In this post, I will talk about Exploring Ancestry ThruLines and of how it may be able to help you discover ancestors and distant cousins.

According to ancestry "ThruLines uses Ancestry trees to suggest how you may be related to your DNA matches through common ancestors."

If you have tested with Ancestry and have uploaded your family tree to Ancestry then you should have the option of using ThruLines.

Once you log in to Ancestry click on DNA and then "Your DNA Results Summary" then just click the green button labeled "Explore ThruLines".

You will be taken to a page that has the names of you parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so on as you scroll further down.

When you hover your mouse over any of your ancestors you will be able to see more information. I did this for my ancestor Juan Tanguma. Here is the image of how ti looks.

Discovering  Distant Cousins

From the above image we can see that this particular ancestor has 4 DNA matches that also have him in their trees.

I then clicked the little arrow to see more details and this is what I got.

One of the matches is my mother since I had her tested. The boxes labeled "evaluate" are people that I need to confirm. The white boxes are boxes that I have confirmed and are on my tree.

From this image we can see that the three DNA matches have the granddaughter of Juan Tanguma, Maria Dolores Tanguma, as their great grandmother.

I had her on my tree with no husband nor children. Turns out that she was born in Los Aldamas, Nuevo Leon, Mexico and then she married in Starr County, Texas.

The great thing about these particular distant cousins is that their trees are very well documented so it was easy to enter their lines into my tree.

Discovering Ancestors

ThruLines can also help you discover ancestors.

My tree is very complete but like everyone else I do have some brick walls. One of my brick walls is Antonia Martinez and the above image is of a potential mother for her.

This suggestion is based on my DNA matches and who they have listed as the mother of Antonia Martinez.

All I have to do now is look at all those trees and hopefully find a citation to a record that I might have had missed proving who her parents are.

On the same note, I did a test where I uploaded a tree with only five generations of ancestors for my father. His ThruLines is full of ancestor suggestions. When compared to his ancestor chart it is pretty accurate, but use caution.

Make sure to evaluate the information and find a record supporting the suggestion. That is what this is, a suggestion. It is still your job to verify.

This is just another great tool to help you find more ancestors.

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