A Fun Exercise Using Thrulines--Descendants of Jabel Putman

I am fortunate to have tested myself and three of my siblings in an effort to capture the DNA we inherited from our Dad.  He passed away before autosomal DNA (atDNA) testing was widely available. That gives us four of his children who have tested. Each child received 50% of their DNA from him, but not the same 50%. Because of this, sometimes all four of us will share a common match. Other times, only one of us will have the match.

The table below shows the number of tested Jabel Putman descendants that Thrulines believes are connected through each child's branch, broken out across the four siblings. This was primarily a visual exercise in identifying potential connections through Jabel's children,  so I did not double-check every match. If you use this exercise to infer a connection through a Thruline ancestor, you will need to verify each connection independently. The table is a great illustration of the randomness of DNA inheritance. 

Jabel Putman(1772-1835) is my 3rd Great-Grandfather.  He was from Union County, South Carolina, before moving to Bedford County, Tennessee.

Things to remember:  

• Thrulines uses users' trees, and those could likely have errors that other trees have copied.
• Thrulines is side-blind and doesn't verify that the match is on the side of the family that would make the suggested connection possible.
• Thrulines links smaller segment matches, which may be false positives / identical by state and not by descent.

To make sure the Thruline suggestion is even possible:  

• Look at the shared matches you have with the DNA match connected with the Thrulines. Do they share with other known matches of that line?
• Is the match even on the correct side to make the Thrulines possible?
• Green dotted lines between each connection from the Thruline Ancestor to the DNA match indicate that it is a hypothesis and should be checked as thoroughly as possible before being used to make any inferences. The match may be connected through an entirely different line.

Studying the Thrulines gives you a better understanding of the matches because it forces you to prove or disprove the possibility of the connection through that match or line, which helps your overall research. Just as you never really know who might have the most Putman or Cook DNA, you also don't know who might have sources or clues to help with your research. Locating cousins can be very helpful, especially if they are actively researching. Everyone who tests isn't. I feel like this table will also be a helpful reference when I want to work on Jabel's line.