To read more on the Darthula Ross case study, click here.
After so many years of searching records for Darthula Ross, there was a lot of hope that DNA testing and DNA research might bring about a miracle breakthrough. We had all kinds of theories about Darthula, including the idea that Darthula was Native American. I tested a few years ago with Ancestry. With nearly 60,000 DNA matches and over half coming from the Southern States, the odds were good for DNA matches to eventually appear. Perhaps by beginning DNA research for Darthula, we could breakthrough our brickwall.
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Ancestry Thrulines
Ancestry released Thrulines not long after I tested. Thrulines is a DNA research tool that suggests possible connections. Ancestry compares your DNA match’s trees with your tree. By overlapping the trees, you can see new possible connections. These possible connections still need to be researched and verified, but they have definitely opened doors for many people. There was hope that Thrulines would suggest new connections for Darthula. This also assumed other researchers had Darthula in their tree.
I regularly checked for Thruline hints for Darthula. Unfortunately, none have shown. The ethnicity estimates for myself and my siblings also show no Native American ancestry*. No new descendants of Darthula have shown up in our DNA matches.
Adding to your Ancestry Tree
After waiting a few years for DNA matches to show up, I decided to reconsider my approach. The theory that Darthula Langford and Darthula Ross were the same individual made me think about forcing DNA matches to appear. Normally this approach is frowned upon in the DNA community because it means creating an unverified tree. Unverified trees are a significant problem on Ancestry because these trees end up being copied by hundreds or even thousands of people who accept these trees without question.
After much consideration, I added William Langford and Drucilla Waits to my tree as the parents of Darthula Ross. As part of this, I added William Langford’s children as siblings. I also included the parents of William Langford and Drucilla Waits. I intentionally added tags such as unverified, hypothesis, actively researching, and brick wall. This way if anyone did see my tree, they would also see the tags and hopefully not copy it.
Trees can be either public or private, but must be searchable by Ancestry for Thrulines to function. Therefore it is really important to label something like this scenario appropriately. Forcing Thrulines hints in order to facilitate DNA research is one technique used by genetic genealogists. Either it will work or it won’t. I had previously added two different sets of parents to Darthula and neither generated any Thrulines hints.
Finally Beginning DNA Research
Using Thrulines in this way is a bit of a stretch. I am at the generational distance from myself in which I may or may not have any DNA from Darthula’s potential parents, let alone her grandparents. Autosomal DNA testing only works for 5, maybe 6, generations from the tested individual. The amount of DNA that I may share with potential DNA cousins may be small, small enough to be insignificant. Regardless, it is worth a try to see what happens.
Within about two months I finally had some DNA matches show up on Thrulines, but not exactly in the way I expected. All of the matches come through Drucilla Waits’ father William Waits.

While it is exciting for some matches to finally show up, there are some caveats to consider. The amounts of shared DNA look promising, though not very high. So far I am the only potential match from Drucilla Waits. It would be nice if there were other descendants of Drucilla. I poked around the potential relationship paths of Drucilla’s siblings and it is not clear yet if these are good matches. A fair amount of descendancy research is needed to confirm these relationships.
No DNA matches have shown up for the Langfords. This is concerning because the original hypothesis suggests that William Langford and Drucilla Waits are Darthula’s parents. If that is true, DNA matches should eventually show up for the Langfords. If there are no DNA matches for Langfords, then this hypothesis may be in jeopardy. Drucilla may be the mother, but who is the father? Nonetheless, DNA research can begin.
Further Research
These are my notes on these matches:
- Match #1: The connection to John Waits may be dubious. I definitely share DNA with this person, but their tree needs documentation. Also the connecting person may or may not be a known child of John Waits. John Waits appears to have fathered a child with a woman prior to his marriage. This relationship path may go through this child, but the names do not match. Research is needed.
- Match #2: I have already confirmed this DNA match as a descendant of another shared ancestor. This means the amount of DNA shared appears higher than it should as a descendant of William Waits. It does confirm the Waits family potentially intermarried with an allied family, but this connection confuses things.
- Match #3: This match looks interesting because the amount of DNA is higher and because the tree looks documented. This may be a good place to start.
- Match #4: The amount of shared DNA is on the low side, so carefully reviewing the relationship path is important.
- There are three DNA matches that appear to descend from Silas K. Waits. Unfortunately the amount of DNA is under 10cM. It will be worth looking at the relationship path to confirm the paper trail, but the amount of DNA reduces the likelihood of a true DNA match.
My Heritage Theory of Relativity
I added William Langford and Drucilla Waits as Darthula’s parents on my tree at My Heritage. My Heritage has a similar tree analysis for DNA matches as Ancestry Thrulines called Theory of Relativity. Ancestry has a much larger DNA and tree database than My Heritage, but it is still worth trying. So far no Theory of Relativity matches have shown up for William Langford or Drucilla Waits.
After many years of looking for Darthula’s parents, we may have a path forward.
*There are many descendants of Southern families with a Native American origin story. Our family was no different. There have been questions about how many children Chief John Ross of the Cherokees had. Many people have tried to claim a connection with no evidence. The Ross surname for Darthula led us down this path, despite there being no evidence.
3 responses to “Hopeful DNA Research – The Search for Darthula Ross pt. 6”
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