Genealogy Jottings

Earlier this fall I learned about DNA cluster research for identifying recent ancestors. I decided to try this to see if I can learn something about my dad’s maternal grandfather.

This mystery man fathered my grandma late in 1895. I do not know where my great-grandmother was at the time. She may have been living at home on her Nebraska homestead or visiting relatives in Michigan. I have done a tremendous amount of research for both locales, but no clues have turned up to help me identify this man.

DNA research offers my best hope for learning his identity. The My Heritage website offers a simple-to-use cluster tool to sort DNA into family groups. I have run my dad’s report twice, about a month apart.

The second report clustered the matches a little differently and included a few more people. It puts our matches into an overwhelming 21 clusters.

I recognize only one person in the first, largest cluster 15 people. She is a third cousin on dad’s paternal side. Similarly, Clusters 2 (7 people), 4 (6 people) and 5 (5 people) seem to be paternal relatives. So do the smaller Clusters 10 and 12. Since I am looking for Dad’s maternal grandfather, I did not look any further into these clusters of paternal relatives for now. I need a cluster of closely related people whose names I do not recognize.

In the remaining clusters I do not recognize anyone, but they are not close matches, either. The instructor who introduced me to cluster research said to focus on those clusters where no one is familiar, particularly those individuals who have a greater than 60 cM match. Unfortunately, no one in any of these clusters meets that threshhold.

Still there are some clues here. My dad’s ethnicity estimate says he has a lot of Irish heritage, yet no one among my known relatives is Irish. All seven of the matches in Cluster 3 have Irish surnames—Cusack, O’Brien, O’Neill, Ryan. Are these people relatives of my dad’s grandfather? Was he Irish?

And what about Cluster 6 where I do not recognize any of the five matches? Again, these people are very distantly related. No distinctive ethnicity appears from surnames in this group.

To do cluster research, I must begin somewhere, even if we have no 60cM or greater match to anyone in the unfamiliar clusters. This week I started by trying to construct family trees for the matches in Cluster 3, and the Ryan surname appears in two of them so far.

This is going to take a long time. I have learned to run a new report periodically to see if any new matches show up. Any other children of my mystery man would be my grandma’s half siblings, their offspring would be dad’s half-cousins. If we have relatives out there who fit this profile, I wish they would provide their DNA tests to My Heritage so I could find them.

This cluster research is fascinating and aggravating at the same time. I had hoped a simple answer would leap out. Instead, this is a slog or hard work over a period of time.