Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It’s Saturday Night again –

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  If you have AncestryDNA ThruLines results, which set of 3rd great-grandparents has the most ThruLines? [Note:  Go to Ancestry.com home age, then “DNA” tab, then “ThruLines” tab and run your mouse over each of your ancestors to see the number of ThruLines for each ancestor].  Analyze your ThruLines from these ancestors.  Are they all “correct?”  

While I haven’t looked at ThruLines for a couple of weeks, the last time I looked, they were missing many many matches. Thus, I didn’t expect to have reliable information to answer this prompt. However, they appear to be somewhat updated.

I wrote about my ThruLines data in May 2021. Thus, I have some data for comparisons. Since I manage tests for my siblings and a parent, I’ve recorded the numbers of matches for all four tests.

Based on my results today, my ancestral couple William G. Harding and Elizabeth Fowler have the most ThruLines matches. If I only look at my mother’s side of the tree, then my ancestral couple, Ozias Wells and Mary Kennedy have the most ThruLines matches.

The second part of the prompt, Are They All Correct, is a challenge to answer. In my opinion, answering that question for this many matches is almost impossible in the few hours I allow for writing this blog post. I also believe that answering that question requires that I have done research on the descendants of these third great grandparents.

Descendancy research is time consuming. However, I have done quite a bit of this research. Thus, my Ancestry tree contains many of these descendants. (Pictured is a view of descendants of my 2nd great grandfather, Washington Marion Crawford and his wife Mary Foster.)

So, I will try to answer the question about correctness based on my knowledge of my tree. My first observation is that matches that are in my tree are MISSING from my ThruLines report. Since I’ve been fortunate to have lots of close cousins test, I recognize their names in my list of matches and have many of them linked in my tree.

When I look at my ThruLines report for Nelson G. Crawford, and work down to my great grandparents, it is obvious to me that I’m missing some identified matches. Hugh Judson Crawford has at least 2 descendants on my match list and Lois Elida Crawford has at least 3 descendants on my match list. ThruLines currently only shows 1 descendant in each of these lines. Since all of these matches are linked in my tree, I would assume that they would show up on ThruLines. Thus, an obvious (to me) error.

The other error that I found was in my HARDING line. My ancestor, William G. Harding has a son named Abel Harding (1888-1906). ThruLines found 7 matches thru this Abel Harding. However, it is trying to place another Abel Harding (1834-1920) as a son of William G. Harding. I believe this other Abel Harding (1834-1920) is a son of Abel G. Harding and Ann Nase and a nephew of William G. Harding.

If I click on Abel G Harding it takes me to his profile on my matches tree. This profile is well documented and agrees with what I have in my tree for this Abel G. Harding.

If I were to click on the EVALUATE button, it tells me that there are several trees with this Abel Harding in them. Clicking next, it then wants me to add Abel Harding to my tree citing one of these trees as a source.

Since I already have this Abel G. Harding in my tree as a nephew to William G. Harding, I have no desire to add him. Unfortunately, I could not find an option to reject this DNA suggestion.

While I only looked at my own matches to check for correctness, these were the only ‘obvious’ errors I found.

Thanks to my descendancy research, I was able to not only spot the error but to also realize that some of my matches are missing from my ThruLines.