DNA progress - first steps

 At the end of 2023, Ancestry released their "pro-tools" in the UK.  This is an additional set of tools for family history, and for more advanced DNA research, than are available through their normal subscriptions. But it does require both a current subscription, and additional payments.  Although I was 'tempted' when it was first released, I left it for a while because that was a busy period and I knew I wouldn't have time for research. But I was then disappointed to discover, when I returned to it later, that the monthly cost had already increased from £4.99 to £7.99.  

That put paid to that!

However, a recent post on FB alerted me to the fact there was an offer on (until 20th January), and I have now been able to take out a cheaper option for six months.  I'll see how I get on with it, and how useful it proves to be, as to whether I continue to subscribe, or not.

Of course, the additional tools and information should be of help - for example, it is now possible for me to see how much DNA is shared, and the suggested relationship, between one of my matches and the matches we share.  The thresholds at which the shared matches are shown is also less restricted than it is with the standard tools.  

This will be very useful in cases where several members of a family have tested but perhaps only one or two of them share 20cM or more with me, so the more distant ones didn't previously feature in the shared match list.  This should  make it easier for grouping matches and allocating some of the more distant ones to potential ancestral lines. 

My main hesitation is how to get to grips with recording all of the additional detail.  So my next step will be to read up on some of the blog posts by other researchers, to find out how they are managing the data.

Ancestry DNA matches - passing 200 "4th cousins or closer"

I was planning to post an update to my Ancestry DNA match numbers when I reached 200 4th cousins or closer.

But clearly someone, somewhere, has a sense of humour!

Having been slowly creeping up towards 200 over the last few weeks....

....yesterday when I checked, the total had jumped from the previous day's 198, up by three to 201, thus missing out 200! 😀

An increase like this is what one might expect, when a group of family members all decide to test at the same time.  The closest match is a predicted third cousin to me and then the other two are both predicted 4th cousins.

I think it's the first time I've received such a batch of close matches, all on the same day.

Initially. all three matches showed with unlinked trees - but at least they were trees that featured, not just one of my surnames, ALLEN, but also the similar use of a particular middle name.   The trees have since been linked to the matches, so I can now identify the relationships between the three of them.

Another good thing was that, out of the nine other DNA matches shared between myself and the closest new match, I have already identified a common ALLEN ancestor with seven of them, and another one connects to the ALLEN surname, although we've not proved who the shared ancestor is yet.  The ninth match has two other shared matches, creating an isolated group that I hadn’t been able to link into an ancestral line, so perhaps these new matches might lead to the opportunity to do so.

One would think that, with all this information, the connection to the new matches should be obvious, but I didn't recognise the oldest ALLEN ancestor in their line. 

However, following some research today, I have now written to the match.  Potentially, if there is any doubt about the connection between their oldest two generations, then I might just have the answer. 🙂

Ancestry close matches

I was beginning to think that my comment on the 12th January - that everyone was just waiting for Christmas to buy DNA tests - was clearly not justified, since there was then a lack of any new close matches for almost another fortnight, during which time 23andMe announced they were laying off staff.  When Ancestry also then reported lay offs, on the 5th February, it just emphasised how much of a downturn there has been in the DNA testing market.

However, it hasn't been all "doom and gloom" since - I've received seven new "4c and closer" matches since my comment ( 24/1, 1/2, 11/2, 13/2, 19/2, 21/2, and 23/2) bringing me up to a total of 190. 

Out of these new matches, one was someone who has also tested at 23andMe - which is useful, since I have identified the potential shared ancestor with this match, and that helps to confirm some of the shared lines at Ancestry, which were suggested through match clustering.

Another match was a predicted 3rd cousin - by the time I'd explained how our shared matches enabled me to identify approximately where in my pedigree they fitted, ie a shared match who is a first cousin of mine meant my paternal side, sharing with certain second cousins of mine narrowed it down to my paternal grandmother's ancestral lines, and a shared third cousin meant the connection was most probably through my great grandmother HAYNES' ancestry somewhere, they'd discovered just how closely they were related to that third cousin, and it was clear exactly where they fitted into the family! 

The other matches haven't been quite so easy to place, varying from no pedigree information and no shared matches, to both good pedigrees and at least one shared match, with a possible suggestion of which of my ancestral lines they will connect to, based on the shared clustering.  

So, still a bit of research to be done for most of the new matches, but with a possibility of success for at least some of those.  

Which makes for steady progress towards my goal of identifying all of my '4c and closer', as well as giving me some more examples to use in a presentation that I am currently working on, on how helpful shared match clustering can be.

23andMe Lay-offs: https://blog.eogn.com/2020/01/23/23andme-lays-off-100-employees/

Ancestry Lay-offs: https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2020/02/05/our-path-forward/

Another potentially identified DNA connection

Isn't it nice when things just work out?

I haven't done much regarding DNA over the past month or so, due to other activities.  But I have tried to keep up with the "new" events, such as the MyHeritage changes.  I'll write more about my results at that site at another time - this post is about an Ancestry find.

Late last night, (probably too late, I should have been on my way to bed, but you know that thought, "I'll just check one more thing" 🙂) I decided to look at how many '4th cousin and closer' matches I have on Ancestry.  I thought it would probably be 81, which is what it went up to a week ago. But the numbers have been increasing more rapidly recently, with five new matches in that category since the beginning of the year, so I am ever hopeful of an increase.

The total was 82!

I quickly searched for the new match -  no tree and only a 'good' confidence level, with 22.7 centimorgans shared across 3 DNA segments.  That could mean three segments at about 7.5cM each, or it could be one longer segment and a couple of smaller ones.  I won't know unless they transfer their data to another site.  Still, it would be worth following up when I get time.

But then I looked for any shared matches.  Often there are none, as shared matches only show for matches in the "4th cousin and closer" category so, if this match also matches some of my more distant matches, the more distant ones won't show up on this person's profile.  But, this time, there was one shared match shown, predicted 'high confidence', with 38cM shared across 2 DNA segments.  And with a tree of eleven people.

I keep a running total of the numbers of matches I have, as well as noting the names of new matches and anything interesting about them (like whether they have a family tree, or a surname in common with me). So I could tell that the shared match had appeared on the 9th of January and, at that time, was not showing a family tree.  So I am fortunate in that it looks like they are interested in finding out more about their ancestry, as they have taken the trouble to add some family details.

There were two surnames in common with me, LEWIS in Wales and ALLEN in London.  The Welsh one was not in one of "my" counties, so I took a closer look at the ALLEN first.

There were no dates, just the location for the one female ALLEN's birth in London.  But her marriage was shown, so that gave me her husband's name.  Armed with that information, I was able to identify their marriage, in 1926, on Ancestry.  London records are well represented on the site so I didn't just find the civil registration index but also an image of the actual parish register.  That gave me the bride's father's details, Herbert Henry ALLEN, a poulterer.  As the bride's age was shown on the certificate, it didn't take long to find the family in the 1911 census, Herbert Henry (33), with wife, Ada (32), and children, Edward (12), Florence (11), Herbert Henry (10), Frederick (7), Joseph (6), Dorothy Violet (5), Cyril James (4), Bessie Maud (3) and Frank Reuben (1).  From there I checked the 1901 census, which showed Herbert and Ada, along with the two older children.  Herbert's birthplace was Lambeth in both censuses.  Ada's and the children's varied from Lambeth to Brixton and Stockwell, but these are fairly closely connected areas in south west London, and all familiar from my own family.

The next step was to identify the marriage of Herbert Henry ALLEN to Ada - I used FreeBMD for that and found that the most probable entry was in September 1898, in Camberwell.  Back to Ancestry to search for the church records.  Yes, again the entry was there - Herbert Henry ALLEN, aged 20, married Ada SPRINKS on September 12, 1898.  Herbert's father was a John ALLEN, Perambulator Maker.

Now that's exciting - because my John Prosser ALLEN, snr, was also a perambulator maker. And, on February 10th, 1878, my John, with his wife, Sarah, christened their son, Herbert Henry ALLEN!

Obviously, I need to continue to work through the details, and check for my John and Sarah in records such as the censuses, to make sure their Herbert is with them, or not, as appropriate, and that there's no evidence to suggest this isn't the right connection to my DNA match.  I also need to contact the shared match who appeared on my list yesterday, to confirm whether or not they connect to the same family line.  And, of course, it would be great if both matches transferred their raw data to one of the other DNA sites, so that we can check exactly where we match on the DNA.  That would also mean I could look for more evidence, for or against the connection, amongst my other DNA matches.

ALLEN is a fairly common surname, so I don't follow up general references to it on my DNA matches' surname lists - but, who knows, if these two matches do transfer their data, perhaps there'll be others matching over the same segments and with the same surname.  I'd certainly be following those up then!

Just going back to the quantity of DNA shared - 38cM is the average for 4th cousins (based on Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project*) whereas we actually appear to be 3rd cousins.  So the shared DNA is a bit on the low side, but well within the range.  The match with 22.7cM could be more distant, but I am hopeful that they will still be within the range of my genealogy!

(And I did eventually get to bed last night - although it was 'today' rather than yesterday!)


*
Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project - https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/
Interactive Tool by Jonny Perl - https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcm

Ancestry shared matches and a new connection

This post continues my general theme of looking for strategies to deal with my DNA results - in this case, results from AncestryDNA.

I have 225 pages of matches at Ancestry, which equates to almost 11,250 matches.  I use the DNAGedcom Client app to download the information.  That gives me three files - a list of my matches, a file showing which of the matches are in common with each other (based around fourth cousins and closer only), and details from my match's trees.  This latter, 'ancestors', file has over 345,000 lines of data in it, which seems a staggering amount to consider dealing with - especially as, unfortunately, most of it is probably not relevant to my connections with my matches, as the majority of them are in the USA and few have traced their connection back to the UK, which is where most of my pedigree information relates to.

Although I do have three Ancestry Hints, which have been helpful, I don't appear in any 'DNA Circles'.  So I've been looking at the "shared matches", to see what clues I can garner from those. Ancestry provides details of my matches that are fourth cousins and closer, and indicates where they share DNA with another of my close matches.   They do also show the more distant matches that are shared matches to the closer cousins - but only by showing the closer match on the more distant match's profile.  Given how many thousands of distant matches I have, I do not check each of their profiles individually to see if they just happen to match a closer cousin.  So the app download makes this feature more useful, by picking up those more distant matches who are in common with the fourth cousins, as well as providing the information in a more convenient, (ie spreadsheet) format.

I have 59 matches within the '4th cousins or closer' category and 379 rows in the ICW* file downloaded by the Client app, which, as far as I am aware, includes each individual who connects to one of my '4th cousins or closer' matches.  That's probably not many in comparison to people with colonial US ancestry but I imagine it's about average for those of us in the UK.  And it is enough to do some simple 'network analysis', which I hope might allow me to make more sense of the data.

Let me say here that I don't really know anything about proper network analysis - I think that's complicated computing, with thousand of entries, which produces things like the Genetic Communities.  It involves lots of statistical calculations and terms that I don't even understand the meaning of, yet alone know how to use! But most of us are probably capable of using some simple techniques - the basic concept for what I am doing I learnt when studying for a GCSE in psychology, so that's a qualification designed for teenagers. In that course, we were using it to analyse friendship patterns in a class of schoolchildren.  The "sociometric" technique simply consisted of asking each child in a class who their three best friends in the class were.  One then drew a diagram something like the following, where each dot is a person and the arrow shows the direction of the 'choice'.

