How to use DNA alongside traditional family history

Do you remember when you first started your family history research? That heady excitement of sitting at a microfilm reader, scrolling down the pages of a census, looking out for the names of your ancestors? Waiting for the post to drop a birth certificate that you ordered, which revealed the mother’s maiden name or (sheer bliss) a published surname index of your church of interest waiting at a records centre? All day at a desk but the joy of finding one piece of evidence?
Maybe your traditional research has uncovered everything you hoped. You have built your tree back on all sides, through many generations and you have copious evidence to prove your tree is ‘right’.
But stop for a minute. Have you ever found information that doesn’t fit perfectly? Dates that don’t quite tally? As family historians we are always striving to find evidence to build a true picture of our ancestors. We are looking for sources that allow us to build back, to identify the correct people, but sometimes the trail goes cold.

Here’s how to keep going: In this guide I’m going to show you how DNA has complemented my traditionally sourced tree, and how the expert research skills you already have can combine with DNA to turbo boost your tree to the next level.

Reasons why traditional research needs DNA

Reason #1: Documentary evidence that’s unclear or conflicting

Some lucky researchers find that they can build a tree without too much difficulty. They have unusual surnames that allow them to find records and know this can be the only candidate. My maternal 2x great-grandfather was Philemon Timbrell which is a rather splendid name and extremely uncommon, so finding documentation for him should have been easy. Yet I still had some problems (not accounting for the many ways to spell Timbrell). When I first ‘met’ him in the 1881 Census he introduced himself as Philip Timbrell from Gloucester. From his marriage certificate in 1878 onwards he was always Philip and his death and burial were indexed under that name in 1900. Luckily information about a more specific place of birth and a father’s first name guided me to a Philemon born in Alderton in 1853, but there were other candidates who were also possible fits. 
I later found the family liked name changes (his brother Paul Timbrell became James Burt, and his sister was called Amelia rather than Jemima for a while). How could I be sure though that I had the correct man?
Before DNA testing it was balanced on all the documentary evidence, but my maternal side DNA testers soon showed matches to Philemon’s siblings. Here DNA was working as another source of evidence, complementing my traditional research with genetic proof.

Reason #2: Sometimes evidence is lacking on a more common name

Lily Powell born in Dudley in 1883 was the sister of my great-grandmother Sarah Jane. In 1904 she married a Charles Joseph Perry but then seemed to vanish, with no sign of her in subsequent censuses. However, there was a possible sighting in the GRO index of a Perry child born to a mother whose maiden name was Powell – Florence Ethel, born in Dudley in the March quarter of 1904. A subsequent baptism confirmed her parents’ names as Charles and Lily, but there was no sign of a death or emigration for any of the Perry family. I found a Charles Perry living with his daughter Florence in the 1911 Census, but his wife was nowhere in sight. 
Then a rather interesting match appeared on my mother’s DNA test, who said that he was descended from a Florence Ethel Powell! After much discussion and tree searching it appeared that Lily left her husband soon after the birth of Florence and alternated between the surnames of Powell and Perry before her death in 1921. At some point Florence became a Powell as she married under that name, using her father’s first names of Charles Joseph (perhaps she wasn’t his child after all – there was only three months between the marriage of Lily and Charles before Florence was born). Without the DNA match I would never have found Florence or the fate of Lily.
It doesn’t matter how much documentation you have that tells you something, our ancestors changed information by accident or design, skewed the truth, and even told fibs to hide secrets. Our ancestors were real humans, with lives that extended far beyond any paper evidence we will ever find. Often the written record is the truth (or their truth as they saw it), but we ignore sources at our peril, and DNA is a source of information and evidence.
 

Reason #3: The ‘Brick Wall’

I often mention my 2x great-grandmother Mary Overfield (née Fletcher) because she is an excellent example of how DNA can help to clear the confusion (but also cause some problems as we’ll discuss later).
In the 1881 Census she was married to Levi Overfield and mother to a number of children, including my great-grandfather Henry Elijah. The census tells me she was born in Dudley around 1841. I followed the family back and found them in 1861. Levi and Mary were living in St James Terrace, Dudley, with their first child and an 82-year-old widower, John Fletcher (no relationship is given). In the same property, or next door, are 47-year-old William Fletcher, his wife Eliza and their five children, whose ages range from 11 to 21 years. 
This all fits nicely, I thought: Mary is living next to her parents and has her grandfather living with them. How wrong I was!
I purchased the marriage certificate of Levi and Mary and there was no father listed for Mary. I couldn’t find William, Eliza or Mary in the 1851 Census, and Mary wasn’t with the couple in 1841 nor was her birth registered under Eliza’s maiden name of Cautherington. Perhaps Mary had been born after the 1841 Census, but not finding her in 1851 was a big blow. 
More documentation in the form of census and death certificates gave more information. John Fletcher was the father of William, so the families did seem to link together. Mary always said she was born in Dudley but her year of birth veered between 1841 and 1845, with her death in July 1924 giving her birth year as 1844. I looked back at the GRO index of births and could find only one Mary Fletcher registered between 1841 and 1845 whose mother’s maiden name had been Fletcher. I purchased the certificate with the full knowledge that ‘my’ Mary may not have been registered at all – this was before registration became the responsibility of the parents (as opposed to the local registrar) and illegitimate children were sometimes ‘overlooked’ by unmarried mothers who didn’t want to air their dirty linen to the relevant officer! The birth certificate showed a Mary Fletcher born on 25 January 1844 to an Eliza Fletcher who lived in Dudley. 
This is when alarms started ringing! John Fletcher had a daughter Eliza (William’s sister) who would have been 20 when Mary was born. I rushed back to my paper research. Eliza had married Edward Pinnock in August 1845 and had nine children, though Mary never appeared with the family. I couldn’t find another Eliza Fletcher of the right age and geographical location. Had I found Mary’s family?
It was when DNA landed I knew I was on the right track: as of today I have 25 matches (from just one test) who are descended from the children of Edward and Eliza Pinnock. One daughter, Rebecca, very kindly emigrated to America and produced 15 children who all seem extremely interested in family history! This doesn’t prove Eliza is Mary’s daughter, but the genetic evidence does add considerable weight to my research.
 

