52 Ancestors Week 17: DNA

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17:

The theme for Week 17 is "DNA." DNA has helped countless people make discoveries in their family history – some good and some not. Has DNA helped you solve a genealogical question? (Remember that if you post anything publicly, you should protect the identities of living people unless they have given you permission to share their story.)

Here we go again!

    It just wouldn't be a genealogy blog without an entry about mysterious DNA matches, would it? I've had so many mysteries over the years and thankfully some of them have been solved. You've all seen me figure out many puzzling DNA matches and I'm grateful for all the help I've had over the years solving puzzle after puzzle. However, there is one family out there that's been vexing me ever since they popped up on Ancestry as matches to me, my father and my great-aunt Nicolina. Follow along as I go through one of my greatest DNA related mysteries. This is definitely one for the books.

Hey, Franklin.

    Meet Franklin Richards. Frankie here is a DNA match to my great-aunt at 46 centimorgans across 1. He matches my dad at 52 cMs across 2 segments and myself at 52 cMs across 2 segments. 

    This seems pretty straight forward, right? The shared cM project puts him in a wide variety of positions in the family tree from half third cousin to as far back as 6th cousin.

    That really doesn't help much, does it? Franklin could be anywhere in the family tree. Naturally, I sent a message to the lady who manages Frank's kit to see if she knew anything about any possible connections I had with him. While I waited, I checked out the shared matches he and I had in the hopes that something interesting would show up.

    I checked out the shared matches and saw no names I recognized. I saw my father, my great-aunt and my dad's cousin Cathie. Below them were a bunch of matches that were a mystery to me.  I decided to check out one of them to see if I could find anything interesting. The matches name was Susan and she shared a mighty 46 across 1 segment with my great-aunt. And as an added bonus she actually had a tree!

    Franklin had a tree as well. However, the lady who managed the kit was working more on Franklin's maternal side and I didn't see any Italians on that side of the tree. She messaged me back saying that I probably connected on that side and to try emailing someone else in the family I did that and never got a reply. So, logically I must connect with Franklin and Susan on the paternal side of things.

    When I looked at Susan's tree, I saw a last name that rang a bell. The last name "Mazza" appears in various records in San Pietro a Maida. I found many Mazzas and put them on WikiTree. Surely the connection must be there, right? Uhh.... Nope.

    Apparently these Mazzas all came from San Pietro Apostolo, a town a good 38 kilometers northeast of San Pietro a Maida. Think I'd be frustrated? Yeah. You ain't seen nothing yet.

    If I wasn't connected to the Mazza family, the next logical step would be to check out his wife who was a Casale/Castelnova. The only thing is she was supposedly born in Brazil and I haven't been able to find much else about her.  At that point I just shook my head and labeled the two of them as unknown matches to figure out later. I wasn't about to spend time on this issue if I wasn't getting feedback from the matches themselves. No one responded and when that happens I get frustrated. I like bouncing ideas around with people. That's how I was able to solve so many puzzles! Genealogy isn't a solo gig! It takes a team and there's no "i" in team!    

    Over time I just let things simmer. It was clear to me that I wasn't going to solve this mystery overnight. I had other things to do and other puzzles to solve. That was when Jennifer showed up as a match to Nicole and as you can see she shares a mighty 79 cMs across 3 segments. This makes her one of the biggest DNA matches Aunt Nickie has in that family!
    
     Jennifer being the largest match of the bunch meant that there was something obviously going on here and the three of us had a clear connection with this family. I messaged her and unfortunately I never got a reply. At this point I realized I wasn't going to get any help from anyone in that family. It's a shame because I was hoping we could talk things over. We could find the connection and move on with our lives. The connection IS there despite the shared matches not going toward any family member I knew about. Frustration was building and I decided to take matters into my own hands.

    I compiled a list of all of the matches in that family group to see how they all match myself, my father and Nickie. As you can see Nicole matches everyone on the list and I only match a handful of them. That's to be expected as the older generation would match more people than I would.

    With that said, I used Ancestry's new comparison tool and my great-aunt as a guide to make a tree on DNApainter.com's "What are the Odds?" app. The results were pretty interesting.

Check it out!

    Yeah. This isn't very helpful, is it? I managed to cluster Franklin and his family together in a neat little package. Reed, Ben, Sue, Jennifer, Johnny and the rest of them all fit in quite well together. My great-aunt is likely one of those hypotheses and it's hard to say which one is accurate. Let's look at my great-aunt's tree and do a little comparison!

    Okay. As you can see here she's got a pretty ironclad tree thanks to years of research and help from the fine folks over at the commune office in San Pietro a Maida. Everything in her first thirty ancestors have been verified and I have yet to see any connection to the Mazza family or even the Casales. Nickie's DNA matches seem to hail from the Ferraiolo, Coppola and Tedesco branches for the most part and none of the "Richards" family match anyone from those three family groups. Could they come from the Gullos? It might explain why they don't match anyone else.

    I honestly have no idea. It's entirely possible that they descend from the Gullos or even that "Unknown Coppola" in her tree. The connection may even be farther back and I see big numbers because of endogamy. But, I see no evidence of endogamy at all here.

    DNA is very random and DNA doesn't lie. I doubt that these are false matches. Not when Nickie has that 70 cM match. I've asked for help on this issue many times and I've gotten nowhere. This is why this family vexes me so much. It isn't so much the lack of cooperation. It's more that I know there's a connection out there and I can't figure it out. There's also the possibility that their trees are wrong. I have no idea.  

I do have some theories. 

1. The connection is very far back and might be at the 4th cousin once removed level like Zelda is. Remember her? Or it might be greater.

2. I connect at the Casales and that might link to San Pietro.

3. Endogamy might be at play here. I haven't seen any endogamy in my great-aunt's tree. But, you never know!

    If anyone else has any theories, please share them in the comments. I'd love to read them! 

    In any case, I'll just have to keep the Richards family on the backburner for now. I suspect that they are on the Gullo side of things because they don't match anyone else. So, logic dictates that they must have a Gullo ancestor that's connected to me. In theory. I could be wrong. All I can do is watch and wait. 

    DNA testing has helped me make countless discoveries. I'm not denying that. More discoveries will be made I'm sure. Right now this family vexes me in both the DNA area and especially on the communication front. Or rather the lack thereof. DNA has solved questions. But, in this case communication might be more helpful. Here's hoping I get a breakthrough with this Richards family!

See ya next time!

P.S. Hope you caught the references with the names I've used this week to protect the innocent. Reed, Ben, Sue, Johnny, Franklin and others are related to characters appearing in the pages of Marvel's "Fantastic Four." See Marvel's first family return to the big screen this July. And as for this blog? Well, to quote the ever lovin' blue-eyed Thing...."What a revoltin' development dis is!"