Saturday, December 31, 2011

Nothing but Good News to end the Year with!


It's been a really good year for genealogy :)! I've had several major breakthroughs. I received the final DNA test results for my Uncle Charles Forgey. At 37 markers he mismatched Roger Forgey by only one marker. That is described by FT DNA as a "Tight Match". They say very few people achieve that close a match. My family and Roger share a common ancestor back in 1732 when our shared ancestor Andrew Forgey was born. I only had circumstantial evidence of this before. Now the DNA backs this up. Really very satisfying! I had no idea they would match that close considering two other testers confirmed to share a common ancestor in the 1720's mismatched by 4 markers at 37 markers. If that had happened in our case it would have led to second thoughts about our relationship. 
The one mismatch with Roger was a mutation occurring in our line. It was not shared by our other testers either. The single mutation made a big difference as far as the number of matches my Uncle got versus Roger. My Uncle got sixteen matches and he got 30 matches. That one mutation cut the matches by half.

These are our results to date.

I made a happy discovery in my ancestry messages. I don't check that message box very often. I didn't notice a message had been there since September about a Joshua Hicks book. It's available at Lulu and Amazon http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/descendants-of-joshua-hicks/17440597 . I purchased the digital copy a few day ago. It's really excellent. I was thrilled to find a picture of a many times great grandmother Nancy Melvin-Hicks. I have been researching her family extensively, so seeing a picture was a wonderful treat!  I believe she is the earliest ancestor I have a picture of. She was born in 1806. I do plan on doing more research on her in the New Year!

No comments: