I have tested with all five of the large companies. I went to Richmond in the fall to hear Blaine Bettinger speak at the GRIVA event. When the tests went on sale just before Christmas, I decided that I wanted to know about the extra information that each site could give me and ordered kits from the three companies that I had not yet tested with. But this blog post is specifically designed towards my Ancestry matches.
Crista said that Ancestry now gives as information that each of the participants who have tested with Ancestry now have about 20 third cousin matches. She personally does not have quite that many. I find that I personally have slightly more. Blaine Bettinger had stressed the importance of our third cousin matches. So between all of this late night information and the going to sleep with this on my mind, I felt as if I dreamed all night about getting in touch with my third cousins.
Before falling into bed last night, I used my Reunion (I work on a mac) software to make a very nice fan chart of all of my 3-gr-grandparents. I had not thought about using circular and fan charts before I was in touch with an autosomal match last week who sent me a WONDERFUL fan chart of her ancestors. I am missing a few that I will explain below. The problem with Ancestry is that one can not e-mail each of our matches directly. So I decided to put my fan chart on my blog site and send a URL. I realize that only a small portion of my 3rd cousins will respond. But I have hopes that there will be one among those who do respond who will turn out to be a genealogy buddy!
If I make this bigger on the site it is harder to manipulate. However I think that I might cut it in half and present below. If you want it via e-mail, please get in touch with me at mosesm@earthlink.net and ask for my third cousin chart. Or ask for something else if you want more information.
I am missing four of my Alsace Lorraine 3-gr-grandparents....They are on my mother's mother's side. Most of the Sammons/Osborn/McNeely/Castle side are well documented. It seems that more of my 3rd cousins fit into this niche and we seem to have had a lot of research on this side of the family. I give Ruth Sammons Nassar a lot of credit for some of my own information. She is now deceased but did a lot of Sammons research back in the day when there was no internet!
On my dad's mother's side , I am missing some of his McGregor, Hair, ancestors as his earliest proven couple did not come to these shores until the famine time in Ireland. But on his mother's mother's side, I have had a lot of fun taking many of these people back into the early 1700s and even into the 1600s when they arrived in this country. And on dad's father's side my biggest road block has been my maiden name: Hawkins. I have had a brick wall for 30 years on the Hawkins surname in Early Virginia. It has only been in the past six months that I have found a very small crevice and have some hope that I may begin to find holes this coming year. The rest of this family lived right here in Cabell County in what is now WV from very early. They are well documented.
Some of the surnames that will appear in the next rings out are: Farrar, Moore, Ross, Butler, Marshall, Scott, Lacey, Perrin, Baugh, Hensley, Morrison, Atkinson, Webb, Witcher, Burchett, Carter, Goode, Worsham, Rowland, Penix, all of the Nantucket names (e.g. Worth, Gardner, Coffin, ....), Clendenin, Holderby, Handley, Pendleton, Dannenburg, Konig, Botjer, Schultz, Lutjen, Botser. Some of these surnames are not documented and a few may even be iffy. But many of them are well documented. It would make this blog post too unwieldy to explain which are iffy and which are well documented. Just ask. I am happy to share information.
