Possible Bolling Cousin on Gedmatch. Can you share more DNA with distant cousins than you think?

Question

Does anyone know if it's possible to share a lot of DNA with a distant cousin?

First I'll explain the situation. I have a connection to the "White" Bolling family on my dad's side through my grandma and a possible "Red" Bolling connection AKA Pocahontas' descendants through his grandmother. I'm a 10th great-granddaughter of a woman named Mary Bolling who married a Chambliss. She was from England, therefore making her a "White" Bolling. But I'm also a descendant of a woman named Penelope, married to Captain Christopher Clark. No one knows her parentage although there are rumors she may have been a daughter of John Fairfax Bolling and Mary Kenyon, apart of the "Red" Bollings. I've never known for sure nor have I ever claimed that heritage because I didn't want to claim something that wasn't true.

Either way though, I found a person who I match up with on GEDmatch who happens to be a descendant of John Kennon Bolling, son of John Fairfax Bolling.

It tells me we're about 4th or 5th cousins but according to his Wikitree, I can't find anything that connects us. Granted I know that sometimes there's misinformation, illegitimate children, affairs, or some people just don't know all of their ancestors for lack of information or damaged records. Now if we were related through the Bolling connection and not a different one, according to my own calculations, we'd be 6th cousins, 5x removed. That doesn't sound to me like we'd have as much DNA as we do at that level. So saying it's through the Bollings may be wrong but I'm just not sure on it.

This is our connection on my chromosome as well as his sister who is also my cousin:

6    129,035,893    151,517,840     27.5    2,506   - My Cousin

6    128,881,163     151,519,107    27.7    4,030   - His Sister

 

Can anyone please help me figure this out?

Comments

Sure! That would be great, thank you so much!

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Ms. Glennon: GEDmatch kit # M742663

We have a good match in GEDmatch.com - I descend from Pocahontas if you would like to share research and sources message me!

Bridgitte

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Bridgette, her account was closed--don't know when or why-- but you may not get a response.

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Thank you for letting me know!

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hi Bridgette legend has it that mataoka is a great aunt and i compared one of my moms test to kit in comment and got t6.6 total half match with 52,72 half identical

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Ellen Smith: 

Maybe I am having a dense moment here, and I have plenty of those these days...but please explain the "why" of this statement: 

"But it would be unusual to find a living relative at that degree of relationship"

The connecting ancestor would be the 5th great-grand of one person and the 10th great-grand of the other person.  

I agree with your statement about the match being high for that relationship level. I just don't understand why a living cousin of that level would be unlikely. 

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Yes, Suzanne, it is mathematically possible for 7 generations in family line A and 12 generations in family line B to be sufficiently similar in total duration that both family lines could have living descendants taking DNA tests, particularly if one family has a testee who is age 90  and the other family has a testee who is age 20. However, from having seen lots of Relationship Finder results here in WikiTree, I have observed that pairs of WikiTreers who map out as cousins at distances like 6th to 9th cousins are seldom more than 3x removed.

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Hi Ellen,

Thank you for responding and explaining your statement.

My question wasn't coming so much from a DNA or testee viewpoint, but questioning why there couldn't be a 6C5R cousin living. 

I think the likelihood, or lack thereof, would really be determined by the length of generations in the families involved and the birth order from the common ancestor to the people in question, along with the age of the parents involved. 

One thing that makes me question is because of former President John Tyler (10th president, born 1790), who still had a living grandchild in November 2020. That grandchild was 91 at the time of the article. Here's the link: Harrison Ruffin Tyler is the last living grandson of John Tyler.

Granted, their case is an extreme rarity.  My mother-in-law's maternal grandma was born in 1879 and died in 1983. She has hundreds of living descendants. I can see it happening there.

Thanks again for explaining your thoughts on this. I am a questioner by nature (much to my late mother's chagrin!). "Why?" should have been my middle name.  :)

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That's a good match!  Who did you compare with? I also have a kit# A775668 and I've matched the other's who descend from Pocahontas, so far I've found 2 lines from her and 1 from her sister Cleopatra!

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IT HAS BEEN A WHILE AND IM WORKED HALF TO DEATH GETTING OLD IM NOT SURE WHO I COMPARED IT TO NOW BUT IM AM ABOUT TO CHECK THE KIT NUMBER YOU JUST POSTED I HAVE FOUND BOILING COUSINS PETTUS COUSINS AND A FEW ROLFE COUSINS,SORRY JUST REALIZED CAPS ARE LOCKED AND PRETTY TIRED IM NOT YELLING I PROMISE  i set it at lowered 3 cm because it was so long ago and get a 3.8 on chromosome 12 with my mom going to go look at some chromosome painting comparisons ok mom has two kits and on her other kit compared to yours bridgitte i get 4,3 on chromosome 2 and 4.1 on 8

Answer 1

It was common in many small communities for people to marry cousins (generally 3rd or 4th cousins) and this can concentrate DNA so you get a higher number than you would normally get.  

