I’ve been busy “painting” my Fennimore matches from testing companies and third-party tools, and I now have a picture of my segments attributed to this couple. This technique is also called Autosomal Triangulation. William Fennimore and Mary Day are my Third-Great Grandparents, which makes this a bit tricky. For any possibility of success, I need DNA matches, that also have solid research proving their decadency. Genetic genealogy is not possible without traditional research; the two go hand in hand.
To recap, I began with a group of DNA matches who descend from one of three sons of William Fennimore and Mary Day. Members of this group have a paper trail, match me, and at least another of this core group. I have triangulated against these kits and added 106 matches in DNA Painter, of which 97 are not yet identified in our family tree. These 97 unknown matches are the folks that may help me solve my brick wall, identifying William Fennimore’s parents.
Before I contact them, I will prepare “cousin bait” or snippets of my research. During this process, I am re-evaluating some of my earlier finds. In most cases, it is revising old citations to the Genealogical Proof Standard and replacing transcriptions with images of the documents. I am also revisiting some of my early negative results to ensure that it was sound. I did quite a bit of analysis of census back when one had to visit the basement of Alexander Library at Rutgers University to view microfilms, town by town, line by line.
Some of my upcoming posts may be proof statements, family groups, census evaluations, or highlights of an individual. The focus will be on the research part of the project. The posts will include research techniques, which hopefully will be useful to other genealogists.
