Genealogists trace a family and then get to a point where is seems very difficult or maybe even impossible to get beyond. These involuntary stopping points in genealogy are often called “Brick Walls”. I have several and I suppose a good many people doing genealogy have several brick walls. This is the story of a brick wall broken by DNA.

To be more specific it is the brick wall in my McKenzie line. I had been able to go back as far as my great grandfather Malcolm McKenzie and his wife Emma Cash McKenzie. Over a year and a half I wrote a very short post about them, mostly Emma Cash McKenzie.

Then a few months ago, there was a comment on that post by someone who thought they might be related to Malcolm McKenzie, my brick wall. Over the next few months, we exchanged many emails and indeed it did seem likely but we could not find a record which made the connection certain enough.

So perhaps DNA could help. Since our potential McKenzie connection included both paternal and maternal inheritance, autosomal DNA was our best option. Jessie (the commenter) had already done autosomal DNA. It seemed rather unlikely that we shared any family relationship other than this possible McKenzie connection. So I decided to try autosomal DNA and see if we were indeed related.

The DNA test indicated she was a distant cousin. And the results were consistent with our guess based on records of a half 3rd cousin once removed.

Because of work that Jessie had done previously, I now know that Malcolm’s father was Alexander. Alex emigrated to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and was originally from Gairloch, Scotland.

So thanks to a comment and some DNA results, I saw one brick wall broken by DNA and I am now very certain of how the McKenzies came to New York and where they came from in Scotland. Even better is having a partner in trying to trace this family back further and finding answers to some of the other questions that arise when researching a family.

Are there any more potential cousins out there?