Monday, February 5, 2018

Set of matches on Chromosome 4 and Segment Search on Gedmatch

Working my way through matches on Gedmatch I discovered that I had four individuals and a family of three that were all matching me on chromosome 4 (and all matching each other). The start location varied between 83,882,518 and  93,686,575 and ending between  105,645,025 and 131,472,885. The total length in centimorgans varied between 17.5 and  30.3. This implies 3rd cousin once removed to 4th cousin but there is a much wider range in actuality. 3rd cousin once removed implies 2x great grandparents and 4th cousin we are looking at 3x great grandparents.

None of these individuals is known to me with regard to placement in my family tree. Their places of location include the British Isles, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada. The resting spot for this particular match appears to be the Midlands of England but even that is not set in stone. Comparing these matches with my phased grandparents files leads me to my mother's side. Several of the individuals have X matches eliminating my father's father's line. I can not necessarily eliminate my father's mother's line (and do not) although I am dubious that the match lies on my father's side. The Buller family (my mother's mother's line) has settled in New Zealand, South Africa and Canada which struck me almost immediately when I looked at what I had written. But there isn't necessarily anything to connect any of these members to the Buller family.

I have a lot of information on my 3x great grandfather Christopher Buller and his wife Mary Beard.

I have collected all the information on these seven individuals into excel files. I have run Segment Matches on all of them. There is a lengthy list of matches that tends to be consistent between members. Basically another pile-up on Chromosome 4 but being on Chromosome 4 it tends to be more significant than a pile-up on Chromosome 23 the research tends to tell one. There is some overlap between matches on other chromosomes which is also interesting. I have not yet compared all of them to each other and need to do that.

The family group mentioned above has done a lot of research and are suspicious that this match is in the Birmingham area which fits well into my mother's mother's line. But one of the matches is in West Yorkshire and I have managed to trace her back to the mid 1800s and her family lines appear much deeper there. I will continue to work on her line as I know more about her because of shared information. I happen to have extensive East Riding of Yorkshire ancestry in my Gray line, My maternal grandfather's mother's father's line was from the East Riding of Yorkshire going back many generations.

I need a Research Plan to look at this material.

1. Produce a unified file for all of the matches
2. Continue researching the one member match in the West Riding of Yorkshire
3. Write to the three members, no email address for the fourth as she is part of a study by another researcher already known to me
4. Write to the manager of the family set to see if she has progressed in her research
5. Where I have an X match run the tree software on Gedmatch

1 comment:

JDR said...

Elizabeth: When you write "four individuals and a family of three" does that mean you have results for 7 tests? How much more confident can one be because the segments match than if you had the same total cM match amount but with no common segment overlap between them all?