52 Ancestors Week 26: Slow

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 26

The theme for Week 26 is "Slow." We are living in a rapid world. Everything seems instantaneous. What is something an ancestor did that would seem slow by today's standards? (Farming and laundry come to my mind.) What about a line that has been slow for you to research?

What did the snail say when he was on top of a turtle's back?
WHEEEE!

    As a companion piece to last week's blog about how quickly I found a DNA match's connection to myself and my mother, here's a blog about how long it's been taking to find out another DNA match's place in the old family tree. I may have talked about it before. However, there's been a couple really good updates which may expediate the whole process. Let's first go through everything from the beginning and just take it slow. See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Yeah, that joke didn't have any traction. Slow and steady might win this race, I guess.

    We start our story way back when I first got my DNA tested on Ancestry. In 2017, I came across this DNA match, let's call her Isadora, who seemed to match virtually everyone who descended from my 2nd great-grandparents, Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran. From the perspective of my mother and I, she was NOT a small DNA match. She matches my mother at a mighty 171 cMs and myself at 136 cMs. 

    My mother and I looked at each other like "Who was this lady? Why did she match basically everyone who descended from Antoine and Lucie?" Naturally, I sent a private message to Isadora as she was recently online at the time. I had hoped for a quick response and sadly that never happened. I didn't even send that awkward a message, either for once I swear!

    I basically just introduced myself and said that she appeared to be a DNA match to myself, my mother and quite a few Legaults. The Leeds Method proved that much at least. I said they all came from Haverhill, Mass and everything. Just pretty standard fare, really. What else could I say? The lady was a complete mystery to my family and several of the cousins had been asked me who she was! 

    When I compare my mother's ethnicity results with her, she currently stands at 35% French when compared to my mother's 46%. I know ethnicity estimates are just a rough guess and you should take them with a grain of salt. However, you really, really can't ignore something when it's in the double digits like this! 35% is a lot. 

Progress is progressing. Slowly.

      Eventually, I got tired of all this waiting around for some clue as to where Isadora fit in the grand scheme of things. I had important things to do and this case was put on the backburner. I ended up asking various DNA matches Isadora and I share how much they share with her so I could put them into DNApainter's "What are the Odds?" tool.

    To my surprise, the highest match was a lady named Kelly who shared a huge 331 cMs with her. That narrowed things down considerably because this meant that Isadora had to have at least descended from Antoine and Lucie's daughter, Delphine. Since those two had over a dozen kids, you have no idea how happy I was to finally get that narrowed down a bit.

    Little by little, I collected more data and I even checked Isadora's tree. It seems that her father's side is well established and that she has very strong Scottish roots. Makes sense given how large the amount of Scottish was in her DNA. So, this meant that the connection had to have been on the maternal side, right? RIGHT! I mean, it's not rocket science here, kids.

    Time passed and eventually my second cousin once removed, Pamela Leavey decided to take the plunge and get her DNA tested. Pamela knows full well how often I've asked about Isadora and she has wondered about her story ever since I told her about her. She wanted answers just as much as I did.

   Pamela's mother was Marguerite Rosalie David and my mother has many fond memories of visiting the Davids in Newburyport. In fact, she and her siblings used to get bait from Pamela's uncle's bait shop. I wonder if they knew they were family. Spoilers: They did.

    Ovila David and Delphine Legault had seven children and Pamela herself had several siblings. So, her testing would help the family solve this puzzle once and for all. Things took a while to get going. After all those AncestryDNA kits are not cheap. I let her know when a sale was going on and she ended up buying one for her and her daughter. I then had to play the waiting game and you all know how much I LOVE that game. It's the BEST!

    Pamela's results came in and to the shock of myself AND my cousin, she shared 729 cMs with Isadora. That's not a small number! According to the shared cM project, Isadora could be a first cousin or at least a half cousin depending on a few factors, of course.

    I put the exceptionally large number into "What are the Odds" to see what would happen next and for some reason the app really wanted to make her the daughter of Pamela's aunt Jeanette. Interesting theory. However, we'd still need more proof and more DNA matches.

    Thankfully, a new DNA match materialized recently. Pamela's cousin, Martha tested and has a full tree on Ancestry going back to Antoine and Lucie. I sent her a message introducing myself and I asked her if she could share with me how many cMs she shares with Isadora. The puzzle is slowly getting solved and I'm running out of options considering Isadora has been radio silent since 2017. To make matters worse, she has been online! I hate when that happens.

    At any rate, Pamela is going to do some sleuthing to see what she can dig up from her cousins. We know she is at least a descendant of Delphine. She likely descends from one of her kids. The cousin who just got her results in descends from Jeanette. Her match with Isadore could help solve the puzzle. Time will tell.

    While I wait, there are still plenty of things I could do in the meantime. I have asked Pamela if I could look at her DNA match list to see if I could sort things out for her from her perspective. She has offered to talk to cousins, like I said.

   

    Unless Isadora contacts us, there's little much else we can do. So, in this case you can see that solving this DNA match's puzzle is a slow process. Though, I don't blame her for the slowness. 

           I can understand her reluctance in communicating, though. Think about it. We're all shocked by her appearing in our DNA match list. Can you imagine what it must be like for her to see all these clearly French-Canadian descendants taking up the top twenty in her DNA match list?! Yeah, that has to be a little shocking to say the least. Then again, I don't know if she's even looked at the match list. Some people do the testing for the ethnicity and yet they should probably expect surprises. Her life has probably got flip-turned upside down. I can only imagine what she thinks about this whole thing. Solving DNA matches can be a slow process. At least this wall has been chipped away a little at a time.

See ya next time! Here's hoping the story of Isadora gets solved!