How difficult would it be to find a 4x Great-Grandfather using DNA?

+10 votes
632 views

I've been trying to plug away at my matches. But would it at all be possible to make progress on a possible father for my 3x great-grandmother Minnie A. Mastin by using DNA? I realize that with how far back it is, it might be fairly difficult, but any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.smiley

WikiTree profile: Minnie Ward
in Genealogy Help by Robert Ward G2G6 Mach 3 (33.4k points)
DNA can certainly provide clues.  Then, as you probably well know, you need to still create the paper trail of official records or other evidence.

Unfortunately in your case you won't be able to use Y-DNA, since Minnie doesn't seem to have a full brother who would have inherited the missing father's Y-DNA.

So you will be using auDNA.  It will be a big job, because first you will have to rule out all the matches that you can account for based on your known tree in order to see what DNA might have come from the missing father.  You will want to get all your living relatives who descend from Minnie to test, because as you know half of the DNA is 'lost' with every generation but not necessarily the same half. You will want to create comprehensive chromosome mapping with all their data, and then see what is left over.  

Even after a ton of work, you might come to understand that you have a biological relationship with a certain family but still not be able to pinpoint the actual brother who is Minnie's father.  Or you might! But it won't be quick or easy.

Here is a post by one of my favourite bloggers: https://dna-explained.com/2013/12/09/chromosome-mapping-aka-ancestor-mapping/

Good luck!

Shirlea

Robert, WikiTree has a very special project, with members who have a lot of expertise with seemingly impossible detective work to identify parents.  I recommend that you request help from the Adoption Angels.

4 Answers

+4 votes
 
Best answer
The direct answer to your question would certainly be more than fairly difficult. I'd go with something between extremely and exceedingly difficult, but not impossible. It will require an incredible amount of luck as well. The fact that your grandparents on that line were second cousins once removed is going to make this considerably more difficult, especially given that their common ancestors were Minnie's in-laws.

I see you've already got a reasonable start on your DNA confirmations, but you're going to need to take that to a whole different level. If you haven't already done so you'll want to have your father's DNA at all of the major sites (you really need to work with your father's DNA, if at all possible, as it gets you at least one generation closer): Ancestry, MyHeritage, FTDNA, 23andMe and GEDmatch. This will require triangulation so Ancestry won't be of much help at that distance, though it can provide some good clues.

Next you'll need to find some matches with descendants of Minnie. This will mean building Minnie's tree out and down as thoroughly as possible. Depending on how intent you are, you might consider contacting some of her descendants and attempting to get them DNA tested. Then you need to start looking for triangulated matches with any of those descendants, particularly those triangulated matches that are smaller than your match with Minnie's known descendants as those matches are likely (but far from certainly, at this distance) to have Minnie's ancestors as common ancestors with you. What you need to do is find two triangulated matches that share a common ancestor who meets the requirements to be Minnie's father. This is a real stretch, but who knows, you might get lucky.

I've been searching for my mother's 3rd GGPs this way for several years now and am only now starting to get some reasonable ideas of where they were from and who they might have descended from. In the process I've created a spreadsheet that I update about every six months that includes the segment data for all my mother's DNA matches from all the sites that provide that detail. I've also created many thousands of profiles here on Wikitree trying to build out the trees of those DNA matches who might triangulate with matches known to descend from her brick wall 2nd GGPs.

In the end I'd recommend thinking of it as a journey on which you'll undoubtedly learn lots about your ancestors and you'll contribute to building out the tree. And if you're really lucky you might just find your 4th GGF some years from now.

Good luck and have fun!
by Paul Chisarik G2G6 Mach 3 (34.2k points)
selected by Robert Ward
+10 votes

It will take luck to do this, but it is not impossible.

If your question was, what is the chance I can get decent support for a theory about some 4th great-grandparent using DNA, I'd answer that it seems to be quite good, barring complicating factors like adoption or endogamy. With no pedigree collapse, you will have 64 different great-grandparents, and some of them are likely confirmable.

