Ancestry's ThruLines Offer Clues

Back when AncestryDNA launched its "ThruLines" tool, those of us in the professional or advanced amateur genealogy world immediately saw its greatest flaw: Depending on all of the millions of family trees built in its database--the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And let me tell you, there are some really UGLY trees out there. Especially when one is attempting to search for third- and fourth-great-grandparents using DNA analysis.1

But, wait. Let's not throw that particular baby out with the bathwater. The water may be dingy from the dirt from everyone else bathed in it, but, it's still water. It may not produce the "cleanest" baby, but it might offer something that can help.

A BRIEF TUTORIAL ON USING ANCESTRY'S THRULINES

If you have tested at AncestryDNA, or manage kits for friends or relatives, a ThruLines page will look like this:

Because I've got an accurate tree built back through my great-grandparents, the name cards are white. ThruLines will also add the names of people who aren't in your tree, but based on the computer algorithm, it believes should be there. For example, John Sarsby is a predicted fifth-great-grandfather for me, and his name card includes a "Potential Ancestor" indicator.

This is an important distinction, because of course, this prediction is based on the trees (even partial trees) of your DNA matches that appear to fall into this line.

When I hover my mouse over this card, ThruLines shows how many of my DNA matches it believes are also descendants of John Sarsby, and the range of shared DNA in centimorgans (cM). A match of 9 cM is very low and isn't exactly substantial proof of this relationship. The 2,773 cM match is one of my sisters, who is on my tree and, therefore, can be ignored for this. What I will be looking most closely at are those that are at least 15 cM and second- or third-cousin matches, especially those with trees.

Clicking on this name card brings me to this page, showing how many of these DNA matches appear to descend from John's son, John, and potentially those who descend from John's other son, James.

Clicking on the tab that says I share DNA with nine people through the younger John Sarsby brings me to this page, which indicates that the younger John Sarsby had a daughter named Margaret, who is not in my tree but appears to connect to two of the nine DNA matches.

Clicking on the "2 DNA Matches" tab shows me the ThruLines prediction of how I am related to these two distant cousins who share DNA with me.

Again, all of these names are in green with the word "evaluate," meaning this information should be verified by the researcher with documentation, if possible, to prove the relationships that are predicted. I am not going to worry about the seven matches that I have through John Sarsby's other daughter, Martha, whose descendants are well-documented in my own tree.

So, what's the point of this? ThruLines has shown me who I might want to look for if I want to add collateral lines for other descendants of the elder or the younger John Sarsby. This is most useful, in my opinion, if you are working to establish the identity of an unknown parent, grandparent, or other ancestor that you want to find.

How? Well, if these are cousins you've never met or don't know anything about, you can start filling in the information with documents. I start with the low-hanging fruit: Virginia, H.L.'s mother, died in 2016, so her obituary should be easy to find.2 With that, you can document her parents and then keep researching backward from there to determine that, yes, indeed, H.L. and TU are my cousins through my third-great-grandmother's sister.

But ThruLines isn't the only way to shake information from those other family trees maintained (or not) by your DNA matches.

In the next post, I will show you how to do more detective work using the tools available on the pages from your DNA match list.

In the meantime, of course, if you have any questions about using Ancestry and other online databases, contact me at twistedrootsgenealogy@gmail.com or on my Facebook page. Also, let me know if you have any suggestions for future blog posts!

Endnotes:

1. Getting back that far isn't easy, and most people who have built trees back to the 1600s and 1700s don't always use discretion when adding names that they find -- often these are simply cut-and-pasted from other people's Ancestry trees. If you see a tree with a name on it that you are researching, and the only documentation or "fact" listed for that person in someone else's tree is "Ancestry Trees," then run. Run as fast as you can, and look elsewhere. OR check those trees to see if they offer actual documentation for that person.

2. Should be. I can't tell you how many times I have been totally unable to find death notices or obituaries, even for people who died within recent memory. That said, I have found that it's possible to get good information by searching people who were born around 1950 and even 1960, simply because there are so many digitzed public records on Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and even free databases operated by state societies or govermental agencies.