RLP 331: Using GEDmatch DNA Segment Tools in a Research Project

Nicole (8s):
Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro

Diana (48s):
Hi Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (51s):
I’m doing well and I’m excited to talk a little bit about something different today, GEDMatch. How about you?

Diana (59s):
Yes, it will be fun to get back to some DNA. You know, when we’re not doing our DNA study group or actively doing a DNA project, sometimes we focus more on our documentary work and research, but it’s always fun to get back and look at DNA. Well, speaking of documentary work, I’ve been deep into tax records and land records for my study group project for this fall, which is figuring out Henderson Weatherford’s parents. And as I have told you in the past, I am just coming to the belief that neither set of parents that I’ve attached to him on my Ancestry tree is correct. So I’m even trying to remember back to why I attached them and I think it’s because he moved into Dallas County, Texas by 1860 and there was already this established group of Weatherfords there and I think I just assumed he was related to them, you know, proximity, but looking at the tax records, they were relatively wealthy, had a lot of land and just kept acquiring horses and cattle, you know, all the things you do in Texas and they’d all come from Illinois and one of them, Thomas Jefferson Weatherford becomes a state senator and there’s just a lot written about him and I feel like if Henderson was a brother to him, as I had hypothesized, he certainly would be mentioned in some of the records.

Diana (2m 19s):
And it just is not making sense that he’s part of this family.

Nicole (2m 24s):
That’s shocking. You know, we had Hendersons in our tree from the beginning and I think we got them from other people’s trees too. And it’s just surprising to think that we still don’t know who his father is.

Diana (2m 37s):
Well, and I just had not worked on him for a long time and now I know why, because it was confusing and there were so many people in these tax records. So what I decided to do, and we can talk about this one in a later episode, was to develop a special tax table in Airtable so I could trace all these people, because each person would have a separate line on the tax list for every piece of land. So, so many records to look at, but I wanted to go through at least about 10 years before he shows up just to make sure I hadn’t missed him. you know, I thought, well what if he actually is there earlier and I just didn’t see him.

Diana (3m 17s):
And so I went back through and transcribed all of those and it gave me a really good feel for the family, which I am grateful for, even if they turned out to not be our family, it helped me really understand and figure out why he really didn’t fit. But the exciting thing is that I found yesterday, is I found him in the index for deeds and he’s a blacksmith in 1860 and I found him in 1861 recording a deed for a land lot, a small land lot in Scyene Post Office, which is I where I know they were living. So this must be the land that he purchased for his house, his blacksmith shop, what have you. But then he sells it right away in May.

Diana (3m 59s):
So I am now just trying to figure out what in the world is going on. And of course I’ve got to get the actual records all I have is an index. So you know, it seems like with this family, every single thing I find opens up more questions.

Nicole (4m 14s):
Definitely. Well you have just been making so many discoveries lately on this line. It’s exciting to follow along.

Diana (4m 23s):
Well it is fun, I have to admit it’s really fun when you actually find things and you wonder why you didn’t find it in the past, but that’s the way research goes.

Nicole (4m 33s):
Yeah.

Diana (4m 33s):
Well let’s do some announcements. We have our Research Like a Pro webinar coming up on Saturday, November 16th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. And this will be presented by you Nicole. And the title is Four Generations of the Elder Family: Verifying Documentary Research with DNA. So this will be a great case study and Nicole will be talking about autosomal DNA, Leeds Method, proving your pedigree, Shared cM Project, standard deviation, independent descent lines, targeted testing, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, Washington. So you can see from those locations that we’re going to be doing a family that migrated and you know, I think we all want to prove our lines using DNA.

Diana (5m 18s):
And so this will be a great case study to see how you did that. So I’m excited about that.

Nicole (5m 24s):
Me too.

Diana (5m 25s):
Well, our next Research Like a Pro DNA study group begins February, 2025 and the Peer Group Leader application is on our website for anyone interested in joining us and receiving that complimentary registration. And we would invite you to join our newsletter to get news of all the things we’re doing in our latest blog posts and podcasts and videos and also get advanced notice for any special coupons or sales that we are having. And we’re excited about the next Roots Tech conference, which will be happening in Salt Lake City, March 6th through 8th. And Nicole and I both have several lectures we’ll be presenting on topics about AI and genealogy and documentary work and all sorts of things that we love to talk about.

