A common lament for those of us who engage in researching family history using DNA connections is the one with NO dates listed, no indication of country, no indication of their rough age, and name.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
For the past several years, a DNA cousin of mine has eluded me in terms of our connection. A 66cm match for me, 52cm match for my brother, not a match for my mother (my father died before I had a chance to get him to test). So yes, the obvious is I can narrow it down to my paternal side...but THIS is what I had to work with:
first and last name for 3 of 4 grandparents...how was I to figure out what seemed an impossible task. Spoiler alert (I did figure it out, and this is how):
I had NO idea who this dna match was to me, but with a 66cm, and 52cm match, I narrowed it down to a likely 3rd cousin - and perhaps as distant as a 4th, and added the "removed" possibility of a generation as it seems both parents are alive, and possibly one of 4 grandparents.
This took me to looking only at paternal lines of mine, and no more distant than my 3x great grandparents. I felt it most likely to be a match with one of my great grandparents, or 2x great grandparents, so I began from what I felt the closest possibilities were. I looked at our shared matches and was able to narrow it down to 4 of my 2x great grandparents as possibilities. I sort my DNA matches by known ancestor, and in unknown maternal and paternal for those I haven't figured out.
The first names available - Robert, George, Annie...sigh. For my match, I took the last names of George and Robert and started searching for possible parent matches, phone directories, city directories, marriages, anything...a few possibilities came up, all in England. None of my ancestors were from England so I was going to try the two names that had the best Irish or Scottish possibilities. Thanks to the middle initial of Annie being the one additional clue provided, I was able to narrow down the marriage of my DNA cousin's grandparents to less than half a dozen, all in England.
I then also looked at Robert's side, and his last name, also Scottish, and set to work in my own tree (I have just over 10,000 names in the tree I have built and researched over nearly 20 years).
I started from closest relations and went through my dad's journals, and great aunts and uncles and all of those I didn't have a huge amount of documentation for. I narrowed in on my father's AUNT. She had died in childbirth at the age of 29, my father had said her husband had committed suicide soon after, crashing a Rolls Royce. He had no details of her husband's name. My father did write the first names of the children, and what he thought was his aunt's name and position in the family. The children's first names were all correct. His aunt's name, and her being the youngest were not. Last week I found and paid for the death certificate I felt might be this aunt's husband's death. It confirmed he had worked in the motor transport industry, and he had died from fractures to the skull and nose less than 3 weeks after she died. I felt like this HAD to be a great possibility for this strong DNA cousin match that I have been struggling to figure out for years.
For this aunt, I had already written out many theories, and found enough voter registration lists and other documents to know his last name. I don't know where the 3 children lived and grew up as they were so young when they lost both their parents, and they did not stay in touch with my father and his family - when they died, he lost 3 first cousins to tragedy and time and the World War that would begin only a year later.
But I had a prospective last name to search with. Could this be Robert's wife? the living PRIVATE grandmother of my DNA match. I searched more records, one of the orphaned cousins popped up in Scotland in a marriage that would fit the approximate marrying age of my father's 1st cousin - in Scotland. I tested the theory and immediately found several public registers (voter registrations/phone books/city directories - these are go to's for me). CONFIRMED
This vague, undetailed tree with less than a handful of names, thanks to the steps I followed and a middle initial to help, solved a years' long mystery - not just for how I matched this DNA cousin, but what happened to the children orphaned after the tragic loss of their parents. One of my father's 1st cousins had something of a tragic end - in his 40s, in the US, alcoholism named in his death certificate, alone, without family, but the other 2 had remained in Scotland and built lives and future generations.
the DNA match - my second cousin, once removed. My great grandparents, her 2x great grandparents. Her father is my second cousin.
