Hi Mary Ann,
I see you got your results back yesterday from Family Finder and show as a match to my father and to me.
For my father, you and he have 30 common matches between you. I suppose that means most are linked through Pico. You are projected as a 4th cousin to my father with 32.14 shared cM. It's the same 4th cousin estimate to me with 27.5 shared cM. I don't know if you know what that means yet. When you log into your account, you can go to FAQS and get definitions of these things.
You and I have 17 common links between us. I don't know every one of them, but at least two have mostly Terceira ancestors. The closest on the list of 17 is Linda Marie Myhre who is my 4th cousin with common ancestors named Leal da Rosa from Piedade. She is a 3rd cousin, once removed to my father. Michael Gilfillian who is also connected to these same Leal da Rosa ancestors is my father's 4th cousin, once removed.
Interestingly, when I click on common matches between my father and Michael Gilfillian, there are only 5 and one of them is you.
When I do that for Linda Myhre, we have 13 in common and you are there, but Michael Gilfillian is not. I guess Michael and Linda just didn't get that same DNA, but are related by Leal da Rosa.
It all gets pretty complicated.
But when I look at your father's tree (I don't know your mother's Faial ancestry), there is no match to mine that we can prove. Having said that, we do have these surnames in common from Piedade:
Leal
Azevedo
Ferreira
Silveira
Valim
Dias
Vieira
Correia
Cardoso
Goncalves
Goulart
Bettencourt
Avila
Gomes
So one or more will surely link further back. And I think what is happening is that the little bits of DNA from these ancestors has combined into larger segments that trick you into thinking there is a closer connection than reality. I believe the closest true link to some common ancestors comes from 9 or 10 generations back for you which takes us to the middle 1600s and is making us something like 8th cousins. It takes 6 generations to reach there for my father, so we'd maybe be 7th or 8th cousins, once removed.
Of course, there is always a decent chance there is a closer link to your mother's side, in case you know a little of her ancestry from Faial. All I know is Dutra from Faial.
One more thing. Aside from you as our most recent DNA match, our second most recent is the first cousin to Marie (Marshall) Pleasant. Her name is Mary Jane Fuchs. You also match her. I don't know if your husband's Marshall name is originally Machado from Pico, but if so, she could be a close cousin to Marie Pleasant, too. I am cc'ing Marie so she can check into this more. She has been successfully getting her cousins to test and is finding lots of great things this way. Marie's link is mostly to Lajes do Pico but has a problematic "exposto" in Faial in the late 1800s that could be showing up in these DNA findings.
Doug da Rocha Holmes
Sacramento, California
Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618
Sacramento, California
Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618
Website: www.dholmes.com
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