Diana (6m 14s):
So we would love to see you there.

Nicole (6m 17s):
Yeah, it’s gonna be so fun. And with RootsTech being in March, I’m just hoping that it won’t be as cold and snowy as past years, but you never know in March,

Diana (6m 26s):
Oh my goodness. We have had beautiful Marches in the past where it’s actually sunny and warm, but for some reason RootsTech brings snow. It is so bizarre. Last year I think we were in March and we had that huge snowstorm on Saturday, so we’ll see. We’ll hope that it’s lovely weather. Well our topic for today is DNA. I’m excited to talk about my project a bit and how I use DNA segment data. you know, segment data is something that maybe our listeners have not really worked with much, so I’ll give you an example of what I did with it. Maybe it will help you out. Years ago I started my chromosome map in DNA Painter and I added my close cousins and you know, started to identify some of those segments and I gradually added matches.

Diana (7m 17s):
But for my Cline DNA research project, I was really trying to find some genetic evidence that confirmed my hypothesis as John C. Cline as the father of Clemsy. And Clemsy is the wife of Henderson Weatherford, who I’m now working on. So I decided to use some segment tools that are part of GEDMatch tier one and I found a DNA segment that I inherited from Clemsy and Henderson Weatherford. And then I wanted to see if I could find some other DNA matches who also inherited that segment and I was really trying to see if I could trace that back to John C. Cline.

Nicole (7m 56s):
Well that’s a great idea and something really fun to do. I love DNA Painter and keeping track of those segments we’ve identified and assigning them to the grandparent couples they belong to and then using them to find additional DNA matches who are likely related on the same line. Well let’s review the Cline project and kind of what it was about. So the purpose of this project was to discover the father of Clemsy Cline and she has been one of our brick wall ancestors. She was born about 1820 in Alabama and first appears in the records in the 1850 census in Morgan County, Missouri.

Nicole (8m 37s):
So Clemsy had married Henderson Weatherford about 1838. So by 1850 they’d been married for about 12 years, no marriage record has surfaced. A marriage record typically will give the bride’s maiden name and a location to start looking for her family. But without a marriage record, how can we discover Clemsy’s maiden name? Well, this came about through looking at the death certificates of her children and two of them named her as a Cline. So that was extremely helpful. While looking at this 1850 census of Morgan County, Missouri, Clemsy and Henderson were residing there. He was 35 years old and she was 30.

Nicole (9m 18s):
Henderson was born in Tennessee. He was a farmer with $300 worth of real estate. Clemsy Weatherford was age 30 and she was born in Alabama. Then they have three Weatherford children living with them. Maryanne Weatherford, age six, John W Weatherford, age four and Clemsy D Weatherford age two, oh I think I missed the first one, Eliza Jane Weatherford age 10. So there’s four children and they all were born in Arkansas. Then there were two Cline children that lived with Clemsy and Henderson. Now because we found Clemsy’s maiden name from the death certificates, now all of a sudden these two Cline children living with them in 1850 are very interesting Talitha Cline and John Cline, age 10 and eight, born in Arkansas.

Nicole (10m 2s):
Then on the same census page we find another Cline family, Jacob and Talitha Cline, he was born in Virginia, Talitha was born in Kentucky and he was 39, Talitha was 43. And then we have a bunch of their children probably, we have Reuben, John, Elizabeth, Jacob, and Basil, ages 13 down to two. And then we have a 22-year-old woman named Mahala Cline, born in Alabama and of Robert Cline age five, born in Arkansas. So obviously we have wondered over the years, how are these Clines all connected? I mean they’re living in the same area. We know our Clemsy’s maiden name is Cline. She has those Cline children living with her. And then on the same page, this other Cline family.

Nicole (10m 45s):
So it wasn’t until you did two focused research projects that you came up with a good hypothesis for Clemsy’s family and a key locality was Izard County, Arkansas. And that’s where Henderson Weatherford paid taxes in 1839 and 1841 also in Izard County was a father candidate, John C. Cline and then two sibling candidates as well, Mahala Cline and John Cline, Jr. So these Izard County connections were really helping to bring about a hypothesis for who Clemsy’s family were.