It occurred to me some years ago that this type of diagram could possibly be used to help analyse genealogical networks and I had hoped to use it in my Parry One-Name Study to try to sort out the potential relationships among the lower gentry of Herefordshire (which contains numerous Parry connections that may, or may not, relate to the same Parry family). I came across a (free!) program* that looked like it would be useful for actually drawing the diagram (although it is easy to do by hand, if there's a lot to draw, a computer obviously does make it easier) but I never managed to get all the pedigrees typed up sufficiently to try it out for my study.  Now, with doing genetic genealogy, it seems to me that the same principle could be used with shared matches.

And so the following diagram shows the connections between my shared matches at Ancestry:

In this image, each red dot represents one of my matches, and the blue lines indicate the other matches that they also match.  I am not using arrows, just lines, as the genetic relationships will be in both directions.

As you can see, the matches fall into groups, Sometimes these are made up of just two or three people who are shared matches with each other.  But there's also some larger groups, one of about 50 connections, and the other with over 150 connections.

It was interesting to see how the data plotted, but how does this help me?

Well, my theory, as you've possibly guessed by now, is that the people in the same group are likely to connect to me (at some level) through the same ancestral line.

So, firstly, I allocated everyone in each group an 'AncestryICW Group Number' (both in the Notes section of my view of their DNA profile on Ancestry and in my spreadsheet) to help me keep track of the Groups.   I also added any information about potential surname connections.  Here's the same diagram, with those numbers added and also some additional symbols based on my family history. (Key in the bottom right corner of image)

As you can see, the Group 1 (derived just from the genetic relationships provided by Ancestry), contains two people who share the surname NAYLOR with me. One of these I have discovered the potential connection to, the other currently just has the surname in common with me.

I've also 'starred' one match - over the weekend, I carried out a new download of the shared matches file. There were 32 new rows added since the previous download, which, once charted, increased the size of some of the existing groups and also created a few new ones.  (NB these are not new 'fourth cousins or closer' - these are more distantly related new matches, who just happen to connect to my fourth cousins and closer.  As such, I would not normally have checked them out, among the many new distant matches that keep being added.)

I was just starting to work through them, adding the group numbers to my spreadsheet and checking if the people had trees attached to their account, when I noticed the surname NAYLOR.  Yes, one of the new additional matches in Group 1 also had a NAYLOR in their tree!  It was just one, a NAYLOR female marrying into their SMITH family, with no other information about her except her husband's name, and their child's details.  And the family were in the 'wrong' place in the UK (up in Lancashire, rather than in London) - but obviously I didn't leave it there.

By initially working on the husband of the SMITH child, and then finding him and his wife in the 1939 Register, I was able to obtain her proper birth date (1895, not 1885 as shown on the pedigree). That correction meant that I could then find her in the 1901 and 1911 censuses with her parents - her mother being the NAYLOR by birth. Those censuses gave me sufficient information to get back to the previous generation - who traced back to London and the entries I believe relate to my family in 1841!

All of this still needs confirming properly, especially the early censuses for the family, which I had found some months ago when identifying the other NAYLOR connection, who is in Australia.

But it all looks very promising that my new match and I are fourth cousins through the NAYLOR line.

So, just the process of simply grouping my shared matches, on the basis of who they are in common with, has been sufficient for me to spot a connection that I may not have seen otherwise, since the new match was identified by Ancestry as a more distant 5th-8th cousin, sharing just 9.7cM across 1 DNA segment. Although I understand that there may be other reasons for shared DNA of that quantity, unless I can find other evidence to contradict it, the simplest explanation, that the three matches in Group 1 who all share the NAYLOR surname with me obtained it from a common NAYLOR ancestry, does seem to be logical.


*
Network analysis program used for drawing chart: Pajek (http://mrvar.fdv.uni-lj.si/pajek/ )  [One day, I hope to learn to use the program properly, as I am sure it could potentially display the DNA information more effectively, taking account of features such as the closeness of relationships etc]

ICW - stands for "in common with" - the term often used for matches who also match someone else you match.

