It’s been quite a while since I last posted. I have not stopped researching. Pushing my family lines back beyond numerous brick walls has gotten harder which means discoveries are fewer and further between. Thus, I have turned to DNA match analysis as my primary research focus.

“Robert Floyd Trantham” is both the name of my 3rd great grandfather and his namesake, my 4th great-granduncle. Robert Floyd Trantham the Elder (as I will call the latter) has many descendants who’ve (thankfully) tested on Ancestry.com. That’s an important point as I try to uncover the identify of my 5th great-grandmother, “Massey” – Robert Floyd the Elder’s mother.

Unlike his siblings Martin, Sarah, and Elizabeth, Robert Floyd the Elder did NOT marry one of the Holliday siblings. This means that folks who share DNA with both Robert Floyd the Elder’s descendants AND members of my close DNA circle but NOT with other Trantham-Holliday descendants most likely share a common ancestor related to Martin Trantham and Massey. Did you follow that? In other words, if they also share DNA with someone descended from a Trantham-Holliday union, I have to discount that the relation might be on the Holliday side further up the line. Thus, the importance of Robert Floyd the Elder’s descendants and their DNA matches.

Okay, fast-forward through a few weeks of DNA analysis and building out trees of folks with no trees – yeah, that takes time – where I made a discovery that is rather exciting. Many of the DNA matches who match only the descendants of Robert Floyd are descended from the Drakefords of North and South Carolina. Richard and John Drakeford were both living in the Camden District of South Carolina at the same time as Martin and Massey. Could Massey be a Drakeford?

The surname “Drakeford” is not unknown to me. I know of at least one later marriage between a Drakeford and Trantham that occurred after 1800. BUT, this genetic discovery would seem to indicate that a Drakeford-Trantham marriage occurred much earlier, or that there is some other common ancestor to both the Drakefords and Tranthams! So now I have turned my attention to researching pre-1800 Drakefords to see if an earlier relationship can be unearthed.

Big “if”.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: Unknown, but DNA suggests a genetic relationship
Common ancestors: Probably