Page 18 - The Ancestry of Francis Bryan (1770-1863)

HOW I DISCOVERED THE NAME OF FRANCIS’ MOTHER: CLUE #1
So Ancestry.com's new ThruLines confirmed that Francis was indeed a sibling to Peggy Bryan Sutherland....but it suggested that they were half siblings, not full siblings! This was not something that had even been reported before in the family histories. The most likely assumption is that they had different mothers. And on that same chart was the name of another half sibling, Guy Bryan!
Ancestry.com was suggesting a relationship between Francis Bryan, Guy Bryan and Peggy Bryan. This meant that my family had DNA in common with some descendants of Guy Bryan. Despite the lack of documentary evidence, was this proof of Guy Bryan and Francis actually sharing the same father?
I knew that Guy Bryan was married to Mildred Asher. A connection to the Asher family was of interest to my research. And so this was an exciting finding! Why?.....
Because this finding might suggest a relationship between our Bryans and William Jennings Bryan: A relationship that had been spoken about in our family histories but never proved. Guy Bryan's wife, Mildred Asher, was the sister of Letty Asher. Letty Asher married a William Bryan and William Jennings Bryan descends from that union. I discuss this relationship further on page 111.
The photo on the next page is a screen shot of the ThruLines image which showed the half sibling relationship to both Guy Bryan and Peggy Bryan. The user name for the Ancestry.com member with whom we match has been redacted for privacy.
On the original screen, when I clicked on the arrow in the box below Margaret (Peggy) Bryan’s name, 45 boxes opened with columns below them showing the full tree connection to the DNA matches. When I clicked on the down arrow below Guy’s name one family tree was revealed with a connection via Guy’s daughter, Jemima Bryan.
Guy Bryan has many fewer descendants than Peggy Bryan. Hence the possibility of finding DNA matches becomes more remote. To date I have only identified three descendants of Guy Bryan that are matches to my family, all through his daughter, Jemima. And all of the matches are less than 10 cM. I will also discuss the significance of match sizes later in my story. A 10 cM or less match is usually considered unreliable.
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