Since last month's update, there's quite a lot of new information to share. Several of these topics deserve a dedicated post, so this is a summary of progress on my various research questions.
Paternal side research
1 - Identifying the parents of Bridget, my Irish 3rd-great-grandmother. Last week I had a consultation with a genealogist at the Irish Family History Centre, who gave me some great suggestions for follow-up after my meetings had ended in Dublin. This needs some more time as I only returned Friday afternoon, but there are some promising leads to pursue.
2 - Generation of connection for the Pennsylvania O'Briens. Based on my experiment with BanyanDNA, I think a case can be made that these people descend from an earlier son of John O'Brien, born between 1807 and the mid-1820s. YDNA testing would help significantly on this question if an O'Brien male descendant of this branch would test, and an O'Brien cousin on my Dad's side took the test. I think this research question will shift in the next month, and I am currently taking the YDNA online course through YourDNAGuide.
3 - Determining the mtDNA haplogroup for the maternal line of Elizabeth Thornhill Jones. Big news! We have a result! No spoilers yet, this deserves its own post.
4 - McIntosh side of the tree and McIntosh DNA matches. This topic may change.
5 - Jones YDNA. I've joined the Jones YDNA project on FamilyTreeDNA and I'm using my own Big Y results as part of the YDNA online course I am in, while also looking for male Jones cousins to encourage to test. There's currently a sale on YDNA kits with FamilyTreeDNA. This topic will evolve but for now it is a placeholder for Jones YDNA research.
6 - Guthrie DNA group project.
7 - [New] Cleaning up my Thomas Jones and Nancy Tucker research. Much more to follow later this month.
Maternal side research
1 - Identify possible siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez.
2 - Working with DNA matches on the Amado side of the tree.
3 - Analyzing the mtDNA matches in the maternal line path of Maria Jesus Vasquez.
4 - Identifying the connection to the Guerrero-Leyva mystery matches. I might try using BanyanDNA here, in combination with Ancestry's new Clustering with Pro Tools.
5 - Resolving descendancy from the daughters of John Carter (1715-1783) using mtDNA. I've joined the Carter DNA project with FTDNA and will be following up with the Carter Society.
6 - Identifying a direct maternal descendant of Mary Alice Cain Read to encourage to take a mtDNA test.
7 - [New] Campuzano YDNA - This one is an exciting addition to the research. I'm working with Campuzano cousin Pat, and she's persuaded one of her male cousins to take the YDNA test. I purchased a kit and have sent it off to Pat for him when they next connect later in the month. It may take a few months for results, but this will give us a Y haplogroup for the line of Vicente Antonio Campuzano. I am hoping this will help clear up whether this branch came from Cantabria, or if there's some truth to the shipwreck tale passed down to my Granny that a Campuzano was Italian, or some combination of the two (a Sephardic link from northern Spain to Genoa perhaps).
A look at the numbers
On Ancestry, I have 79,801 DNA matches. My Mom's kit has 63,850 matches. My Dad's has 51,738. On MyHeritage, my kit has 19,608 matches. My Mom's has 16,905, and my Dad's has 21,131.
On FTDNA, my FamilyFinder (autosomal) transfer has 7,204 matches. My Mom's has 6851 matches, and my Dad's has 7,149.
With this many matches, the new clustering tools are even more useful.
