AncestryDNA ThruLines tool has been for me recently a way to really figure out who many of my AncestryDNA matches are in my extended cousin world. I have been using them both to extend some of my direct ancestral lines and to extend the genealogies of my extended cousins – the other descendants of my direct ancestors.
Since I got involved with one name studies, I have let my own genealogy wilt. I have not worked on it much for the last 20 years except for the adding information about a birth, death, or marriage among the folks I had been documenting already. Using Thrulines and the wealth of new sources available today, I have easily added hundreds of descendants to several of my direct ancestors.
The descendants of one of my direct ancestors – my namesake 4th great grandfather John Lisle (c.1758-1808) – was one I thought I had done fairly well with. Even with him, I am adding hundreds of people.
He had 8 known children. All of them married and had children. Most of the eight, I had traced to at least the 1850 census and 5 of them I had made contact with living present day descendants over 20 years ago. With Thrulines, I am now down to only one line with no as yet known living descendants.
John had five daughters and three sons. The proven 5th cousin descendants of his first son show 15-17 cM/1 segment DNA matches. The proven 5th cousin descendants of several of the daughters show similar 1 segment/ 10-16 cM matches. Let me emphasize that all of these are proven by good paper trail to be genuine 5th cousins. The cousins from the son I am descended from show as 2nd to 4th cousins with much higher DNA matches, as would be expected.
This brings us to the 3rd son; John’s youngest son was named John Lisle, and he was born about 1802 in Franklin County, Ohio. I know from various probate data that he married Thankful Maynard 31 January 1822 in Fairfield County, Ohio. Then after his mother died in in 1824, he and Thankful went west to Indiana. I have someone I believe to be him in the 1830 census of Vermillion county, Indiana. There is no evidence of a Thankful Lisle in Indiana that I have found yet but the 1830 census does show that they had children. I just do not know the names of any of them!
Various evidence shows that the John Lisle, age 48 born Ohio, in Dubois county, Indiana in the 1850 Census, could be him with a new wife Sarah who was born in Tennessee.
There is also a marriage record of a Sarah Spradley who married John Lisle in 1844 in Dubois county. She was the widow of a Calvin J Spradley and was the former Sarah/Sallie Sweatt of Tennessee.
I cannot say for sure that my John Lisle from Franklin county was the second husband of Sarah Sweatt. But I cannot find any contradictory evidence.
Remember that I do have 2 ThruLine matches claiming to be descendants of John s/o John of Franklin County. These are 1 segment/35 cM “5th cousin” matches. The two tests were taken by 1st cousins.
The ancestry they show is Provable back to John, “son of John”, born about 1804. But this John married someone (I cannot be sure who yet… ) and was living in Guernsey county, Ohio, from 1830 census through to his death there in 1860s. I have yet to find a provable reference that John’s father was a John Lisle; nor even for the given name of his first wife.
Could I have it all wrong and shortly after going to Indiana, he came back to Ohio and settled in Guernsey county? If that is not the case, how can the DNA match be “better” for him than the other John Lisle siblings?
My first thought was to research the spouse lines to see if maybe the connection to me was through one of the spouse lines. I quickly showed that could not be the case.
There is another possibility… I know that my John Lisle came to America with an older brother Robert just before the Revolution, and they settled in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. My ancestor John served in the Revolution and settled after the Revolution in Franklin or Cumberland county in Pennsylvania. He then went to Kentucky to claim his Bounty land which he was swindled out of and then returned to Pennsylvania and about 1796 or 1797 went to Cincinnati where he joined with Lucas Sullivant to form a settlement at what is now Columbus, Ohio. He died in 1808 and his Will was one of the first in Franklin county.
I did not know much about his brother Robert’s family until I contacted one of his descendants who was an almost perfect 37 marker YDNA match to me. But he only knew about his own line which was through a son of Robert named Samuel. Maybe John is also a son of Robert. That would make me a 6th cousin (or 5th cousin once removed…), but it might explain the connection. Of course, it is also possible that another brother came to America either earlier or later than John and Robert and that John of Guernsey county is descended from him.
There were several Lisles (of one spelling or another…) in early Guernsey county. In fact, a further John Lisle married there in 1826 who was yet another John Lisle that might need to be sorted out.
So what am I left with… more paper trail work!
And people ask me why I never registered the surname Lisle with the Guild!
Thrulines is not a tool, it is a gimmick. I think the purpose is to suck people in with quick and easy results to sell more memberships.
ThruLines may be a gimmick, as you say; however, at least in my review, it is mostly one that is helpful. Even as a fairly experienced researcher, Thrulines have given me decent clues for extending several of my extended family lines. And Ancestry cannot use it to sell me any more subscriptions because I already subscribe.
One of the challenges with ThruLines is that it depends on compiled genealogies from the people who have taken AncestryDNA tests to stitch together the various trees and not everyone is as thorough a researcher as I am. Clearly, the trees that connect the John Lisle of Guernsey County, Ohio, to John Lisle of Franklin county, Ohio, are wrong.
However, the science does not lie that an about 35 cM segment of DNA from some descendants of John Lisle of Guernsey County, Ohio, does match. It now becomes my task to understand how my known family and this other family connect.