I have several instances where 3rd or 4th cousins married, then a niece of one of the grandmothers married a step-grandson (from husband's earlier marriage).   

So I think I sometimes get higher match numbers than I should on some of those matches because if I ask the people to look back a couple of generations we sometimes find the link.

Comments

What Laura is referring to is endogamy. Using auDNA in an endogamous population "can be particularly difficult" according to ISOGG: https://isogg.org/wiki/Endogamy

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Yep. And significant endogamy and/or pedigree collapse would be required for any reasonable probability of detecting shared autosomal DNA between 6th cousins 5x removed. That would be a generational distance of 19, or 19 birth events between the two cousins. That's the equivalent of 8th cousins, 1x removed. Without pedigree collapse, the average expected total sharing amount at that level would be less than 0.03 cM...keeping in mind segments smaller than 5 to 7 cM are as likely to be false-positive as not, and can seldom be used reliably.

ISOGG's "can be particularly difficult" also applies to figuring out expected DNA sharing under pedigree collapse, even if the populations aren't considered endogamous.

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Yes pedigree collapse or endogamous groups can affect your DNA readings and indicate a closer relationship than actually exists.  Guilds were big business in the 1600s into the 1800s and often required members to marry within the guild.  So this is actually more common in Europe than you might otherwise believe among craftspeople.  You also see it among nobility.

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Pops shows as 3rd cousins with most descendants because of the number of times the family intermarried following Native American traditions.

Answer 2

Crossover is very random.  More matching DNA than "expected" doesn't disprove anything.

But at that distance, you have too many ancestors, so you'll have to triangulate.

You need tests on 2nd and 3rd and 4th cousins - not only in the potential Pocahontas line - in the hope of picking up fragments of the same DNA, to find out which direction it came from.

Same at the other end.  You believe your genetic cousin is descended from Bolling, but you don't know he got the DNA from that direction.

But there's a good chance that the process will be inconclusive or point in the wrong direction.

Comments

So basically there's no possible way that could happen? I'm pretty certain it's the only connection we have, although I could be wrong. But he seems to have all of his information as far as relatives on his tree. I might try e-mailing him and see though.

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I didn't say it couldn't happen.  However, you can't really rely on the tree to say there's no connection anywhere else, because - apart from brick walls and possible mistakes - there could be somebody in your tree or his whose genetic parent wasn't who they were supposed to be.

Things to do

- try to confirm as much as possible of the two trees by DNA

- test cousins for the key DNA turning up where it's not expected

- look for more matches.  The Bolling-descendant might share a segment with a cousin of yours that you don't have yourself, or you might share a segment with a cousin of his that he doesn't have.

- look at your other internet matches for clues

It's not as easy as they pretend.

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That's true. And there could be something I'm missing or just don't know of so I keep skipping over a possible relative that way. Hm thanks for the tip! I'll try to to match me to other relatives of his as well as relatives of my own to see if I can find a match that way.

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I'm related to Mary through her son Henry. My dad & I both have our DNA in GEDMATCH. Mary is just out of range for my Dad's DNA info to be posted, but he's on Henry's profile.

• Henry Chambliss: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Chambliss-15
• Mary (Bolling) Chambliss: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bolling-114
• Me: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Noland-165
• Dad: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Noland-166

Cheers, Liz

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Oh really? I'm related through Henry as well actually. Sometime later on, though, they married into the Fuller family who married into the Glennon family so here I am haha! Henry was my 9x great-grandfather. Oh okay! I think the GEDmatch website's down today but I'll try to compare us either today or tomorrow to see if we're a match!

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Well, I finally got the website to load and I compared us on the One-to-One Comparison and...it said we weren't related. That's so strange, I was pretty positive I'm descended from Mary. I guess maybe her DNA skipped me maybe? Unless I'm not an actual descendant like I thought...

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That far back, I don't think it's unusual that there would be no matching DNA. I think only yDNA of male line can be useful past 4 or 5 generations. Perhaps there would have been something in a comparison between my father's DNA & your grandfather's (my Dad born 1924, your grandfather born 1920s), but I think it would have been only the FamilyFinder/au that could have matched. I'm still trying to figure out DNA, but the pages in the DNA section of a person's profile help a lot! For my Dad's, https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/Noland-166/89 (don't know if you'll be able to see that), it shows where he gets his DNA from & Bolling/Chambliss aren't listed. It shows his grandfather Martin - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Martin-9183 as contributing to his X DNA, and his (Dad's) grandfather was the 5x-gr-grandson of Mary (Bolling) Martin... pretty sure. I think more sources are needed to connect her & Henry.