AncestryDNA - Genetic Communities

Back in February, when I wrote about my LivingDNA results, I commented on the upcoming release of AncestryDNA's "Genetic Communities" feature, which I'd heard about through others who could see their communities as part of the beta testing.  Unfortunately, general "busy-ness" got in the way of me posting about my own Genetic Communities, when I received them soon after that.  So this is a 'catch up' post.  I'm not going to cover all the details of how the Genetic Communities work - information about that is already available on the blogs of other genetic genealogists, such as Blaine Bettinger* or Debbie Kennett*, or on the Ancestry site itself. In this post I'm just going to focus on my own results and explore how useful (or otherwise) the information might be.

This is from my AncestryDNA Home Page, showing my general ethnicity and also that I am in three of the genetic communities.

Clicking though to view my "genetic ancestry" gives me the details of which communities I am in, and a map showing both the communities and the estimated general ethnicity areas (I only have traces of 'ancestry' from the "three more regions" so they aren't shown in detail.)

There are over 300 Genetic Communities currently available (Blaine Bettinger has provided a pdf of the full list, from a link on his blog), and it is possible to click down from a continental level, to explore what communities have been identified in different regions of the world, by clicking the "view all" button.  However, I find this a bit inconsistent, and potentially "buggy", when trying to explore the regions where I am in a community.

For example, If I look at the "Scots", which I am not part of, all of the communities show separately in white:

But, when I view a region where I am part of a community, I can only see my own community. For example "The Welsh and English West Midlanders" contains three communities:

But I only seem to get shown the one that I am in, when I try to view these:

This is virtually the same view I get when viewing my own Genetic Community, "English in the West Midlands". 

Based on the list provided by Blaine Bettinger, the "Welsh and English West Midlanders" region also contains the "North Walians" and the "South Walians", but I don't seem able to access the view similar to the one I see for the Scots region, showing all three of the communities in the region - although I can (sometimes) see the whole region, if I access it from the drop down on my own genetic communities view above:

For the other two community regions that I am in, the "English Midlanders and Northerners" and the "Southern English", I seem to be in the overall region but not allocated  to a more specific community within that, but again, the only view I can obtain is the same as my personal view, so I cannot see what the three more refined communities in each of these regions are.

 I would be interested in seeing how the three regions my Genetic Communities are in look like to someone who is not in them.

Comparison to LivingDNA

Since LivingDNA is the only other company that provides ethnicity estimates in fine detail within the UK, I thought it might be interesting to compare the results from them to my Ancestry Genetic Community regions.  My LivingDNA results have been updated since I wrote about them at http://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/a-slight-sidetrack-my-livingdna-results.html so, for now, I am including an image from both versions of LivingDNA to compare to AncestryDNA's Genetic Communities. (I will do a more detailed post about the updated LivingDNA results later.)

The three Genetic Communities I am in on Ancestry cover a large area of England, but do not include any of Scotland and only cover the border area of Wales.  In some ways, the earlier version of the LivingDNA results was a better match to the Genetic Communities, as it included down into Devon and Cornwall, and did not include much of Scotland, whereas the updated results no longer show any Devon or Cornish DNA, and now include Aberdeenshire.  However, we are talking about fairly low percentages for these counties.  Both Ancestry and LivingDNA place my main 'ancestry' as being from the West Midlands/Welsh Border areas - which does tie in with my known family history.

So I do feel that both companies are identifying connections to similar areas within the UK and, as the details continue to be refined, potentially the results will be very useful in furthering my family history.

Debbie Kennett has pointed out that, given the current predominance of Americans in the database, the Genetic Communities can help those of us in the UK to filter our match lists so as to focus on the more relevant matches, ie those who do have an identifiable connection to the same UK areas that we have.  However, although the Genetic Communities are created initially from the DNA analysis, with pedigrees then being used to supply historical information that helps to 'identify' the community, it isn't necessary to have a pedigree in order to be in a community, so finding the connections to matches who are in communities will usually involve further research (and, ultimately, might still be impossible in some cases). 

