I might have cracked it!

[Ayashi]

Please cross your fingers, toes, paws etc for me, I think I might have made a major breakthrough.

My 2nd great grandfather was illegitimate with no father mentioned anywhere. DNA suggested a family- from common ancestors with a large group, I thought his father might be a son or grandson of the common couple.

If it was a grandson, I would have to match with the marry-in family, which would be BELL in one case and GREENER in the other. I admit I was rather fancying BELL, but I quickly found that in neither case could I find a paper trail (and nor could anyone else by the looks of it).

I was having a fiddle around with the search function today, looking up trees with GREENER and suddenly found several people who, after some squinting, appear to match back to the same common GREENER ancestor... and one of the possible options for "my" Ann GREENER also appears to match to the same family!

Still needs some evidencing, but the exciting thing here is the lack of possibilities among the sons. It's technically possible that the son born in 1835 could father a child in late 1852 but more likely to be the oldest son (1832). It would also make him a minor for marriage- perhaps his parents said no!

I've amended my tree for Thrulines (with the people labelled as John or Jane DOE - INVESTIGATION DO NOT COPY lol) so hopefully Anc will confirm that a load of people are indeed related to each other. I can also try to match to the other surnames, although that includes SMITH...

I'd be somewhat hesitant to go ahead and name my suspect as the father in case I've bungled the entire thing. Can someone please invent a magic machine so I can temporarily resurrect them for a paternity test? 

Remaining quietly hopeful,
Ayashi

[4b2]

Amazing!

You might be able to seal it with just DNA. Look through all the common matches for those related to Greeners. You will need to extend smaller trees, which can easily be done via searching dead-ends in public trees.

You should probably have matches for the other relevant families from the Greeners, if that is correct. e.g. you mention the son born in 1832. There should probably also be matches for his mother's side. If so then that's your sealing.

[Ayashi]

Unfortunately many of the common matches do not have trees/private trees, but I'll be going through them where I can. The GREENER people don't even show as shared matches to the original family I was investigating, but since they are such a low cM amount I don't think that is necessarily suspicious (just a bit unfortunate). I'm hoping that some of the proven descendants might eventually respond to messages and confirm what they believe to be true of the GREENER ancestry.

The 1832 son is TELFORD (many matches, definite relation) on his father's side and GREENER on his mother's. Using the DNA matches, I have a speculative GREENER line but I am currently hitting issues already. Her mother's name, LAIDLER, marries into a different branch of the same family so I am wary that any LAIDLER matches might be descended from the other marriage and a red herring for this one (even if both lines end up being from the same family). I have a few LAIDLER matches that are definitely from that side (TELFORD). I have her father's first name but no luck so far. Another surname is SMITH... Then you've got one I can't find yet, a woman only known as Jane (no surname) and then a disputed wife where I think both people are wrong.

Two of the matches descend from a GREENER born 1767. The furthest ancestor here was born 1698 so the odds of even matching to those descendants was not in my favour.

It may be a very slow process.

[4b2]

Do you have Ancestry Pro Tools? It's sometimes the case that a match has no tree, but another close match does have a tree, e.g. mother and son. Via such connections it's possible to use a lot more matches.

It's difficult to follow everything without it being laid out graphically.

The best way to approach this is going through all the matches of the closest match that appears to relate to the NPE or other unknown event. Go through all their shared matches, down to 8cM and extend trees as needed by searching for dead end ancestors in public trees and/or records. Mark ones that you can't see any common ancestors to the shared matches as not worth looking at again; to avoid keeping going over them. With Ancestry ProTools you can find shared matches that are closely related and that helped to more quickly find the common ancestors among matches.

If you have say a half second cousin match on an NPE, they are probably going to have shared matches that relate to several different lines of shared ancestry. Though with the nature of inheritance, there will be some branches that are not shared in common.

There needs to be shared matches + a shared paper trial to make a match. If you are looking for surnames in trees only, you can construct a lot of trees to people who are not ancestors. One of my grandmothers was born out of wedlock, and Ancestry's Through Lines suggests the complete ancestry of the man her mother later married. Since all the lines of ancestry of her husband happen to be in my matches' trees, but they are randomly spread throughout - not corresponding to any shared DNA.

