed to still be married to John Forest. She had many more children. There birth certificates all list John Forest as the father, even though this is not possible due to the relationship having broken down and John not being in the same country when these children were conceived.

I'm descended from one of these illegitimate children, a daughter I'll call Jane Carson.

So I'm trying to find out who the actual father of Jane Carson was, by looking through my DNA matches.

The issue I have is that when I look at some of the people I match with, they list John Forest as the father in their trees. I assume because they don't have the information that I do. It was hard to find.

I imagine that it's possible that among my matches, there may very well be people with the same 2nd Great Grandfather that I have, as he could very well have fathered other children.

But how do I sort it all out, when it's sort of a mess?

[David Nicoll]

Hi,
    As you say it will be a long job, and you have to hope for not too much pedigree collapse.
I would say cluster analysis is the way forward.
You are looking for lower cM DNA matches with people who do not share any DNA from your known ancestors. You want matches with siblings or descendants of Ancestors of your unknown. Ancestry now more or less halves the job with its parent identification.
You will then have to hope that enough people have built trees, to the point you can extend them. And then hope that you can triangulate.
The fact that you don’t know the father does not really change the process. It’s pretty much the same for any unknown match.
Build a tree backwards from a match until you find a shared family. It’s easier when you get to a common name, but the principle is the same.
I realise this is a bit rambling, but I hope you get the gist?