After discovering several DNA matches who share DNA with descendants of John Crawford through his daughters’ Sellers lines, I decided to see if I could do something similar with descendants of John Crawford and his brothers, James and William.
Following the same process I used for the Sellers research, I temporarily changed the parents of my James Crawford in my Ancestry tree to test different hypotheses:
- John (Rebekah) Crawford
- James (Rebecca) Crawford
- William (Elizabeth) Crawford
This allowed me to use ThruLines to identify matches descending from each of these three Crawford lines. Once I had those autosomal matches, my goal was to use GEDmatch to see if I could find a shared DNA segment that might help confirm a common Crawford connection.
Since I didn’t recognize most of these matches, I turned to GEDmatch’s “People Who Match Both or 1 of 2 kits” tool. For the comparison, I used my own kit and that of a known descendant of James and Rebekah Crawford. My hope was that those who matched both kits would share Crawford DNA, helping identify a possible Crawford segment.
However, after reviewing the GEDCOM data and linked WikiTree profiles, that didn’t appear to be the case. Instead, I found trees with Van Arsdale and Neafus ancestry—both surnames that do appear in my family tree, but not within the Crawford branch.
At this point, I don’t have enough GEDmatch kit numbers from confirmed Crawford descendants to identify a shared DNA segment. So for now, I can’t prove that I share DNA with the descendants of John, James, or William Crawford. Still, this process has provided valuable clues and will help guide my next steps in exploring the Crawford DNA connections.
Although I haven’t yet pinpointed a shared Crawford DNA segment, this research journey has deepened my understanding of how interconnected these early Crawford families were. Each analysis—whether through ThruLines, GEDmatch, or traditional genealogy—adds another piece to the Crawford puzzle. My next step will be to locate additional tested descendants from the various Crawford lines and see if new data can help connect these pieces into a clearer genetic picture of our shared ancestry.