Missing Link

[AlisonT]

I'm hoping for some advice. My grandmother is going to do the Family Finder test (we're just waiting for the kit to arrive). One of the things I'm interested in is trying to find out the identity of her grandfather Philip's father. His mother had him out of wedlock and died ten days later.

Philip went on to have six daughters, so Y-DNA is out. What I'm wondering is if anyone has any tips for trying to figure out who his father was through my grandmother's matches (when she gets them) - or is it even possible?

[tomcat]

The evidence is in there, the problem is sorting it out!

In this instance your GM's X chromosomes are of no avail as her paternal X came from her paternal grandmother. If you are able to test two of Philip's daughters you can isolate Philip's X, that came from his mother, and through matches to those X segments, the possibility of links to an intact family.

[AlisonT]

Thanks, tomcat. Unfortunately all of Philip's daughters have passed away. I'm thinking the only way we might get a clue about his father is if he was from outside their area, and my grandmother matched someone related to him, who had none of her ancestral names... She's related to pretty much everyone who lived in the area, so if his father was one of them, we'd probably have no way of knowing - we'd just assume the match was related through one of the known lines.

[tomcat]

Allison,

I hope something, otherwise unaccountable, comes-up in your GM's FF matches that will give you a clue.

Are still connected with the community of origin, in which your GM is related to everyone?

[PDHOTLEN]

Aside: "Illegitimacy" isn't all that important, when it comes to genealogical facts. I've uncovered one incidence of that category over the past 1,000 years in my maternal line (Are there more?). And it also supposedly happened in Norway with my paternal line. For example, Joan Plantagenet, born around 1188, give or take a century, was illegit. But later, for political reasons, the pope declared her legitimate. King John of Magna Carta fame "knocked up" a lass before he was crowned king and officially married to someone else (or something like that).