Using ThruLines Part 1 by Sylvia

USING THRU LINES – A CASE STUDY PT 1

My purpose in using Thru Lines is to try to determine who is on my unknown father’s side of the tree and separate the known paternal ancestry and DNA matches from the unknown paternal ones if possible. Also, to continue building my mother’s side and verifying known or guessed at ancestors by checking the DNA matches given for a particular ancestor and by researching their trees. Then I correct my or their misinformation.

My Thru Lines would not start at first. I had to unlink what I thought was a linked tree and re-link after rebooting the computer. (Thank you, Cheryl, for your help!!!). Then it gave me only my unknown father and no other information at all. Then it disappeared again altogether???? I finally got my Thru Lines to work by removing the link, removing and reconstructing the family tree, then recreating and linking the reconstructed tree! If you ever lose your link, that might be what works. I only put my mother’s side of the tree up and almost immediately got heaps of connections to dna cousins and family trees! Whoo-hoo! I’m on a roll! So I decided to add a prospective paternal line to my linked tree, to see if any dna cousins come up attached to any names in that potential tree. This could get really interesting! I’m hoping it can help me determine which side of the family the cousin matches are on at least.

A week or more on, I have only links that are distant (5^th – 8^th) cousin trees and a couple of DNA matches for 3x great grandparents one branch of the tree. No other names or connections come up. On my mother’s side, however, where I have a first cousin and second cousin match and lists of 4^th – 6^th cousins, there are loads of links to known ancestors and I am having a great time verifying and adding to my mother’s side of the tree!

The way it seems to work is that you get the male/female head shot of each level of your ancestor lines – parents – grandparents, great grandparents, etc. Underneath it might only have their birth/death dates or it might have a “potential ancestor” link. Either way, when you click on the picture you can see where the ancestor is on your tree. If there is a dna match it will show up in the ancestry line that this ancestor belongs to, as will other member tree links, whether or not you share dna with them. If there is a dna link, you should click on the dna symbol and you’ll see both your trees all the way back to your “suggested” (always remember Ancestry uses your and other trees only) common ancestor. Ancestry is helpfully doing the work we all painstakingly did ourselves to find a common link! And best of all they are linking not only other trees but dna matches as well Yippee!!!

So to find more family or verify what you have, you should open up and research both the dna links and the member tree links because they can help you fill in the blanks or give you more information. I like to open up the tree of a dna match or member tree match and look at a particular ancestor profile. In their tree, they may have posted some additional information for that profile – a document you don’t have, a note such as, “They were married at St. Mary’s church” which you don’t have. So scour their trees for information you might be missing. A missing census for a particular decade, for example, can be a mine of information that verifies the ancestor’s scant profile in your own family tree!

Anyway, today – discouraged by the total lack of any information closer than a one-line distant cousin regarding my prospective/possible/suspect father line tree, I decided I’d try to trick Thru Lines! (Remember too, if you are on a similar search, that the further back you go, the more surnames you have to deal with and the more likely you will find common names on both sides of your tree!). In my case, the only ancestor line common to me and the matches I found on this side of the tree were surnames and locations that were on my mother’s side. I haven’t looked for a link between their ancestors and my mother’s ancestors yet, but expect to do so.

I decided to remove the potential paternal tree and replace it with my known father’s first name only and then add a third cousin’s ancestral tree. I have not found a single name in her tree that can be linked with ancestors on my mother’s side, and so I believe she is related to me on my father’s side. There are a number of 4^th – 6^th cousin matches to names in her tree, so I thought I would start with that generation of ancestors. From my father’s generation through his grandmother I used the placeholder “unknown” for last names. Then I began adding the names of my 3^rd cousin tree. My hope is that Ancestry will find me some good dna and family tree links to the names of the great grandparents and beyond, and help me to find out which common ancestor my 3^rd cousin and I share. Although it is a “hybrid” tree – with a mix of her and my ancestors…I am hoping Ancestry will do what it has done on my mother’s side to help me find a common ancestor I can trace forward to find my father’s name (or to verify the prospective ancestor I had found).

Good luck with your own searches and do make use of Thru Lines as it is a fantastic tool for all of the above reasons.

As to my own sleuthing, stay tuned – same Bat time, same Bat channel!!!

Sylvia Willis