[This post is based on the 52 Ancestors project by Amy Johnson Crow]

When it comes to family trees, some of us have sturdy oaks. Mine? More like a particularly enthusiastic vine that wraps around itself… and then marries into itself… and then throws DNA testing into glorious chaos.

This week’s DNA adventure centers around my great-grandfather, Lucian Matlock, born out of wedlock (as the saying used to go) in 1882 in Humphreys County, Tennessee. According to family lore—passed down from my grandmother (who married his son Claude) and my mother—no one ever really knew who Lucian’s father was.

Given what I knew about the family already, I had a pretty good guess.

Let’s introduce some key players first, just to keep the names straight:

• My mother is a Matlock.

• Her grandfather was Lucian Matlock.

• Lucian’s mother was Elizabeth “Willie” Matlock.

• Willie’s parents were William Matlock and Poppy Choate.

• Willie’s paternal grandparents were Luke Matlock and Jemima Choate.

• Willie’s maternal grandfather was Squire Jackson Choate.

• Jemima Choate and Squire Jackson Choate? They were siblings, both children of John R. Choate and Eleanor Renfro, so Willie’s parents were first cousins.

(Yes, you read that right. John and Eleanor are my 5th great-grandparents twice—and, spoiler alert, possibly three times.)

The Problem with Minor Endogamy

Given the Matlock-Choate obsession in my tree, it made sense to suspect that Lucian’s unknown father might have been a Choate.

But try using autosomal DNA to untangle a mystery in a community where the same families intermarried again, and again, and again… it’s like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube while blindfolded and spinning.

Every time I thought I had a lead, I’d realize that the same surnames popped up all over the place, and the DNA matches were a confusing soup of Matlocks, Choates, Renfros, and their many intertwining branches.

Triangulation, Shared cM Values, and a Hunch

By carefully triangulating segments and looking at shared centimorgan (cM) values, I began to spot a pattern.

Many descendants of John Levi Choate—a son of the Choate dynasty—shared way too much DNA with me for the relationships to be “just” distant cousins.

Even accounting for endogamy, the numbers didn’t lie:

• 79 cM

• 113 cM

• 90 cM
  …and not from particularly close relationships either—these were supposed to be 6th cousins, 5th cousins once removed, and so on. They were either outside of the accepted ranges or at the cutoff areas.

The math just didn’t add up—unless one of John Levi Choate’s sons was Lucian’s father.

I ran several scenarios through DNAPainter’s “What Are The Odds?” tool, and every time, the strongest likelihood pointed straight back to John Levi Choate’s line.

Adding Y-DNA to the Story

Later on, a Y-DNA test from a male-line descendant of Lucian confirmed the Choate surname genetically.

While it hasn’t pinpointed exactly which son of John Levi Choate was the father, it narrowed the possibilities considerably.

Adding to the evidence: Lucian was given the s first name as one of John Levi’s sons—a son who conveniently moved off to Texas after Lucian’s birth (which might explain why no one seemed to make the connection – he was no longer around for whispers and nods).

Coincidence? Maybe.

But in a family this tangled, even coincidences are suspicious.

A Clue Hidden in Plain Sight

The funny thing is, once I had narrowed it down to Isom Lucian Choate as the likely father, I went back to the basic records… and there it was.

My great-grandfather’s own death certificate almost slapped me in the face with the clue I had missed for years.

The informant was his son, Uncle Cliff.

On the death certificate, under “Parents’ Names,” he had reported:

Father: Lucian Matlock
Mother: Elizabeth

I had looked at that certificate dozens of times and always assumed that the same name in both the deceased field and the father’s field was just a sloppy clerical error.

But now, it made a strange kind of sense.

I could imagine how it happened:

• He knew Lush’s mother was Elizabeth Matlock.

• He knew his father was Lucian.

• In trying to explain this quickly to whomever was filling out the form, he probably said something like:

  “His mother was Elizabeth Matlock. His father was Lucian.”

• And the clerk, thinking in normal family structure mode, heard: Lucian & Elizabeth Matlock and wrote it down with Matlock as Lucian’s surname, and Elizabeth’s surname mysteriously unknown.

In truth, Elizabeth was a Matlock by birth, Lucian was the given name of his probable father (Isom Lucian Choate), and the record accidentally fused the two.

It’s one of those moments when the record isn’t exactly wrong—but it isn’t right either. And it took fresh eyes—and a lot of DNA—to finally understand what it was trying to tell me.

It was a reminder that even the people who loved him most could accidentally weave another twist into the family vine.

Final Thoughts: A Vine, Not a Tree

If my theory is correct, then John R. Choate and Eleanor Renfro aren’t just my 5th great-grandparents twice… they’re my 5th great-grandparents three times. I’m not certain that it’s possible to know for certain from this distance, but the DNA and circumstantial evidence is stacking up. At least I’m certain know that I can stop chasing another elusive surname as the possible father for my great-grandfather!

Sometimes, when two branches get too close, they just become one vine, twisting beautifully—and confusingly—through history.

And that, dear readers, is why DNA doesn’t always simplify genealogy… sometimes it just makes the family tree even more entertaining. 🌿