Without doubt DNA testing can be a real benefit in validating each branch of your well documented Family Tree.
We researched ours for about 10 years before both my Wife and I took an Ancestry DNA test, and the results lead us to find many “DNA Cousins”, people who we never knew existed and to add their branch in our respective Family Trees. Along the way we learned of the people in these “DNA Cousins” direct line, how they ended up where they did, how they emigrated to the USA, Canada and Australia, and of who they left behind. All in all our understanding improved of the Social and Economic factors that drove them to radically change their lives with a voyages into the relative unknown.
Then the Bomb went off.
A high DNA match, a minimal family tree, no response to messages, no contact at all. It was time to build a tree around them, two years and a tree of 700 later we are still no nearer resolving the match, and they are still not responding to pleads for contact.
There are now 12 additional “DNA Cousins” of mine who are “Shared” with the high DNA match who all now reside in the “Irish Family Tree”, if that is not all, there are near on 100 other DNA matches of mine who also link to this Irish family but have yet to be added to the tree.
An NPE, that is Not the Parent Expected event has to have taken place somewhere in my fairly recent past, but where, and in which line?
Using The Leeds Method and then a Chromosome Browser, did not help as we did not have a term of reference by way of a true Biological Family Tree only a Genealogical Family Tree. So I set about marking up a six generation Pedigree Chart where a Mark was placed on the MRCA (most recent common ancestor) between me and a DNA Match. By the time I had marked all 100+ “DNA Cousins” on the chart there were glaring sections where there were no Markers, specifically on the branches from both of my Paternal Great Grandfather’s.
Time for a Y-DNA test, so I took one with myFTDNA and when the results came in I waited until their database and been scoured for matches.
Top of the list of matches was an American whose surname is the same as that in my “Irish Family Tree”. Match numbers two and three also have the same surname.
So now emotions are mixed, I am not who I think I am. The family Surname should not be the one that I was born with, nor should my Father’s, nor Grandfather’s, nor should my First Cousins who were born to the same Family Surname. I have thought that it may be so for a couple of years but even so it does come as a bit of an emotional shock.
The “Irish DNA matches” resolve by why of their cM value beyond Grandparent level hence the effect on my First Cousins is probably as I have just described. The lack of a willingness of any of them to take a DNA test is not helping in the quest to learn about our family and I am not sure if it will ever be resolved but I do know that Grandfather and his younger Brother did look different than their older siblings.
DNA testing can help you grow your family tree, it can validate each branch. Despite what is happening to me emotionally I still firmly believe that unless you have DNA matches linking to a MRCA then the accuracy of that branch of your Family Tree has to be questionable. You may have all the BMD records, all the documentation but as I have found it is meaningless without the DNA proof that substantiates your lineage.
It has taken us six years so far to learn and research about DNA and still I feel like I have only just scratched the surface. Having a DNA test does not present the results on a plate, there is a lot of work to do to make the most of actually having the test and what to do with it.
So if you have not yet started your own “DNA Voyage of Discovery” then do think hard of the repercussions that may result if like me you get the unexpected DNA Match(s).
