Over the weekend, I did one of my infrequent checks for matches at Ancestry DNA. I found a new match to C.B., an estimated 5th-8th cousin. Heaving a sigh, I idly checked his family tree — and immediately recognized many of his surnames as common to Wilson County, my birthplace. I looked a little more closely at his profile, and … I’ll be damned. His daughter was my high school classmate! How in the world are we connected?
M.W. is the second Beddingfield High School grad that I’ve matched in Ancestry or 23andme. The other was a classmate of my sister. I have no clue how we match M.R. either.
I can assume the C.B. match is on my father’s side, as is M.R. I also assume that it is through an Anglo ancestor. What throws me is that I don’t know of any white ancestors from Wilson County or northern Wayne or southern Edgecombe Counties, from which Wilson was created. Clearly, I have one, or some, though, as these and a couple of other Wilson County matches attest. The most likely conduit is through my Artis-Seaberry-Hagans, who had obvious Euro ancestry about which I know nothing and who lived in northern Wayne County.
An initial exchange of messages with M.R. has fallen silent, but I’m hoping a collabo with M.W. will get me somewhere.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 
Having just been notified that my DNA results were in I haven’t had a lot of time to dig into all the data presented. I am a little skeptical about the findings. I do see where they match the surnames, but direct links I have not experienced many… yet. I have a lot of other lines in my tree not directly related to my father represented in my tree and have seen the surname matches not the true lineage.
The jury is still out for me upon further review. I’ll keep on persevering. I love how you have your work presented, Lisa. I wish I could be so organized.
Hi, Margaret! I was skeptical, too, and my ration of definites to ???s is terrible, but those few genuine matches has convinced me of the basic soundness of the results. So far, my most distant hit (via 23andme) is a 7th cousin, a few times removed. Via Ancestry DNA, it’s a couple of 4th-5th cousins in my Lewis line, a Euro-descended line from southern Wayne County. (These, of course, were lines that I knew about and are confirmed by these matches.) One major obstacle for me is that I know so little about much of my white ancestry. On my father’s side, my grandmother knew her grandfather’s name, and I was able to tap into the huge Lewis-Martin-Casey-Herring-Price tangle of lines. Beyond that, though, with one exception — Sampson/Duplin County Balkcums — I am clueless. My grandmother, I’m guessing, probably had 60+% Euro ancestry, so that’s a lot of unknowns that I’m matching.