Harold Alfred Thompson and Lily Myrtle Shannon
As I prepared for my DNA Cruise I had a pleasant surprise while searching my matches on Family Tree DNA (FTDNA). I found a match named Dixie and Dixie shows as my 3-5th cousin witha 37.97 cM match. What makes the match special is that Dixie’s DNA kit is managed by Blaine Battinger. Blaine Battinger is one of the three presenters for the cruise. So as you can imagine I have some questions for Blaine when we finally meet.
Dixie is a match on my father’s line and it would appear that she is a match on the one line that my father has that I don’t know a lot of details about. This is because my grandfather; Harold, never knew who his father was. I know she’s not a match on my grandmother’s side as I’ve tested someone from both of her parents sides and they were not a match to Dixie. So unless there just wasn’t enough cM to show as a match to them I’m betting that Dixie comes from my other DNA mystery great-grandfather; Godfrey Myrtle. I found his name of the birth registration that I found that my grandfather never knew about; but I’ve never been able to find out any additional information about him either before or after the birth of my grandfather.
So perhaps on this cruise we can not only learn more about DNA, we may just solve a mystery on this trip or at least have one more piece to the puzzle.
How is that for a serendipity story.