This last weekend I had very sobering genealogical experience followed by an uplifting genealogical experience. The reality check came when I started looking more closely at my father’s DNA matches and realized about halfway down the 2nd page of results (out of 129 pages) that I had no clue how the DNA match and my father were related. Keep in mind that a lot folks have taken the DNA test offered by Ancestry.com but haven’t built out a family tree. Naturally, I skipped those folks and focused on matches who had at least 50 people in their family trees. Not that that made a difference.

In fact, I asked myself: how is it possible that someone who is genetically related to my father in the 4th to 6th cousin range can have 2,000+ people in their family tree (true story) and NOT ONE of their ancestors’ surnames appears in my family tree? This bugged me so much that I decided to get organized and identify the direct-ancestor “holes” in my family tree back to my 6th great grandparents’ generation. Each of us has 254 6th great grandparents. That’s a lot of ancestors and a lot of potential holes. So I created my own scorecard so I could keep track of them. I am not even halfway through this experiment on my father’s side but I can clearly see the problem – I have too many “holes” who are unknown ancestors. That would explain why so many DNA matches are complete mysteries. Ugh.

After consuming an entire bag of oatmeal raisin cookies (which helped), I decided to end my self-inflicted great grandparent pity party and get back to work. My missing ancestors were not going to find themselves after all. Using the portion of the scorecard that I completed, I started looking at family lines that ended with a 5th great grandparent.

One of these is Mary Nalle, my 5th great grandmother and the great grandmother of Isadora (Sims) Trantham, my 2nd great grandmother. I’ve done virtually no research on Mary’s parents, grandparents, etc. But other people – my distant cousins – have done quite a bit of research.

Assuming their research is correct, Mary appears to be a direct descendant of King Edward III of England. I did the math and he’d by my 19th great grandfather. His father, King Edward II, my 20th great grandfather and so on.

I am going to need a bigger scorecard.

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: 2nd great grandmother
Common ancestors: It appears that Isadora Sims is a descendant of many of the royal houses of England and Europe which have yet to be explored.