Saturday, August 27, 2016

A plan for helping to identify my 3rd and 4th cousins DNA matches


I've been working on mapping out my chromosomes to specific ancestors.  It has not been an easy process.  I have researched since 1990 but I had not gotten much info beyond the 1950s(outside of my 1st cousins) for the cousins on farther back.  This has made it difficult to tell where someone matches me especially if there is a daughter in their line of decent from the ancestor we have in common.  Too they may not have their lines back to that ancestor.   Bear in mine that 3rd cousins will share a set of 2nd great grandparents and 4th cousins will share a set of 3rd Great Grandparents.   So my plan is to select one of the 8 couples that are my 2nd great grandparents and work on them each week until I complete all 8 as much as I can. Once that is done as best as possible I will move on to the 3rd Greats and start working on them.

This weekend's couple is William Benton King(1819-1901) & Eliza Jane Manire(1818-1896)

I chose to do them first as I have many 4th cousin which are matching known King cousins who have tested but we cannot find how the tie on the King/Manire tree.  So I'm hoping this will get some answers and once I get back to 3rd Greats(I have identified and researched all but 1 of the 16) and start finding their descendants which I don't have listed yet..that should help even more.  Hopefully this will combat some of the frustration of not being about to identify the connect AND put me on the path to finding it.

2nd Great Grandparent Couples


  • Cook/Putman
  • King/Manire
  • Jakes/Morrow
  • Frizzell/Manley
  • Luna/Rigsby
  • Pittman/Adcock
  • Acuff/McElroy
  • Hale/Hitchcock

3rd Great Grandparent Couples

  • Cook/Unknown
  • Putman/Tyler
  • King/Upshaw
  • Manire/Jackson(which is really Lambert by DNA & Blood)
  • Jakes/Harger
  • Morrow/Sutton
  • Frizzell/Kennedy
  • Manley/Frizzell
  • Luna/Lenox(Enoch)
  • Rigby/Lewis
  • Pittman/Hatfield
  • Adcock/Bowles
  • Acuff/Curvin
  • McElroy/Webb
  • Hale/Elzie
  • Hitchcock/Fleming
Not only will this give you a better sense of the many surnames that the descendants of each couple have but it will also make you more familiar with the areas where they settled.  I tell most people that the majority of my line stayed in Tennessee...which is true.. yes my direct line did but many of my cousins went to Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and California.

If you decide to do this and need help to keep on track, I suggest putting an event on your calendar and blocking out a time to work on each couple.  I use Google Calendar to keep track of appts, programs, sports events and projects because it lets me detail the event or project and set reminders.
Please let me know if you try this and find it helpful.  I'd love to hear your results.


1 comment:

  1. My 2nd great grandmother's parents are unknown. She was French Canadian and I am finding a lot of DNA matches with French surnames so I started researching those surnames. Good to know I'm not the only one trying to recreate a family from cousin matches. It is a challenge.

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