Taking a Hint: Cross-researching Records with DNA

Anyone who has a tree on Ancestry knows that the service sends hints about the people in your tree. Ancestry’s algorithm takes the data attached to your ancestor’s profile and compares that with records in the database. If the algorithm finds a potential match, you get a hint. This happens in the background without your participation, and hints accumulate over time. Sometimes hints lead to valuable information, and sometimes they don’t.

With all my time spent on DNA since I got my test results back in April, I’d neglected the regular hints Ancestry had been sending me. When hints for my tree reached the 3,000 mark, I knew I needed to dive into this pool of records, and, if nothing else, eliminate the ones that were wrong or that were for people I wasn’t interested in right now. Reviewing the hints was mind-numbingly tedious. (Note to self: avoid letting it go that long in future.)

And then one record caught my attention. The hint was for my great-great-grandmother Bridget McHale. According to English census records, Bridget had been born in County Mayo, Ireland around 1843. She married in Leeds, England in 1865. I’ve never been able to find birth or baptism records for her, but she showed on her marriage certificate that her father’s name was Edward. Since I couldn’t find her in the 1861 English census, I had guessed that Bridget arrived in England between ’61 and ’65. I also guessed that she’d spent the time between her birth and arriving in England in Ireland. I had no proof of any of that, only assumptions.

1855 New York Census showing a McHale family.

But Ancestry sent me a hint for an 1855 New York state census record with a family named McHale including a 10-year-old named Bridget and a father named Edward. In this census, the Edward was 65 years old and his wife, Mary, was 50. Four children were in the household with them: 14-year-old Mary (born in Ireland), 10-year-old Bridget (born in Ireland), three-year-old Catherine (born in Pennsylvania), and one-year-old John (born in New York state).

Maybe it was the fact that I’ve had little luck finding records for anyone named Edward McHale, but something about this record peaked my curiosity enough to do a little research.

I realized by the births of the children that this family had been in the USA for at least three years but not more than 10, initially in Pennsylvania and then in New York state.

I already knew that many Irish families had been driven from Ireland by poverty and famine throughout the 1800s, the majority during the potato famine. Many of those went to England but many more went to America, and a significant number landed in Pennsylvania working in the coal mines.

So there was certainly a possibility that Bridget’s family could have gone to the USA, but was there any way to prove this?

After considering various research paths, one potential avenue popped into my head. I remembered that Ancestry lets you search your DNA matches by surname and location.

I opened my match search page and in the surname field I typed ‘McHale’ and in the birth location field I typed ‘Pennsylvania.’ This will do a search of the trees linked to my DNA matches looking for anyone named McHale who happens to have a location of Pennsylvania.

I was surprised to find a dozen different DNA matches (4th-8th cousin range) with ancestors in their trees who were named McHale from Pennsylvania. At first I thought this had to be a coincidence or maybe one large family had all done DNA and they were all the same Pennsylvania McHales. But when I looked at the trees that had come up in the search, I noticed that each match had different McHales in Pennsylvania. There were no duplicates across the trees. These were all separate families named McHale. Based on the information in the trees, some had gone to Pennsylvania in the early part of the 19th century and others in the middle.

At this point, I turned to Google Maps. I plotted out all the Pennsylvania McHales based on their record locations. Although there were dozens of individuals, they were all living in the four communities in coal mining country — and within a few miles of each other.

Pennsylvania McHale ancestors of DNA matches 

A theory began to develop. What if relations of my McHales went to America and found work in the Pennsylvania coal mines in the early 1800s? Then when the potato famine struck, maybe Edward packed up his starving family and followed. But could I connect the Pennsylvania McHales to the area of Ireland I’d connected with my McHales?

I knew from census reports that my great-grandmother Bridget had been born in County Mayo. Unfortunately the exact location was not listed. But after she’d married, Bridget had returned to Ireland to give birth to her first child. I had both a civil registration record and a parish baptism record for this birth, which happened in 1866 in a town called Ballycastle. I had concluded from this that Bridget had gone ‘home’ for the birth and that Ballycastle was where her family was from. This was given credence when my DNA linked me directly to that location in Ireland.

Ancestry connected my DNA to a very small area of county Mayo, Ireland, right around the town of Ballycastle.

So I returned to my DNA matches to again look at the Pennsylvania McHales. I was fortunate to discover that several of my matches had traced their Pennsylvania McHales back to Ireland. I checked all the records and wrote down the locations. Then I went back to Google Maps and plotted those out in a new map. Since McHale is a common name, I was hoping to find at least one in County Mayo, but more specifically I hoped for a connection to Ballycastle.

The red pin is Ballycastle. The blue pins are ancestors of the Pennsylvania McHales.

In the map above, you can see the Irish locations for the Pennsylvania McHales — all in County Mayo. But more importantly, several had come from the area around Ballycastle. Coincidence?
Since DNA doesn’t lie, I am related to descendants of McHales who went to Pennsylvania from County Mayo Ireland in the 1800s. Does that mean my direct ancestors lived in Pennsylvania in the 1850s? It certainly suggests the possibility.

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