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Triangulation for Autosomal DNA

Roberta Estes

In our last article, Triangulation for Y DNA, we covered triangulation for the Y chromosome, how it works, and how it can help a genetic genealogist.

In this article, we’re going to cover triangulation for autosomal DNA.

Triangulation for autosomal DNA is kind of a chicken and egg thing.  The goal is to associate and identify specific DNA segments to specific ancestors.  The easiest way to do this, or to begin the process, is with known relatives.  This gets you started identifying “family segments.”  From that point, you can use the known family segments, along with some common sense tools, to identify other people that are related through those common ancestors.  Through those matches with other people, you can continue to break down your DNA into more and more granular family lines.  This is easiest to visualize thinking about your 4 grandparents.

Triangulation is easiest if you have parents or grandparents living, and you can test them.  Yes, all of them.  Their DNA will give your immediate pointers when you have matches to which side of the family you share with your matches.  If you can test your 4 grandparents, you immediately know which of those 4 lines someone who matches you descends through, because they will also match one, and hopefully only one, of your 4 grandparents.  However, for some of us, testing even one parents is simply not possible, so first, let’s look at some examples of triangulation without your parents DNA results.

I’m fortunate that one of my cousins has given a lot of focus to our Vannoy line.  Vannoy was the surname of my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Vannoy (1846-1918) who married Lazarus Estes (1845-1919).  The Vannoy line has a mystery we’ve been trying to solve for decades now called, “Who Was Elijah Vannoy’s Father?”.  Elijah was Elizabeth’s grandfather.  Your family probably has a similar mystery, and these tools hold the potential to answer those questions.  They also have the potential to introduce more questions.  But then again, isn’t that the way of genealogy?  For every ancestor we find, we get two more questions.

Several of the Vannoy cousins are interested in solving this mystery as well, so they have taken the autosomal Family Finder test at Family Tree DNA.

We know how they are related, and the men have all been proven to be Vannoy via Y-line testing.  By doing this, we’ve assured no undocumented adoptions, also known as NPEs (NonParental Events) in the Vannoy line.

We expect our cousins to match, and indeed they do.  This is my test result showing my three cousins who match me.

In my family mystery, “Who Was Elijah Vannoy’s Father?”, there are 4 candidates, all brothers who lived in Wilkes County, NC in the late 1700s.  Elijah was born in 1786.  We have the wives surnames.  Hickerson is our primary candidate surname, so I wanted to see everyone who matches me on my match list who also shows the Hickerson surname.  I enter that surname in the “ancestral surname” box, and click on “run report.”  The matches returned will all carry the Hickerson surname, which you can see by scrolling for the highlighted names. Turns out, it was only my Vannoy cousins – today – but tomorrow might be different.

Now for the triangulation tool.

I want to see if these three people share common DNA not just with me, but with each other.  If we all share a common segment of DNA, then that confirms a common ancestor and attributes the DNA at that address on that chromosome to that specific ancestral family.  This is the fundamental concept on which triangulation is based.

In my case, the known ancestral family is Vannoy, not Hickerson, at least not yet, so let’s look at the Vannoy cousins as compared to me.

Each of the participants results are color coded.  On the page below, you can see that each matching segment of the chromosomes is colored.  It turns out that all of us share a fairly large segment on Chromosome 15.  So now we can attribute that segment to Elijah Vannoy, our oldest proven ancestor in that line.  You can also see some areas where one or two of my cousins match my DNA, but not all of us.  Those can also be attributed to Elijah Vannoy’s line since we share no other (known) common ancestors.

This cousin match is simple because the men share the same surname, but if this was 3 women with different surnames, the matching would still work.  The challenge of course would be to find the common ancestor.  In this case, if all 3 women had Elijah Vannoy in their tree, we could still tell that this segment of Chromosome 15 was attributed to the Vannoy family because they all matched me and matched each other as well on the same DNA segment.

Eliminating False Matches

Now let’s move to the “what ifs.”  When my kids were young, I just hated sentences that started with “what if.”

