The danger of assumptions

From looking at the tree attached to a DNA match, I hoped / presumed / assumed that I'd found yet another piece of corroboration for our connection to the Jenkins/Buchanan family we have so many matches to.
Which got me quite excited.
These brickwalls (Archibald Henderson and and his daughter-in-law Amelia Millar) have been standing a long time.

So I spent a happy day or two researching and validating the line back from South Africa to Perthshire.
I've never read a will before where someone was divvying up a town amongst his children: to x the railway station to y the post office to z the store.....

Between them, the two sibling kits involved had shared matches to a satisfactory selection of my Henderson/Millar cousins. Both kits were managed by a person we didn't match, so her relationship to the matches wasn't readily visible.

Thankfully this was a responsive tester and the flaw in my assumption was quickly revealed.
She was their mother, and it was her line that led back to Jenkins/Buchanan family via a branch in South Africa.
And we didn't match her. 

The matches were over 30cMs, so it was extremely unlikely this was a testing company glitch unfortunately.

So back to the drawing board and over to the paternal side of their tree, which was a bit sparse given this was why they had tested.

It didn't take me too long to realise that a Smith born in Central Otago around that time period just might be the Smith branch, well one of the Smith branches, in my tree.
All Smiths are related? Right?

Sure enough, he was already in my Henderson/Millar data.
I used to hold all these names / dates / places in my memory cells, but the explosion of people that you get interested in when exploring DNA matches means some just have to drop out to make room!

I feel old, the matches' grandmother is my 3rd cousin.

I was lacking the crucial link in my database down to the new matches as this 3rd cousin's sister had omitted to tell me the rest of the story back in 2003 and I would never have found this branch without family hints.
I feel some updates coming on.

Moral of the story: 

Shared matches and hope are not always enough to prove a theory.
If the mother had not also tested I'd likely never have realised the actual source of this DNA as at first glance nothing looked very promising to explain the link on the father's side.

The irony is that the matches will be related to the Jenkins/Buchanan family from both their parents - once we do figure out how I and my cousins connect to them given so many matches are telling us we do.
If only the right branch to test could be found, or pop out of the woodwork!