Golf nearly done so more time for pruning the family tree perhaps

It's already September 29th. Our golf league finished last night so my official duties are pretty much done for this year. The only remaining task is to convert my Mac files to PC format so that everyone else can read them. Maybe Saturday???

Well, maybe not Saturday. The morning offers a meeting on the subject of DNA for Genealogy and as I've had two different DNA tests, both of which prove my substantial Irish heritage. There are also test results for my brother and an Irish cousin, so I'll be attending that presentation. The information from the tests is not exactly enlightening. There seems to be a field of relatives of varying degrees out there. The close ones in the Irish line I had pretty much known from regular research. The French ones I'm not particularly working on for now. However, some very interesting possibilities lurk in those chromosomes.

It seems that Tom and I who are of course a VERY close match being siblings, don't quite match Jim Byrne. Tom does match him VERY closely on the Y-DNA (male) test of the Byrne line. All that means is that our common ancestor is 6 or more generations back. This is not a revelation - we already have five generations worth of data. Interestingly enough, the commonalities increase the farther back we go. Fingers crossed that we're getting close.

Another interesting finding is the "matches in common" with a number of people most of whom are in Ireland. I've been in touch with one lady and am very much looking forward to getting together this winter to try to fit more of the puzzle pieces together. We have some surnames in common but from what I understand at this moment, they are all in-law connections and not blood relatives. Yet, the DNA matches seem to say otherwise.

The mysterious connections remain my greatest pull away from housework and things that need doing at the moment. Pulling from another side is a huge stack of library books. I found a couple of list of books worth reading and using the library website, placed holds. Naturally they all came available at the same time - now! Here I sit torn between two great alternatives. I do need to find something that pulls me to move around rather than sit still. Ah well - another day.