One year ago I shared a set of research questions, including a question for the WATO course on YourDNAGuide to determine the generation of connection with a set of mystery matches from the Leyva family. After a lot of digging into shared matches of matches, building floating trees, talking through the case with Jarrett Ross (the Geneavlogger on YouTube), and comparing the matches using WATO on DNAPainter, I think we now have a hypothesis for the generation of connection with this family.
When talking it through, it seemed like the amounts in common were stronger with the Portillo branch of cousin MC, who is descended from Alejandro Portillo.
I caution this is just a hypothesis based on the tool and it has not been verified through other records, which may not exist. Using shared matches of matches in common between CH and my Mom on Ancestry, I plugged those centimorgan amounts into a tree and generated hypotheses. Thanks again to Jarrett for cleaning up my first attempt to generate results from WATO. Far and away the highest ranking among the hypotheses was #5, that CH is the grandchild of Alejandro through an unknown half-sibling. This was six times as likely as the next hypothesis. As we know CH was the daughter of Trinidad Leyva, according to this result the most likely generation of connection is that we share a common ancestor in Manuel Portillo (1830-1880).
This result collides with what the paper trail says about Trinidad's mother, Flora. So far, there's nothing I've seen to place Alejandro in Sinaloa or Flora in Guaymas or Hermosillo in March/April 1891, but it was feasible and there's a big gap in Alejandro's timeline. In later years, Alejandro, Flora and Trinidad were working in the cotton fields of Glendale, Arizona around the same time, and also lived in Nogales at the same time, but this does not directly connect them.
Again, there's more to do before declaring this the most likely answer. I still need to try to separate matches descending from either Escolastico Leyva's side or Flora's. There's also another set of shared matches pointing to an earlier Portillo who may have been a sister of Manuel Portillo Sr.
Why I have spent so much time trying to place these mystery matches into the tree? I currently do not have a strong understanding of my Portillo line beyond Manuel Sr. The Leyva matches, and at least two other families have a connection to the Portillos through different paths, and I am hoping this research will help unlock further layers to the Portillo story in Mexico (and perhaps earlier to Spain or Portugal).