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Oh, okay, I see. Well, that would explain a lot - maybe it's just something I didn't inherit along the way. Which is very, very possible being so far back. Thanks for clearing that up, for a second there, I was worried because I wasn't matching some farther back relatives haha. This is my DNA section actually: https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/Glennon-107/89 and where the Bolling/Chambliss connection comes through is my father's side. So that's actually very likely then that it just skipped me somehow.

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Liz Shifflett,

WikiTree doesn't show a relationship between me and Henry or Mary, but it does show a relationship between you (Liz) and your dad and me. It says 16C3R between me and you and 15C4R between me and your dad.

So, howdy, cousin!

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Hey cousin!

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I think the Relationship Finder is my most favorite part of WikiTree. :)

Answer 3

From that far back this size of match is not impossible, but is way down the probability scale. I would suspect that there is another more recent cross connection.

The thing to do is to check out the triangulated matches you have with this pair of Christian siblings.

Top of the list is Jackie Thomas (A825428) who matches the three of you exactly over those 27 cM. There is also *S Hurt (M564260) who matches the back end of this segment 16.7 cM and Robert Hough  (M850437) who matches the front end 15.1 cM. I'd contact each of those and look for the common thread.

Comments

That's a great idea, thank you! I'll go e-mail them now and see if anyone knows how we're related. Maybe it's just something I've been missing somehow.

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Okay, I messaged my cousins and one of them, Robert Hough, got back to me.

He said he also had a possible Pocahontas connection. His oldest known ancestor who may be a Pocahontas descendant was Dr. Dixon Brown (b. 1803).  He's a descendant from his daughter, Louisa Virginia Brown.  It’s possible (but not verified) that Dixon was the son of Anne Murray, a known Pocahontas descendant, who married Jesse Brown in 1786.

That's so strange that he could have a possible connection as well. I'm waiting on the others to get back to me but things are maybe slightly looking promising for it being the Bolling connection.

 

Answer 4

Are you a member of the Bolling Family Association?  (BFA) see them on the Net - they have DNA studies...and they have their yearly meeting in Virginia in October.  Please pass this on.

Comments

I'm not actually but I do need to check that out and maybe get involved with it!

Answer 5

If you are saying that you have a single segment match at 28cM then yes, it is quite possible that it could be a long time ago.

If you look at the ISOGG wiki, there is a report of a 2015 simulation study that shows: for matches at 30cM, something like 30 percent of them will be from at least 10 generations ago.

This is based on random recombination with a finite population size, so, as far as my limited understanding of the paper can tell me, there will be some minor levels of endogamy included. However endogamy is not necessary to explain the situation.

Comments

It is actually! It's about 27 cM. Wow! I actually did not know that. That would actually explain why we all seemed to be a bit related through Pocahontas/Bolling connection as well as through a possible Thompson connection. I might need to look further into my Thompson side because if you're right and that's how it happened, then we're probably all related through that! Thank you so much for your help!! This gives me some hope that maybe I'm on the right track with my theory!

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I hope this helps:   I have a 6th cousin 1x removed that I share a 27cM single segment with.  We know our connection and there isn't any other connection.  Good luck with finding your answer!

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Wow really?! That sounds exactly like it is with mine! I mean I really can't find any other connection than that one. Thank you so much!! This really helps!!

Answer 6

Use the Tier 1 tools. At that amount, you two should have others in a triangulation group. Collaborate with everyone in that TG. You can do the Tier 1 tools for only $10, plenty long enough to downoad  all the results pages from triangulation tools into a spreadsheet that will give you loads of people to research for a long time.

. DNA can surprise you. Sometimes some distant relative's DNA hangs on tight, like dried egg yolk to a plate. When it does it crowds out some of your more recent relatives. There is always the chance you have some repeated grandparents along the way in that line too. Happy finding!

Comments

Ohh, I see! So it's like a montly payment thing then? I wasn't entirely sure if it was one of those things you pay for and then you get the results or if it was sort of like Ancestry's subscriptions where you pay a month.

 

Hahaha I like the way you explain that! Hm, I didn't know that though - most people just tell you it's not possible and don't really want to even discuss the possibility of it. Thank you so much! This was so helpful to me, I'll have to try that out!

Answer 7

This cool tool from DNA Painter project mentioned in this blog post makes it simple. It computes using the information in this chart from the August 2017 updated to the Shared cM project: 

Using the tool, you can see that even 8th cousin could share up to 50 cM, but the table does not go as far as your 6C5R, however, I'd say by extrapolation that it is possible for 6C5R to share 27 cM like you are seeing, especially if there is endogamy and pedigree collapse on either side.

Comments

Hm, that's interesting! Thanks for this! I didn't know that. Hm, I'm going to have to research this more then! For some reason, all I'd ever heard was that most people don't share that much DNA - being far back like it is. But as far as I know, that's the absolutely only connection I have to these cousins. It has to be this connection though because it's the only one that makes sense from what I've researched.

