Community Inheritance 2.0: A Look at Jim's Report

Last week I looked at my AncestryDNA Community Inheritance report. It helped me to pinpoint where several of my lines might have originated from in Ireland. This week I looked at my husband's Community Inheritance report, and I found interpreting his results was very different.

Our backgrounds are disparate: My family lines entered the U.S. in the early- to mid-19th century or early 20th century. I have the benefit of a pretty even split in my ethnicities of 49% Eastern Europe & Russia from Mom's side and 46% Ireland from Dad's side.¹

By contrast, Jim's family lines have been in the U.S. for centuries—he has at least one confirmed Mayflower ancestor, as well as an ancestor wrongly accused of witchcraft and hanged in Salem, pre-statehood Texas settlers, etc.  His ethnicity report reflects 41% Scotland, 34% England & Northwestern Europe, with lesser percentages from Norway, Sweden & Denmark, Wales, and Germanic Europe. Jim's parents' most recent ancestors generally moved from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas to Oklahoma and Texas. Over hundreds of years, his paternal and maternal ancestral lines have crossed paths and migrated to similar locations.²

Jim's Community Inheritance report reflected his deep American lineages and their gradual migrations west and south. I suspected that his communities would reflect much more specific U.S. regions, and that is exactly what I found.³

He has one community—Early Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana & East Texas Settlers (blue above)—which is present on both sides of his family, whereas I have no shared communities between my maternal and paternal sides at all.

While I certainly could not take any of his lines back to Europe using the report—I do have a few observations.

• AncestryDNA's communities are getting really good. Jim's communities really do reflect the confirmed geographic regions where his ancestors lived. Of his top three matches in Arkansas, Oklahoma & Texas Settlers, all trace back to his Stephen or associated lines. His most distant identified ancestor in this line is James Stephen, who entered Coahuila y Tejas in 1829 to settle near present-day Brenham. Other ancestors in this line were in Harrison Co. and Erath Co., Texas.⁴

• The Early Upper South Settlers community reflects his Casey and collateral line migration from Tennessee to Arkansas before they moved on to Oklahoma and Texas.⁵

• The community Early Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana & East Texas Settlers is present on both his his paternal and maternal sides. And while AncestryDNA cannot assign his top three matches to a side, I can!⁶

• Match1 does not have an online tree. Looking at shared matches between Jim and Match1, I could see that they were all paternal matches. Since I have access to Jim's dad's DNA kit as well, I found the same match in his list, where it was noted as being on his maternal side. Therefore, the family lines have to be Hall, Kelso, or Blanchard or their ancestors. I don't have much research done on these lines, so for now, the geographic region does not mean much.
• Match2 does not have an online tree. Two of the shared matches between Jim and Match2 had a common ancestor of William Franklin Stephen/Mary Carolyn Howard. Therefore, Match2 is potentially a Stephen line match, which fits the geographic region indicated.
• Match3 is a great match even without an online tree! Jim's maternal line has an NPE (non -paternity event): an expected ancestor was not biologically related to Jim. This was discovered as when a strong match with an unfamiliar surname appeared on his list. Long story short, we discovered new ancestral lines to fill in that gap. While Match3 shares only 3 matches with Jim, two of those had the same identified ancestral lines in common with Jim as that previously unfamiliar match. This is just more evidence supporting the case that we have identified the correct ancestral line.
  

In trying to decipher where the top three matches in each community belonged in Jim's lines, it helped to have a well-developed tree. I know a great deal about the first 4 generations, with some lines going 6+ generations back. I know where these lines lived geographically, so it was easier to theorize which family each match belonged to even if the match didn't have a tree built.

 

Shared matches are also key. When a match did have a tree, yet no surname jumped out, looking at the trees of shared matches with Jim usually gave up a recognizable surname or two—and thus a possible family line. 

Until next time...

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.

NOTES

¹ "Ethnicity Estimate," personalized report for James Casey, Jr., Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024).

² "Ethnicity Estimate," personalized report for Nancy Gilbride Casey, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024).

³ "Community Inheritance," personalized report for James Casey, Jr., Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024). 

⁴ "Community Inheritance," personalized report for James Casey, Jr., Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024), "Arkansas, Oklahoma & Texas Settlers" matches.

⁵ "Community Inheritance," personalized report for James Casey, Jr., Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024), "Early Upper South Settlers" matches.

⁶ "Community Inheritance," personalized report for James Casey, Jr., Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 28 May 2024), "Early Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana & East Texas Settlers."