BackgroundAll living persons and test subjects have been anonymized for privacy reasons. In this particular study, AncestryDNA performed all DNA tests.
Preliminary Analysis

Further Examination the roster of Shaw family matches from our First Case Study reveals an additional family group with lower cM linkage than the M family of Case One, as illustrated in this revised table: • members in blue are known individuals in the Shaw tree; • members in magenta are from the M line explored in Case Study 1;• members in green are from our “mystery” group. Having found a family group similar to the M line examined in our first case study, let’s see if a similar methodology can’t be applied to this “green group” as well.

Public member trees and educated inference allow us to connect each of the members in our “green group” (with the exception of AG4) to an inheritance diagram:

Members of this group are descended from George Henry Francis Chapman (1846-1899) and Emily Susannah Whiting (1854-1887), who represent the most recent common ancestors (MRCA) of this family group. Because we have ready access to several Shaw family members DNA matches, it’s worth taking a moment to see how much linkage our “green group” shares with various Shaws:

From the above table we can see that the Shaws with best linkage to the green group are CG and JM. This would be how we might proceed if we were to attempt to link our Shaws to the Chapman family. However, because our Shaw family group has a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) that predates that of the Chapman group (see diagram, with linkages shown relative to CG), it makes sense that the Chapman family must instead connect to our Shaw lines, and so we need to select a member of the Chapman line for analysis based on the linkage they share with our Shaws.

From the Chapman inheritance diagram, we can see that AH and MB are both one generation closer to their MRCA than their cousins ASH and J95B. Although MB shares linkage with four members of our Shaw group, AH has greater average linkage, and so we’ll use his profile to begin our search for a connection between the Chapman family and our Shaws.
Further AnalysisAny connection between the Shaw family and our Chapman descendants line must occur with — or prior to — the most recent common ancestors of the group: George Henry Francis Chapman (1846-1899) and Emily Susannah Whiting (1854-1887), and so their connection to the Shaw line can be no more immediate than 3 generations prior to AH, such that the member of the Shaw family was of childbearing age between 1846 and 1854.
As discussed in our first case study, our Shaw family was based in London after 1800. Among other considerations, this knowledge may assist us later in determining which Chapman/Whiting ancestor connects best with the Shaw family.
Doing the MathLet’s start with our Shaw family inheritance tree, with linkages relative to AH:

The What Are The Odds (WATO) tool from DNAPainter.com uses the relationships and probabilities implied by our Shaw matches’ shared cM linkage to generate genetically — if not genealogically — compatible hypotheses and then scores these probabilities (click to enlarge):

Each numbered hypothesis represents a place in the tree where AH might reside. (Note also that the pink and black lines indicate full-sibling relationships, whilst the yellow and green lines indicate half-siblings.)
However, because we know that the member of the Shaw line from whom AH is descended must have been of childbearing age between 1846 and 1854, we can immediately remove any hypothesis which involves a Shaw born after 1830, simplifying our model considerably:

Further, since John Shaw (1811–1890) didn’t marry until 1864, and his brother Duncan married in Spain in the 1850’s we can remove the “unknown sibling” hypotheses (1–6, and 14–19) marked as originating with their descendants, in addition to the similar “unknown sibling” hypothesis attached to the sister Mary Ann Shaw (1813-1885) as no births were registered to her and her husband after 1839, and it’s not in any way likely that either George Henry Francis Chapman or Emily Susannah Whiting were born of Mary Ann Shaw and her husband and subsequently given up for adoption.
Likewise, the “unknown sibling” marked as a descendant of the Shaw/Jones couple at the left end of the diagram can be removed, as no other children of John Shaw (1774-1819) and Susannah Jones (1781-1859) were living as of 1846. This leaves us with the following hypotheses:

Remember that each hypotheses represents where AH might exist on the tree and that our Chapman family connection to the Shaw line can be no closer than 3 generations before AH such that the prior generation’s Shaw was of childbearing age between 1846 and 1854. This means that only Hypotheses 3 and 10 (in the above diagram) remain valid.
Finally, when considering the line of hypotheses 15 through 22 we can rule out 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, and 22 because the number of generations involved doesn’t work with our dates. Hypothesis 17 presupposes that Susannah (Jones) Shaw (1781-1859) gave birth in either 1846 or 1854, which is impossible.
Hypothesis 18 would require either John Shaw (1774-1819) or Susannah to be a grandparent of George Henry Francis Chapman or Emily Susannah Whiting. This seems particularly unlikely as one of the four Chapman/Whiting parents was born after John Shaw died, and none of the three individuals for whom there exists reliable birth information were born in Westminster, where the Shaws lived. Nevertheless, we’ll leave Hypothesis 18 in place for the time being. This reduces our final set of possibilities to:

The remaining probability scores translate to an 81% likelihood that either George Henry Francis Chapman or Emily Susannah Whiting were the offspring of John Shaw vs. an 18% probability that either of them might have been descended from John’s brother Duncan. When we consider that Duncan Shaw (1819–1885) left England for Spain in 1846, returning only occasionally thereafter, and that no linkage exists been Duncan’s descendant AS and AH, the 18% appears to be a generous assessment. Similarly, Hypothesis 3 can essentially be discarded, as it represents a less than 1% probability.
What this suggests is that either George Henry Francis Chapman or Emily Susannah Whiting was the child of John Shaw. This, in and of itself, isn’t surprising inasmuch as John Shaw is known to have fathered another child prior to his 1864 marriage. What remains is to determine which ancestor — George or Emily — were actually John’s child.
Though not a tool by which one would build a tree, Ancestry’s Thrulines feature, which aggregates DNA matches with member trees, casts the deciding vote in this case. The Thrulines for MB, AH’s 2nd cousin, reveal a shared a DNA match with a 4th cousin once removed — a member descended from George Chapman’s father’s sister, Harriet Chapman (1822-1887) — with whom MB shares 19 cM linkage. Since AH and his family group genuinely share DNA with George Chapman’s father’s family, the only possible conclusion is that Emily Susannah Whiting is the heretofore-unknown daughter of John Shaw. Our master inheritance chart for the Shaw family line now becomes:

(linkage is relative to CG, click to enlarge) Note that whilst SC shares no DNA with CG he nevertheless shares 8cM with DS. ConclusionAnalysis of the DNA linkage in the Chapman family group demonstrated that John Shaw (1811-1890) was the father of one of the group’s common ancestors. DNA shared with distant relations along the Chapman line proves that Emily Susannah Whiting is the ancestor descended from John Shaw.

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