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Shared surnames in trees of your DNA matches

Discussion in 'Ancestry' started by JoyNor, Aug 14, 2022.

  1. JoyNor

    JoyNor Guest

    By this I do not mean names of common ancestors. I am beginning to find Ancestry is unreliable on this as I often find matches who do have the same names as me in their trees but which do not show up on their outline tree page as being shared by us. So they do not get investigated from this page. I do go to the full list of people in a tree I wish to explore more closely when I feel there is a possibility of identifying our connection.

    John & I share 35cM/1 seg. I am a guest on John's private tree & he on mine - he has 73,500 names, I have 7,200. We have ancestors from many of the same small rural communities with lots of common names between us. But none have yet let us establish a paper link. Of the 3 most likely names 2 are very common in the locations whilst the third is much less common & we expected it to be our link. However we may be cousins through various shared names if we can go back far enough. But at the moment I am back to Halifax 1749, whereas John is back to Wakefield 1748 so it may be there is a common ancestor still further back as the surname in question was imported into Yorkshire in the 1600s.

    But I have now found a paper link between us via another fairly common surname. John has 160 people in his tree with this & I have 119. And I have traced it back to a common ancestor beyond the scope of Ancestry barrier at 5 x Great G/P. It is identical spelling, is one of those names that is rarely spelt otherwise & we both have the same birth locations.

    So why does this not show on the Ancestry page as a name in both our trees even if Ancestry cannot show the MRCA? A question will be forwarded to Ancestry, but meanwhile I wonder if anyone else has had such a discrepancy.
     
  2. JoyNor

    JoyNor Guest

    Haha! Just goes to show that writing things down can clarify them. On re-checking the lines I now think there may be an issue with a second marriage to a spouse with the same name as the first. Which may make two children not in fact siblings, or at least not full siblings. The family may have 2 William Smith's, but not both in the family household at 1841 census.

    No need to post any answers here as I think I see what has happened. Blame it on the lack of variety when naming children. I have one of my families with 3 sons called Joshua. As each one died a new baby boy was given his late brother's name - in this case it being the name of their paternal grandfather which was to be passed down by hook or by crook.
     

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