Other reasons why DNA supports traditional resources

• Even if you have been able to find all the documentation that supports your tree this will not take the ‘human factor’ into account. A father on a birth certificate may not be the genetic father – an adoption by a childless couple, or following the wrong couple with the same name, should both be considered.
• A match has family information that was not available to you, such as letters, diaries or a family bible that could enrich and further your own research.
• Perhaps you have found documentation that is sending you in multiple directions, or which you think may be incorrect. With so many online trees potentially misleading researchers on platforms, DNA testing could focus your research.

Why DNA needs traditional research

One of the main reasons people who are interested in family history take a test is to solve an illegitimacy brick wall, and I’m often contacted about how to do it. I’m not going to tell you that DNA is a magic bullet, because finding links to a shared ancestor depends on many factors. But DNA doesn’t work without utilising the traditional research skills and sources we have all been using for many years. We see our match list and we try to work out how those matches link to us. In the case of a missing ancestor, we look for matches that may indicate their identity.
 

Reason #1: Building trees for your matches

If you have taken a DNA test you will know that a match’s tree could come in many shapes and sizes. Many matches will have no trees attached to their results, some will have partial or private trees, and a few show a tree that goes back many generations. It’s tempting to look only at the matches whose trees are flourishing, but it is often the matches without much information that bear the most fruit.
‘Chris’ was a match on my maternal side, sharing 42cMs with my mom. They had an unlinked public tree with four people on it (with no surnames I recognised), and a few place names that indicted a United States connection. At first glance this wasn’t particularly helpful, but the amount of shared DNA showed a close enough connection which could show up in records and one name, Charles Cotton, had his place of birth as England. Charles and his wife Hannah Freath had a son, Charles, born in Pennsylvania in 1915, and I therefore looked to the 1920 US Census, where I found the family. 
Charles Senior and Hannah were both from England, so I looked for a Charles Cotton/Hannah Freath marriage. I couldn’t find a Cotton/Freath marriage but I did find a Charles Cotton marrying a Hannah Freeth and they lived in Smethwick, which was a significant geographical location for my mother’s paternal line. In the 1901 Census, Charles and Hannah were in England and even more helpfully were living with Hannah’s parents Alfred and Ann. When I investigated Hannah’s parents I found that Ann Freeth’s maiden name was Povey, and that is a surname I recognise! Ann Povey, born in 1841, is the eldest living sister of my 2x great-grandfather John. Chris and my mother are 3rd cousins.
Building out the trees, or even trying to create a tree for a match, uses all the same research skills as researching your own trees and it can achieve some impressive results. Building trees for clusters of matches may show a common ancestor who shines a light on a brick wall. On mine and my husband’s tree I’ve been able to identify a missing father and two grandfathers to the ‘right’ man, a missing great-grandfather to the right set of brothers, and a missing 2x great-grandfather to the descendant of a couple as either their son or grandson. All of these have taken several years, and some are ongoing, but I have been able to fill in those missing branches on my own tree.
 

Reason 2: ThruLines and Theories of Family of Relativity: approach with caution!

Ancestry and MyHeritage each offer an amazing tool that looks at your own tree, trees in their database and a match’s tree to see if they can find a link. These common ancestor hints can be game changers and save a lot of time and effort, but they come with an enormous caveat: the companies do not validate the quality of the tree, how well it is researched or whether there are sources attached to it. This means trees, and therefore hints, can and will be wrong. I mentioned Mary Fletcher being an excellent example of good and bad in DNA research, and with ThruLines we see the bad! Many trees on both sites have attached William Fletcher as Mary’s father, so I get lots of hints saying he is her father. I’m actually getting DNA matches from his line because he is her uncle. This is where your expert research skills come into play. You need to check the validity of the ThruLine or Theory of Family Relativity and decide for yourself whether this is how you and a match actually are related.