Oh yes, I have everything under the sun: Ancestry, FTDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe. I’ve even had the leading experts in the field helping me and working alongside me on this but it’s really just a case of bad matches.
There’s only so much you can learn from a half-cousin once-removed: her grandfather, born 1911, went to a barn dance, had a good time, and didn’t stay in touch. This man produced my paternal grandma according to my YDNA line — YDNA comes from a male and is passed to males. The YDNA has given me some direction, but no solid answers: I’m trying make a single male from a combination of a male from the most prominent family in 1800s Saugerties, NY, an unknown from Chicago (by way of Bohemia), and two unknowns from two different parts of Grand Forks, North Dakota (both Scandinavians).
And this all happened before the internet of course: 1860-1960 is the range that I am working with.
This h1C1R I speak of is my best match, followed by third-cousins. I’ve exhausted every avenue that’s been visible to me. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s very uncommon to know who casually slept with who generations ago. :)
There’s a lot of census searching (and scraping, and CSVing), newspaper article reading (lots of juicy details in small newspapers) and some luck. I have a tree built out some 1600 people strong. Hopefully with the holiday sales, new matches will come my way that are helpful. :)
There’s only so much you can learn from a half-cousin once-removed: her grandfather, born 1911, went to a barn dance, had a good time, and didn’t stay in touch. This man produced my paternal grandma according to my YDNA line — YDNA comes from a male and is passed to males. The YDNA has given me some direction, but no solid answers: I’m trying make a single male from a combination of a male from the most prominent family in 1800s Saugerties, NY, an unknown from Chicago (by way of Bohemia), and two unknowns from two different parts of Grand Forks, North Dakota (both Scandinavians).
And this all happened before the internet of course: 1860-1960 is the range that I am working with.
This h1C1R I speak of is my best match, followed by third-cousins. I’ve exhausted every avenue that’s been visible to me. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s very uncommon to know who casually slept with who generations ago. :)
There’s a lot of census searching (and scraping, and CSVing), newspaper article reading (lots of juicy details in small newspapers) and some luck. I have a tree built out some 1600 people strong. Hopefully with the holiday sales, new matches will come my way that are helpful. :)