Getting ThruLines to Work for Me

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A Segment-ology TIDBIT

Here is the set up for my BROWN story, without dragging the reader through the whole back story. This line includes most of the descendants in the BROWN Y-DNA Project Group-40.

I’m searching for the children of Wilson BROWN (he probably had 10 children, only two daughters are known). This is my Tree at AncestryDNA. I expected ThruLInes to find some Matches… Nada. I had Matches from Keziah (and her husband Elliott BAKER) on down. I had none from Wilson – not too surprising because no one has any Trees for Wilson (except for daughter Keziah). I expected some 6C Matches from James, because I know they are out there – but… nothing.

So I used my “Search on a Surname” process [here] – I searched for the BROWN surname, and checked each Match’s Tree for likely families. One family that quickly became the standout was the family of Thomas BROWN 1773 married Nancy LITTON. I was getting a lot of “hits” on that family. So, I looked them up at Ancestry – there are 2,668 Trees for that line! Almost everyone who shows his parents, has John/James BROWN b 1731 MD; married 1755 Plymouth, MA; d VA & Sarah LITTLE b 1737 VA; d 1779 VA.

Two key points about Thomas BROWN 1773:

1. I have found over 70 Matches who descend from Thomas BROWN b 1773 (shared DNA segments from 10 to 30cM). These are spread over virtually all of his children.

2. Two descendants of Thomas BROWN 1773 – through different children – have taken a Y-DNA test and are in BROWN Group-40. So, Thomas BROWN 1773 is BROWN Group-40. No one else in Group-40 has claimed descent from his father, John BROWN 1731.

I have concluded that Thomas BROWN 1773 must be a son of Wilson BROWN and so I added him (and his children) to my Tree.  I stand alone in doing so…

I waited over a month for Ancestry’s ThruLines to show me the 70 Matches I had found – nada. Disappointing… Ancestry clearly had Thomas BROWN 1773 locked onto John BROWN 1731. I’ve written at least 10 blog posts about the power and usefulness of ThruLInes – search for links to them in the Segmentology Outline [here]. One post is about ThruLines X-Ray vision looking into Private Trees…

So, I decided: maybe Ancestry is correct! Maybe if I accepted their version, ThruLInes would report some of my DNA Matches as cousins. So, I changed my Ancestor Keziah BROWN from the daughter of Wilson BROWN to the wife of Thomas BROWN 1773 (so the two of them looked like the parents of my ancestor, John Brown BAKER – almost like Thomas had an affair with Keziah.)

The next day Ancestry listed 31 new ThruLines Matches (spread from 6 to 30cM) – all descending as half-cousins from Thomas BROWN 1773 – WOW.  All of these were new to me. 2xWOW! Near the top of the list was a Match with a Tree with only 2 parents, and 3 grandparents – ThruLines built the Tree back to Thomas 1773. I have built a lot of Quick&Dirty Trees in my BROWN searches, but I would not have tried that one. 3xWOW! And another Match had a Private (but searchable) Tree. I’d never have found that one. 4xWOW!

The fact that I adopted the on-line version of BROWN Tree does not detract from my goal: find more DNA Match cousins from Thomas BROWN 1773. And ThruLines delivered.! The Matches share DNA with me (no matter how the Tree is drawn).

I still need to put all of these in a spreadsheet; make sure they are reasonable; figure out the averages and see how they compare to the Shared cM Project. And I’ll wait a few more days – fully expecting another tranche in the next day or two.

BOTTOM LINE:

This method will sure save a LOT of scrolling through all the thousands of 8-9cM Matches for BROWN Matches (it took me over a Month of steady focus to just get through the 10cM BROWN Matches). And it will find cousins with Private Trees and cousins with very small Trees that don’t have BROWN in them!

[22BW] Segment-ology: Getting ThruLines to Work for Me TIDBIT by Jim BARTLETT 20230707

15 thoughts on “Getting ThruLines to Work for Me”

  1. Pingback: Genea-Musings: Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of 2 to 8 July 2023

  2. Jim,

    I wish I was smart enough to follow all that you say. Due to age and health problems, I have trouble focusing and could never stay with it long enough to build a spreadsheet. Still, I really enjoy your discoveries and, like Barb LaFara, I see how this may help with surnames like Smith.

    I’ve been working on a Smith like for 50 years. Another Smith researcher encouraged one in my line to do a yDNA test on her father. Results gave us a connection. This helped the other Smith researcher to break through a long-standing brick wall. Comparing autosomal results helps the rest of us link to those with yDNA test results.

    I haven’t used ThruLines enough yet but what you said makes it look far more interesting. I’ll continue to follow those of my relatives who are better at this and thanks again to you for guiding the rest of us.

