Tag Archives: DNA Matches

2025 Week 19

11 Sunday May 2025

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So my main focus this week is to review the remaining five DNA matches I have for Benjamin Cox and Sarah Piety.

  • The first two are siblings. Their tree does not lead back to Benjamin and Sarah. Their Cox line stops at a John Cox in the early 1800s in Tennessee. Ancestry’s IA attempted to make a connection to Ben and Sarah through a Benjamin Cox born in Tennessee in 1786. These might connect a couple generations further back. I’ll revisit them in the next generation.
  • The third DNA match also is projected through the same Benjamin Cox who is not a son of Ben and Sarah.
  • The fourth DNA match was actually fruitful. I was able to get her added, but that family was messy–multiple marriages, and an unfortunate murder-suicide mixed in.
  • The last DNA match for the Cox line at present was connected to Benjamin’s brother Jonathan Piety Cox, however. The family was residing in Warrick Co, IN, not Knox County. I need to be on the look out for a Jonathan who married a Nancy Huston. I’ll revisit this one again later as well.

To recap, I have 9 Cox DNA matches that need extensive research to add to my tree. Hopefully I’ll be able to place them while working a future generation. For now, I need to get busy on Ben and Sarah.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5276 errors in the tree–372 possible duplicates, 4298 with no documents, 606 other errors.

  • The first error was for someone entered as James. He had no last name and was only connected to two other people in the tree who were not connected to the tree in any way. I removed all three.
  • Helen is my second error for the week. She has sources but is not connected to the tree. I’ll remove her too.
  • The last error for this week is a 6th cousin who doesn’t have any sources attached. She is a granddaughter of a DNA match. She has lots of hints, so I’ll get her cleaned up as well as her siblings and parents.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.
301 years ago – death of Jacques Cardinal (8th ggf)
222 years ago – birth of Nicholaus Sievers (4th ggf)
186 years ago – birth of Louisa Reeve (3rd ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,833 people
End of Week: 27,868 people
Change = +35 person
Tasks for coming week:

  • Start data mining on Ben Cox and Sarah Piety
  • Confirm the data from Polk Family and Kinsmen has been added for this family and page numbers are noted for easier citation adding
  • Review Coxes of Cox Creek
  • Review History of Mariah Creek Christian Church
  • Review bio of James Ballard, husband of Susannah Cox

2025 Week 14

06 Sunday Apr 2025

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I use Family Tree Maker for my offline family tree. It syncs with Ancestry so I don’t have to do double entry and and I have a backup copy of my work. Backups are important. It has a Plugin called Family Book Creator. I use this to generate the rough drafts of my family bios. I like it because you can include an abbreviated family tree with the text. It incorporates the facts from FTM and has the ability to include citations as well. I personally do not use the citation function when I generate the bios because of the way I am assembling my final document. It gets all discombobulated with the formatting.

After I generated the rough draft for Gabriel Cox and Nancy Squires, I realized I did not have Nancy’s parents entered into the tree, and as a result, they did not show up on the chart. I also realized that I needed to at least research the DNA matches from Nancy’s parents so I could make my case for John S Cox being a child of Gabe and Nancy. So researching my matches through John Squires and Mary Gott has been this week’s research focus. I have 16 matches through John and 22 through Mary. John was much older than Mary and died a few years after their marriage. She remarried and some of my matches are from the second marriage.

I have seven DNA matches from the lines of Nancy’s siblings–one from her full sister Margaret Squires and six from her half-sister Mary Caplinger. Interestingly enough, the match through Margaret is only 8 cM. Several of the matches from Mary are close to double that. It’s likely that there is an amplification effect from Mary’s husband, Gabriel Lemen. Gabriel’s mother was Mary Cox Lemen, an aunt to Nancy’s husband Gabriel Cox. The fact that these matches through Mary Caplinger circle back to the Cox line muddies my reasoning that John S Cox is a child of Gabriel and Nancy Cox. However, the one match through Margaret does, in fact, help the case. Such a tangled tree!

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5265 errors in the tree–384 possible duplicates, 4273 with no documents, 608 other errors.

  • This week’s first error to correct is for an unconnected person in the tree. I cannot figure why he was added. Maybe a distant collateral family? I have removed him.
  • My second error to “fix” is the mother-in-law of a 3rd cousin 6x removed. I have not attached any records to her. Since I typically do not include in-laws of distant cousins, I will remove her and her husband.
  • My last person to clean up is the husband of a 5th cousin. He I will keep. I updated him and his wife (my 5th cousin). I even added a bit to that family to bring it up to date.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.
346 years ago – birth of Jean Baptiste Creely (8th ggf)
333 years ago – birth of Jeanne Duguay (7th ggm)
282 years ago – marriage of Anna Mohr (7th ggm) and Michael Katz (7th ggf)
133 years ago – death of Caroline Nagley Nagele (3rd ggm)
114 years ago – death of Eli T Butler (3rd ggf)
113 years ago – death of Joseph Nagele (3rd ggf)
89 years ago – death of Anna Gravel Cardinal (2nd ggm)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,622 people
End of Week: 27,760 people
Change = +138 people
Tasks for coming week:

  • Continue editing and footnoting the bio of Gabriel and Nancy Cox and their children.

