G2G: DNA as a source in the future and a thank you to the community.

Question

On 31 Oct 2024 Kie (Entrikin) Zelms wrote on Baumann-2154:

Looking at this profile, it seems there is no proof that he was the son of Cornelius Bouman and Anna. Their son, Pieter was born in New York in 1717 and we know Hans Jerg did not arrive in America until 1727. Hans Jerg sould be removed from these parents. It's also not clear that he was necessarily the son of Jacob and Barbara Baumann, tho that is much more likely.

Kie, thank you for your service to the Wikitree project and community. This may not be the preferred place to make this comment but what the heck I'll give it a shot.  I’m new to Wikitree, with just over a couple of years so far.  When I’m not working, genealogy has become a new favorite pass time, mostly during the winter months.  I will admit I have a lot left to learn, even with a couple of years here I will still consider myself a beginner. That said I’m continually blown away at the dedication by the volunteers and the generosity of time that’s gifted.  When a “stranger” add’s sources to a profile I created or quickly chimes in on a comment I’ve made It restores my faith in humanity.  It’s equally amazing to learn about how closely we’re all related because once you’ve created your tree and you connect your family lines to the larger tree it’s so easy to see that we’re all cousins or had ancestors that were closely connected!  

Admittedly out of curiosity I did a relationship finder between us and indeed we are 10th cousins and share 168 additional common ancestors. This kind of connection no longer surprises me as I’ve learned that if your tree is even half built you can find these connections with almost any living person. Wow, just wow, right?!  There’s so much empathy and humanity that we can learn from understanding this, that we are all relatives. 

Kie, after you so eloquently answered my question and further looked into this profile that’s become a personal project of mine (I’m trying to prove or disprove that George Bowman Sr (AKA Hans Jerg Baumann) is my 6th G Grandfather.  Everyone in my family through Ancestry.com and FamilySearch has believed this to be true but sadly my line has recently been disconnected and even orphaned the profile of my 5th G Grandfather George Bowman (1764-1786) *the death date as listed in Wikitree, however I believe it was much after that.  Several sources list his death as 1769 however this is another story for another thread I’m sure.  As it stands George Bowman (1764-1786 which I believe to be incorrect dates) has been left floating in the system with no parents or connected children.  

Okay so here is the kicker for anyone who’s bothered to read this far down, my DNA and my Fathers has been matched to hundreds of  descendants of these two George Bowmans and their wives / maternal line (Hites, Roush, Kelchner).  I know it’s true that there’s always a possibility that another ancestor was married into one of these families which could explain the DNA connections so you can’t prove anything by that fact alone but the DNA shared is true to the connection, for instance my father shares up to 44cms with living Roush relatives which clearly is a close cousin. Here’s my question, will there ever be a day that we can incorporate DNA as a true source to prove connections?  I know we’re not there yet and Y-DNA is the only strong proof but it’s still not enough to prove anything on Wikitree alone.  

Comments

My only thought about this is, I haven't done a DNA test and don't intend to.

My own family history is well documented with sources . Perhaps I am more confident because all my ancestors are in England where there are far more sources available than there are in other countries.

I am part of a family history group that has been researching our ancestors since the early 2000s.

One family member of the group has done DNA and it did succeed in finding a distant family member who migrated to Australia.

Every other DNA connection he found was already documented through sourced records.

DNA only finds family members if enough other people have done DNA tests.

And if we are relying on Ancestry family trees to show ancestors, way too many Ancestry trees are fictitious.

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I so agree on the Ancestry family trees, I just posted a comment in this thread a minute ago about that.  It's a shame how easy it is to copy bad information.  DNA could be a game changer for ancestry and has been for some but I think we're not 100% there yet.  I hope it will be in my lifetime because some records don't exist anymore. The civil war and natural disasters destroyed many US records.  I'm jealous of your family's well documented tree.  I have a few lines that are as you mentioned, little to no questions remaining but my ancestors from Virginia, the Carolinas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Ohio have mysteries that may never be solved.

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It seems in my own tiny opinion that due to the lack of records and sources in many parts of the United States even as recently as the early 1900s that DNA results and information are 'more important' than in other countries/places.

In many other places that I am familiar with such as England and Scotland birth or baptism, marriage and death or burial records have been required or are common since as early as the 1600s. Most from the 1700s.

I don't know anything about European records, my knowledge about US records is limited to a few descendants of my husband's ancestors who arrived in Canada in 1824, some of whom of them moved to various parts of the US.

Canadian records are common and mostly accurate in some places such as Québec and the some of Maritime provinces from the 1600s. in some places records no longer exist or did not exist to begin with.

In current day Ontario, records are good from the 1850s, some from the early 1800s.

Answer 1

You can add DNA as a source this app helps with that. https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/clarke11007/DNAconf.php. It has its limitations though. Maybe you could add a few DNA sources to more recent relatives and see how far you can go (I'm guessing the limitations means it won't reach back as far as this profile)

Answer 2

To the last point: no, DNA alone can never prove a relationship by itself. Even seemingly slam-dunk cases like verifying paternity using DNA can be wrong if bone marrow donation has happened.

But that’s not all you have. There is some amount of documentation as well. And absolutely, WikiTree allows you to write a proof argument incorporating both DNA and documentary evidence to justify a connection, and the DNA can be an essential part of the argument. And it doesn’t have to be Y-DNA.

But the statement about Ancestry matching someone to hundreds of descendants of the Bowmans is not acceptable justification. Ancestry uses those peoples’ trees to identify them as your matches. And just because there are hundreds doesn’t make it obvious. I have several times found lots of Thrulines who all copied the same wrong info into their trees and so all got falsely matched with me through Thrulines.

The standard at WikiTree is that each of the lines you use as evidence needs to me individually vetted. That can be a lot of work. And even a great argument might not rise to the bar needed to click that “confirmed with DNA” button. But I don’t concern myself with that button and am happy when I can just identify probable connections, even if I mark them “uncertain.”

Comments

Barry thank you!  I could not agree with you more.  Ancestry.com has one of the worst set of circumstances when it comes to bad information.  The fact that the built in system almost makes you accept their suggested ancestors and quickly copies unverified trees, it's honestly sad because the more people copy wrong information the more people believe its validity.  If you want to manually put in information the system almost alienates you from ThroughLines because it doesn't match everybody else's incorrectly added ancestors.  So I get that argument 100%. I should have been more clear when writing this earlier as really what I'd LOVE to see in the future is a better way to compare DNA.  I know that right now it doesn't exist but I have seen a lot change in my life and I hope in my lifetime I live to see technology steer us to a world where we can use this genetic information to verify ancestors.  We aren't there yet.  Perhaps it will come sooner than we think.  AI has already blown my mind with FamilySearch you can now search their system by key words and AI scans through every document they have scanned that hasn't been indexed, because it can read the documents before they've been transcribed.  It's a game changer for finding sources.  It's in the test stage right now but anyone can try it.  I just discovered it.  And because I just talked it up I'll add a link for anyone reading this.  Pretty cool tool!  https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text

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