Diana (11m 18s):
Right. And it really helped that Mahala Cline was in that census in Morgan County, you know the same name. And it made me wonder if these people were all related. so I had settled on John C. Cline as the father of four Clines, Jacob Klein, who was in Morgan County, Missouri, and then John Cline Jr. and Mahala Cline and Clemsy, who were all in Izard County, Arkansas. So I had to do a study of the tax records because this was a burned county and marriage records probate, all those things had been destroyed, but the state records had been sent to the state. so I had those. And through the tax records, I found out that John Jr had died by 1850, which was unexpected.

Diana (12m 3s):
And so I hypothesized that those three children found in the 1850 census with Clemsy’s family and with Jacob Cline’s family could have been his children. I found this John Junior’s likely widow Sarah paying taxes on his land in 1752. and I found her in the census in 1850 with 2-year-old twin sons, so I had not had any idea that perhaps those children, those kind children up in Missouri could have been John Junior’s children. But when I found his death and as the widow with twins, it really made sense that when he died, that Talitha, John and Robert, those three children probably moved north to Missouri and they could have gone with the Weatherford family, would’ve been their aunt and also Mahala Cline because she was there in Missouri as well.

Diana (12m 55s):
So it was really fun through the tax records to find a good hypothesis. and I also found John C. Cline in 1850 in the census in the neighboring county, Fulton County. And he had a wife and four children, but the wife would’ve been too young to have been Clemsy’s mother. So I hypothesized that this was a second wife and four children with her, her name was Milka, so these would be half siblings to Clemsy. So it was really great to get some specific names of half siblings that were coming through John C Cline’s line. So I had two complete reports. you know, this was a lot of research, took me a while.

Diana (13m 40s):
And so my first project, I really just discovered this possible family and I had found them in federal land records. They had land patents. So that’s when I first took a good look at John C. Cline, Mahala Cline and John Cline. And of course, as I already mentioned, I was really interested in Mahala because she’s also in Morgan County. I wasn’t sure if it was the same person or not, but I thought it, it probably was. So I discovered also that Jacob Cline, who was the one on the census page in 1850 by Clemsy, I was trying to figure out more about him and if his records could lead to a possible father for Clemsy thinking, maybe he was her brother and he had a connection to Rockingham County, Virginia people online had given him that origin and there was nothing, absolutely nothing to that.

Diana (14m 32s):
And so I discarded that theory that he was not connected. I think it was just a same name situation. so I really didn’t find any more clues about Jacob’s father from doing research on him. So then I needed to turn back for number two phase to those Izard County people, So that project I really worked on trying to identify them. And they had all patented land in 1830 between 1838 and 1850. So I did a big land study. I got the original land entry papers, I found them in the track books. I did a lot of tables to try to see exactly how they were buying and selling land.

Diana (15m 15s):
It was, it was fun. That is when I did some tax research as well and made all my discoveries about this possibility of them being family. So next would be adding DNA because all I have are some really good hypotheses,

Nicole (15m 32s):
Yes, and I love that we have that possibility to add the DNA evidence to check our hypotheses and see if there’s anything panning out that way. It really gives you that confirmatory feeling that like, okay, I am on the right track. There are some DNA matches here. So, that was the phase three objective was to add add some DNA evidence. And with this probable family discovered, it makes it a lot easier to then try to find matches and DNA evidence. So the following objective was set for the DNA project using DNA evidence and documentary research. this project aims to test the hypothesis that John C.

Nicole (16m 13s):
Cline was the biological father of Clemsy Cline Weatherford. John was born in 1785 in Pennsylvania or Virginia and died after 1860 possibly in Fulton County, Texas. He appears in tax and land records in Izard and Fulton County’s Arkansas between 1830 and 1850. Clemsy Cline Weatherford was born about 1817 in Alabama and died after 1880 in Texas. Clemsy married Henderson Weatherford in about 1838 in Izard County, Arkansas.

Diana (16m 41s):
Okay, so we always are trying to find a cluster of matches to work with and I had identified a network of Ancestry DNA matches that were connected to the Cline and Weatherford families and I started diagramming their connections. So I found that most of them came through Clemsy’s children. She had several children and they all had a lot of children. So I had a good group of matches, but I did find some that descended through those proposed siblings and half siblings and that was really exciting. So I had this network and that’s good evidence, but could I find any segment data?

