My Paternal Matches at FamilyTree DNA

I have not looked at my matches at Family Tree DNA in a long time. For this post, I’ll concentrate on my paternal side. My dad’s ancestry is half Irish and half German. 

Closest Match

My strongest match is my dad’s sister at 1962 centimorgans (cM), with the longest block at 167 cM. I also match 107 cM on the X chromosome. The 1962 cM is consistent with matching at a half-sibling, uncle/aunt/niece/nephew, or grandparent/grandchild. [1] 

Next Closest Matches

My next closest match is a 2nd-4th cousin range at 170 cM. Our longest block is 28 cM. There is no X match. I have communicated with this person in the past and she is my second cousin once removed, a granddaughter of my great-grandfather, John H. Sullivan’s brother. 

The third closest match is also at the 2nd-4th cousin range with 117 cM, 42 cM as a longest block, and 10 cM on the X chromosome. I don’t know this person and they provided no surnames. Since she was an autosomal transfer, I found her on Ancestry DNA. Her tree shows she is the great-granddaughter of my grandfather’s sister. That makes us second cousins, once removed. This is the only match I’ve identified on my father’s father’s side (the German side).

The fourth closest match is the same 2nd-4th cousin range with 74 cM, 60 cM at the longest block and no X-match. I know this person. She is a third cousin, as we both descend from John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney. We have communicated in the past (pre-DNA days) over our shared ancestry.

Summary

I have 739 additional paternal matches and have no idea who any of these people are. I would need to work on my Gleeson, Tierney, Hork, and Sullivan lines to bring them forward to the present before I could sort them out. Only some have ancestral surnames and trees, mostly Irish surnames.

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1. “The Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4,” DNA Painter (https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 : accessed 21 April 2025), entered 1962 as shared centimorgans.

#52Ancestors-Week 17: DNA

This is my eighth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow  at Generations Cafe (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/).

I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family (https://mam-massouthernfamily.blogspot.com/) or My Trails into the Past (https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/). I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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