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surprise, they verified that they already knew their com-
mon ancestor, and that it was not a Harness ancestor.
Now we had a new triangulation! (See Figure 2.)

DNA Triangulations

In DNA matching, matches known as triangulations are
particularly valuable. This is how they work: we all have
23 chromosomes. The 23rd is the XX or XY chromosome.
Of the other 22, each has two strands, one that we inherit
from our fathers and one from our mothers. DNA match-
ing is about matching portions of these strands, known
as SNPs—we’ll call a collection of SNPs a segment for
purposes of this article.

When three or more people match a segment of the
same strand of the same chromosome, these individals
are guaranteed a common ancestor. Just as one can tri-
angulate a geographic position by gauging the distance
between two known points and the distance of those two
points from one another, DNA triangulations can help
pinpoint position in a family tree. Basically, it can help the
third individual locate which branch of their tree contains
the match.

Beth and I shared a known common Harness ancestor, but
Beth also matched Bill, and the ancestors she shared with
him were not known to me. These ancestors were Arent
Bradt b. 1618 and Catherine De Vos b. 1628, and they were
Norwegian and Dutch. The triangulation I had with Beth
and Bill guaranteed that I was also somehow related to
Arent Bradt and Catherine DeVos, though it was still pos-
William Ware, youngest son of John Ware, and his wife Mary (Libby), sible it was not through the Ware line.
Paradise 1883.
matched another individual, a Canadian named Bill, who How could Bea Ellis be related to the Bradts? My initial
was descended from a couple of hundred years of Cana- thought was still that the Bradts must somehow be related
dians. The Harness line history showed it never ventured to the Harnesses, who were also Dutch. Yet the Harnesses
so far north, and Bill’s ex-wife, Bonnie, who managed his had come to Virginia and gone west and south from
DNA results for their child, verified that Bill’s family had there. The Bradts came to New York and mostly stayed
no links to southern states. in the Schenectady area, with a few descendants going to
Canada. There was no evidence they went as far south as
How on earth then could Bill be related to the Harness Virginia, and after months of research I could find no hint
line? I had to face the possibility that Beth and I were that the Bradt and Harness lines were related, at least not
doubly related, that we had another common ancestor. in the past 300 years.

I emailed my thoughts to Beth and Bonnie, and, to my Trying to Solve the Mystery

Figure 2: The mystery triangulation of Bea, Beth, and Bill. Still stumped on John and Hannah and seeing no obvious

Arent Bradt Bradt connection to my own tree, I decided to research
Bea Ellis ? the Bradts, going forward from Arent and Catherine. My
theory was that since the Bradt history was fairly well
Many Beth Harness documented (many records were held by the Reformed
Generations Dutch Church), I might possibly be able to follow their
descendants and find a link somewhere in my tree. The
Catherine DeVos Bill Bradts had many children, who also had many children,
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