Question Re: Ancestry Thrulines

+8 votes
318 views

I have a fun little question about Ancestry Thru Lines.

Which one of your Ancestry Thrulines has the most people in it?

If you mouse over any ancestor in your list of thrulines, something will pop up saying how many dna matches there are. 

Of course the ones closer to me or my parents have as little as one.  Some further back in the 1700's have in the 30's or 40's.  But I have one with 112 DNA matches. 

He is Johan Gottleib Ihrich.  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ihrich-1

He was born in 1724 in Hesse, Germany and arrived in America in 1751, where he settled in Virginia.  Like many at the time, he had a lot of children and their descendants are now scattered everywhere.  He died around 1781

But like a monster in a sci-fi movie the name Ihrich has mutated into many different forms, Arey, Ary, Eary, Arie, etc. 

His lineage has been thoroughly researched by a couple of genealogists a few years back and thanks to that, a lot of people can connect directly into him.  

Of course many people at that time have tons of descendants, but thanks to some very good Genealogy work, so many of them can be identified.

Which brings me back to my original question.  Which of your through lines has the most DNA matches in it?

in The Tree House by Craig Albrechtson G2G6 Pilot (102k points)

9 Answers

+6 votes

Since I use my parents' results more than my own, here are theirs.

Paternal: 206 DNA matches with descendants of Edward Dodd (who fathered 18 children by 2 different wives).

Maternal, here is what endogamy does to Thrulines: 152 DNA matches with descendants of Justinian Mills and Mary Dant...some of whom are also descendants of William Willett and Mary Griffith (139 matches); of Samuel Abell and Susannah Spalding (58 matches with descendants of Samuel's son Peter); and of Charles Buckman and Jane Dunbar (101 matches).

by C Handy G2G6 Pilot (208k points)
+4 votes
WOW you guys are lucky. I think the most I saw was 10 or 15 and some of the older ones that I could add have "0" sources.
by Richard Devlin G2G6 Pilot (503k points)
edited by Richard Devlin
The highest I get is 2, for the great-grandparents I have in common with the one 2nd cousin who has tested on Ancestry. (There used to be more people in my ThruLines; when did they dumb it down?)
+5 votes

222 matches from William Jeter (Jeter-182 here on WikiTree). 221 matches from his wife Margaret Vaughan. 

Hmmm...Your question has me thinking...With that many matches would that make my descendancy from those two individuals a fairly sure thing? And I wonder if the ancestors with whom I have few, if any, matches may indicate that I may have errors in my tree and they are not my ancestors after all?

by Nelda Spires G2G6 Pilot (554k points)
I didn't know that William Jeter was here. His daughter Priscilla is accused of being my 4th ggm. He gave Sillah's daughter by Moseley 125 acres.
+4 votes
214 DNA matches from Anna Osborn https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Osborn-2024 and

189 DNA matches from her husband James B Campbell  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Campbell-13323

The rest varies from 2 up to in the hundreds
by Rhonda Zimmerman G2G6 Pilot (225k points)
+4 votes

One paternal line and one maternal line are the winners for me, and my mom and paternal uncle have me beat on each of them.  I have 212 matches to my 5th great grandparents, Thomas Figgins Jarvis and Ailsey Connolly.  My mom has 264.  And I have 313 matches to Aisley's father, George Connolly, while my mom has 403.  It's a combination of very large families for several generations and West Virginia intermarrying/endogamy.  So. Many. Jarvises.

On the paternal side, I have 174 matches to my 5th great grandfather Burroughs Higginbotham, and my uncle has 220.  Huge families again.  

There's a reason I haven't really tried to unpack all of this in my cluster analysis, but I really ought to, because I think in addition to just swamping out all the other matches these clusters actually eat other clusters.  All it takes is one cousin on some other line moving to West Virginia and marrying a Jarvis and suddenly their whole cluster gets lumped in with the Jarvises until I look more closely.

by Lisa Hazard G2G6 Pilot (263k points)
+5 votes
If you take a closer look, I wonder if you will find that most of the matches do not really share the MRCA (most recent common ancestor) to whom the ThruLine is attributed, but rather a closer ancestor.  That is what I find in my own case.
by Living Kelts G2G6 Pilot (545k points)
Fleshing out the paper trails is important to determine which is the MRCA. I think the size of the DNA match and likelihood the match is within the relationship level are important factors to look at when determine the likelihood of a particular person being the MRCA.

What I meant was that my siblings and I, for example, are all listed on ThruLines for a fifth great grandfather.  But they in no way validate that ancestor.  For me and my siblings, the most recent ancestral couple is merely our parents.  Just yesterday Roberta Estes made an interesting post about triangulation in which she mentioned that concept:

  • A triangulation group of 3 people is only confirmation as far back as when two of those people’s lines converge and reach a common ancestor.
That's true, Julie. Your family tree is populating the line from you and your siblings back to whomever you list as your 5th grandparent. That means nothing if you don't have DNA matches to trace the trail back or if your paper trail is faulty, such as an unexpected birth event. What I'm talking about is when you are trying to get through a brick wall and Thru Lines has your DNA matching 50 people back to a 3G or so, you know you're related in some way. One will then need to develop the paper trail back to rule out or in various possible ancestors.
+4 votes

Out of my 3x-great-grandparents, it's John Foster and Mary Jane Cole. They have twice and sometimes three times as many DNA matches as the others. I'm not using 4th and 5th generation ancestors as most of the ones on Thrulines seem to be weakly connected or outright made up (example: "David William Henry James Caldwell", allegedly my 5x-great-grandfather. Who even gave their child that many middle names in the mid-18th century?? Did someone just slap together a bunch of common men's names and call it a day?).

I notice I have fewer matches from my father's McFatter and Tanksley ancestors than most others. My mother's ancestors tended to have gigantic families, but those on my father's side had smaller families and seemingly left fewer descendants.

by Jessica Key G2G6 Pilot (310k points)
+6 votes

I am of French-Canadian and Acadian descent.  I stopped looking after my third great-grandparents.  My highest number was 518 DNA matches for Beloni Nadeau - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nadeau-749.  The motto on the Québec license plate is "Je me souviens" (I remember).  North American French people tend to be very passionate about their family history.  So... a lot of them get tested for DNA.  French Catholics also had HUGE families.  I am the youngest of 11.  My dad was one of six children, but his father was one of 12 children and his grandfather was one of 18 children.  I'm sure I could find similar statistics in the Nadeau line.

The first settlers of European descent to arrive in the area where I live were Acadian refugees who came here in the summer of 1785.  There were 16 founding families who settled here that summer.  Several of those founding families are my fourth or fifth great-grandparents, I have as many as 1300 DNA matches among my fourth great-grandparents such as https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Thibodeau-172

by Robert Daigle G2G6 Mach 1 (13.7k points)
edited by Robert Daigle
Wow! That's incredible, Robert, that you can trace the generations back that way. Due to the Civil War and lack of documentation of births and marriages in newly-settled areas, my family line has missing links.
+5 votes
On my maternal line one of my 3xgreat grandparents - 199 DNA matches. They were a prolific family. I have several others with over a hundred matches on both maternal and paternal lines.
by Virginia Fields G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)

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