Ay. So all her research was wrong? The families she identified as neighbors aren't related at all to your mom?
Sometimes this stuff just makes my head hurt.
Here's another thing I've been trying to make work, using DNA matches. My nearest empty spot in my family tree is a great-great-great grandmother. I know her husband (and many generations beyond her husband, because his is a well-documented family) and the name of his first wife is loud and clear in various records including a written family history. His first wife had eleven children with him, and, I assume, died of exhaustion. But then he fathered four more children, including my own ancestor. The written family history has [unknown] for the name of the second wife. And boy is she unknown! I can't find a marriage record, death records, no mention of their mother's name on the children's marriage records, nothing.
But what about DNA, right? Since she is my only gap up to and including that generation, any matches I can't place should belong to her family. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. There are waaaay too many matches with no family trees and other obstacles to figuring out my connection to them. But it seems like somehow I ought to be able to use a process of elimination. Like, clusters of matches who are related to A but not to B, look for their common ancestor, or at least common ancestral name and that's the right family? Or something like that? I can't quite make it work.
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Date: 2016-11-11 05:10 pm (UTC)Sometimes this stuff just makes my head hurt.
Here's another thing I've been trying to make work, using DNA matches. My nearest empty spot in my family tree is a great-great-great grandmother. I know her husband (and many generations beyond her husband, because his is a well-documented family) and the name of his first wife is loud and clear in various records including a written family history. His first wife had eleven children with him, and, I assume, died of exhaustion. But then he fathered four more children, including my own ancestor. The written family history has [unknown] for the name of the second wife. And boy is she unknown! I can't find a marriage record, death records, no mention of their mother's name on the children's marriage records, nothing.
But what about DNA, right? Since she is my only gap up to and including that generation, any matches I can't place should belong to her family. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. There are waaaay too many matches with no family trees and other obstacles to figuring out my connection to them. But it seems like somehow I ought to be able to use a process of elimination. Like, clusters of matches who are related to A but not to B, look for their common ancestor, or at least common ancestral name and that's the right family? Or something like that? I can't quite make it work.