Back in March I got to hear several presentations from genetic genealogist Angie Bush, and I loved the way she presented DNA matches in charts using Lucidchart.
So, I thought it might be interesting to try it out on one of my father’s family lines where he has quite a few matches – his Scottish line, the Philps of Fife. His great grandmother Ann was born (according to census records) in Ceres, Fife, though I can find no record of her baptism.
Ann Philp, born in Ceres, Fife around 1840, and died in Burnham, Canterbury, NZ on 13 March 1895
Ann migrated to New Zealand in 1863 with her husband Martin Burke and their baby daughter Mary, establishing the New Zealand branch of the family. Ann and Martin had two more children after they settled, daughter Annie and son Thomas.
- Mary married Patrick Riordan
- Annie married Francis Burton
- Thomas married Norah Burton
Yes, Francis and Norah Burton were siblings, so their descendants, including my father, are double cousins. You can see this quite clearly in the amount of centiMorgans these cousins share, compared to their Riordan cousins, descendants of Mary. (View a larger version of the chart.)
I’m amazed at how many matches my father has on this one line, and there are certainly more, but those matches have no trees visible so I can’t identify where they connect.
It helps that the Scottish records are profuse, so you can take the paper trail quite far back. However the Philps seem to be two a penny in Fife, and I’ve reached a bit of an impasse for now going back, so maybe I’ll concentrate on going forwards instead!
Thanks to Angie Bush for the inspiration, and to Blaine Bettinger for his helpful webinar on LucidChart and Other Tools for Genetic Genealogy.