Genealogy Jottings

My dad’s DNA cluster report from My Heritage (www.myheritage.com) returned 21 clusters of matches. I continue to hope that one of these will reveal the identity of Dad’s unknown maternal grandfather.

As I analyzed this report, I focused first on the biggest clusters, 1-10. I recognized relatives in eight of those clusters, so I assume the people in them are relatives of either Dad’s father or his maternal grandmother, not his unknown grandfather. I can eliminate these clusters from my search.

The other two clusters, 3 and 6, are peopled with strangers to me. They may be members of the family I seek.

Unfortunately, no one in these clusters is a close match of 60 cM or more, the threshold for ease of relationship identification. They all fall in the more distant 3^rd-5^th cousin range. That means our most recent common ancestor would be 2^nd great-grandparents at the closest. Some of my dad’s 2^nd great-grandparents were born during the Revolutionary War.

Still, this match list is the best clue I have for finding my mysterious ancestor, so I will work with what I have. The methodology for cluster research tells us to reconstruct the family tree for each match in the cluster to look for a common ancestral couple. Then, follow the lines of descent from them to identify the unknown ancestor.

Creating family trees for each match presents a daunting task, but I worked on it for the six matches in Cluster 3 this week. Except for one, these people appear to be Irish. I could find no family information for one of the Irish-surnamed people.

For the man with an other-than-Irish surname, I found no family tree on My Heritage. I did find him on our match list on the 23andMe DNA testing site. He provided brief family information there, saying they came from New York and St. Louis. Not much help there. I then searched the site for our common matches there and found we have Irish relatives in common although the man himself does not have an Irish surname.

The other four matches on the cluster report provided family trees on the My Heritage site. I worked backwards, looking for their common ancestor.

I found that two of the matches were closely related to each other, an aunt and her niece. The other pair of matches seem to be second cousins. If Dad is their 3^rd-5^th cousin, I need to compile the family trees for all three groups going back 4-6 generations to find a common ancestor for us and all of them. None of their posted trees go back that far. There was no common ancestor for all four people provided on My Heritage. But I did learn that all four of the matches have Ryan ancestors.

The aunt and niece are descended from Patrick Ryan (1838-aft. 1911). The pair of second cousins is descended from Mary Ryan (1812-1865). Both these Ryan families lived in County Limerick, Ireland. Were they related?

The online trees I have searched so far (Family Search, WikiTree, Ancestry) do not have any more information for Patrick Ryan. Mary Ryan seems to be the daughter of Daniel Ryan (1787-1831) and Catherine Brien. I still need to look for these names on Geni.com. After that, research into the paper trail will be required.

As I worked on these family trees this week, I found no surname that fits into my family tree as I know it. Cluster 3 must be my unknown family branch. If their only common ancestors were the Ryans, then the Ryans must be our ancestors, too. I still need to find the common Ryan ancestor for all of us.

Only then can I follow the names of the Ryan descendants who came to America and try to guess which one is my great-grandfather. I sure wish a closer Ryan match would do a DNA test. Is it too much to ask for a second cousin?