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Another cool tool is DNApainter.com check it out too!

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Oh, that sounds cool!  Thank you! I'll check that out!!

Answer 8

I just found this link on the Colling family tree published in the 1800's Of course people fabricated Genealogy then too so hard to say. Suposidly I am Related through Jane Rolf line...I am checking sources now, One thing I noticed is that find a grave doesn't have ALL the relations the BOOK has...The Book is only a secondary source but has 30 pages of gemeplogy "Old Style" before computers! LOL

google Book On Bolling Family Page 300

Sorry I know this is a little OT. The discusion does talk about researching the line.  Pam hawn

Comments

Hello!   I am also related to the Mary Bolling born 1630, married to a John Chambliss.  For the life of me, I can’t seem to find out who her parents are. Does anyone know that info?  Also i have tested with Ancestry, 23&me and Family Tree if anyone wants to run my GEDmatch kits.  They are A373231, and JH1878790.     Please feel free to contact me at alabamagirl329@yahoo.com.

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“Nicketti” as a relative of Pocahontas, Powhatan, or Opechancanough is a mythical person.  There is no record of a woman  by this name in Virginia during the early colonial period.  It’s possible that an ancestor of one of the families who claim descent from her married or had children by a Native American woman but there is zero documentation to support such a claim.

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True. There has not  been documented proof yet, but tradition, handed down from Native American historians, have several stories about Niketti.  Time will tell hopefully.  It is not very hard to believe, since I am a 5th GGD of Chief Hokaleskwa Cornstalk.  This has been proven and documented.  Thanks for your reply!

Answer 9

Just posting the FTDNA Bolling DNA project for reference.

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/bolling/about/background

Answer 10

Do you think this would be the Penelope married to your Christopher Clark, Cpt. Penelope Johnston

BIRTh	4 Aug 1684 New Kent County, Virginia, USA
DEATH	unknown
BURIAL	Saint Peter's Episcopal Church CemeteryPutneys Mill, New Kent County, Virginia, USA From Ancestry. St Peter's Parish Register Kent Co Virginia: "Penelope Daughter of Edw: Johnson Eliz: nat ye 4 day of August & bapt. ye 17 of ye instant, 1684." Christ Church Virginia Parish Records 1653-1812: Primary Name: Penelope Relation: Daughter Parents: Edwd Johnson, Eliz. Birth Date: 4 Aug 1684 Baptism Date: 17 Aug 1684
MEMORIAL ID	48213700 · View Source

Answer 11

I think I remember this. 4 years ago.  This book has Bolling information:  Colonial Families of  The Southern States of America, by Stella Pickett Hardy.  You can go look at every page on ‘familysearch.org’. 

Go to Search BOOKS.  It will ask for account and password.  It is free, so keep it for further searches, as it takes you in to look at original records as needed.  It is the best website to start looking for DNA matches.  Feel free to contact me.

Answer 12

I have many matches from 7th-10th cousins, IIRC, that on average should share 0%, but they share. One reason is endogamy (multiple examples of cousins marrying each other), another reason is there are just so many distant cousins. I share 1.27%, four segments with a 5th cousin 1x removed, but we are probably related through more than one couple as our connections are from a  small village (population 410 in 1856). ISOGG: How Many Cousins

Answer 13

I can't help with the Bolling question, yet I too come from Penelope and Christopher Clark. This is the first time I've heard of a last name for her. We thought, for a long while, she was a Johnson, daughter of Edward Johnson and Elizabeth Walker, but I have my doubts. 

I have another "wife" for Thomas Arthur Sr. (1730 Christ Church Essex Co VA-Dec 1810 Bedford Co VA) who is said to have married Jenny (?Mary Jane) Bolling, but if so, I've never found parents for her or a last name. I have a kit on Gedmatch, if you want to see if we link. Both are on my mother's side of the family. My MtDNA group is U5a1a1d1 with 6 mutations (309.1C 315.1C 522.1522.2CT10410CC16519T). So far I've only found 10 full matches and oddly many are in Denmark and Norway. Yet ADNA says I'm 58% Scot, and the rest is English and western European with maybe a bit of Norwegian. Guessing they are my Dad's side, the Germanic Norwegian part anyway.  The kit number for Gedmatch is A388081 if you want to see if we connect. Its a mystery to me. I dearly wish the English and early settlers did a better job of recording the maiden names, like the French. Even the Scots on PEI bury the wives with their maiden name as wife of so and so. Makes life a lot easier!

Karen (Weitz-140)

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B200031

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B200031

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B200031

Answer 14

Hello, 

Jasper Bolin CLARK ( AKA - Pocahontas Metatake or Morenus) was my moms 2nd GREAT GRANDPA.)

UC7297465, & A812300

Let’s see how closely related we are.

Terri Solomon