Genealogy Jottings

We have a branch missing from my family tree.

My paternal grandmother never knew her father. She claimed she did not even know his name, and perhaps she didn’t. Her aunt, not her mother, raised her.

This unknown man contributed 12.5% of my ancestry, yet I have no information on his family or heritage. Endless searches of records on my grandmother and her family have yielded no clues.

Recently we embarked on our last, best hope, DNA testing. We opted for autosomal testing because we are not looking for a straight maternal or paternal line. If we could only find someone with no discernable matches to my documented family tree, that person could be related through the mystery man.

Matches have begun to come back, and most of them seem to connect through lines I currently have documented:

• One match also had Reed and Carter ancestors.
• One match and I both descend from the Puritan Edward Bangs.

Strangely, several matches came in from Australia. All the paternal ancestors I know about have lived in America since colonial times, and I know of no relatives who relocated to Australia. Could these people be related to my unknown great-grandfather?

I am just beginning to wade into this new world of DNA testing. I have learned a couple of things as I try to understand how it works. For example, descent from a common documented ancestor does not mean that the DNA match is necessarily from that ancestor. One must triangulate results to prove a match from any given ancestor.

With no scientific training beyond college biology, this DNA world presents me with a daunting learning curve. But if I ever want to discover my great-grandfather, I need to become proficient in this science.