But the very fact that a pedigree isn't required, in order to appear in a community, does make the Genetic Communities a useful feature for anyone who does not know their family history, as it can help to identify some "times and places" for them to explore potential connections to their matches.

So, as confirming my family history and discovering new relatives are my main aims in using DNA, how useful are the communities for finding the connections between my matches and my own family history, beyond the general benefit of narrowing down my match lists? 

 The story views on the Genetic Communities help to provide more detail about the places where my matches' ancestors were from.

And also where they went to:

And the connection page indicates some of the surnames that are more prominent in the particular community, as well as indicating my own strength of connection to the Community:

(I love the background photo, by the way - definitely a place with relevance to my family history!)

As you can see, there is overlap between the three communities that I am in.

Just as I am in several communities, so are many of my matches.  The following diagram illustrates the numbers of my matches in each of the overlapping Community groupings:

(For anyone who does the maths, yes, there is an inconsistency between the images, with 23 matches being listed as in the "English in the West Midlands" community, and only 22 shown in my diagram - that's because another person was added in the four days between extracting the community match lists to produce the diagram and then copying the "Your Connection" image above.  Keeping data up to date is not easy!)

Since the "English in the West Midlands" is a subset of the "Welsh and English in the West Midlands", it does seem strange that two of the matches are in the subset but not in the higher level community (but that's just a minor anomaly that I've noticed, rather than something I'm looking into).

It seems clear that, at the moment, whilst it is helpful to know these matches have a UK connection, the Communities don't necessarily narrow that down to a particular branch of my family - partly because my genetic matches and I might both be in the same multiple communities but also because, as Blaine points out in his post, just because a match shares a particular community with me, it doesn't mean that, that is definitely where the shared ancestry is from.  But the Genetic Communities certainly could be helpful 'pointers' to potential connections and I imagine they will also improve over time, so may eventually even hint at specific family lines, especially when combined with other information from known family history and shared matches. 

What about those DNA matches that I have already identified some shared ancestry with - how do the Genetic Communities match up to our shared ancestry? 

Unfortunately, only two of those 'identified matches' appear in the same communities that I am in.  In one case, the match is in three of the communities I am in - the 'Welsh & English West Midlanders', 'English in the West Midlands' and 'English Midlanders and Northerners'.  There is quite an overlap between these three communities anyway, but it is reassuring that our shared ancestry is from around the Bromyard area, in north eastern Herefordshire.  The other match is in both the 'Southern English' and the 'English Midlanders and Northerners'.  In this case, our shared ancestry is in London in the later 1800s and then traces back to Wiltshire by the beginning of that century, so it looks as if the 'Southern English' community may be relevant to this - but, if I didn’t already know the connection, the shared 'English Midlanders and Northerners' could send us looking in the wrong place.

There is one other match who, whilst I don't know exactly how we relate, is known to be related to me on my mother's side, thanks to comparisons at Gedmatch.  They are in both the 'Southern English' and the 'English Midlanders and Northerners', either of which could be relevant to my mother's side of my family.  However, I have noticed that a third match, who is shared between the two of us, is showing as just in the 'Southern English' community, so that may possibly hint at where the shared ancestry is (although that community does take in everything under a line from South Wales to the Wash, so that's hardly narrowing things down :-) )

In another example, I do have a match who is in all four communities that I can see, but is a shared match to someone who is only in one of the four.  So the combination of the Genetic Communities with shared matches may be another topic to explore, to see if it can help indicate the potentially more relevant areas of the country to be researching in. 

However,  this may not be without its problems and may still be misleading to me.  For example, I have a match who shows up in just the 'Southern English' community, but both his profile and a shared match indicate there's likely to be a high level of Welsh ancestry.  Since I assume that I am not seeing any communities that my matches are in, but which I am not in, it's possible that they both share in a Welsh community,  and it's probably more likely that one of my West Midlands ancestors headed into Wales and connects into their trees that way, than the connection being in the south of England.

Shared matches are something I will write about in a separate post soon, so I shall perhaps consider the combined use of these two tools further in that.  I'm certainly grateful to AncestryDNA for the various tools they provide and look forward to future developments.  

