This is my monthly recap on research questions. It's been a mix of progress and stall, along with some scene-setting to anchor real movement this month.
My Paternal Side
1 - Looking for the parents of my Irish 3rd-great-grandmother Bridget. In March I started a process of chromosome mapping, and yesterday had another expert consultation with Jarrett Ross. There were a lot of helpful suggestions and ideas to explore. I highly recommend using guided instruction when you need it, and I had definitely reached a point where I needed to bounce ideas off someone more expert than I am. it was helpful to hear I'm on the right track, and I'll share more on this shortly.
There's clearly two groups of matches (and maybe a third) who I think connect to Bridget's lines, one associated with the Hanleys who moved to LaSalle County, Illinois, and another group descended from Greeley, Casey, Farrell families in Longford, Ireland. Now I need to go through the steps to work through chromosome mapping along with the traditional genealogy and research to look at the connections.
I spent a good portion of the month reviewing strategies from RootsTech and following examples from case studies shared by YourDNAGuide. The combination of guided instruction and Study Group has given me some confidence that it might be possible to figure out this long time brick wall on Bridget's side of the tree. I also submitted a paper inquiry to the church archives in LaSalle, and I'm awaiting either a confirmation that no records exist, or maybe something will be found that opens up another door to this quest.
This research question has received the most attention in March, deservedly so. It will likely be the big one in April too.
2 - mtDNA matches descending from Sarah Westall and Elizabeth Thornhill Jones. No movement since the last update.
3 - Jones YDNA. I have some new Y-37 matches, but not higher level Big Y matches to explore. This one is still holding in place.
My Maternal Side
1 - Working with the Portillo matches and continued research on the Leyva group. No movement this month.
2 - Analyzing mtDNA matches in the maternal line path of Maria Jesus Vasquez. Autosomal results arrived for cousin Joe on his mtDNA kit, while we still await the mtDNA results. Already there are some interesting XDNA matches to triangulate using his kit and Catherine's in comparison with mine and my Mom.
3 - Campuzano YDNA. We're awaiting Big Y results for cousin Garry, which should give a more recent branch point for our Campuzano line. I'm not expecting this for a few more months, so this one will likely be revisited in the summer.
Allison's sides
1 - mtDNA results in the maternal line path for Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann. It seems there are delays at FTDNA in processing mtDNA results, and we're on week 12 since Sophia's kit was received. I'm still expecting the results any day now, so hopefully we'll have an update this week.
2 - Separating out maternal and paternal line matches on FTDNA. I'm interested to apply some chromosome mapping techniques here, using the approach I'm taking with my Dad's matches on MyHeritage and FTDNA.
3 - Analyzing XDNA matches on Allison's side of the tree. I've continued reviewing FTDNA and matches in common on Ancestry to keep building this out.
Future RootsTech Talk
I'm giving this its own category here, as I spent quite a bit of time catching up on recordings of RootsTech 2026 sessions from earlier in the month. Partly this is to get a better sense of the type of sessions that were accepted, so that I can realign my own future talk proposal for the next time submissions become open. I have also started to construct the talk and accompanying material, and may try to present it somewhere else first to see how it is received before trying again for RootsTech 2027. This takes a bit of planning, and researching how similar talks and case studies are presented is worthy of tracking.