To see why some are easier to find DNA evidence for than others, imagine quantifying the "easiness" to confirm one of these people with a score X. A higher score means it is easier to confirm the ancestor. 

We should be able to write

X = f ( # of tested cousins, matchingDNA )

i.e., X depends on two varialbles: the amount of DNA you share with the 4x-great-grandparent and the # of living descendants of that 4x-great-grandparent who have tested. 

If you increase either of the varialbes, the score X goes up and it becomes more likely you can use DNA to support a connection that ancestor.

Investigations on tangential lines in my tree have shown me the parts with a scarcity of cousins, and presumably that correlates well with the number who have tested.

While you are expected to have gotten 1/64 of your genome from each of these 64 ancestors, this is only on average. You received more than 1/64 from some, at the expense of receiving less than 1/64 from others. Having confirmed several dozen ancestors with some confidence, I have a pretty good "gut feeling" for which parts of my tree have the ancestors who gave me the most DNA, especially combined with my general knowledge about numbers of cousins coming from each part of the tree.

If you are unlucky, you will not have gotten much DNA from Minnie's father and/or there will not be many cousins down lines from siblings or half-siblings of Minnie. I imagine it is rare to find someone who has solid confirmation of all 32 3x-great grandparents. But on some lines you will be lucky, and this could be one of them.

I think most people consider this to be about the limit of using autosomal DNA as evidence. Going past the 5th cousin level is very hard, and you need significant luck and diligent work to get reasonable support of 5th-great-grandparents or beyond, getting exponentially harder with each generation. If you do manage to go father, it will probably just be on one or a couple of lines.

by Barry Smith G2G6 Pilot (293k points)
I love that you have a formula for it!
+5 votes
Forget it... nearly impossible via DNA testing alone. A better route is to chase the paper trails of common ancestors among your known family members. Go for the names, dates, and children first - then search Find-a-Grave for free. Contact 2x and 3x relatives for more info and more complete paper trails. Use DNA after all is said and done to validate/confirm your findings. That's my take (and I'm a Y-DNA haplogroup admin).  Good luck!
by Leake Little G2G6 Mach 1 (16.4k points)
+6 votes

I may have found her 1865 census record.  It shows her as living in her grandfather's household, along with her mother and probably her mother's brother - he's 22 and Minnie is 9, so he couldn't be her father.  The names look all misspelled on the record - her mother Abigail is shown as Albeyal, and her grandfather and mother have last names Martin, but Minnie and her uncle have last names Mastin.  If this is her record, then it implies that her mother was not married to whoever her father was.

"New York State Census, 1865," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVNJ-CHH9 : 8 March 2021), Minnie Mastin in household of Seoryne Martin, , Scipio, Cayuga, New York, United States; citing Census, p. 2, citing multiple county Clerks; Warren and Lewis County Board of Supervisors; multiple counties in New York; Utica and East Hampton Public Libraries, New York.

by Gaile Connolly G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)

Abby was the daughter of Sufrin/Severyn Masten and Anna Gale (1860 census)

Name: Ann Gale Gender: Female Record Type: Marriage Marriage Date: 27 Jan 1820 Marriage Place: Shawangunk, Ulster, New York, USA Spouse: Sevryen Masten Source Citation Holland Society of New York; New York, New York; Shawangunk II, Book 47

There are no marriage records for Abby

1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 census all have her with her parents or with Minnie

Eddie, THANX for selecting this as best answer, but I just de-selected it because it is not even a real answer, let alone the best one!  The question is about finding the identity of Minnie's father and all my answer does is to make a case that Minnie's parents were not married, which your additional evidence also supports.  In addition, the question is about how to use DNA to find the father, which I completely ignored (because I realize that it will be near impossible to do, requiring complex triangulation with unknown people, who may or may not have taken DNA tests).

Hopefully, the adoption_angels will come to the rescue here.

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