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DNA discoveries despite a tree of just three, a twin-birth brain-teaser & more
A tree of just three...
Having tested on Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe, I found that I was inundated with results and matches that I did not understand and did not know what to do with. I joined Michelle Leonard’s class (The DNA Bootcamp, Autumn 2021) as I wanted to try and make sense of what the various sites were telling me.
Amongst my matches on Ancestry was Marilyn, with whom I shared 94 cM –a decent amount, and worthy of investigation. Michelle has stressed that the ‘shared matches’ function is a particularly powerful way of making progress. However, the only shared match I had with Marilyn was with my sister. Furthermore, the ‘tree’ that Marilyn had posted contained only three people –a named couple and an apparent offspring, marked ‘Private’. Marilyn’s given surname did not feature in my research, nor did those of the two other people in her tree. Michelle had said a few times that we should not despair when a DNA tester puts up a tree of only three people. With that advice in mind, although not expecting much, I dived in.
First, I assumed that Marilyn’s stated surname was that of her husband. Fortunately, both this name and that of the supposed father in the tree (hence, hopefully, Marilyn’s maiden name) were sufficiently unusual for me to be fairly confident of finding a suitable marriage record, just to prove my theory – which I did. But the marriage took place in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Although not far from Manchester, my family tree’s centre of gravity, Macclesfield is not somewhere that features in my research. Her father had a very common surname, so I therefore decided to focus on the mother. Marilyn’s tree had given a date for her mother’s birth – 2011. I assumed this should have been 1911 and went looking for her birth record. The Manchester Non-Conformist Births and Baptism collection on Ancestry gave not only her date of baptism, but also her date of birth, in the spring of 1911. The parents’ names and their Manchester address was also noted. All useful stuff.