The long awaited day has arrived! My mother’s DNA successfully processed, and her results are in.

I dove into them the last few days, sorting and organizing. I was particularly on the lookout for my Sutton line, as I have not yet found any matches to it.

After the initial sorting, I tried the Leeds Method, which sorts matches into your four grandparent lines (except in cases of endogamy). As you can see, the first pass generated 3 clear lines…and one blank one.

The Sutton line.

This is not a surprise. As I have said before, matches to this line will be farther out, since my great-grandfather was the only one of his 5 siblings known to have children, therefore any matches will be generated by brothers and sisters of my mother’s maternal great-grandparents.

I was not deterred. I went down past the recommended lower threshold, and finally found 2 matches that were maternal but did not match the maternal grandmother matches (the yellow highlight). Could these be the elusive Suttons?

Maybe. After working through the cluster map of these matches (below), I now have 42 maternal matches of unknown origin. Some may be other Hayden matches that simply don’t match our known Hayden matches. But some are undoubtedly Suttons.

The next step is trying to build trees for these matches. This may prove difficult, as Irish records are sparse. But I will give it my best shot!

I really don’t have much to report on my writing adventures this week. Much of my time was taken up by Board of Education and PTA duties, which left little time and energy for writing projects.

The weather isn’t helping my motivation. We have a had a few very nice days, but the past few have been gray and rainy. Great for napping, not so great for writing.

On a positive note, my mom’s sample was received by Ancestry. Now we need to keep our fingers crossed that her DNA can be extracted and processed successfully. Ancestry is a “spit-test” where you fill a tube with saliva. My mom has trouble with that, so we followed directions to make artificial saliva and use brushes to swab her cheeks and put into the solution. Many people have used this method with great results, so I have my fingers crossed that it works with her as well.

Having her DNA on Ancestry will help my research a lot. She has lots of matches to her Scottish Campbell side, but her Irish Sutton-Hayden side is elusive. I managed to find a group of matches from the Hayden line, because one of my great-grandmother’s brothers came to America and had a large family. However, I have not found a single Sutton match.

Given that her grandfather Sutton was the only one of his siblings to have children that we know of (there is one sister that we do not know her fate), all the Sutton matches would be farther out. So my mother, being one generation closer, has a better chance of stronger matches than I or my brother do.

I am also hoping that her being one generation father back can pry open the brick wall we have one her Campbell line. I have many matches that trace back to Hugh Campbell, born about 1787, but we lose the trail with him. I am hoping my mom’s DNA pulls up some matches that are one generation farther back. DNA is really good for about 5 generations back, which is where Hugh is to me. So I look to my mother to get one past him.

But first we need a good sample! It will take some weeks before we know if it’s successful.

So that’s where I am this week. Where are you?