I got some really great news. Two of my paternal matches uploaded their DNA to Gedmatch! Here are the results:
Chr 4
| Match ID | Type | Name | Matching segments on Chromosome 4 | Overlap with previous match |
| 1 | F2 | *lbusby2000 (A156133) | 90735702 - 149322904 (47.237 cM) | New Root |
| 2 | F2 | *Bevie (A826168) | 101931127 - 149010098 (39.197 cM) | 101931127 - 149010098 |
Chr 4
All of the bars in darker orange are related to them. The gold bars are what I thought I had identified relationships with on my maternal side. As you can see, one of my maternal matches is included in the ICW. Normally, I would throw my hands in the air and let my St. Bernard eat my laptop, but I happen to know for a fact that my match on that one was a leap of faith insert by that cousin. She has no paper trail and was using this and some other matches with Ephraim Osborn as ground for assuming she was related to him as well.
You see how easy it is to make that mistake? It happens to everyone. Us seekers need to be careful that we do not fall so in love with our hypothesis that we blind ourselves to the facts. It's called confirmation bias. Now I get to tell her I am pretty sure she is related to me on my paternal side. I hate putting brick walls back up for people. That sucks.
This also points out something that has happened to me for the first time. I discovered a Half Identical match. This is explained clearly at FTDNA in their learning center HERE.
So now I can tentatively mark those segments as John "Jack" Nicholson and Martha Malinda Berry in Genome mate. Anyone that matches me on this segment is either related to John Jack and Malinda, or they match Ephriam Osborn.
I also want to note that I am seeing some of the issues being discussed about Timber (used by Ancestry to eliminate false positives) here as well. Bevie has a total of 77.9 cM with me on Gedcom. Ancestry reports 71 cM. That is a loss of 6.9 cM. Busby has 47.2 on Gedmatch and 26.7 on Ancestry for a total loss of 20.5 cM. I am not educated enough about this issue to make any kind of conclusions about what I am seeing. I just know that Gedmatch assumes Bevie is a closer match than Ancestry does because they do not recognize some of the segment.
So were am I?
Step 1 went well.
Step 2 was a half dead end. After using the Gedcom tools on the remaining siblings spouses, I have no matches with them either. It is a total dead end. An educated dead end, but I can't go anywhere with it. I know I am related to the Maxey's and Crowders somehow, but without matching any of the spouses on maternal and paternal, I can't viably move down that line. So that research must sit and wait for more clues to trickle in. That is close to the same place I was with this Nicholson/DePriest match when I decided to chase down that 3rd cousin hint.
So where do I go now?
My next closest match on Ancestry is kc051551 with a 3rd cousin prediction, 121 cM over 7 segments. but last login date is May 7. 2015.
Not a difficult tree to copy, but not much room for a match. If I don't match Casey, or if I can't chase that Williams name to something viable, it's unusable. This person shares a match with Bevie and Busby plus 15 more. Unfortunately, I have no way of contacting this person to learn what is happening with this tree, or get more information.
PB is a 3-4th predicted match. We share 98 cM on 7 segments and have Bevie and Busby in common plus 4 more, but not KC, I did find her on Facebook and she gave me some names on her paternal side, but no locations.
Then I have A.M. Predicted relationship 3rd cousin. We share 92 cM on 3 segments and have Bevie and Busby in common plus 18 others. Included in the others is a match that I share with cousin on my mothers side. Let me explain:
RH has a 4th cousin prediction. Their match to my maternal side is sitting at a 6th cousin 1x removed. We share 17.9 cM on 1 segment. No Gedmatch or FTDNA, and not responding to messages. This is a managed account with 4 accounts in total. 3 out of 4 of her accounts use the same tree and have the same match. One of her accounts does not have an ancestor hint, but I share DNA with them. On the account that I do not have an ancestor match, I share cousins with two people, including this RH.
I haven't quite wrapped my head around all of that yet. Since she is not responding to messages, all I can do is look at the data and try to figure it out. She is a super connector. She also matches my husbands family. He also has Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and the Carolina's.
