How many suprises have you found?

[Ayleiah]

My surname hasn't shown up

I am a Scheer, or so I thought. My mom says my father looked just like his dad, however, I don't think she could have met him.I have no pictures of my "paternal grandfather".

So am I not a Scheer, was there a Smith, Miller or Williams in the wood pile? I'm thinking my great grandfather was illegitimate.

I have one "match" Identifying my paternal grandmother.

I am very new at this and would appreciate any help, where do I go from here.

My father is deceased,I have no brothers. I have male cousins that might take a test and have nephews.

Thank you for any help you can offer.

Connie Scheer

[Jim Barrett]

After more than a year of testing and research I found that my father, born in 1902, had a half brother. This would never have been discovered without autosomal DNA testing. Still waiting for Y-DNA results.

[craigbear]

I'm still confused by it, but my closest DNA match in the entire FTDNA database -- such a strong match that first cousin is inside the range of possibilities, with more than twice as many shared cM's as the second cousin I already knew I had who came up as my second closest match -- is a person I have absolutely no context for how we could possibly be that closely related, because I know of no family branch (not even a distant one) with his surname.

He's got no tree posted on here, and didn't respond when I sent him an e-mail either, so I may never actually know what's going on. But as of right now, he's still my biggest surprise -- other than the cousin I was already Facebook friends with anyway, I have yet to find even one new person, either here or on MyHeritage after I reuploaded my data there, for whom I've been able to nail down the exact nature of the relationship by comparing any of the family tree data that either of us had already published.

[georgian1950]

I'm still confused by it, but my closest DNA match in the entire FTDNA database -- such a strong match that first cousin is inside the range of possibilities, with more than twice as many shared cM's as the second cousin I already knew I had who came up as my second closest match -- is a person I have absolutely no context for how we could possibly be that closely related, because I know of no family branch (not even a distant one) with his surname.

Have you checked your matches in common with him? Sometimes you can figure out something about someone that way even if that person is not giving up any information.

Jack

[MoberlyDrake]

If his name isn't a very common one, you may be able to locate him in an online directory, perhaps with a few relatives listed. That might lead you to searching for online obits or other records of his family and you may be able to build a tree for him.

This process doesn't work very often, but sometimes it does. It might work more often if you subscribe to one of the databases that find info on people, but I have no idea which places are good or safe, etc.

[craigbear]

I've done that already. I was able to determine that he has to be be on my mom's side, because the shared surnames among the common matches all point at my mom's (French Canadian) side of the family rather than my dad's (German/Ukrainian), but they were all much more distant from me and none of them had enough information in their public trees that I could actually nail down the connection to them either.

I have actually gotten lucky in the past by Googling names of relatives -- I actually once succeeded in finding a third cousin I knew about but had never met just by Googling his name and contacting the smalltown newspaper in which an article about a person of that name turned up alongside names of other people I recognized as likely relatives. (Turned out, in fact, that the entire town was thick to overflowing with relatives because my grandfather's cousin founded the company that built it in the first place!) This one doesn't have a rare enough name that Google would likely be effective, though.

[ltd-jean-pull]

A few nice surprises who weren't on the family tree because they'd not been raised with both or any of their biological parents. Each and every one of them is a delight.

One of them is the daughter of an adoptee. We're related to her birth grandmother. I'm willing to share as much as I can and it's a win-win because her DNA is useful for the family history on our side as well as on the birth father's side.

She's finding that some other very religious members of the birth mother's family (so mutual relatives to us) who are quite high up in church heirachy have been surprisingly unfriendly and unhelpful. I think they're scared they'll be tainted by the scandal which occurred more than a century ago! Their attitudes and behaviour don't strike me as exactly doing what Jesus would have done. Hypocrites.

Mind you, they have bigger worries in the future - camels and needles.

[rmm0484]

I am a Scheer, or so I thought. My mom says my father looked just like his dad, however, I don't think she could have met him.I have no pictures of my "paternal grandfather". So am I not a Scheer, was there a Smith, Miller or Williams in the wood pile? I'm thinking my great grandfather was illegitimate. I have one "match" Identifying my paternal grandmother.

I am very new at this and would appreciate any help, where do I go from here. My father is deceased,I have no brothers. I have male cousins that might take a test and have nephews.
Thank you for any help you can offer.

Connie Scheer

I assume you are male (although I am a female Connie), and that you do not match the Scheers. Your nephews will not be able to help, since they are from your sister's line, so they do not carry your father's Y chromosome. If your male cousins are descended from an uncle on your father's side, they will be acceptable.

I m a huge fan of autosomal DNA. A family finder test match with a posted family tree would perhaps identify second and third cousins for you. Good luck!

[DRNewcomb]

My family is so boring.

My family is so boring. I had three tests: autosomal, mtDNA & Y-67. Autosomal: I've been able to confirm my paper trail with matches to 7th & 8th cousins. Nothing closer than a 2nd cousin. No surprise half siblings, close cousins, etc. mtDNA: I'm exact matches with three only people, all within about 30 km of my grandmother's birthplace of Kalmar, Sweden. Y-DNA: I have four matches. All male-line descendants of Andrew Newcomb (b. ca. 1616).

The biggest surprise came from the ethnicity estimates, which don't really agree with the paper trail, but that says more about ethnicity estimators than the paper trail.

[khuebner]

We always had matches who were adoptees, but it's only recently that close-in adopted relatives have begun to show up. At least two first cousins had children unknown to the extended family (one of the kids did know who his father was and the immediate family knew); some second cousins also gave up children for adoption, and some relatives in more like the third cousin range. As quite a few family members have tested, it's usually not too hard to narrow down the connections. Still, there are some fairly close matches who haven't responded to queries, and due to the location of their segments, I'm unsure whether they are descendants of my great-grandparents or from one generation farther back.