DNA cousins

Ancestry shows I have matching DNA with over 82,000 "cousins." I check my new matches frequently to see who has popped up.  As of today, of the 82,000 people on Ancestry that I share DNA with, 1,064 of them have an ancestor in their tree that matches one in mine.  So, we know we have matching DNA and we are pretty sure of where that DNA came from.  Some of my matches share more than one ancestor pair with me.  That makes them a "double" cousin.  I have lost count of the number of double cousins.  Surprisingly, there are a few triple cousins also.  A good number of these cousins match both my maternal and paternal sides.  I have found this most common with the Culpeper and Cleveland families.  Culpeper's are a paternal line while the Cleveland's are on my mother's side.  The two families shared a very similar migration path from Colonial times across the southeast.  They intermingled a good bit.

Ancestry is unable to deduce a common ancestor for the vast majority of my cousin matches.  This is generally because many people's trees are not filled out beyond a couple or three generations.  Sometimes I am able to determine if the match is maternal or paternal or even narrow down to a family line based on our common cousin matches (that is, people that share DNA with both me and the cousin match in question).  If a bunch of them show a connection to a certain family line, the original match is likely in that line as well.

Beyond immediate family and a few 2nd cousins, I have only recognized one or two of the matches that have shown up in my list of 82,000 cousins.  One was a friend of a friend that I met on a couple occasions before seeing his name in my match list.  His profile showed that he was from Mississippi and I figured it must be him.  Sure enough, it was him.  I expected to see a lot more of that, but so far it's been extremely rare.

Sometimes I will add a DNA cousin match to my Tree.  I'll do this if I have been corresponding with that person or they are part of a family I'm particularly working on.  I will fill out my tree enough that I can include them.   It typically involves a lot of lateral additions.  I designate those DNA matching cousins in my tree with a special graphic.  I've got about 40 of those folks now. Here's the graphic and a list of the individuals it's assigned to...

DNA matches that I have also included in my tree at ancestry

I'd guess about one in ten ancestry.com users attach a photo of themselves to their profile.  This is the only reason I noticed the following two cousin matches.  They are both wearing uniforms that caught my attention.

Screenshot from DNA match list

I like baseball but I don't really follow it and would have let Curtis Montague Schilling's name pass right by, but the uniform in his photo was a giveaway.  Curt was a pitcher with the Phillies when they won the world series in 1993.  He has also played with the Boston Red Sox and the Arizona Diamondbacks.  He retired in 2009.  According to wiki he has done some sports and political commentary on radio since then.

According to Ancestry.com, he and I share 7.5 centimorgans of one DNA segment.  That's not a lot, but it's enough to register a match.  We also currently share 4 common cousin matches.  Two of those I have identified on my mother's side of the family.  Specifically up the Keller, Dickson, Cleveland lines.  So, likely, Curt and I have a common ancestor in one of those families 6 or more generations back.  His tree is private, so I can't get more specific information.

Screenshot from DNA match list

The other uniform I noticed was a Starfleet uniform from the United Federation of Planets.  Truthfully, I had to google that also.  I did recognize the uniform from the Star Trek TV show series and I knew enough to say that his red shirt signified his role as engineering or security aboard ship.  Chris Doohan is the match.  Turns out he is an actor who appeared on "Star Trek The Motion Picture" and Star Trek Into Darkness."  He also played "Scotty" in "Star Trek Continues," a web based series.

His father, coincidentally, was James Doohan, the Canadian actor who played the original "Scotty" in the television series.  I suspect Chris' small DNA connection with me, however, is through his American mother, Janet Young.  Chris' father, James had parents from Ireland.  If our connection is through him it would be way back many generations because my people have been in the states a long time.  That's why I figure the connection is through Janet Young.  I figured we would connect on my father's side due to the Young family being in my paternal branches, but this may not be the case.  We share only one DNA cousin who is most likely related to me on my mother's side.  Chris Doohan's tree is public, but there are only 3 people in it, so determining our common ancestor is not possible at this time.