Using DNA and Thrulines to Breakdown a Brickwall

I last talked about using Ancestry.com's thrulines last year. There is inherently a problem with using thrulines and not triangulating DNA, but with the arrests from GEDMATCH  a few years ago, I have seen far fewer additions to my GEDMATCH matches now, so I am stuck using the tools I have.

DNA and in common matches on ancestry are one such tool. The hazard here is that just because a person is in common for me and another match, doesn't mean that that is the same, thus the need for triangulation. However, I do think we can use the matches, and the trees as a place to start.

Let me be honest, I have family members whose trees are a mess. So I know that not every tree on ancestry is perfect, and a lot have errors. It doesn't take rocket science to see if someone connects a hint that cannot be true routinely, they tended to accept the hints without researching them. For example, a civil war pension attached to a woman who died in 1800.

So when I look at my matches, I look for in commons where we have multiple family members of lines I know matching multiple family lines with similar trees. And I do the research the old fashion way. I take those in common families and research them myself.

Last weekend, I was scrolling through un-indexed images available on family search for Bulloch county. I was looking for (and found) a court record I had seen referenced in a book. But I hit upon a name, Ephraim Chambless as I was scrolling those records. And I was like wait, that is one of those surnames. I had forgotten that I had researched Ephraim before.

So long story short. Gardner (presumably Sheppard) Hardy in 1820 was living in Bulloch with his mother Rebecca and his stepfather Robert Kelley Jr. (whose mother was a daughter of Wentworth Webb. Nearly every tree out there has his wife Rebecca as a Webb, but the court cases and wills referenced for Wentworth Webb and his widow Rachel Shorter are for Robert Kelly Sr, Robert Kelley was a child).

So in 1820 on the same page, yes, I never noticed, is Ephraim Chambless or Chambliss. So Ephraim's wife is Elizabeth Driggers. Both Chambliss and Driggers are surnames I had already noted were in common with the descendants of Gardner Hardy and his wife Harriet. Descendants from every known child have links to these two surnames.

Turns out, Ephraim moves to Covington county. When I look at the census, in 1820, 1830 and 1840, children that are female are evident, without known names. There is another family my family is linked to, descendants of a Lydia Chambliss, who is around Harriet's age, who married a Duncan McCorquodale. Turns out yes, the females not accounted for have a fit in the census for these two women.

I changed my tree, and added Harriet as a child of Ephraim (note youngest child of Harriet is Ephraim Hardy) Chambliss/Chambless and Elizabeth Driggers (note, eldest daughter of Gardner and Harriet is Rebecca Elizabeth, first names of both mothers for the couple). I waited 24 hours.

DNA thrulines are matching not just all of the children for Ephraim and Elizabeth, but also for their parents and their children. Just like with Talulah Johnson, (see blog July 2019) and Green Brantley's family, the in common matches, and then using genealogy research to confirm if it was feasible, has lead to a point were though lacking paper documentation, I do believe we have proven who these women belong to.