Recently, Ancestry.com released a new feature with Pro Tools that shows how much DNA your DNA matches share with each other and the estimated relationship between them. Like many, this caused me to immediately get the Pro Tools. Seeing how much DNA is shared between a DNA match and the shared DNA matches will assist in solving some genealogical and genetic mysteries. Here’s one of them.

In 2022, DNA led me to finally discover who had likely enslaved my maternal great-great-grandmother, Polly Partee of Panola County, Mississippi, before she was sold to Squire Boone Partee. His name was Alfred Alston of Fayette County, Tennessee. For over two decades, I had not been able to find any significant, documental clues related to her origins. See These Findings Can’t Be Coincidental to read more about it or view my Legacy Family Tree Webinar, The FAN Club Methodology, DNA, and Genealogy Lead Back to Lunatic’s Plantation.

From that discovery, at least four good genetic groups were uncovered, and all of them were related to Polly. Also, all of them had a link to a court-determined lunatic named Alfred Alston. Cousin AR below, who shares 64 cM over 5 segments with my mother, always appeared as a shared DNA match, so I knew that he was related somehow via Polly. But, how? Unfortunately, he did not have a family tree on his profile.

Ancestry’s Enhanced DNA Shared Matches tool allowed me to see that two shared DNA matches share 277 and 372 cM with Cousin AR. They only share 13 cM with my mother, so they never appeared as a shared DNA match because they were below the 20 cM threshold. Also, I had ignored them, as I sometimes tend to bypass DNA matches under 15 cM. I am learning from this mistake. 🙂

Fortunately, those two shared DNA matches, who share 148 cM with each other, had a family tree attached to their profiles. They both descend from Tom & Lucinda Alexander of Haywood County, Tennessee, where many of my Alston genetic cousins resided. As mentioned before, Alfred Alston had resided in nearby Fayette County, Tennessee. Their son John Alexander’s death certificate reports Lucinda’s maiden name as ALSTON. Bingo!

Luckily, more investigative sleuthing with Cousin AR’s account manager’s name led me to find their Virginia marriage record on Ancestry.com. It reported their parents’ names, and lo and behold, I soon uncovered that Cousin AR is a great-great-grandson of Lucinda Alston Alexander, who was born c. 1840.

Lucinda’s descendants are now yet another genetic group that are linked to Grandma Polly. Perhaps Lucinda and Polly were sisters, but I don’t have enough evidence to proclaim that, other than that Lucinda and Polly were closely related, somehow. Nevertheless, it’s additional genetic evidence to strengthen my claim that Grandma Polly had likely been first enslaved by Alfred Alston before she was sold to Squire Partee of Panola County, Mississippi.

The 1854 Fayette County, Tennessee court record below shows that Alfred Alston’s property included an enslaved girl named Lucinda, who was 13 years old.