DNA brickwall help

[kylejustin]

I have an ancestor born in 1864 at Bethel, South Australia. The mother was german, and the birth was presented as legitimate but no marriage exists. The mother married in 1866 to a fellow german.

The father listed on the birth cert is "John Coen, farmer of Bethel."

Over the years i have tried in vain to find anything on this man, and i decided to search my DNA matches for the name "Cowan".

I have 4 matches to the family of John Cowan and his wife Margaret, who emmigrated from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland in 1852 aboard the "Epamonindos". They settled at Two Hills near Adelaide, west of, but in the same region as Bethel.

Three of the matches are descended from Wesley Benjamin Cowan b.1856 North Adelaide. They are 14-16 CM's. And one from his brother John b. C.1845 Ireland. This match is 28 CM's. This John was married twice, to Margueritte Annabel Thompson, then to Anne Foley (no marriage found) and had 6 children in total i believe.

Would it be safe to say this is the family i'm looking for? I can't see any other DNA matches from my illegitimate ancestor matching these Cowan descendants though. Is it also fair to say, that John b.1845 is the father of my ancestor, not his own father?

[PhotoFamily]

Those seem like small amounts of shared DNA to draw conclusions from.
It might be helpful to have the other Cowan relatives' comparisons to each other, and to know if any of the segments that they share with you are also shared (overlapping) with another of the Cowans (triangulation, not just in-common). You can't do that on AncestryDNA (no Chromosome Browser)

Have you tried to figure out what your relationship would be to your matches if, say, John(1845) were the unknown father? That would assist making a best guess.

By any chance, are you a direct male line descendant from the unknown father? Know anyone who is who might be willing to test?

Do any of your ethnicity estimates include an amount from Ireland? Do you have other lines from Ireland?

Have you moved your results to "fish" as many "ponds" as possible?

[kylejustin]

John would be my 4th great grandfather. The estimate is 5-8th cousins, but i think they are 3rd cousins a few times removed by my calculations.

The descendants of wesley are two sisters and one of their daughters. John's descendant is a shared match with the two sisters but not with their daughter.

I have three lines from ireland (antrim, clare, cork). one query line as well (illegitimate too), then this line.

I did upload my results years ago to another site, can't recall which. Aussies tend to use ancestry, this site was old, aimed at americans and was a nightmare to navigate.

[PhotoFamily]

John would be my 4th great grandfather.

So, the random nature of genetic inheritance makes inheriting small segments from distant relationships possible. The reverse can also be true - for instance, my father does not share "significant" segments with his 3rd cousin (but from other cousins and the matching among this cousin group, we know that the paper relationship is true). 10% of 3rd cousins do not have significant matching.

And you are not a direct-male line descendant of this unknown father, nor do you know someone who is?

I suspect you uploaded to familytreeDNA.com. You could consider uploading to MyHeritage.com.

[kylejustin]

My ancestor is female. I haven't proper delved into john cowan's (b.1845) sons, but at a glance they were childless.

I bad thought the father's name on the record was made up for respectibility, but have discounted that. The SA archives say the informant ran a home for unwed expecting women in the area and would travel a few hrs away to register the births to avoid prying eyes with the proper details.

[kylejustin]

so figured out the actual relationships if this is the right family (highly coincidental concerning there is 4 matches from this family and no other recognisable names in their tree.) , and assuming John b.1845 is my ancestor's father.

the match with John's descendant would be 2nd cousin 3x removed (ancestry says 4-6th cousin). the sisters from wesley would be 4th cousins twice removed (ancestry states 5-8th cousin), and their daughter is a 5th cousin 1 removed (also states 5-8th cousins).

so my understanding is that either: i would have more genes in common with john's descendant without him being the father, vs because more genes in common, he IS the father.