    Ron Vincent

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    • Ron, thanks for your kind words. The gist of this is to use a Shared Match group, and look at the Trees for a Common Ancestor, which would be your Ancestor. I have almost 1,000 ThruLInes and about 95 % are Correct. They are worth looking at. Jim

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  3. Jim, someone pointed out your blog today to me. Curious on your Thomas Brown 1773, who married Nancy Litton. Are they the family in Botetourt County? If so, Nancy is a 5th great aunt to me. I was looking at her Thomas Brown after seeing this and found a will dated 1822 for another Thomas Brown in Botetourt County. There is a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Keziah Brown listed in that will. Perhaps this Thomas with the 1822 will might be of interest.

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    • Barbara, Just WOW! Yes, married 1795 Botetourt Co; in Tax List through 1803; Nancy died 1810 and Thomas remarried and was in Jackson Co, TN Census 1820 to 60. I’ll email you more. Jim

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  4. Hello Jim,

    It’s always good to see your examples of how you are working through your matches. I’m glad to see you are getting closer to solving your Brown family problem.

    I have had a somewhat similar problem with my Bruce family. For the Bruce line, I have a broken tree about 4-5 generations back, cannot identify definite parents there but my cluster is so large that it was possible to trace back to the immigrant, John A Bruce born 1740. John had several sons, and the cluster tells me that I must descend from one of them. Thru Lines had chosen one of them as a “potential ancestor” but my findings showed that I was getting better scores and more matches with a different son. So, I reloaded my tree and Thru Lines was responsive, gave me even more connections than with their other choice.

    In your Brown case, I wonder if you could get even more insights if you used the DNAGedcom program and looked there for all the low scoring shared matches for your specific Brown people using the data in their ICW file. I am just speculating about the value of that, haven’t done it yet myself.

    Best regards,

    James Baker

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      • Thank you for your ideas. I have already done some things along that line (charts, analysis). But just to make me feel more confident, let me run a couple things by you, and you might suggest others or maybe give me confidence that you, too, would be a believer.

        This Bruce family has been a major challenge. My GGF, Lizzie Bruce was born about 1840 – unsure about the exact year or about her parents. In two different marriage licenses in IL she named her father as Alexander Bruce. But I have been unable to find him anywhere. Maybe he actually had a different first name or maybe he was just elusive, but he would likely have been born in TN circa 1800-1815,’’

        At the early end of the family, John A Bruce, the immigrant, was born 1740, lived in VA. He had several sons, born 1760 to 1775. I have defined a huge cluster of over 200 matches that all are part of this Bruce family and are all likely descendants of John A Bruce. Because I can’t find parents for my presumed Alexander Bruce I have a broken tree.

        In 2018, Ancestry gave me Circle Data showing I might be descended from the Bruce family via John’s son Robert and Robert’s son Benjamin. Ancestry continued to suggest these potential ancestors with the Thru Line data. However, I kept analyzing and found more and better scores with John’s son John Thomas Bruce born about 1760. He would fit well as father for my elusive Alexander Bruce or a different son.

        I was fortunate to find a proven descendant of John Thomas Bruce named Amy who allowed me access to her data. In the meantime, I reloaded my tree showing John Thomas Bruce as father for my Alexander Bruce. Thru Lines now gave me 62 descendants for John Thomas Bruce; They would presumably be my 4th cousins. Thru Lines gave Amy 142 descendants matching at the John Bruce level. Amy would be my 4th C 1R. Many of Amy’s high scoring people were also matches for me, but generally with much lower scores.

        Amy scored cM = 39 with me. Other John Thomas Bruce descendants scored well for possible 4th cousins, most of whom were actually 4th C 1R. Matches scored 41, 41, 40, 40, 40, 38, 34, 26, 24, 23, 21, 20. That’s 12 matches scoring over 20. A few others scored below 20. Descendants of the other sons of old John A Bruce generally had lower scores, although a son named Robert had a descendant who scored 43 (maybe just an anomaly or maybe endogamy). But neither Robert nor any other son had anywhere near the formidable array of cM scores that occurred with John Thomas Bruce.

        Further, if John Thomas Bruce is not my ancestor, then I would be connecting further back than John Thomas Bruce with those good scoring matches who were John Thomas Bruce people. That is, it doesn’t seem right that I would find a dozen scores over 20 if they were 5th or 6th cousins.

        Does this make sense?

        James Baker

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  6. Have you considered that John Brown 1731 could be the son of James Brown 1705? That might give you some different Thrulines if there are trees with James in them.

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    • Andrew, Maybe, but John was not a given name in James 1705’s Will naming 16 children. But adding him in as a son anyway might help – even though it’s another generation back. Jim

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