#175--James Hannah and Thrulines

The theme for this week’s genealogy blog is DNA.  Last week I wrote about Andrew Jackson Hannah, who I found through my DNA on Ancestry.com.  So this week I wanted to go in a different direction.  Ancestry recently changed its genealogy circles to ThruLines.  According to their web site it “shows how you may be related to your DNA matches through a common ancestor.” To do this, ThruLines takes the family trees of DNA matches and your tree combines them into one tree for one ancestor.  I decided that I would explore Trulines.

The opening page is arranged by generations:  There is a series of boxes.  On the first line is your parents, second line, their parents, then their parents, etc.  It will go back as far as your tree goes.  Those you are definitely related to are enclosed in a solid line box and those you may be related to are enclosed in a dashed line box.  When you click on an ancestor’s box, you get a descendant’s tree or a list of people who are in the tree.  For each individual, it tells you how the person is related to you, e.g. second cousin, and the number of centomorgans you share across a how many segments.


I decided to focus on my James Hannah line, because it is a line that is pretty complete, has a number of people in it and most importantly because I am pretty familiar with it.  When I clicked on James Hannah, the first thing it told me was that I had 44 DNA matches through James Hannah.  It listed five of his children—James, John M., Jane, Andrew and Henry, along with their children.  When I clicked on one of the children, e.g., James, I got his children along with their relationship to me and how many centomorgans we share.  As I clicked, there were indeed some descendants I did not know about and I could include them in my tree, but not before checking out the documentation for the person.  As I looked at the information available in the tree, it appeared to be very accurate.  However, I was disappointed that five of his eleven children were not included as no DNA was available.  Hence, I did not learn anymore about William, Nancy, Rebecca, India Ann, Mary, and Elizabeth.  However, in the future one of their descendants may do their DNA and appear in Thrulines.

As I looked through the Thrulines, I noticed one in a dashed box for a William Hanna, a person I did not know about.  When I clicked on him, Thrulines indicated he was my fourth great grandfather and I shared 26 DNA matches with him.  The first thing I did was look at his descendants.  My James

Hannah was not listed among them!  There was a James two generation down, but the birthdate was way off.  That was disappointing, but some of the information was useful.  The family was located in Newry, Northern Ireland, which I had seen before.  There was a reference to a source called Irish Pedigrees, Vol II, which had a section on the Hannas.  I will go back and read it very carefully.  Was Thrulines correct that this was my fourth great grandfather, no. not at all.

Thus far, I like Thrulines very much.  I am a visual person and being able to see everything laid out in a diagram is helpful to me.  Also I like being able to look at the sources on other people’s trees to see what they have to offer.  However, I would be very cautious.  I found one tree where the children listed were born from the early 1600’s to the mid 1700’s.