With that much cMs it would be fairly close, possibly descendants of one of your grandparents siblings.

I have a match with that much and they are a descendant of my maternal grandmother's younger sister.

AN, if you click on the "i" in a circle next to the amount of shared DNA, it will show the possible relationships and which ones are more likely.

That's not really helping. Maybe I need one of those ice bag things to concentrate the mind.

Check both sets of your grandparents and check you have all their siblings and marriages and maiden names if appropriate then go check one of the trees and start with their Grandparents and work backwards and check siblings and maiden names and marriages, have a good look at the maiden names because I have noticed on some of my matches they have some maiden names incorrect.

Or am I asking you to suck eggs :D

I'm quivering faintly at the suggestion, but have you DNA proved your ancestors? (I know the Bodycotes are okay!)

For quite some time I thought that Granny must be a changeling, and there is very little proof for most of her family, which is deeply frustrating.

There is also the possibility someone had a child no one else knows, or speaks, about on Anstey's side of the family.

The other three people all have in their trees a marriage in 1878. I have the names of the parties to the marriage, but they mean nothing to me.

My grandparents' siblings were all born between 1869 and 1906 and all are accounted for, so they can't be descendants of any of them, can they?

Phoenix, what do you mean by have I DNA proved my ancestors?

Possibilities:

• This is pure chance
• One of their ancestors was the lodger
• One of your ancestors was the lodger

Have you got confirmed DNA matches for your grandparents?

How likely is pure chance, when I have three people, that closely (relatively) related to me, plus a load of distants matching with us all?

Lodgers, who knows?

Confirmed DNA matches. The closest is the second cousin I know about, where we have great grandparents in common. She’s not in doubt. We have the same family photos.

Other than that I have another second cousin and two third cousins, all the mystery people and then the more distant matches. My more distant matches generally confirm the Bodycote connection (yay!) and some other lines where people emigrated to the US in the middle of the 19th century. The rest are a complete mystery.

I’m still baffled.

You’re baffled?

I certainly am. I’ve contacted one person so far who apparently is a third cousin to my daughter. Not my side. No tree to see and no reply. The only people who seem to have tested are people I already knew about a long time ago.