Sellers DNA Provides Major Hint to My Crawford Ancestry

Do you have DNA matches to members of your FAN club that you just can’t place in your family tree? That’s been my struggle with my SELLERS matches.

When I experiment with my Ancestry tree and list Rebekah Douglass Crawford as the mother of my ancestor, James Crawford, those SELLERS matches suddenly appear in ThruLines. Not only does ThruLines connect me to descendants of Mary Crawford Sellers and Sarah Crawford Sellers, but it also identifies a handful of descendants of the James Crawford who married Martha Knight.

Building the Evidence with Charts and GedMatch

To better visualize these connections, I began creating a McGuire chart showing how the SELLERS matches descend from Mary and Sarah.

Hoping to strengthen the case, I turned to GedMatch. A one-to-many search revealed that one of these SELLERS matches was also on GedMatch.

Running an autosomal one-to-one comparison showed a shared segment on chromosome one.

Using GedMatch Pro Tools, I identified other matches who share that same DNA segment, including some of my known Ancestry matches. That gives me strong DNA evidence connecting me to this group of SELLERS descendants.

Revisiting an Old DNA Circle

Remembering that Ancestry once featured “Circles,” I dug through my old files and found a printout of the SELLERS DNA circle. Specifically, I located the circle for Nathan Douglas Sellers (1797–1874). This wasn’t just a list of matches—it also included Ancestry’s relationship estimate. According to their analysis, Nathan was my 2nd cousin 5x removed.

That estimate provides an important clue: if Nathan is a second cousin, then our shared ancestor would be about three generations back from him. His FamilySearch tree points to potential ancestors. While it’s possible the connection lies through Nathan’s mother, it seems far more likely that the common ancestor is on the SELLERS side—which includes both a CRAWFORD line and a SMITH line.

A Major Clue Toward Identifying the Ancestor

While Ancestry’s ThruLines won’t extend back far enough to pinpoint the exact common ancestor, I now have multiple layers of evidence:

• DNA proof of a connection to SELLERS descendants
• A triangulated shared segment on chromosome one
• An old Ancestry circle identifying a likely cousin relationship

Together, these clues provide a major hint that the CRAWFORD line in the SELLERS family may also be the key to unlocking the mystery of my own James Crawford’s parentage.

This isn’t the final answer, but it’s a significant step forward. The SELLERS DNA may ultimately hold the missing link to my CRAWFORD ancestry.