[Biggles50]

You may find that there is zero documentation evidence to support the DNA.

In the case of illegitimate births what documentation there may be could very well be falsified with that being either deliberate or in good faith.

In my Wife’s tree two distant Cousins with 31cM and 39cM have a closer relationship with each other and using ProTools we can see this and it supports the MRCA they have with each other.  Another Cousin of hers shares the 31cM but not the 39cM match such is the way DNA is inherited.

Just to throw a spanner in the works do note that as close as your 3xGGP may be there is the possibility that you do not inherit any or their DNA.  Conversely what this could mean is that DNA matches who may be shared with others do not in themselves share any element of DNA from the MRCA that you are hoping to link them to.

[Ayashi]

I do have Pro Tools. I leave notes on various matches. The closest unknown match is someone with no tree whatsoever and not knowing who he is is pretty annoying, but I suspect he's on "my side" (ie another descendant of the illegitimate child's marriage). Thrulines sometimes gets it right and sometimes gets it horrendously wrong. In any case, Thrulines only matches a couple of generations back into GREENER, not far enough to suggest common ancestors of the earlier ones. While I did search by surname, the actual trees connected do follow the same lineage (although that's not to say someone else didn't cobble it together and spread it around). From what I've looked at so far, even if it isn't accurate it is not exactly unreasonable either.

Thanks Biggles. There's no father mentioned anywhere. We've definitely inherited a lot of TELFORD. I've got multiple matches from various branches of their family as well as the common mother's HAGGERSTON and her mother's BEAMSON (or BENSON). It may well be that the TELFORD line was particularly potent at the expense of the other side of the family... I've had a few patches of the tree where I'm spoilt for choice on matches on one side of the marriage but the other side is oddly sparse in comparison.

The BELL family is a straight dead-end paperwork wise. The surname is unfortunately common too. I can't even trace some of the sons because of men of the same name and age in the same area. At least there's now a possibility for GREENER. Even if their proven TELFORD-GREENER descendants don't match with the same people I'm hoping they might match with other people who follow the same line up. I've messaged the descendant of 1832 and someone managing a mother-son pair descended from 1832's sister (she responded to one message previously but was pretty much the only person to even give me the time of day). There are a couple of others from the same marriage I haven't re-messaged yet.

One thing that has helped is that illegitimate's mother's side is an absolute twig for several generations- he was the only surviving child of an only surviving child of an only child (also the illegitimate child of a widow...). I have only one proven DNA match on that side of the family, from his grandmother's brother. Even finding that was unexpected. It vastly increases the likelihood that TELFORD is his father's side, especially as illegitimate's wife's side is another area of the tree with more connections than I can shake a stick at (none of whom have matched with TELFORD).

His father might always be a matter of speculation, but I intend to make it as deeply evidenced speculation as I can manage. Apparently I've already been (im)patiently working on this for something like 5 years and it is only going to get (hopefully) more clear over time with more matches. Or I might later find I was quite literally barking up the wrong tree.

[Biggles50]

You could try using Ancestry’s Grouping feature.

It would take a bit of work as it involves creating 16 Groups, one for each Great Great Grandparent and assigning each DNA match and each of their shared matches to a specific GG GP.

The matches you then have which are not linked to any Group could well be the ones related to the unknown family

It a bit of outside the box logic.

[Ayashi]

Thank you for the suggestion. This lot are currently grouped in Brady Suspect Line-Up  Unfortunately it seems like the majority of my matches are, tree-wise, pretty worthless. I think if I tried grouping everybody by individual ancestor I'd have probably very few groups and a migraine.

There is one potential game-changer. Two of the TELFORD-GREENER children have the middle name LOVE and indeed 1832 is with the LOVE family on the 1841 and 1851 censuses (for some reason). On the 51 he is listed as "nephew" but I haven't worked out how on earth they are connected yet. I'm pretty sure its a GREENER connection somewhere though. Watch this space, I guess?

[coombs]

Good that you have something to go on at least, a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.