Dead end after dead end.
One day I'll get there...
Safe to say, DNA has certainly proven to be quite the challenge. I had gotten my results at the end of June and my mother got hers a matter of days ago.
I love how my results are rather plain but Mum gets more variety than I do. (thanks, Mum!) But I’m kidding, it was good to have confirmation as to what our collective research had told us so far and the DNA confirms it, Dad is strongly rooted in Mayo and Mum is strongly rooted too but in Waterford.
But I think the amazing thing for me is the matches, seeing how closely my relations are. My closest matches are either a half-first or half-second cousin to me judging by the cM measurement on Ancestry. But as we don’t know who my mother’s father is, the current task for me is trying to establish who he is using trees that my matches have and trying to piece the puzzle together. Another issue for me is trying to figure out how they’re related to me with a very small tree (and I’m talking either one or two people in it), unfortunately, as the names I’m dealing with are incredibly common in their locale, sadly does not help me figure out who my matches are out in the interwebs!
Currently, I’m just trying to make the best of what I have and see what I can manage to uncover and find. Sure, it might be dead end after dead end, but I can feel myself getting closer every day I spend searching.
Are the close half matches showing up in your mother's results on her paternal side? If so figuring out who your mother's father is should be very solveable. Are you familiarising yourself with tools like WATO (DNAPainter)?