Diana (17m 22s):
I had started this chromosome map on DNA Painter, but nothing specifically was coming through Clemsy and Henderson Weatherford. So I hope for this project because I had started identifying some of these people, I hope to find some that were Cline Ancestry DNA matches and I was using the websites that actually have chromosome information, MyHeritage and GEDMatch. And then I was hoping to paint those segments on my chromosome map so that I could have something that specifically went back to Clemsy and Henderson and then maybe perhaps a John Cline.

Diana (18m 2s):
So my chromosome map at DNA Painter has about 49% of my genome represented. So I have a lot of work to do and you know this is how it goes. You just do what you can and you gradually fill it in and find more connections. Well let’s have a word from our Sponsor. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Break down genealogy brick walls with a subscription to the largest online newspaper archive. Did you know Newspapers.com has over 1 billion pages of digitized newspapers dating back to 1690? Their growing collection includes papers from the US, UK, Canada, Australia and beyond.

Diana (18m 42s):
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Nicole (19m 22s):
Great. So after finding that Cline network, the next step was to check out GEDMatch Tier One tools where you can find more segment data. GEDMatch is a website where you can upload your raw DNA from any of the testing companies and compare it to others. So they don’t provide testing kits and they don’t process the kits, but they are like a third party where anyone who’s taken a DNA test from like Ancestry and MyHeritage can then go upload that test and compare it to people who tested somewhere else like at 23andMe. So for those who tested at Ancestry only and 23andMe only, that’s like the only way you can compare your test is by putting them both into GEDMatch.

Nicole (20m 11s):
So when putting these kits into GEDMatch, you’re able to see a list of your matches and Diana looked at her matches and she found a match who we’re gonna call Jane. And Jane was also a descendant of Clemsy Cline but through a different child, her oldest daughter, Eliza Jane Weatherford. We have already identified Jane on Ancestry where she had a tree, so that was helpful. And then Diana used two segment tools to make more discoveries, the Segment Search and Triangulation. And within GEDMatch there are some free tools and there are some tools that require pay, and the ones that require pay are part of the Tier One.

Nicole (20m 56s):
So if you’re a subscriber to GEDMatch Tier One, then you’re able to access them. I think it’s only about $10 a month. So Diana actually just subscribed for that one month and then did as much work as she could on the project. So to use the Segment Search tool, you need to know the kit numbers that you’re researching. So of course you’re gonna know your own kit number, but then you have to look at your match list in GEDMatch and get the kit number of another person who you’re interested in looking at. And you can look at just your own segments. But if you enter the kit number of another person, you can look at more segments. So Diana entered her own kit number and the kit number of a first cousin once removed and the kit number of Jane who’s a fourth cousin once removed, and the three of them shared a 17 cM segment on chromosome 22.

Nicole (21m 50s):
So in DNA Painter Diana had previously identified this segment as coming through her great grandparents, but now she knows because of the fourth cousin once removed that it’s probably from the Cline-Weatherford ancestral couple, so that was exciting. When you know a segment comes through a particular great-grandparent couple, you can then walk the segment back to a more distant ancestral couple by identifying more distant cousin matches like this fourth cousin once removed, so that was exciting. And then Diana ran the triangulation tool on GEDMatch and looked specifically at chromosome 22. So now that she’s identified that specific segment as being a potential Cline-Weatherford segment, she can look at it and find anyone else in the whole GEDMatch database who shares that segment with her.

Nicole (22m 42s):
And she found several other matches who shared segments of DNA on that chromosome within that start and stop point. So now she could go explore those matches and see if any trees point to shared Cline ancestry. Then she painted Jane’s DNA in DNA Painter into her chromosome map and saw that a mystery match also shares DNA on that segment. So, that was exciting. And before finding Jane, she only knew that the mystery match shared DNA on the paternal line. Now we know that this is a Cline-Weatherford match. So if you can identify a person who descends from your hypothesized ancestral couple or the couple in your research question, then you can find so many more matches to work with based on that exact segment.

