Friday 6 April 2018

I'm in Touch with Torongos!

First I had a response from my Torongo DNA match - well, from his wife.  She said they don't have much info about his family, but his sister does - and it turns out that his sister is someone I was corresponding with on Ancestry five years ago about the possible Doyle-Torongo connection.  At that time, she was pretty sure about it, but I wasn't convinced, and for some reason I've forgotten, I dismissed the whole idea and stopped messaging her.  How rude.  Sorry about that.

So I contacted her again in hopes that she's turned over some new rocks in the last five years, and she soon responded and sent me an invitation to her tree.  She had already sussed out just about everything I found about Elizabeth Doyle, and more. 

I also nudged Mrs Torongo to put her husband's DNA on Gedmatch, where I might find connections with other Torongos, who aren't on Ancestry.

So where does this get me?

I'm 99% sure that the Elizabeth Doyle Torongo I've been chasing around really was my great-grandfather Isaac's sister.  So there is a point in looking at her descendants, to see if there's anyone there with the same surname as PM (but don't forget, I'm NOT obsessed with PM...)  And the Torongo tree I've just been given access to should be a big help with that.

But even if I don't find any likely connection to PM, I'm quite satisfied with having settled the Torongo-Doyle connection, and I enjoyed poking my nose into Elizabeth's life.  Genealogy has many rewards, big and small.

Tuesday 3 April 2018

Getting Tangled and Drawing Diagrams

My Torongo DNA match isn't responding.  I can see that he has logged into Ancestry the last couple of days, where I left my message for him, so he either hasn't noticed it or he's deliberately ignoring it.

While that's on hold, I keep getting my brain in a tangle, wondering if I'm barking up the wrong tree in my hunt for PM.  Maybe I've made a stupid mistake, and PM isn't in the Doyle family at all.  I always find diagrams helpful when I'm trying to nut things out, so I made one, using a screen shot of part of my Ancestry tree and the wonderful Windows Ink program that comes hidden inside Windows 10.  Click to enlarge it.



It surprised me when I realized that if PM is a Doyle, he/she must have got his/her X DNA either from the Croskery line of the family, or from an illegitimate daughter of my great-grandfather Isaac.  If that's the case, I'm scrambling in the dark, with no knowledge of her maiden name or her married name.  Not that I know of any illegitimate children Isaac might have had, but he was a bit of a loose cannon, so who knows what he got up to?  He spent his latter years hundreds of miles away from his wife, fawning over the evangelist Amiee Semple McPherson - not that I think she might have been the mother of his love child - he probably never even spoke to her.

Anyway, if you're interested in X DNA but haven't got to grips with it yet, and don't understand my reasoning, I'll try to put it in a nutshell:

  • PM has an autosomal DNA match with me, my brother and Graeme, my paternal 1st cousin once removed; therefore, PM must be somewhere on the paternal side of my family
  • PM also has an X DNA match with me and Graeme
  • I didn't get any X DNA from my father's father (because men don't give any X DNA to their sons, only to their daughters), so all the X DNA I got from my father had to come from his mother.  Therefore, the match must be in one of her lines - Ellis or Doyle.  Of course, Graeme could have got some X DNA from my father's father, because he's descended from one of his daughters - but because I couldn't, that's obviously not where the match is.
  • I have many autosomal matches with people in the Ellis line, but PM doesn't match any of them, which is a strong indication (I only wish I could say it's proof) that he/she isn't in that line, and is therefore a Doyle.  (Unfortunately, so far I don't have ANY known autosomal matches with anyone in that line except Graeme and my brother, both of whom are also in the Ellis line, so not useful in pinpointing Doyles.  And the few other people that PM and I share autosomal matches with are unknown to me, have no trees etc.)
  • Graeme and I both could have got X DNA via my great-grandfather Isaac, but NOT via Isaac's father Francis (because men don't give any X DNA to their sons, only to their daughters)
  • Isaac's only other known child is a son, Egbert, by Isaac's first wife.  Egbert would not have any X DNA from Isaac (because men don't give any X DNA to their sons, only to their daughters - forgive me for saying that multiple times, but it's a very important thing to remember), nor, obviously from my great-grandmother Sarah, who was not Egbert's mother.
  • So Isaac's X DNA is out of the running as the source of the match, unless he had another daughter that we don't know about.
  • If there's no mystery daughter (and I fervently hope there isn't!) PM could be descended from one of Isaac's siblings.  His sisters would have X DNA from their father Francis (because men don't... etc), but the fact remains that neither Graeme nor I could have got any from him, so the X DNA we both share with PM must have come, not from Francis, but from his wife Mary Croskery.  Make sense?

That was a rather large nutshell, wasn't it.  Sorry about that.

Sadly, I know almost nothing about Mary Croskery, so I hope PM isn't descended from one of her siblings!  And the possibility remains that PM, despite having no autosomal DNA matches with any of the 30 or so Ellises that I match, is in fact, an Ellis.  God forbid.

Sunday 1 April 2018

But wait, there's more!

After ploughing through all kinds of Torongo records which told me quite a bit about the family but didn't reveal what I was looking for - i.e. was John Torongo's wife my great great aunt Elizabeth Doyle - I had a breakthrough, thanks to DNA.

I found a reasonably strong DNA match, for both myself and my brother, with someone who is descended from John and Elizabeth through their son Hilliard Francis Torongo!  It looks like we're 3rd cousins.  I've contacted this person, and am currently living in hope of a response that will shed more light on everything. It's possible that I match this person through some other route entirely, but so far, that's not looking at all likely.  So I'm quite confident that our matching DNA came from Elizabeth Doyle's parents, Francis Doyle and Mary Croskery, who were my great great grandparents. 

Fingers crossed.  Of course, this 'breakthrough' doesn't even get me halfway to Step One of figuring out who the mysterious PM is....