I just know that I still have a lot to learn, to be able to work with the tools effectively!

Sources

Blaine Bettinger's Blog post http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2017/03/28/ancestrydnas-genetic-communities-are-finally-here/

Debbie Kennett's Blog post - https://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/ancestrydnas-new-genetic-communities.html

AncestryDNA - https://www.ancestry.co.uk/dna/lp/genetic-communities

My First AncestryDNA Tree Hint

Last week I noticed one of those leaves.  You know the sort - the little 'hints' that appear on  Ancestry, to indicate that they have identified an item in their records, or in someone else's pedigree, which the company's search tools suggest could possibly relate to someone in my own pedigree.  When I first put my tree online, there were over 1000 of these and some of the suggestions seemed so ridiculous to me that I soon decided to ignore the little leaves.

But not this one.

This one was on my DNA account.  That's the same pedigree for me, but being matched to a specific group of people as comparisons, people already identified by Ancestry as connected to me through shared DNA. 

Excitedly, I checked my match's details.  A private tree.  Never mind, send a message - and wait.  (Did they receive the message?  How long should I wait before sending another, 'just in case' the first went astray?  Oh, aren't we genealogists so impatient at times!)

I receive a reply. Hurrah!

And, yes, we do appear to have a common ancestor.  Or, more correctly, a common ancestral couple.  Thomas DOWDING (b. 1768 d. 1857) and Ann WHATLEY  (d. 1861), living in Donhead St Andrew.  I descend from their son, George , who married Mary COLLINS and my match descends from their daughter Jane, who married a John HOWELL.  I show the family on my "DNA Tree" at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/im.griffiths/parryfamilyhistory/personaldnatree.htm (search the page for "Whatley" to find them, as I haven't yet added links to specific families).

The research for this family was mainly carried out by my mother, and it is part of my "Genealogy Do-Over" goals to check her work during this year.  But, at the death of Ann DOWDING, the widow of Thomas DOWDING, the informant was a John HOWELL, and I have found some look-ups I did for Mum on Ancestry, back in 2005, relating to the John HOWELL, so we were definitely considering that family as another descendant branch.

John HOWELL appears to have first been married to a Mary (HO107/1175/5/ED8/F22/P6) and had at least four children by 1841.  There is a possible death for Mary in March 1849 and, based on the 1851 census, John and Mary had, had further children by then (HO107/1849/62/24).  John then marries Jane DOWDING* and has at least three children, Emma J, Georgina and Abigail.

My DNA match is descended from Emma Jane HOWELL.

The Ancestry relationship prediction is that we are 5th-8th cousins.  From the genealogical relationships, we are 4th cousins , once removed.

Unfortunately, at Ancestry there is no chromosome browser, so we cannot see where we share DNA.  If we could, it would enable us to each identify our other matches over the same area.  If those matches then matched both of us there, this would mean we all shared the same common ancestry somewhere on the lines through Thomas or Ann (either their descendants, or, as descendants of one of their ancestors).  Thus it would potentially help us find our connection to these other people, who might not have sufficient detail in their pedigrees for us to spot the link from the pedigrees alone.

Also, currently, even though the two of us have found common ancestors, it does not necessarily follow that the shared DNA definitely comes through them - so, finding other matches who share the same DNA segments with both of us would enable us to see whether their pedigrees have the potential to link to this same ancestral couple, which would help to confirm where the DNA actually came from.

I wonder if my match might be willing to upload their data to Gedmatch, so that we can actually compare DNA - currently, transferring the data elsewhere is the only way to make up for the deficiency in the Ancestry provision.

So, there is still a lot to confirm, but at least this 'shaking leaf' does seem to be a hint in the right direction. 

[*Jane appears to have been married before as well - a Jane DOWDING marrying an Elias DUNFORD in 1842, with Elias dying in 1843, and a 'Jane DUNFORD' then marrying John HOWELL in 1849.  These details do still need confirming.]