Peeking Over Brick Walls

A few months ago I asked my parents if they would do another DNA test, only this time through Ancestry.com. Currently I have their DNA data at MyHeritage, FTDNA, LivingDNA, and GEDMatch, (I think that is all of them) But, of course, greedy Ancestry (what a bunch of wankers) doesn’t allow you to upload results from other companies, so I have to test everyone all over again just for this site. This also means that those relatives who donated in the past, and have since died, are out of luck.

My main reason for doing this was to see if the Irish DNA my Dad carries would show up as from a particular part of Ireland, but also, we would most likely find lots of different matches because so many people get suckered into Ancestry’s universe and don’t use the other DNA sites.

Thankfully they both said yes and the results arrived a week or two ago.

First, to get it out of the way: my Dad’s Irish DNA is too small an amount to even show up (guess I will have to try my sister). My Mother has Irish too, in fact more than my Dad, but I still have no idea where in Ireland these ancestors came from as both didn’t have enough DNA from this ethnicity to sort it out. Bummer.

Now the good stuff. I have to say that the Thrulines and DNA matches have really been exciting.

Our Cross and Warner connection has been reaffirmed with several matches with siblings of our ancestors.
My Norwegian ancestry is 100% correct. Damn I am good!
And Mary Baker/Weekley can stop wavering as she appears to be a Weekley.

A little background on Mary. I talked about her a little bit in a previous post, but the nitty gritty is this. Elzy George and Mary Baker likely were married¹ in December 1825. They posted their marriage bonds in November and December. These are the parents of Rachel George who married Ezra Hays, who are then the parents of my great grandmother Rachel, aka Dick. In this bond it clearly states her name as Mary Baker:

But then several of her children’s death records started showing up with their mother’s surname being stated at Weekley. And the confusion commenced.

One of my theories at the time was it was possible that she married a Baker who died very shortly afterward and then married Elzy George. Or she was a Baker. No one in the genealogy circles had developed any theories, at least that I know of. Research into the matter didn’t really clear it up either. I could find no record that connected Mary specifically to either surname other than this marriage bond.

But now we have DNA, and DNA says she was a Weekley:

ThruLines as defined by Ancestry.com: ThruLines uses Ancestry trees to suggest how SJ may be related to their DNA matches through common ancestors.

Now this match does not mean that Mary is a daughter of Thomas, it is merely being suggested because we match all these other Weekleys who appear to be children of Thomas. The DNA only tells us that we match these Weekleys, not HOW we match them. ThruLines are suggestions, that could be correct. It is also possible that Thomas had a sibling who is Mary’s parent.

At Ancestry Thomas shows up in SJ’s list of ThruLines as:

Here is Thomas Weekley and his wife Mary Jones (Polly is a nickname for Mary).

The dotted line around his square means potential ancestor, which is also indicated on the square. If there is no line then that means you have that person in your tree, and we will all assume that it is the correct ancestor. Below is the ThruLines from the top when you first go into your results, scrolling down will bring you to each generation that they have ThruLines for, some of which will also be potential ancestors.

Of course now that we have more of a nudge to the Weekley line, I will have to be more vigilant in researching the Weekley family in Tyler County, West Virginia. She is connected somehow. Maybe she is illegitimate!

Elzy George and Polly/Mary Baker marriage bonds, November 30, 1825 and December 1, 1825. Tyler County, [West] Virginia. Test. Absalom George and John Baker, son of Evan, William George and Deborah George.