Chasing rabbits

I finished a "DNA finds" session at our local Genie group the other week with this image:

and, as always, ignored my own advice.
I should be methodically finishing off analysing, and publishing, what we've learnt from newly in  known-family tests on each of my Andrews, Rowe, and Dawe * lines.
* including finally, after 10 years, confirming the yDNA signature for the line of Isaac DAWE of Lamerton, Devon.

Instead I was having a look at the posts in the FaceBook group Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques and couldn't resist trying out one on how to visualise your Ancestry match lists (this link to my DNASurnames blog where I post general DNA type posts as opposed to those more related to my own genealogy work).
I ended up with a filtered set of groups that actually do interact - or have a match of particular interest in them:

My Henderson/Millar brickwall will some year find an answer amongst the dark blue group on the left.
My Jane Gibson brickwall amongst those in the light blue cluster top right.
That on the bottom right reminded me I'd not finished chasing the rabbit that led to a small cluster of more extended Fairbairn family matches ....

Need to upload to GEDMatch; One thing leads to another

Helen popped up in my Ancestry DNA matches, with sufficient of her tree attached for me to believe that the DNA match could be accounted for by our believed to be shared Peter SINTON and Jeanie WIGHT who married at Southdean, Roxburghshire in 1806.  See #1.

Thanks to that bit of activity on an update on the family of Peter and Jeanie's daughter Margaret (I hadn't followed Margaret's grandson John down beyond the 1881 census until now, so Helen was a very pleasant surprise) I took another look around some of the rest of Peter and Jeanie's family - who don't appear often in baptism records.
Which led me to review the family of Elspeth/Euphemia SINTON who married Robert SLATER/SLATTER/SCLAITER/SCLATTER, fisherman of Lessudden.
An 1855 birth cert. of a son Thomas had helpfully indicated that their eldest son James, born about 1845 was still alive in 1855 but I'd never found hide nor hair of him beyond the 1861 census.
Mind you it was quite some years ago since I'd looked. So many more online records these days!
Still couldn't find him obvious in any Scottish census records, nor those further afield easily available on Ancestry.
So I turned my attention to the children of his brother Robert.
Popping Elspeth Sinton SLATER into a census search to find her beyond the 1891 I already had wasn't any more successful this time - but did result in an entry in the National Probate Index in 1926 in London with the surprising information that she died, single, in Dublin.
What's more, the administration was granted to one James SLATER, retired engineer.
Surely that was going to be her uncle? Missing in action beyond 1861?
Who has now subsequently been found in the 1911 census in Dublin North at the same address as Elspeth's normal residence at the time of her death.
James was shown as a widower, marine engineer born Scotland, religion Free Church of Scotland.
In the household was an unmarried sister-in-law Mary MILLS, also born Scotland, Free Church.
Which was enough to find James' marriage to Jessie MILLS in Hawick in 1869 - usual residence for James was already Dublin, occupation engine fitter.
Next mission, find out if James and Jessie had any children.

#1: the dangers of Ancestry DNA and their refusal to supply a chromosome browser.
Thankfully Helen did upload to GEDMatch where the actual DNA match details could be compared.
The relationship between Margaret (married Robert AINSLIE) to Peter and Jeanie (WIGHT) SINTON has yet to be proven by DNA as at 4C1R we didn't get the luck of the draw for a provable segment of shared SINTON/WIGHT DNA.
The larger of our two segments turns out to be a longer ago bit of DNA and somewhere back up a different line of my ancestry - this one:
http://surnames.lornahen.com/tng/lh/dnagrp17p036.php
and an unknown line of Helen's. 
The smaller bit, at only 7cM, is too small, untriangulated with anything else as yet, so inconclusive as to ancestry.

Familton/Hamilton

As I'm addicted to genetic genealogy, in case readers hadn't guessed by now, a while ago I succumbed to an ancestry.com sale and added one of their dna kits to my sum of knowledge.
Although I now see firsthand how woeful their tools are for actually confirming their suggested matches, I do have to report a success.

Using the search by location for Roxburghshire, Scotland over my suggested matches brought up several trees of interest.
One of particular interest showed an end of line HAMILTON as Archibald HAMILTON and Isabella HEN(D)RY whom I know to be of the Abbey Hotel, Melrose (father George appears on my webpages complete with photo).

Our DNA match was predicted as confidence "very low", and I strongly suspect that FamilyTree DNA wouldn't even show it as a match, but nonetheless, having confirmed sufficient of the papertrail shown, I believe we are 7th cousins!
This is somewhat beyond the normal range of autosomal dna testing for a great deal of confidence, so maybe there's a closer papertrail in there somewhere, but for now I'm happy to have found a Californian branch of my FAMILTONs.

However, the next step is to try and verify which segment of my dna can be tracked back to our shared ancestors, William FAMILTON and Elizabeth WILSON (which descendant chart now has at least some of the newfound (to me) line appearing on it).
This couple are the parents of the Bessy FAMILTON who married John RUNCIMAN and we have several descendants with detectable matches back to at least the next generation down.
With a lot of luck and co-operation with the ancestry match we should be able to use the wonderful third party tools at GEDMatch.com to see if the shared segment is detectable in some of those.

Any other FAMILTON/HAMILTON descendants out there wanting to try their luck at a detectable match via this tree, do join my FamilyFinder project FFLornaHen and order a FamilyFinder test. I'll happily help you through the maze of results.