52 Ancestors Week 39: Steps

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 39 is "Steps." There are many ways you could interpret this theme. You could be literal and talk about an ancestor who walked a lot. You could think about the "step-" relations in your family tree. You could outline the steps you took to identify an ancestor. Remember: There are no wrong ways to interpret a theme!

Step one: Create a banner in five minutes.

    Whoever said genealogy is easy is lying to you. It isn't just researching your ancestors in the hope that you find something or prove you have that connection to some king who lived centuries ago. There is a lot of hard work involved in proving connections and family lines. It gets even harder when you try to prove how a DNA match is connected to you. Neither of which are impossible. So, don't lose faith! Keep at it because you never know what you might find!

    Last February I talked about a DNA match of my great-aunt named "Alex" in this blog. I mentioned how he shared over 100 cMs with her and talked at length about how I should reveal what I found to his adoptive mother. Believing that "with great power, comes great responsibility". 

    I handled the situation with the utmost tact and skill. I didn't want to enter any drama. I presented the facts and left "Alex" to decide what he wanted to do with the information I gave him. I washed my hands clean and went on my way. Despite my detective work, I never really went into detail on the steps I took to prove my connection to "Alex". I made slight references here and there to various programs I used. I just never SHOWED the work. I think it's time we rectify that mistake!

Step One: First Contact

    Contacting "Alex" was a little awkward. I've been reassured that it's always awkward contacting a DNA match. What I do is state my name, why I'm contacting the person, where I think we might be connected and offer the person a chance to ask questions. Very rarely do I put in the cM counts because most of the people who do tests on Ancestry and the other vendors don't really understand what a cM or a centimorgan is.

    Sometimes people respond and luckily "Alex"'s adoptive mother answered and we talked for a bit. I mentioned that we had a lot of shared matches who descend from Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato, my 3rd great-grandparents. She was impressed and a little taken aback by how much Italian her son had and offered to let me look at his DNA matches. I said "Sure". 

Step Two: The Leeds Method

    Popularized by Genealogist Dana Leeds, the Leeds Method allows you to sort your DNA matches into color coded boxes. It usually groups them by great-grandparents or great-grandparent pairs. Read all about it here.

Taste the rainbow!

    Looking at the chart I made, I could clearly see the Coppola/Suverato group in Blue. Those Italian last names weren't the only ones that caught my attention. Several of his matches had a person with the last name "King" in their tree. Paolo's son, Paolo married a woman named Lena King in 1909. They had nine children together until her death in 1918. That narrowed things down quite a bit.

    Then I saw another familiar last name from my research.--"Cheney". Paolo and Lena's daughter, Mary Rose married a Cheney!

Step Three: Second Contact

     Feeling confident that there was a connection in the Cheney and King families, I sent several messages to "Alex"'s closest DNA matches in those families. Their last name was "Cheney". They had to know something about what I'm talking about. I got a reply back from a nice lady who told me a lot of information about Mary Rose. She had a few children and she told me about the girls. I sat back in my chair and write back "Did she have a son?" I asked because "Alex's" connection to me would have to be on the paternal side give what his adoptive mother told me. The lady replied saying "Yes. She had one son." I shook my head a piece of the puzzle was solved. Now I needed to put theory into practice!

Step Four: The Complicated DNA Stuff!

    Once I finished talking to the Cheney match, I went over to DNApainter.com to see just what the odds were of "Alex" being connected to my great-aunt. At 144 cMs, I had quite a few options thanks to all of the genetic genealogical gold Dr. Blaine Bettinger, Dr. Leah Larkin and Jonny Perl put on the website.

    Leah, aka the DNA Geek, has a tool called "What are the odds?" or "WATO" on the website. I decided to use it to determine just where "Alex" was in the tree.

    Using the program, I first put in my great-aunt and built the tree up to Paolo and Rosa. I then added known DNA matches the match and I shared. I knew where they fit thanks to my research and my own family tree. All I did was substitute my cMs shared with his own numbers. After adding six DNA matches from the Coppola family, I then hit the "Suggest Hypothesis" button. I was a bit surprised by the results!

    Six possible  hypotheses returned after I had put in three of Paolo senior's children: Concetta, Paolo and Caterina and the matches who descended from each of them. Concetta and Caterina were almost immediately taken out of the equation. I added people like my father and Caterina was removed, too!

    I will admit that sometimes the highest hypothesis isn't always the correct one. The other day I was playing around with my mother's Legault lines and it didn't gel completely with established paper trails. It's always a good idea to keep in mind that it is just a hypothesis. Even the most likely ones can turn out to be incorrect. It really just depends on what information you put into the program and the number of close matches. The more you have, the better. That tends to increase the odds along with adding birth dates. Sometimes WATO will be accurate. Sometimes another hypothesis may turn out to be correct. 

    In the end, "Hypothesis four" turned out to be the most logical answer. It had the highest score and that meant that it had the highest probability of being the connection. I put in "Alex"'s age and Mary Rose's son's name in and became even more likely that "Hypothesis 4" was the correct way to go based on ALL of the information I obtained. I gathered my thoughts, and started talking about what I could do next.

    That's where the Spider-Man comparison from the other blog came in. I had an obligation to report on what I found for "Alex". With great power and all that. I know I sound like a nerd when I talk about Spidey. But, the statement still holds. When you find something this huge, you should try to be objective and report on what you find. That way the person you are talking to can make their own informed decision. It still amazes me that I went from Dark Knight to Wallcrawler over the course of working on this match.

    I had great success using WATO and I've used it for other matches who vexed me. Trust me I have a lot of DNA matches who are confusing. In time, I'm sure I'll solve the puzzle. Right now I feel pretty good about how I went about solving this puzzle. There are other ways to go about solving genealogical puzzles. This one was probably the easiest for me because I'm a visual learner. I need to see things in action before I can make a conclusion. There are other steps people can take and this was the best one for me given what I already knew about my family's history.

   I just hope "Alex" is happy with the results as I hadn't heard much from him or his adoptive mother since the big reveal. Maybe that's the old "Spidey luck" creeping up. I don't let it bother me. I did what I had to do and I learned how to do some pretty cool things along the way thanks to Dana, Leah, Blaine and Jonny. They're good people! Follow 'em on social media and I'll see ya next time!