DNA

DNA Definites, no. 26.

I couldn’t sleep; I hadn’t adjusted to the night sounds of Guatemala City. So I logged into Ancestry.com, and:

  • T.L., who is a known third cousin. The match is actually with his sibling K.L., who provided a sample in lieu. (Predictably, Ancestry underestimates our match at 11.9 cM — 5th to 8th cousins. He shares 17 cM with G.W. and 47 with K.J., who are his third cousins and my second.) His great-grandmother Emma McNeely Houser, and mine, Carrie McNeely Colvert, were sisters. He’s my first McNeely match who is not also a Colvert, so I’m hoping our common matches will shed light on that line.
  • W.H., my known half-third cousin. His great-grandmother, Lillie Barfield Holmes, and mine, Bessie Henderson, were both daughters of J. Buckner Martin. W.H. matches siblings J.E. (94 cM), L.H. (105 cM) and M.C. (23.6 cM), who are grandchildren of Bessie’s full brother Jack Henderson. (They’re W.H.’s half-second cousins once removed.) These are especially satisfying matches as I have been frustrated and mystified by our failures to register matches with descendants of Aunt Lillie’s brother. W.H. and I aren’t Ancestry matches, but we’ll see what Gedmatch says.
  • I was shocked speechless by a match with F.W., whose tree shows her to be a descendant of Durant Dove. Durant Henderson, alias Dove, was the son of Nancy Henderson Dove, whom I believe to have been the sister of my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Patsey Henderson. But at 32 cM?? That fourth cousin-range number is much higher than I would expect with a fifth cousin second removed. F.W. has a second Henderson-Dove line, but I’m not sure that’s enough to account for the extra.
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