I created an account in Gedmatch.com early in my DNA genealogy research. In 2015 a 4th cousin match to my mother’s Ancestry DNA messaged me and asked that I create an account in Gedmatch. He did not detail the advantages of using Gedmatch but he periodically continued to ask. I could see that he and my mother shared 25cM of DNA. I didn’t know what a cM was or if a 25cM match was worth investigating. I finally did create an account and discovered that their match was on chromosome 11. I compared his DNA with my mother’s and saw the people who matched 1 or both kits. I was able to see his family tree, which was also in Ancestry.com. A unique tool in Gedmatch allowed me to see that some of the people that he and/or my mom matched, were not always matches to he and my mom. I then looked at some of these non-matches for my mother and found that some did match some of my mother’s other DNA cousins. Interesting right! That is the randomness of DNA inheritance.
In 2015 Ancestry had something called DNA circles to which everyone’s DNA was assigned. I never really got how the circle thing worked and pretty soon the circles were replaced with Parent 1, Parent 2 and Both Parents subgroups. I found this tool helpful. I’d figured out how a key DNA profile was connected to my mother’s DNA. She was in the Parent 1 subgroup and her 2nd great grandmother and my mother’s 3rd great grandmother were sisters. That person’s DNA was also in Gedmatch and my mother matched her on 8 chromosomes, 10 segments including 2 segments on the 23rd. So, the whole group thing worked for me. That is until I looked recently and saw that this person’s profile in Ancestry is now in the Unassigned group. What happened!!
Throughout my research using DNA tools, I have found that what begins as a trek through shared matches with profiles along my Parent 1 branches often mysteriously goes off track and lead to matches on my Parent 2 branches. So, how did this profile that I thought was concretely attached on my mother maternal Phillips line become Unassigned. Why was this key profile not placed in the ‘Both Parents’ subgroup?
I decided to try out the Gedmatch Lazarus Kit tool to try and replicate my mother’s parents DNA profiles. I used my mother, siblings and close family on my mom’s maternal and paternal side that were in Gedmatch. To create a robust Lazarus kit for each of her parents, I had to do 2-person kit comparisons to find enough DNA profile matches to meet the 1500cM threshold required by Gedmatch. When I compared my key Phillips’ matches DNA to my mother’s DNA in an attempt to fill out her mother’s Lazarus kit and other cousins’ DNA to fill out her father’s Lazarus kit, I saw significant people show up as matches for her maternal and paternal Lazarus kits. It finally sunk in. My key Phillips match was indeed a match somewhere back in time to both my mother’s father and her mother.
I’ve traced my mother’s Parent 1, maternal line branch back to Calvert County, Maryland through Charlotte Phillips. Charlotte’s husband was Joseph ‘Young’ Smith who was born in Kentucky. This 1 part of her Parent 1 bucket. Her oldest known ancestors along her Parent 2 branches were supposedly all born in Virginia and North Carolina. One of her ancestors on the Parent 2 line has a number of matches whose ancestors lived in Caroline County, Virginia. When I looked at a map, I found the distance between Calvert County, Maryland and Caroline County, Virginia to be about 55 miles.
55 miles!!
What do you do, when what you thought you had nailed down in your research, turns out to be just another pivot down another rabbit hole?
Well, I am attempting to get more close cousins on both sides of my mother’s tree to upload their DNA to Gedmatch in hopes that I can nail something else down. Hopefully, these Lazarus kits will help sort things out!
Best,
My Maryland-Louisiana Roots 