mckerrow

[gloryer]

I had been working on the assumption that my illegitimate great grandmother would be from the McRae family as I seem to have many DNA matches that lead to that name. However I think now I need to change my way of thinkiing!!!! Over the years I have seen several times people mainly in america claiming a connection to the McKerrow family but once they emigrate from Scotland to America the surname changes but I have never seen any documents to prove this. One came up yesterday and it got me thinking about my DNA matches and I do only have 1 DNA match that connects to the McKerrow family. So I am now wondering if all the ones that lead back to McRae are all descendants of the McKerrow family. I dont have any close enough to be certain but that would explain why I only have 1 definite McKerrow DNA match.
the trouble is it seem a lot of Mcrae cousins married each other. I am able to check if they match with my maternal aunt then they could be from my great grandmother but if they dont match with her then they cold be from the McKerrow clan. I need to ponder over this one a while. lol

[webwiz]

Do you mean that your great grandmother had her mother's surname which was neither McRae nor McKerrow and that no father was named and you are referring to her unknown paternal family? Or have I misunderstood? If I'm right I don't hold out much hope for you finding your gg-grandfather using DNA alone. In my experience DNA only comes into its own in cases of illegitimacy when there is a paper trail identifying posiible subject(s), which is rare. There are multiple possible reasons why you could have distant matches, nothing to do with your great grandmother. DNA is mostly for confirmation purposes and eliminating suspects rather than finding new ones, except for very close matches..

[gloryer]

My McKerrow line has been traced back to 1530 that is my maternal grandfathers line. I do only have one dna match from the McKerrow line but a lot of americans claim their mccray are originally McKerrow or McQuarrie.
My maternal great grandmother that emigrated from Germany/Poland to New Zealand was born before her mother married so she went by her mother maiden name which is Kulling. I have had so many matches that lead to the mcRae family and some were from New Zealand that it led me to believe that the McRae was connected to the Kulling line.
However I came across one recently that claimed McKerrow had turned into mccray so that got me thinking that some of the McRae dna matches could be descendants of the McKerrow family. I had not considered any of them before as there had been no evidence to prove the name change

[webwiz]

Based on what you have said I can see no reason why you can connect your matches with your unknown maternal gg-grandfather, although of course it is one of many possibilities. It seems more likely (but not particularly likely) that they are with your paternal gg-grandfather.You have 32 3g-grandparents (a little fewer if cousins have married) and 64 in the previous generation. Few genalogists know all of them and those that think they do have not proven them all via DNA. But a DNA match could be via any of them (or even a mix from more than one of them) or from an even earlier generation. DNA can be useful, but it is of little help in solving a illegitimacy that far back without other evidence. I suspect that your brick wall man was a Polish or German man who can never be identified. Sorry.

[PhotoFamily]

My mother has a good dna match to an adoptee. Adoptee had no other information about her origins beyond birthplace and date. When we started working on identifying the common ancestral line, they had no good matches in common.
My mother's g'grandparents were this adoptee's g'g'grandparents.
That was about ten years ago. Since we figured this out, there have been a bunch of cousins from the common ancestors who have tested and confirm the research. To the best of my knowledge, the adoptee has not determined the paternal side.

gloryer do you have any close matches, say 1st cousins or 2nd cousins? They can help sort your matches. Are you using any of the suggested methods for using DNA to identify unknown ancestors?

Unfortunately, without good matches, DNA is unlikely to solve mysteries. But just because you don't have matches now, doesn't mean you won't find some in the future. Also, it's important to "fish" all the "ponds" - that means the big three testing sites and gedmatch. Big three used to mean 23andme, AncestryDNA and familytreeDNA. These days, I would say MyHeritage has replaced ftDNA.

Yes, genetic genealogy testing is more extensive in the US than most places, so you'll have matches from the US, but they'll be more distant because their ancestors and yours both immigrated to their respective new homelands several generations ago, so by definition they will be more distant cousins.

[webwiz]

You can pretty much guarantee that nobody will ever get a good match with another person whose MRCA is your 3g-grandparent. Both of you will inherent a very small if any random sample of DNA from a 3g-grandparent so any overlap will be tiny.