Is Michael James Courtney of Iowa associated with my Courtney family?
Last year my first cousin tested for me at AncestryDNA, her father was my mothers brother, another great grandson of our missing George Courtney. He had tested for me at other DNA sites but was not on AncestryDNA having died before being able to test there. I lived in hope that my cousins results might give some additional clues given the extensive database at AncestryDNA compared to other sites. When her results came though I quickly analysed them and using her closest matches allocated them to her four grandparent groups. Through this process I came up with three additional ‘unknown’ groups. It was impossible to tell which side they belonged to so I researched all three to see if I could find any genealogical connections within each group for clues. One group (U2) held particular interest as I found that several members of the group shared the ancestry of Michael James Courtney born c1865 in Bluffton, Winneshiek, Iowa and his wife Anna Agnes O’Brien also born in Iowa in abt 1868.