2025 Week 10

09 Sunday Mar 2025

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While researching Wanda Delaney (4th cousin 1x removed) I’ve come across a bit of a conundrum. A marriage record for her and Marion Sherman says they were married in 1950. Three days later, they are listed in the 1950 census with three children ages two to seven. Wanda died in 1967 and Marion remarried. His obituary clearly states that Wanda was his first wife. Her find-a-grave memorial states they were married in 1943 but no location is listed and a marriage record does not readily come up. I also cannot find the birth record for the oldest child where said child indicated she was born on her marriage record. Was Wanda and Marion married before the kids were born, had a falling out and got remarried in 1950? I have no idea. I guess I could expend a lot of energy on this one and try to find out. Or, I could move on and see if anything pops up at a later date. I’m leaning toward the latter since this is a distant collateral family. My musings have been documented on my tree so if anyone wants to pursue that search, I give you my blessing.

While a significant fraction of Martha and Jerome McCain’s family migrated from Pike County, Indiana to Cass County, Indiana to settle and raise their families, the family of Della McCain and Charles DeWeese landed in Martinsville, Indiana. Martinsville holds some personal interest since I have a sibling who lives there. I wonder if she has had interactions with any of these distant cousins of ours. We may never know.

I am about half done with Della’s family and should have that wrapped up this week. YAY. That will leave me with one more McCain sibling and my plan is to complete that family as well. Then I can start on the next child of Rebecca Cassidy and Isaac Arnold. Hmm? Someone posted on one of my Facebook groups the oath Benedict Arnold signed to the colonies before he sold us out. I wonder if this family is descended from him? I will not be falling head first down that rabbit hole.

Nothing remarkable to say about my DNA matches this week. Maybe someone will shake out of the tree next week.

This week Ancestry gave me three new errors to resolve. I have 5271 errors in the tree–390 possible duplicates, 4273 with no documents, 608 other errors.

  • The first one was the mother-in-law of a distant cousin. I no longer add the parents of someone who marries into my tree unless there are multiple siblings that do so. I have decided to remove her and her husband as they aren’t really a member of family. While I was at it, I reviewed the hints provided for their son.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who had no records attached. Reviewed some hints, cleaned up the record for his wife and added a child.
  • The third one was for the husband of a distant cousin who had no records. Unfortunately, the only record I have for his wife is from the Tanguay Collection which I cannot view using my US only subscription. I have tagged both of them as Canadian and will revisit when there is a free Canadian records weekend. Did I mention they were from the 1700s?

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.

344 years ago – birth of Louis DeMoss (7th ggf)
330 years ago – birth of Elizabeth Norton (8th ggm)
262 years ago – death of Elizabeth Bennett (7th ggm)
247 years ago – birth of Sarah Kerr (5th ggm)
226 years ago – birth of Nancy Squires (4th ggm)
222 years ago – birth of Henry Thompson (4th ggf)
201 years ago – death of Michael Keller (5th ggf)
192 years ago – birth of Isaac DeMoss (3rd ggf)
173 years ago – death of Therese Lefebre (6th ggm)
167 years ago – death of William Fielden (4th ggf)
143 years ago – death of Francoise Courtright (4th ggm)
80 years ago – death of Samuel Isaac DeMoss (ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,485 people
End of Week: 27,549 people
Change = +64 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants, specifically the Martha and Jerome McCain family this week.

2025 Week 9

02 Sunday Mar 2025

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I was pleasantly surprised this week when I discovered one of my first cousins had submitted an Ancestry DNA kit and she appeared as a match! Easy enough to assign her to the tree. I decided to sort all of my common ancestor matches by branch. I may choose every now and again to briefly work on one of those lines just to change things up. There were actually a couple of matches that were easily added to the tree since those lines were built out pretty well. I am still bit frustrated with the algorithm Ancestry uses to predetermine matches. It has at least a dozen matches that are attributed to my 4th great grandmother Elizabeth Lowe DeMoss that should be attached to her sister Catherine Elizabeth Lowe Ishmael. Also, why did they remove “5th cousin” on the relationship dropdown? I am forced to call these individuals a generic “distant relationship” and add notes.

I made some decent progress on the Arnold-Cassidy family. This week the focus was on their daughter Martha who married Jerome McCain. I’m about half finished researching their family. One of their grandsons, Maurice Delaney, served in World War II. He was in the US Navy, stationed in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. He sadly lost his life while trying to help another sailor who was caught in an undertow while swimming, as reported in The Pharos-Tribune on October 10, 1947. His remains were shipped home in 1947.

