Wordless Wednesday : William Lee Wright, 1933

Photo of my maternal grandfather, William Lee Wright, taken in 1933 (age 13-14).

Reaching out to close matches

Reached out this weekend to all of my close matches at AncestryDNA and encouraged them to share or link their results to a family tree.  So many people have tested there and haven't bothered to even enter rudimentary information about their family tree.  A couple of my matches had a family tree, but didn't link their trees to their DNA results.

I encouraged each one of those matches to upload their results to GEDMatch so we could compare chromosomes.

In addition, I reached out to matches that I shared in common with my cousin Jeffrey - so I know those matches should either match me on the upline from the LeMaster/Wehrly line.

So far, the only response I've received one response.  Danny, a man who is predicted to be a 4th-6th cousin, who doesn't know his father.  He has uploaded to GEDMatch, so I will try to help see where we have a match.

Baby Steps : LeMaster and Wehrly DNA

Made contact with Jeffrey, an AncestryDNA match who was predicted to be a 3rd cousin to see if we could compare information and chart our common DNA.  Jeff and I are actually 2nd cousins once removed - our common ancestors were Luman Cooper LeMasters and Barbara Isabel Wehrly.

According to AncestryDNA, we shared 189 cM over 10 DNA segments.  Unfortunately, AncestryDNA doesn't give you a chromosome browser to show you exactly which chromosomes we match on.  It's knowing where we match that can help segregate which DNA comes from the LeMaster side.  

I was able to have Jeffrey to upload his AncestryDNA results to the 3rd party site GEDMatch.  Here are the results of the comparison of our DNA:

GEDMatch shows us matching on 8 segments and 192.4 cM.  The differences between AncestryDNA and GEDMatch are due to the cutoff minimum in GEDMatch to be counted as a matching segment.

As you can see, Jeffrey and I match on chromosomes 4,5,6,8,15,18 & 21.  We have a break in chromosome 6 with two long stretches of shared DNA.  

Next, I compared Jeffrey's results with that of my first cousin Debbie to see where they matched each other.

They only match on 4 segments for 62.5 cM.  The matching chromosomes are on 2,8,15 & 16.

I also compared Jeffrey to my dad, to see what DNA they share together.

Jeffrey and my dad share 11 matching segments and 344.5 cM of DNA, much more than he shares with Debbie or myself.  The chromosomes they match on are 3,4,5,6,7,8,10,15,18 & 21 - including two sections on chromosome 6, just like he shared with me.

The common ancestry of all of us testing above are the LeMaster and Wehrly lines, so the DNA we share has to come from these branches or upline from them.  Right now chromosome 6 seems to be behaving very interestingly.

I'm beginning to collect data on matches that I share from the three testing sites to chart out an mark which DNA is coming from which side of the family. This will come in handy for helping those distant matches that triangulate with us in finding the common ancestors.