Ancestry DNA Circle for the Wrong Ancestor

Finally I am placed in an Ancestry.com DNA Circle.

The common ancestor surprised me:  Mary Evenshirer.  Nobody else has this surname, except maybe Mary's father, John Evenshirer, who likely died in New York City in the 1840s.


Ancestry offered this explanation of a DNA Circle.  I crossed out the part where the evidence went astray:  Mary Evenshirer had no children with Alfred Eyre.

Mary Evenshirer was my 3rd great grandmother.  Mary was born around 1842 in New York City and was probably the only surviving child of Rene Brewer (1824-1904) from Rene's marriage to John Evenshirer.  Rene remarried to George W Duryea (1823-1864) and in 1848 their first child was born, Letty Jane (died 1889).

From there, more chances for a mis-step.  Mary Evenshirer married Stephen C Duryea (1814-1887), a brother of George Duryea, and 28 years her senior.  He was a step-uncle, if such a relation exists.

Letty Jane Duryea, the half-sister of Mary Evenshirer, married Alfred DeCiplet Eyre (1848-1912) in New York City in 1868.  Letty died in Jersey City in 1889.  In 1890, Mary Evenshirer, then widowed, remarried to Alfred Eyre, her half-sister's widower.

Previously a cousin was found via DNA testing on Ancesty.  She is in the DNA Circle.

The DNA Circle links Fanny Duryea's descendant, "C J," to me.

She descends from Stephen Duryea and Mary Evenshirer's daughter, Fanny Duryea (1875-1943), who married Judson Cooke Drake (1877-1938).  My line descends from Stephen and Mary's son, Abraham Brewer Duryea (1878-1944), who married Nellie Cummins (1879-1965).  [Disposition of Nellie's ashes is unknown.]



Another cousin was also located via AncestryDNA.  He descends from Stephen and Mary's daughter, Jeanette Lent Duryea (1868-1939), who married Charles Hughes Quackenbush (1862-1947).  The family tree of this cousin is only three generations, with no mention of any of the surnames I discuss here; predictably, he was missed from this Ancestry DNA Circle.



The DNA Circle formed because a  cluster of three people surfaced at Ancestry with Mary Eyre or Mary Duryea in their trees.  Their trees did not extend back into the Brewer and Duryea lines, hence no shaky leaf designation that we share a common ancestor.  But somehow the threshold was met for a DNA Circle.

The common ancestor with this group of three people would not be Mary Evenshirer.  They descend from Mary's half-sister, Letty Jane Duryea, wife of Alfred DeCiplet Eyre.  The common ancestors would be Mary and Letty's mother, Rene Brewer AND from the other line, Garrett S Duryea (1777-1834) and Ann Cornell (1789-1871), the parents of Stephen C Duryea and George W Duryea.

Ancestry picked up on a common relation among the five of us, but chose the wrong common ancestor.  The actual family tree is tricky, as I outlined above.  Ancestry DNA Circles does not replace researching the family tree.

The Rest of the Family's DNA at My Heritage

The other twenty DNA files that I uploaded to My Heritage have processed after a week.

My own kit processed first within two days, showing a close match in the second to third cousin range.  After the files of my parents were processed, this mystery cousin showed up in my father's matches with around the same amount of shared DNA as I share with this person.

Now that I know the match comes from my father's side, I have better direction.  I built out this cousin's family tree, but I do not see the connection yet.  I sent follow-up inmail to the administrator of the account, but have not heard back.

We need to see where the shared segments of DNA fall on my father's genome.  There may already be identified ancestors.  This cousin does not appear in the matches of the cousins I uploaded, but that does not mean that the match is not through one of those branches.



My paternal aunt has a possible promising match not shared by the other siblings:  110 cM total, with the longest segment 79 cM.  Again, without a chromosome browser, I can't rely on these numbers.

My mother has a match in the second to third cousin range.  I don't recognize him from any other other testing companies.  Let's hope he answers my inmail.

My mother has the most matches of anyone I uploaded- just under 100 matches.  She has thousands of matches at the other three main testing companies: 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and Ancestry.com.

Waiting on Family Tree Maker Update

I use Family Tree Maker software to organize ancestors (and some living people).

MacKiev, the same company who brings us Mavis Beacon typing lessons, recently acquired Family Tree Maker.

The joy of this particular program is that it aligns with Ancestry.com.  Shaking leaves show possible record matches at Ancestry.  The tree on your computer can be synced to your tree on Ancestry for the world to see.

An interim upgrade was offered until MacKiev's new 2017 version is released.  Still waiting on that 2017 release.  Ancestry.com trees cannot be updated using the 2014.1 version.  (You can still change your tree directly on Ancestry.com.)

But there is hope.  Tonight an email offered me a chance to be a beta tester of the 2017 version.  If I become a beta tester, it looks like I have a small window of time in which to try to update my Ancestry.com trees.

So I signed up.

I should be notified tomorrow if chosen.

Via the sign up process, I learned where to find some interesting facts about the tree, such as average life span (66 years!), generations (17), and the oldest birth date (John Stronge, born 1585 in Somerset, England).

I need to read Russ Worthington's blog more to learn more about Family Tree Maker's capabilities.