One of the mysteries of tracing your family history is how do you know that all the research you are putting in is actually following the correct line, well you can never be sure!
In the past (before the advent of DNA) you had to do your homework and check that yours was the only family in the area with that collection of names, follow up on the fathers occupation – loads of ag labs (agricultural labourers) abound and collect the birth, marriage and death records for everyone as well as trying to find everyone on each and every census.
Even with all this diligence sometimes my ancestors threw the odd curve ball, like my Morley ancestor who either chose to misunderstand the registrar or blatantly lied on the recording of each of her children’s births, but more on that later.
To keep living people anonymous I will assign letters as their names. My current puzzle is trying to track the exact relationship of a ‘cousin’ (F) who matches my husband (G) by around 400cM (centimorgans) on their DNA. F is adopted and has successfully traced her mother, but would really like to trace her fathers family. F does not share matches with G on any of his maternal matches and G does not share any of F’s maternal matches, so we have deduced that they must match across both of their paternal lines, but where?
My current tactic is to contact all their shared matches, even those that share just 10cM, in the hope that someone will have a large enough tree, covering collateral sideways lines going forward, as well as going back in time. This is a slow process as a lot of people only do their DNA to get their ethnicity breakdown, others do not check their accounts regularly, so the answers will trickle in gradually.
I have also signed up to Dnapainter so that I can do bulk imports of G’s shared matches from FTdna and Myheritage. This tool allows you to see where people match on individual chromosomes and as such can be useful in sorting out DNA that was passed down by a particular ancestor.
Lorraine’s take on family history and DNA 