Diana (23m 28s):
Right. And you know, before I did this, it sounded so complicated to me and I didn’t know if I could do it or if I could figure it out and it actually worked really, really well and it was just so fun. But I do have some tips if you wanna start using Segment Tools at GEDMatch. I wouldn’t just jump in and start doing this willy nilly. So there were a lot of things I did that really set me up for success. So first of all, you really need an objective for your research. It helped that I was actively researching Clines and WeatherFords and then I had this genetic network for Clemsy and Henderson and that helped me to get a handle on all the different matches that came through them.

Diana (24m 17s):
I was tracking them in my Airtable research log and I was diagramming them. So when I diagram them and when I track them in Airtable, I bring together all the matches from all the different testing companies. So I had some on Ancestry, I had some on MyHeritage and I would just bring them all into one place. And then I was really set up to go to GEDMatch and do this work. So then I was able to go use the tools at GEDMatch and found more DNA matches to paint. And of course you do need to have a chromosome map set up on DNA Painter. So if you haven’t done that at all yet, then I would recommend that you start that.

Diana (25m 1s):
And I used some second cousins. I actually used some first cousins, too, to just get some basic segments in there from my grandparents and then my great grandparents. And so once you have that foundation and you can name those segments that come from those known ancestors, then you have this foundation that when you put in a match from a third great grandparent couple, you can see that it, it fits with what you know. So it was a really great exercise. and I have my chromosome map, which is waiting there for me to add more. And I’m actually really happy that I did this for the Cline-Weatherford group because now that I’m doing Weatherford research, you know, I’m hoping maybe I can find some matches that go back on the Weatherford line as well as the Cline line.

Diana (25m 51s):
It’s tricky as you go further back to try to identify those specific segments of which part of the couple did they come from, the grandpa or the grandma. So anyway, it was a fun project to work on and I’m excited to return to it. I am pretty sure I’m gonna be doing the Weatherford line for my DNA project with our spring study group and hopefully add to this chromosome map.

Nicole (26m 13s):
Absolutely. The chromosome maps are so fun, they’re really addicting because once you are able to map out one of the segments to somebody in your family tree, you just wanna keep going and get more segments mapped. So it’s just fun to go through your matches and see who you can identify and get that all painted out.

Diana (26m 33s):
Absolutely. And a shout out to Johnny Pearl who runs the website DNA Painter and is always making it better and teaches so much about how to use it because he truly has opened it up. This whole idea of making a chromosome map for anyone, you know, it is not hard to do. And so we really appreciate all of his work because it does make it fun for us.

Nicole (26m 57s):
Right, absolutely. Well when you are working on GEDMatch and you felt like you didn’t know exactly what you were doing, where can you look for helps for how to use GEDMatch? Do you have any tips on that?

Diana (27m 8s):
You know, there are a lot of people who’ve done YouTube videos and I think YouTube videos are great for something like GEDMatch because you can open up GEDMatch, log into it, look at your own work and then just follow somebody else and get a feel for what they’re doing and transfer it to your own work. so I think that’s one of the most helpful ways for me. I learn really well by watching a video and then trying it in real time as someone else is demonstrating. And also there are probably some good webinars out there, but I just like little short YouTube videos for these specific things. I probably watched something on how to use the tool. It’s been a while so I can’t remember now.

Nicole (27m 51s):
Agreed. I love the the videos and the help articles that you can sometimes find about GEDMatch and their help section just to kind of see what exactly am I supposed to do. Because sometimes when you first start using GEDMatch it doesn’t feel that intuitive, but once you figure out that you need to know the kit numbers and then you can save those in your research log and then you can use those in many different of the tools, then you’re really getting somewhere. so I love being able to just copy and paste that kit number for different matches, who I’ve logged in my DNA match spreadsheet and Airtable and then when I need them I have them.

Diana (28m 28s):
Yeah, so hopefully everyone listening if you haven’t used GEDMatch before, you can go try it out and see if you can make some discoveries. And if you haven’t tried DNA Painter, you can go try it out or return to a chromosome map that you’ve done in the past and see if you can add more to it.

Nicole (28m 42s):
Alright, well thanks everyone for listening. We hope you have a great week and we will talk to you again next week. Bye-Bye.

Diana (28m 50s):
Alright, bye-Bye

Nicole (28m 47s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.