While I did an autosomal dna test at 23andMe last year, I recently took advantage of a sale price to have my mother’s dna tested at Family Tree DNA, doing their autosomal test, known as Family Finder. I also upgraded my own results at FT DNA, in order to compare my results with hers.
My Family Finder results came in today, so, of course, I spent some time browsing through my 420 matches, looking at the surnames each person had uploaded.
I hit pay dirt almost immediately. I knew as soon as I saw the surnames Hemphill, MacIntyre, Mackie, Patton, and Pitcairn. This pedigree chart should show you why:
My 4th-great grandparents were Captain Thomas Hemphill and Mary Ann Mackie. Captain Thomas Hemphill’s mother was a Patton. Mary Ann Mackie’s mother was a McIntyre and her paternal grandmother was a Pitcairn.
I was 95% sure at this point and one more surname clinched the relationship. As I looked the complete list, I saw Whitesides. Captain Thomas Hemphill and Mary Ann Mackie had three daughters who married three Whitesides brothers. This match is clearly a descendant of one of those daughters.
I fired off an email explaining what I had found and got a very quick reply. The match is not a “genie,” but someone who had tested at another person’s request. This person sent me an outline of the match’s pedigree, which shows that he/she descends from Captain Thomas Hemphill and Mary Ann Mackie’s daughter – Elizabeth Anna Hemphill who married Moses Whitesides.
This image shows the area on chromosome 1 that the match and I share and which can be attributed to either Captain Thomas Hemphill or Mary Ann Mackie. I’ll need to match that segment to a descendant of one of their siblings to narrow it down further.
