Can I prove that (Evans-28320) and (Evans-7247) are the same people using DNA?

Question

For most of my time doing genealogy, I've thought that Thomas Evans and Esther Haines were the parents of Evans-28320, but on WikiTree is said to be the parents of Evans-7247. Wikitreers have insisted that these are two seperate people. I went on to check my GEDmatch of a relative of Evans-28320 (who is my ancestor btw) and got the results. I then went on to view the GEDmatch results of multiple relatives of Evans-7247 and myself. I noticed that when matching with them, there was a pattern. There weren't any significant segments, but there were large gaps between SNP's. Each one of the matches had the same thing i.e. 2 marks on chromosome 2, 4 on 10, and so on. I looked at my match to Evans-28320 again, and lo and behold, he had the same marks i.e. 2 marks on chromosome 2, 4 on 10, and so on. Would this be enough to prove that they were the same person?

Answer 1

Short answer: No - autosomal DNA from that far back is not able to prove anything.

However your question doesn't make any sense. In the same timeframe the two women were married to different men in different states and have different sets of children. How can they be the same person?

If you believe a source, or parentage, for one has been attached to the other mistakenly then OK, that's possible, and you need to provide your research justifying it but they clearly can't be the same person.

Comments

The similarities in segment matches merely suggest a relationship. If you believe these are conserved segments (that is, small snippets that do not get further diluted as they pass from generation to generation), then the match could still mean that the two Esthers were cousins or otherwise related rather than being identical.

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Then is it possible that the two could be related?

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The DNA might show the possibility - though at that many generations back you get into an area where interpretation gets very difficult, you always have the possibility of false positives, and my impression is that even experts disagree on exactly how much information can actually be extracted. I am not an expert on this area, but perhaps others can chime in on what your DNA might show.