What if I have a fourth match, Jane, with unknown ancestry who matches me on these segments, but does not match any of my cousins?

To determine this you would also have to look at your cousin’s matches or ask Jane if she also matches those cousins.  Remember that half of your DNA is that of your mother and the other half is that of your father.  You will have people that match you, and potentially on the same segments as your known relatives match you, but are not related to both you and your relatives.  This means they are matching you on the other half of your DNA.  In this case, if Jane didn’t match my Vannoy cousins too on that same segment of chromosome 15, then we would know that Jane’s match would be from my mother’s side.

To illustrate this point, let’s move to my results at 23andMe.

Let’s use Family Inheritance Advanced to see an example of two people who match me on the same segment, but are from opposite sides of my family.  My cousins Stacy and Cheryl are from Dad’s and Mom’s side of the family, respectively.  We know they don’t share common ancestry, but look, they both match me on four of the same segments.

How is this possible, you ask.  Remember, I have two halves of each chromosome, one from Mom and one from Dad.  It just so happens that Cheryl and Stacy both match me on the same segment, but they are actually matching two different sides of my chromosome.  For this reason, these are called HIRs, or Half Identical Regions.

Now let’s prove this to the doubting Thomas’s out there.

Here is the comparison of Cheryl and Stacy directly to each other.  They do have one small matching segment, 6 cM, so on the small side.  But they don’t match each other on any of the segments where I match both of them.

If they did match each other and me on the same locations, it would mean that we three have common ancestry.

The fact that they match each other on one segment could also mean they have distant common ancestry, which could be from one of our common lines or a line that I don’t share with them, or it could mean they have an identical by state (IBS) segment, meaning they come from a common population someplace hundreds to thousands of years ago.

The real message here is that you can never, ever, assume.  We all know about assume, and if you do, it will.  In this case, assuming would have been easy if you didn’t delve into the big picture, because both of these family lines contain Millers from Ohio living in close proximity in the 1800s.  However these Miller lines have been proven not to be the same lines (via Yline testing) and therefore, any assumptions would have been incorrect, despite the suggestive location and in-common names. Furthermore, cousin Stacy’s Miller line married into her line after our common ancestor, so is not blood related to me.  But conclusions are easy to jump to, especially for excited or inexperienced genetic genealogists.  It’s tempting even for those of us who are fairly seasoned now, but after you’ve been burned a few times, you do learn some modicum of restraint!

So, what’s next?

Color your Chromosomes

In my article, “The Autosomal Me – the Holy Grail – Identifying Native Genealogy Lines,” I described in detail the process of downloading your DNA information from either 23andMe or Family Tree DNA and then utilizing that information in a spreadsheet to look at matches – not 3 or 4 matches at a time, but chromosome by chromosome.

In my case, I was fortunate to have my mother’s DNA results at Family Tree DNA before she passed away, and I was equally as fortunate that they were still viable for the Family Finder test.  Believe me, I held my breath.

Because I have her results, I can tell immediately if my matches are from her side or from my father’s side.  If the person matches both Mom and me, then it’s from her side.  See how easy triangulation is.

Let’s take a look at Chromosome 15 with all of those Vannoy matches on my spreadsheet and see what kind of information we can glean.

On my master spreadsheet, my Mother’s matches have been copied in and are color coded, but since none of these people match Mother, I have eliminated that aspect here to avoid unnecessary confusion.

The people identified as “Dad” mean that I know they are genealogically related on my father’s side.  People who match Mother genetically are labeled Mom.  There aren’t any on this segment of chromosome 15, in our example above.  The blank cells in that column, by inference, match Dad’s DNA, since they don’t match Mom.  When I confirm genealogically how we’re related, I’ll enter “Dad” in that column, but not until then.

I’d like to comment on information gleaned from the spreadsheet.  Every DNA segment has a story to tell.

