Ancestry continues to add to the ThruLines experience

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Today as I took a look at Hannah Johnson, Priscilla Adeline Vestal's mother, in the horizontal format that I share on this blog to help you see the folks I am covering and how they relate, a side-bar popped up and asked which person's DNA I wanted to use for my ThruLines. I have several people connected to my South Pope Family Tree, and three to the CE South Family Tree. I chart all these folks' DNA common ancestor matches on a database and find that information informative and somewhat reassuring about the paper and online trails all us genealogy nuts have followed through the years.

After I told the sidebar in Ancestry to use my DNA for ThruLines, bingo! up popped little blue circles beside Hannah and the first tier of her ancestors.

The blue circles by Hannah and her immediate ancestors means that Ancestry will now tell me any DNA matches that match my DNA (not the group's DNA, unfortunately) through that person. The big news, or the big difference is this: for common ancestor hints, the DNA match needed to have a fairly large, thorough, detailed tree. For ThruLines, the match might have no tree at all--which would describe a lot of their recent customers--or a pretty small tree. Still, since it shows how much DNA matched in cM's, you can depend on that person being a match, and Ancestry will have used their computers to analyze trees and matches to figure out why, to some degree of probability, you match.

Here is an example snip from clicking on one of those blue dots. Did you know you make type or pictures get bigger (usually) by using the Ctrl key and the + key? That might help you read some of this snip. And to get back to normal size Ctrl key and the - key makes it get smaller again.

 I know it's hard to read the names, but from the very top, Hannah's father George Johnson, he connects to a brother of Hannah's called Vardamon Johnson. It gives me the information that I have two DNA matches to George Johnson through his descendants...at the bottom below him and all his descendants is a guy whose username on Ancestry is pretendthisiswitty (!) and another whose user name is Kenya Freeman-Rowland. Both of these folks provided a picture to make you either glad or sorry you are 5th cousins or 5th cousins 1xremoved. Above Kenya is a living relative; I know this because it says private. Ancestry won't show living people unless it's your DNA match. Since you can use any username you want, and don't have to submit a picture, you can be as private as you want even then.

 pretendthisiswitty is a guy already on my chart of DNA matches, and in fact he is the only match for George Johnson for our group of cousins.   His tree isn't large, just 254 people, but he has the Johnsons and some of the Durhams and some other names that are familiar. Tracing back up to George Johnson, his tree was the source of Ancestry's information; it shows 3 Johnson descendants and then a living parent in the boxes down to old pretendthisiswitty, I am guessing another Johnson, and then down to him, and I bet his last name is Johnson, but not my whole pension. All information that prompted ThruLines to connect us through Johnson came from his tree. He shares just 6cM of DNA on 1 segment, but still enough for them to dub him 5th cousin.

As a comparison on cM (centi Morgans), I have no first cousins who have done their DNA with Ancestry, but Amy Faye Webb Jacquess and Lee South are down as 2nd cousins. They share 489cM and 289cM respectively; I am guessing Lee had so much more because he is male, but I don't know that for sure. My brother Bob shares 2,711 cM on 59 strands. Lee shares on 17 strands, and Amy on 13 strands. DNA is much more random than people think. My grandson has 1,814 cm across 49 segments or strands that we share. Neither of my children have done an Ancestry.com test.

Kenya Freeman-Rowland, unlike pretendthisiswitty, has a tree with only seven people, and none are familiar to me. How did Ancestry.com come up with the assertion that Kenya and I are connected through George Johnson? Looking closely, which won't help you due to the size of the snip I was able to get, Kenya must appear, or her relatives must appear on a number of others' trees: Elizabeth's tree, photohut10's tree, Etta's tree, nbreeden1's tree, a living mother, and then Kenya. Ancestry allows me to go to all those trees it used and noodle around in them as much as I want, but living people will be called Private. Kenya shares 12 cM's (centiMorgans) of DNA with me on 1 segment, putting her in about 5th cousin range.  


As I said in the earlier update post, I am hoping that they will not stop doing common ancestor hints, although I have a nagging suspicion that they might. I hope they continue improving ThruLines and also their common ancestor hints made from matching trees. That will give us the maximum information about our ancestors. But I have to say that ThruLines took a big leap today and will provide me a lot of things to think about for days to come. It has opened up all those matches without good trees to still provide clues as to how we match, providing some degree of confirmation that we researchers are not just whistling Dixie.