Have you submitted your DNA results to 23andMe or other services? Is this how you were doing the "color clustering", by matching 2nd and 3rd cousins from matches on those sites?
I have no experience in the matter but presumably there's some research for familial facial recognition? So maybe you could collect family photos or "scrape" facebook local to your area to see if you get any hits? Its pretty speculative but maybe it'd be worth a shot?
I have a little experience in bioinformatics so I'd be happy to help inasmuch as I'm able, if that's something you'd want or need. Regardless I would love to hear more about what methods you've tried (and presumably been unsuccessful in).
Oh yes, I have everything under the sun: Ancestry, FTDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe. I’ve even had the leading experts in the field helping me and working alongside me on this but it’s really just a case of bad matches.
There’s only so much you can learn from a half-cousin once-removed: her grandfather, born 1911, went to a barn dance, had a good time, and didn’t stay in touch. This man produced my paternal grandma according to my YDNA line — YDNA comes from a male and is passed to males. The YDNA has given me some direction, but no solid answers: I’m trying make a single male from a combination of a male from the most prominent family in 1800s Saugerties, NY, an unknown from Chicago (by way of Bohemia), and two unknowns from two different parts of Grand Forks, North Dakota (both Scandinavians).
And this all happened before the internet of course: 1860-1960 is the range that I am working with.
This h1C1R I speak of is my best match, followed by third-cousins. I’ve exhausted every avenue that’s been visible to me. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s very uncommon to know who casually slept with who generations ago. :)
There’s a lot of census searching (and scraping, and CSVing), newspaper article reading (lots of juicy details in small newspapers) and some luck. I have a tree built out some 1600 people strong. Hopefully with the holiday sales, new matches will come my way that are helpful. :)
I have no experience in the matter but presumably there's some research for familial facial recognition? So maybe you could collect family photos or "scrape" facebook local to your area to see if you get any hits? Its pretty speculative but maybe it'd be worth a shot?
I have a little experience in bioinformatics so I'd be happy to help inasmuch as I'm able, if that's something you'd want or need. Regardless I would love to hear more about what methods you've tried (and presumably been unsuccessful in).