Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Some of my AncestryDNA Results

It’s been a while since I have posted anything on my Hilts/Hiltz side of the family. Basically because I have been busy sorting through all my DNA matches.  Since some of these matches are from my Hilts/Hiltz side of the family I thought I would share my results.

None of my matches actually share a “shaky leaf” which means there are no Shared Ancestor Hints. The main reason is that I and my matches don’t always record the Hilts/Hiltz ancestor name exactly the same. I found these matches by “searching matches” and typing in the surname of Hilts.

Here is what I have:

First of all, I expected to see as my matches, my two sisters and my brother, along with my two nephews. I understand if one nephew doesn’t show up, because perhaps he never used the Hilts spelling in his tree. However, my siblings and I are all tied to the exact same tree, since I administer all three of their tests. I first verified that we are indeed tied to the same tree which I labelled “My DNA Tree” because this is a striped down version of my tree, with no pictures, and only includes our direct ancestors and their children. I guess this is a question for Ancestry.

Otherwise, my closest match is a 4th Cousin (possible range: 4th-5th cousins) for C.H. (administered by lpowell61). This match happened to be a known match.  Our closest ancestor is Lawrence Hilts and his wife Nancy. This couple is both of our’s 3rd great grandparents.

My brother not only matches C.H. as a 4th cousin but also ronjanhome. This match also matches Lawrence Hilts and his wife Nancy. This couple is only ronjanhome’s 2nd great grandparents and thus we are 3rd cousins 1x removed.

One of my sisters not only matches ronjanhome as a 4th cousins but also matches crstearns3. However, our common ancestor with this match goes back two more generations to Lorentz Hiltz and his wife Barbara. Our common ancestor is our 5th great grandparents and that makes us 6th cousins. My sister must share a lot of DNA with this person to have it show up as a much closer match.

Finally my other sister not only matches ronjanhome as a 4th cousin but also matches rrothcpa. His tree however is “locked” and thus I can’t actually see how we are related. However if I check our “Shared matches”, Q.K. (administered by contentedjoy1) and teechelle24 show up as 4th cousin matches.

When I check out Q.K.’s tree, I do not find any Hilts branches. Perhaps this person hasn’t research their tree back far enough.  When I quickly view the surnames in her tree, none jump out as familiar. Perhaps she descends through a female Hilts and the name quickly changes from Hilts.

While teechelle24 does not have her results tied to an actual tree, when I view the results, she does have a tree tied to her account. However, in the three generations that are listed, all the names are private with the exception of her grandfather James Robbins and that name is not familiar with me yet.


When I selected “Shared Matches” for all the other 4th cousin matches, no new names appear.  I do have more “Distant Cousin” matches, but I will save those for another day.