Copyright © Janice Tracy, Mississippi Memories

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

DNA Matches and Surname Mysteries

At this point, I have several thousand serious DNA matches. No, they are not all close matches, but if I examine the family trees closely enough, the link is usually evident. But there are a few surnames that keep showing up in my matches that just don't compute. For instance, the surnames of Cox, Manning, and Wilson appear in numerous family trees as ancestors of individuals who share my DNA. But I don't have a clue, at least not at this point, about my familial relationship with these ancestors. One of the ongoing problems with evaluating these "cousin" matches resulting from Ancestry's DNA tests is that so many of the individuals with whom I match don't have much family information posted on the site for review. However, one thing is for certain, if the cousin matches keep arriving by the dozens, as they have since my test results arrived, I may indeed match up with all 1,011,001 of my relatives!