DNA tests solving more mysteries?

I had no intention of blogging tonight but I have to document a follow-up to (2) ancestor blogs due to a new (beta) feature at ancestry.com.  Ancestry has released ThruLines, which (in my layman's terms) appears to take your DNA matches and your online tree and match them together in a much easier way to interpret.  You click your ancestor and it shows you DNA matches and how they match your tree.  More on that a little further in the blog.

In the past, people that you matched DNA with in low amounts were very hard to find a connection.  Now they take those connections and shared ancestors and lay them out for you AND if there's a DNA match and you're missing an ancestor, they give you a "potential" to click on and compare.  Obviously this is only as good as the information in the DNA match's tree (and I've found a couple that are blatantly wrong).

                                                                             

Where I'm intrigued is a couple of brick walls on my paternal grandma's side.  I blogged at length about her great-grandfather Clarence Perkins and how his parentage absolutely mystified me.  I then wrote a follow-up blog that in my mind proves who his mother is but adds even more questions about his father.  And then ThruLines came along..........


I added Clarence's "potential" father into my tree as though he is the father, and his "potential" siblings and their descendants as well.  My grandma matches DNA with NINE, count them NINE descendants of William Lathrop!  If she only matched one or two, I'd be skeptical but nine?  I find it ridiculously difficult to believe that she's not descended from William at this point.

Another DNA ThruLines discovery that solves a potential mystery for me - my grandma's paternal grandmother was born out of wedlock.  When I blogged about her, I mentioned that when her mother married Bernardus Kock (Cook) she was "legitimized".  I then did a ThruLines for Bernardus and lo and behold, my grandma matches DNA with descendants of Bernardus' brother.  If Bernardus wasn't the father of Margaret, how is my grandma matching DNA with those descendants?


I still don't understand most of the science behind DNA testing but I do know that it is going to be a genealogy game-changer (if it isn't already) and it's proving it's worth quite regularly now.  I can't wait to see what else I stumble on as the testing/technology get better and more people test.