I was hoping to find at least one match who shares the Stanley surname. No such luck. There wasn’t even a name that could have evolved into, or from, Stanley. It is a very short list, with only five names on it. The list of my matches using autosomal DNA runs into many thousands (20,000+ on Ancestry as at February 2025). Most of those are distant matches. Even the top 100 goes down as far as 30 centimorgans. From those that I have been able to match, 30 centimorgans suggests a common ancestor in the late 1700s. I need a higher quality not a larger quantity.
Ideally there should be a connection with Roscommon or East Galway. Another blank. The closest match (with a genetic distance of two) records the United States as his paternal country of origin. It is extremely unlikely that the common ancestor is a native American. The evidence indicates that the first settlers arrived in North America about 20,000 years ago and stopped 10,000 years ago. 
They could have taken advantage of a land bridge that existed between Siberia and Alaska when sea levels were lower than they are at present. The Bering Strait freezes over in the winter, so it is still possible to walk across. (Other theories are available!) For ‘United States’, it would be a reasonable assumption to look back to Europe for the ancestral connection. (See ‘DNA ethnicity update’ for information on my origins.)
Only one of my five matches indicates a link to Ireland. The genetic distance for this person is three. The link may predate the Norman Conquest of 1066. The peak probability is 1500. This predates the establishment of comprehensive records in England in 1538. (see “Thank you, Thomas Cromwell”) And records in Ireland have many gaps, not least due to the number of official restrictions on Roman Catholics that were only lifted in 1829 with the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act. My chances of identifying the common ancestor are small.
It appears that I do not have either quality or quantity. Ideally, I need matches with a genetic distance of either 0 or 1. Patience is required, or luck.