Cousin Estes

First, Cousin Estes, with yellow highlighting, is one of my closest Estes relatives.  He is a third cousin on the Estes side and also descends from Lazarus Estes and Elizabeth Vannoy.  He matches me on the segment from 26 (million) to 58 (million). My Vannoy group of matches, shaded green, extend from 33 to 58, so this tells me that the area from 26 to 33 where I match Cousin Estes, and not any Vannoys, is probably from an Estes ancestor, and not the Vannoy line.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any other matches on this segment, so I can’t figure out which line it comes from, just yet.

The green areas are common between me, cousin Estes and the Vannoy cousins.  If we could find a Hickerson match on these same segments, we could then solve the family mystery AND attribute part of this DNA to the Hickerson line.  But so far, no dice.  This is why it’s important to continue to look and to reach out to people you match, especially those who don’t enter their family surnames or post a GEDCOM file.  The answer may be waiting for you.

The Insanity Factor

The pink segment labeled Cousin Younger is making me insane, so let me share some insanity with you.

The Younger line descends through the Estes line, significantly upstream. The Y DNA of Marcus Younger, who had 1 son who had 1 son, does not match the expected Younger DNA line in Halifax County, Va.  Cousin Younger’s only solid Y match also doesn’t match his expected family line, so we’re fish out of water on the Y-line.  Two undocumented adoption cases that match each other, but no one else.  Great, just great.  These are the things genetic genealogy nightmares are made of.

Mary Younger, daughter of Marcus Younger, married George Estes who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Their son John R. Estes married Nancy Ann Moore in Halifax County and they settled in Claiborne County, TN about 1820 where the Vannoy family is found as well, having migrated from Wilkes Co., NC.  John Y. Estes, son of John R. Estes had son Lazarus Estes who married Elizabeth Vannoy.  Here’s the generational progression:

  1. Marcus Younger – wife unknown, Y DNA doesn’t match Younger line
  2. Mary Younger married George Estes, Halifax Co., VA
  3. John R. Estes married Nancy Ann Moore, moved to Claiborne Co, TN
  4. John Y. Estes married Rutha Dodson
  5. Lazarus Estes married Elizabeth Vannoy
  6. George Estes married Ollie Bolton
  7. My father, William Sterling Estes

And of course, there’s a monkey-wrench, so let’s throw it in.  Marcus Younger’s grandson, ancestor of Cousin Younger, married a Moore woman in Halifax County, VA.  We believe we know who her parents are, but we’re not positive.  If they are who we believe, Y-line DNA tests say the 2 Moore families, living within sight of each other, aren’t the same Moore line….but they interact closely and my Moore line doesn’t match any Moores upstream anyplace.  So, we have another unknown ingredient in the soup.

So, from me, Marcus Younger is 7 generations upstream.  I should carry about 1.5% of his DNA.  I was pleased to see that my Younger cousin and I matched.

However, and this is a BIG however, the Vannoy line should not be related to the Younger line.  We know that both of these cousins are matching on my father’s side, not just because of the genealogy, but because neither matches my mother.  But they are somehow related, as Cousin Younger is matching the Vannoy group big as life on chromosome 15.  Could this be an IBS (identical by state) segment?  Yes, it’s small – but I’m not comfortable relegating it to IBS because it’s genealogically “inconvenient,” at least not yet.

So, something may well be wrong, amiss or unknown in the genealogy, either in Tennessee, which is doubtful as we have that fairly solidly nailed down, especially in recent generations, or in Virginia where there is at least one known disconnect and possibly two taking into consideration the Moore monkeywrench.  Still, the Vannoy family was not living in the same state as the Younger family and came from New Jersey to North Carolina, not from Virginia.  Maybe the connection is in one of the unknown wives lines.

So, you can see my reason for being perplexed.  One thing is sure.  DNA doesn’t lie.  It’s up to us to figure out the message it is conveying and which ancestor it is from.

Powerful Tools

I hope you can see what a powerful tool we have at our disposal.  Of course, it can reveal who your ancestors are, along with some surprises.  I don’t mind the surprises.  I view them as gifts from the ancestors.  It’s those crazy-making half-surprises that bother me.  I swear, the ancestors have a sense of humor.

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