The end of last week brought three significant new 23andme.com matches. I’d been waiting impatiently for the results to post for all of them, and I wasn’t disappointed. In summary:

• M.B. is my paternal first cousin. We show a 10.5% share across 31 segments. She matches, of course, my father and sister, but also our mysterious adoptee cousin S.A., and several more distant known relatives. Most exciting: she has a match that none of the rest of us has to a D.D., who’s descended from a Sampson County Balcum-Johnson marriage. That’s the first Balkcum DNA link I’ve found.
• B.J. has been a close collaborator in my Aldridge research for several years. She’s descended from the sister of my great-great-grandfather John W. Aldridge, and 23andme correctly estimated our relationship as in the 3rd-5th range.
• B.L. is from my hometown. I didn’t discover that we were related until I was in my 20s and had started researching my family. (My grandmother knew, of course, but wasn’t sure of the exact connection.) Her grandmother was the last of my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis’ children to pass away — in 1988, at age 101. There are some promising matches in her list that seem to be unique, too, including one to a Locus-Artis from the Nahunta area of Wayne County. 23andme predicted that we are in the 2nd-3rd cousin range, which is correct whether calculated from the Aldridge or Artis side.