Thomas Whitley, 1940

 

Glasgow Rep. 11 Jan 1940.

Newspapers.com has added a bunch of new images and newspapers. Above is an obituary for my 2nd-great-grandfather Thomas Whitley. I previously shared a different obituary in 2014 from the Glasgow (KY) Daily Times.

Research Progress March 2025

We've reached the second of the month, and time for another progress check on my research questions. This is a big week, Rootstech is happening in a few days. There's a lot percolating in the background, hopefully some of those things will be ready for sharing soon. I've signed up for another round of DNA Study Group. It's a great community and I'm looking forward to learning more.

DNA Study Group Research Questions

1 - Identifying the parents of Bridget, my 3rd-great-grandmother. As noted yesterday, there are some hints of a way forward and I'm currently building out a floating tree, trying to see if I can find a link in Longford, Ireland to Bridget's family. It is really nice to see some potential progress here.

2 - Determining the generation of connection with the Pennsylvania O'Briens. I'm struggling with this one and need to try again with WATO. Perhaps some additional skills learned at Rootstech and in DNA Study Group will help resolve this one. But, as noted below, I'm hoping to talk with the WATO developers at Rootstech this week.

3 - Verify the father of Cora Belle Medcalf using DNA matches. This is on hold at the moment, but I'm hoping to dive into this toward the end of March.

4 - Identifying the siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez. Nothing new here, but again I do plan to pick this one up soon as the next DNA Study Group kicks off. I think this one will pick up in April and May 2025, but this is just a prediction.

5 - Identifying living descendants of Jose Jesus Amado and Gertrudis Palomino. This one has perhaps made the greatest progress, as I've made contact with some distant connections and am pursuing some leads on the sprawling Amado family. I have an inquiry open with the UCLA Library Special Collections, which should be the feature of a new post soon.

6 - I may be adding some new questions as DNA Study Group moves into a second year. One might be identifying the common ancestor with a DNA match, CW, on my Mom's side. Another question is related to #5, determining how I'm connected to a cluster of FamilyTreeDNA matches through the Amado side of the tree.

WATO Course Research Questions

I need more time with WATO as I find it to be challenging to use. All three of my WATO research questions need a fresh attempt at using this DNA tool (see this explanation at DNAPainter). I'm looking forward to potentially chatting with the DNA Painter team at Rootstech this week.

FamilyTreeDNA Research Questions

1 - Interpreting Big Y results. I received my results in early February. There's still a lot to learn about what to do next. I've joined the R-U152-FGC22501 group project, and I am tracing the path of other Jones cousins who might be encouraged to try YDNA testing. 

2 - Interpreting mt Full sequence results. FTDNA launched the mtDNA Tree of Humankind last week, and I'm really interested to hear more about the discoveries available. I've also joined the Mexico DNA Project.

3 - Identifying matches in FTDNA's autosomal DNA results and trying to find some common connections that will help with some of my other DNA quests. This is exactly what I'm doing now with these mystery Amados, and I now have another Campuzano cousin in FTDNA.

Hints of a path

As I take a closer look at the matches in common with my Dad's DNA on the O'Brien-Bridget side of the tree, very little has changed since I starting building clusters using the dot method in August 2024. At the time I isolated 71 matches, and I'm now up to 76. This is exactly where I was in November, and almost all of these matches seem to be connected to the line of mystery Pennsylvania O'Briens descended from James J. O'Brien and Mary Nolan. There's a small set of mystery matches pointing in another direction, which seem to trace to back to Longford, Ireland.

I'm digging into this group now, hoping this will provide a lead to Bridget's family. Here are my steps so far: I've selected a match from among this group of 76 with my Dad's results. This match, DK, has 14 cM in common. This is pretty small, but this match has 22 cM in common with my Dad's 1st cousin Mike O'Brien, giving me a little more confidence that this could be a potential match to Bridget's family. DK doesn't have a public tree, but using shared matches of matches with Ancestry's Pro Tools, I can see he has an aunt with a detailed tree. She has 11 cM in common with my Dad, but doesn't match to Mike.

With a quick look at her tree, I can see Irish names and checking a bit further, see a branch of her line came from Longford, Ireland. This is a promising start.

Next, I've started to build a quick tree, using Ancestry's MyTreeTags labeling this person as part of a Floating Tree and a DNA match. Now I'm "doing genealogy" working backward to Longford, hoping this will lead me to a family that connects down to Bridget.

George Barret Sr. Landscape with cottagers. 1775.

There are some hints in Longford that Bridget's family might connect with this line. More to come, and a monthly research question status report to follow with the next post.