Many of my matches are obvious.. we come from nearby villages in Sicily, but this one group of connections has me stumped - I am intrigued, however I wonder if Family Finder is just registering random DNA noise. I do not know enough about DNA to tell whether I'm wasting my time digging into this. What is interesting is I have 5 matches who match each other, and we match on the same chromosome.
3 are 3rd to 5th cousin and two are 5th cousin to remote. The 5th cousin was able to confirm a connection right away with one of my 3rd cousin matches.. so for him the DNA did not lie. I checked my matches on Ancestry and I do show a distant match with this 5th cousin AND his cousins there as well. Same on Gedmatch.
My family has a paper trail in Sicily and Malta going back several centuries. My mother came to America in the 1950's. My father's family came to America in the early 1900's, but returned to Sicily when he was just a child. They did not return until after WW2. I did not speak English until I went to school. What my DNA is doing in colonial America is a mystery to me. How am I connected to these families from NC, Arkansas, TN, Louisiana.
It appears that some of these cousins have traces of Italian/MiddleEastern, but not all of them do. Some have a German ancestor in the 1600's. It is more likely that my ancestor met up with a German than that he was plowing a farm in Arkansas.
Several of the families I match with have "free colored" "redbone" connections. My African ancestry is about 2% - I'm not sure that would account for 3 to 5th cousin.
My grandfather did a stint as a Cook's Tour Guide in Egypt giving wealthy anglos a taste of authentic Middle Eastern experience - so he could have Genghis Khaned his mark onto chromosome 7 of all of these people.. but that seems a bit recent.
3rd cousins match 18.88cm, 17.84, 17.59
5th cousins 9.59, 8.41
All overlapping the same spot. Is that relevant?
Even if I can't find the exact ancestor to pin this on, it would be interesting to at least find the common line where the event may have occurred.
Let's agree those 3rd cousin connections are optimistic... how far back should we be digging? Is this noise from 1000 years ago? Or an event from 250 years ago?
Thanks much,
Al
3 are 3rd to 5th cousin and two are 5th cousin to remote. The 5th cousin was able to confirm a connection right away with one of my 3rd cousin matches.. so for him the DNA did not lie. I checked my matches on Ancestry and I do show a distant match with this 5th cousin AND his cousins there as well. Same on Gedmatch.
My family has a paper trail in Sicily and Malta going back several centuries. My mother came to America in the 1950's. My father's family came to America in the early 1900's, but returned to Sicily when he was just a child. They did not return until after WW2. I did not speak English until I went to school. What my DNA is doing in colonial America is a mystery to me. How am I connected to these families from NC, Arkansas, TN, Louisiana.
It appears that some of these cousins have traces of Italian/MiddleEastern, but not all of them do. Some have a German ancestor in the 1600's. It is more likely that my ancestor met up with a German than that he was plowing a farm in Arkansas.
Several of the families I match with have "free colored" "redbone" connections. My African ancestry is about 2% - I'm not sure that would account for 3 to 5th cousin.
My grandfather did a stint as a Cook's Tour Guide in Egypt giving wealthy anglos a taste of authentic Middle Eastern experience - so he could have Genghis Khaned his mark onto chromosome 7 of all of these people.. but that seems a bit recent.
3rd cousins match 18.88cm, 17.84, 17.59
5th cousins 9.59, 8.41
All overlapping the same spot. Is that relevant?
Even if I can't find the exact ancestor to pin this on, it would be interesting to at least find the common line where the event may have occurred.
Let's agree those 3rd cousin connections are optimistic... how far back should we be digging? Is this noise from 1000 years ago? Or an event from 250 years ago?
Thanks much,
Al
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