Later that same day that spoke with Nicole and signed up for Promethease, as she recommended, I also signed up for GedMatch.com. Essentially, GedMatch acts as a landing page that transcends all of the “Big Three” genetics companies (AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and 23andMe). A person who tested at any of these companies, as well as several others, can upload their data to this singular platform and find matches from all three sites in a one-stop-shop format. Speaking of formatting, theirs certainly isn’t the prettiest, and has a steeper learning curve, but it comes highly recommended by the donor conceived, adoption, and general genealogical research communities for its usefulness. Honestly, I’m still learning new things on how to use it, but overall I’ve found it to be a pretty helpful tool. I uploaded both my DNA kit and James’.
I’m not sure at this point how many matches I had when I originally created my account with GedMatch, but I do know that, as of today (November 30th, 2016), I have over 2000, and so does James.
To give you a sense of what the match screen looks like, I’ve pasted an image of it below (from James’ kit). To the “lay” genealogist (or at least someone who is very new to all of this), it at first looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but at least it still gives you some of the same basics as AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and 23andMe’s match lists…things like the match’s name or username, email (if provided), and shared CMs. Some people have indicated their maternal and/or paternal haplogroups, while others have not.
Once again–I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the volume of information, and also a little sad that I didn’t see any closer matches. I am the first match on the list, followed by Jessie, then Nicole, then the Claypoole maternal cousin that I mentioned earlier. In looking at even just these results, I noticed several things.
For one thing, Jessie shares 495.2-585.6 CMs between me and James (respectively), and Nicole shares 218.9-280.7.
Given those ranges, compared with the chart above, that puts Jessie in range for the “First Cousin Once Removed (1C1R), Half First Cousin (1/2 1C), Half Great-Aunt/Uncle/Niece/Nephew” category. Even though she’s high enough for the next category up when it comes to Jeff, I bump her down squarely into the category just described.
Looking at the same chart, and given her ranges compared to James and I, Nicole technically can fall in that same category, just at the VERY low end of it, but fits much more squarely in the “Second Cousin (2C), First Cousin Twice Removed (1C2R), Half First Cousin Once Removed (1/2 1C1R)” category.
Is your head spinning yet? As I try to compare all of this to Jessie’s family tree, the pathways of possibilities for how we are related (and the different search methods that come with them) feel endless. It’s like learning a new language and finding your way on its map at the same time.
I decided to email Jessie.
Fortunately, she replied the next day.
She explained how she has now been in contact with Nicole and that the two of them have been in contact with her sister. Then she told me that she’d been trying to ask around with different family members but hasn’t gotten any definitive responses. The only med student in the family was female. She wished that she could help me out more, but just had limited information to share. Jessie did mention that at least we can be fairly certain that the connection is somewhere on her Mom’s side of the family. She then wished me the best and said she’d be in touch if she heard anything more.
After thanking her, a few days later, she messaged me again, asking if I ever tried contacting a close mutual match of ours.
Little did she know at the time, but this little reminder sent me down QUITE the rabbit hole in the coming days.
I pulled up this match’s profile. Jessie had mentioned earlier that she thought this was one of the Reilly siblings’ (which includes her mother and mother’s siblings) grandchildren. She felt pretty confident that it was one of the grandchildren of “Ana” (name changed) Reilly Logan, the son of one of Ana’s sons.
With 196 shared CMs (and I can’t tell how many he shares with James, since this cousin, who I’ll henceforth refer to as “Brandon002”, only tested with AncestryDNA and is not on Gedmatch…whereas James only tested on FTDNA and you can’t transfer those results to AncesryDNA like you can in the opposite direction), the best I can figure when reviewing the DNA Detectives relationship chart again is that we are related by the following category (which is the same category as Nicole is to James and me):
Since he’s in the same relationship range to James and me as Nicole is to us, this means that Ana Reilly Logan’s family line, like Jessie/Nicole’s, is probably a dead-end. If our donor were one of Ana’s children, or even grandchildren, then Brandon002 would have been a closer match to me than his DNA shows (unless he, one of his parents, or Ana also have their own “non-parental event” in their closet).
I did my best with illustrating this, below (*some names have been changed for privacy purposes):
Due to Jessie’s genetic distance to me and the age of her children, it’s most likely that she is my 1st cousin once removed (1C1R), in which case my donor would be one of her 1st cousins (the child of one of the Reilly siblings, who I circled in green in the image above). Given both Nicole and Brandon002’s genetic distances to me, both of their lines are pretty much immediately knocked out for containing my biological father/donor.
Given that, of the Reilly siblings “Peter” Reilly only lived to be about 13 before he passed, and “Tim” Reilly appears to have passed at only a few months old, those lines are also clearly “out”, hence my crossing them out in the tree image above.
From the looks of the tree, (which wasn’t completely filled out–you can’t assume that anyone’s tree is 100% complete), and as a result of my research, Virginia Mary Reilly never married and didn’t have any children, so I tentatively knocked her potential line out as well.
That left the following as possible parents of my donor (and thus an extra set of Grandparents for me):
- “Jacob” Reilly and Mary Neill
- “Ryan” Reilly and “Emily” Minnow
- “Joshua” Boyd and “Rachel” Reilly Boyd
So this was the path I followed down the rabbit hole all weekend.