I looked a bit more into the tree score. I have a feeling mine will be stuck at 9.4 for a long time. Apparently I have 5232 possible errors, with 4235 of those being people with no documentation. Resolving three a week will be like paying down the national debt.

  • The first one was another floater which I decided to delete.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who had an approximate birth date but no documentation. That was easily fixed
  • The third one was a descendant of my DeMoss line, but for some reason I had not fully reviewed all the hints. I went back and completed my review of him and ended up adding several more distant cousins in the process.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.
318 years ago – Birth of Elizabeth Bennett (7th ggm)
227 years ago – Death of Eleanor Robinson (6th ggm)
224 years ago – Death of Joseph Coppock (5th ggf)
222 years ago – Birth of Joshua Frost (4th ggf)
207 years ago – Death of Reuben Staton (5th ggf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,340 people
End of Week: 27,485 people
Change = +145 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants, specifically the Martha and Jerome McCain family this week.

2025 Week 8

23 Sunday Feb 2025

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Mary Frances Arnold has been found! I did not locate her in the Pike County Newspaper, but I did find her in her sister Bertha’s obituary before locating her own obituary in the April 30, 1938 edition of the Princeton Daily Clarion (shown here). Mary Frances married Marcellus Chew and they had two children. Other researchers trees with Mary Frances in them make my head hurt. One such tree has documents with three different sets of parents. How does that even make sense?

The Chews are providing me with plenty of material this week. A second interesting puzzle was found in the 1940 census for Clarence and Audi Fowler Chew. Clarence was the son of Mary and Marcellus. In 1940, Clarence and Audi were in their early 50s. There was, presumably, a 7 month old girl named Carolyn Sue listed as their daughter. While not completely impossible, the probability of Carolyn Sue being the biological daughter of this couple is not very high. Checking the birth records for Pike County in late 1939, a birth certificate for Carolyn Sue Roberts born in Jefferson Township in September was found. Checking FindAGrave, Carolyn’s birth parents Floyd and Jewel lived long lives and Carolyn’s memorial was attached to theirs. Still not convinced Carolyn was a Chew, I flipped a couple pages back and found Floyd and Jewel at the bottom of Sheet 10A. Clarence and Audi were at the bottom of Sheet 10B. Carolyn was listed at the top of 11A. I then compared the household numbers…BINGO! The pages were recorded out of order! What a mess!

Tip of the Week: Leverage those FAN Clubs!

This week’s take away…check those FAN Clubs! You would be amazed how many questions can be answered by checking out those Friends/Family, Associates and Neighbors.

Sadly, I have discovered several individuals who died at a relatively young age for various reasons. One was an apparent suicide, one an overdose, and two were casualties of war. Sgt James Herschel Arnold (1916-1945) served in the US Army 152nd Infantry during World War II. His younger cousin, Pfc. Charles Ajay Arnold (1924-1945), was a member of the 132nd Infantry and fatally wounded assisting a wounded teammate to safety during battle. Both men lost their lives in the Philippines. We will be forever grateful for the sacrifice they made for our country.

I added two new DNA matches on my mother’s side of the family tree. One was fairly easy to add as his daughters are already tagged as matches in my tree. The other only required a small number of updates to add.

With the new updates Ancestry has added to their site, they now give trees a score. Mine is 9.4. They then give you hints to bring that score up. I was given three tasks to do.

  • One was for a floater which I decided to delete.
  • The second was for a distant cousin who did not have any dates associated with her. I found her marriage record which listed her approximate birth year to clear that one.
  • The last one had a census record dated before her assumed date of birth. Considering she was born around 1870, there was no official record of her birth. The birth year on her death certificate likely was a guess and her age was actually underestimated. I made an executive decision that she was born in 1869 not 1872.

We’ll see what my new score is tomorrow.

This week in the past…
I’d like to take an opportunity to celebrate the anniversaries of births, marriages, and deaths of my bloodlines which will occur during the week ahead.
217 years ago – Birth of Gesina Brake Sievers (4th ggm)
217 years ago – Birth of Eva Korz Keller (4 ggm)
196 years ago – Marriage of Isaac Lowe (5th ggf) and his second wife Sarah Beckner
186 years ago – Marriage of Suzanne Board (4th ggm) and Isaac Catt (4th ggf)
185 years ago – Birth of Amanda Newcomb Butler (3rd ggm)
161 years ago – Death of Sarah Ireland Reeve (4th ggm)
152 years ago – Death of Zeresh Puckett Coppock (3rd ggm)
115 years ago – Death of Joseph E. Cardinal (3rd ggf)
113 years ago – Death of Michael Kaiser (2nd ggf)
107 years ago – Birth of Samuel T. DeMoss Sr (gf)

Goals and progress…
Beginning of Week: 27,220 people
End of Week: 27,340 people
Change = +120 people – goal MET!!
Goal for coming week: Add 50 new people and continue researching the Isaac and Rebecca Arnold descendants. Barring any rabbit holes, it could take into early or mid April to complete.