I Triangulate
In my quest to connect my ancestor Lucy Snow Hall to her parents Thomas Snow and Hannah Lincoln, I have yet to find a primary source document that spells out this relationship. The paper trail still hinges on an entry for the Hall family line in The Encyclopedia of Massachusetts. I continue to search for additional sources that could verify this relationship.
In the meantime, I can tinker with analyzing DNA results to search for clues. After listening to a presentation by local DNA detective Greg Liverman, I decided to modify the cluster approach he suggested for identifying unknown ancestors. He described how to use online family trees and the 1940 census to fill in the family lines of matches back to a common ancestor.
As I perused my dad’s match lists on the sites where he tested his DNA, I looked for people with New England ancestry. I focused on those with surnames that appear in my own tree, but I did not find much of interest.
I did notice a couple of matches who claimed Nickerson forebears. My ancestor Lucy had two close relatives, a sister and a daughter, who married into the Nickerson family. I spent a couple of days trying to put together the family trees for these Nickerson descendants, and I think they also descend from my Thomas and Hannah:
Thomas Snow and Hannah Lincoln descendants
Lucy Snow Hall Bethia Snow Nickerson
Rhoda Hall Dunbar Thomas Nickerson VI
Olive Dunbar Riddle Thomas Snow Nickerson
Laura Riddle Annie Nickerson Mills Alva Nickerson
Grace Riddle Reed Mildred Mills Cushman Maude N. Kaliher
Earl Reed Alta Cushman Brodie Private
Private Private
The last two people in the threads of the Bethia Snow Nickerson line, Dad’s predicted 5th cousins, both match him on the 13th chromosome. They match each other in the same place.
This is called triangulation. It means people who are not closely related match one other, indicating a common ancestral couple.
In this case, I think the couple must be Thomas Snow and Hannah Lincoln although it is possible there is a different common ancestor. If Thomas and Hannah are the common ancestors, Dad descends from their suspected daughter Lucy. The two men who match his DNA descend from their suspected daughter Bethia.
Thomas and Hannah did have daughters Lucy and Bethia who were baptized at the Brewster, MA church in the 1760’s. Are these the same girls who married into the Hall and Nickerson families?
I still do not have a paper trail proving these relationships, but the DNA result adds weight to my hypothesis.