Can we project protect Nathaniel Thayer? [closed]

Question

Can we Project Protect Nathaniel Thayer?  There's so much confusion and misinformation in this line and the profile was originally conflated with the Nathiel who was in PGM.

 I don't know if he would fall under Massachusetts or PGM adjacent?

Answer 1

I have protected the profile under Project: Massachusetts.

Comments

Sorry, but we each have 256 sets of 7G grandparents, and the chance of two people (8th cousins) getting the same meaningfully long DNA segment from the same 7G grandparent is practically nil. Chances are good that you share closer ancestors you haven't identified yet, or your match is at least partly coincidental. It's always exciting to find an autosomal DNA match and identify a relationship, but this kind of match doesn't prove anything.

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Killjoy! LOL! Well, I was excited about it. I suppose I need to find others and then analyze our DNA in the chromosome browser, or whatever it is called, on GEDmatch, to see if we share the exact same segment, in the exact same chromosome. I have also been told this is absolutely possible. I do not know the credentials of those (including yours) who are answering my DNA questions, however.

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Ellen: What are the chances of two people, who never met, being a DNA match AND finding they have identical people in their family trees, at the precise level that coincides with their DNA match estimate? That must also be a little bit rare. Our trees existed before we found our match.

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Elizabeth, Ellen's explanation is 100% correct. 8th cousins is much too far back for auDNA to be meaningful when comparing just two people. See this chart: https://isogg.org/wiki/autosomal_%20DNA_statistics#Table

It doesn't even list expected shared amounts for relationships beyond 5th cousins. If you share any more than 3 cM, your relationship is certain to be a closer than 5th cousins. Do both you and your match know all your ancestors back to your 7th G grandparents? If not, how do you know that your trees don't intersect somewhere closer?

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I love finding autosomal DNA matches with people who are also mapped as distant cousins, and it does give me a wee bit of extra confidence that our genealogies are accurate, but it really doesn't prove anything.

Based purely on mathematics, the predicted match at the 8th cousin level is zero. Of course, since DNA is not distributed to offspring with mathematical precision, real values don't match the predicted value. That's why we look at statistical information on the distributions of reported matches for different relationships, but in order to interpret the statistical data, we need to understand what it really represents. At https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 , Blaine Bettinger shows an average match of 12 cM for 8th cousins, but that's an average among 8th cousins who reported a match greater than zero (it doesn't include people who had no match reported, which probably means it doesn't include people who got matches less than around 7 cM because the testing services don't show us real short matches). Also, it's based on self-reported relationships between cousins who probably don't have perfect knowledge of their ancestry (for example, it's possible that my 8th cousin and I are 4th cousins on another ancestral branch that is a brick wall for one or both of us).

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Citation Information

Detail

Ancestry DNA match for EAZiegler61 and M.S. (managed by BarbaraScanlon04)

Web Address

www.ancestry.com/connect/Profile/0025E880-0001-0000-0000-000<br/>000000000<br/>

Edit Source

Source Information

Title

Ancestry DNA Match

Author

Ancestry DNA

Note

Constant Lincoln: Common Ancestor in family trees for DNA match between EAZiegler61 and M.S. (M.S.'s DNA is managed by BarbaraScanolon04) 5-8th cousins. Confidence: Good. 17cM across 1 DNA segment. Constant is 7th great grandmother to EAZiegler and M.S. in both family trees.

Publisher

Ancestry DNA

Publisher Location

https://www.ancestry.com/connect/Profile/0025E880-0001-0000-0000-000000000000

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Ellen: I will keep looking for more matches like this. Then, maybe I  will be able to compare them all, using the DNA tools on GEDmatch. Till then, I am still excited about this wee bit of extra confidence, and, I do understand what you are saying. I just explained almost the same thing to someone else a couple of days ago. But, it does make me hopeful, and I like hopeful.

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Hi Kay Wilson, You are correct, I don't know with 100% accuracy. Maybe I am even 100% wrong. However, there are ways to know with higher accuracy, once I have more matches like this one. It is rare, but still possible.

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Hey guys, I closed this thread.  It was initially just to request project protection for Nathaniel Thayer, which is done.

I think if there is additional discussion on DNA or other issues around Nathaniel, it would be best to start a separate thread.

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I agree.