Ancestry DNA Hints
 

I manage Best Mate's tree.
She has DNA matches that link to specific ancestors.
I can work out who they are, and they come down to her on her tree, which is public.
So why does she have no DNA hints?

NB For privacy, near relatives do not have their real names or any data to identify them.

Do they actually have the shared ancestors in their trees, or have you worked back from the furthest generations in their trees to figure it out? Also, silly question, but is your friend's DNA test "linked" to her own tree?

There's a close cousin (10 surnames showing in common) who is not in a dna circle with her, nor showing DNA hints.

When I get home, I'll check that the tree is correctly linked. All the mutual ancestors are obvious and showing.

The other people have to have their trees linked to their DNA profile too, to be Ancestry Hints.
Dad has 15 ancestry hints but over 300 matches.
He has lots of "unlinked trees", which you can look at with a sub. Some of the linked trees only have 5 or 6 people, all of them private as living, and totally useless.
Likewise, DNA circles only work on linked trees.
I have been working my way through the ancestry hints trees and adding to my database, offline. Then I will start on the useful unlinked trees.

Di

I have triaged the 25k matches, and reduced them to under 2k. Now I am going through them more closely, and producing a personal database to manipulate the information. The questions I want answered will lie amongst distant, rather than close relations, so I can't ignore the 6cM matches.

I was directed to a Facebook page "Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques" It's a closed group but is easy to join.

It's used by a lot of professional genealogists but they seem to enjoy helping beginners like us. Personally I found it all a bit confusing - there's a lot of talk about cMs etc but there are some great tools in the files page to help sort your matches.

I'm trying to get my head round one called the Leeds Color Clustering method https://www.danaleeds.com/leeds-method-dna/ A lot of people on the FB page have had great results with it.

Aargh. The original method I thought of, then abandoned as I had too many colours. But it does depend on having close matches.

That was my issue Phoenix - I only have seven 2nd or 3rd cousin matches and five of those are from the same family and I know the relationship. I have just posted on the FB page I mentioned to see if anyone had tips. I'll let you know if they come up with anything!

Another problem I have (well, one of several) is that the database is not static.
One of my "hub" matches has withdrawn a test she manages. A new match is now connecting to lots of others.

I tried out the Leeds method and found it very useful.

If you use an Excel spreadsheet, you can hide the columns and rows as you work, so I just put in all of Dad's DNA matches, although it is recommended to do only those less than 400cms.

Most of the 4th-6th cousin matches, as well as Dad, matched at least one other of his matches so I was able to locate them in a family. Some of the others, I worked out by looking at their online trees.

My daughters colour chart is much more even than Dads, his is overly populated on the paternal line, but hers is spread more evenly between her four grandparents families. Dad has only one match, a person we already know, on his mothers paternal line - not one other person in all the Ancestry world has a match with both of them.

If anyone is interested in seeing what it looks like, I am happy to post a copy.

Di

I'd be interested to see how this is done please Di, as I need to think about how to progress.

Di, I would be interested too for when my results come back in a few weeks time.

Me too.

Hi Jill

Here is my Excel spreadsheet of the Leeds Colour Chart. It has three pages, my Dad, my daughter and my sister-in-law.

You will see they are slightly different as I tried out different ideas.
Lorraine's is only partly done, so I have not yet grouped the families together.

My daughters grandparent families are COLLIS, ECCLES, COLE and LANGLEY.
Dads are COLLIS, MARTIN, PAGE and DAWSON. Lorraine's are COLE, LANGLEY, TANNER and PARSONS.

You will see that COLE, PAGE and PARSONS DNA samples are very sparse.

Some of the family links were made by looking at the various family trees, others just by common matches. I should have put another column for MRCA (Most recent common ancestor) and added them as I found them, as this would help with the many COLLIS and TANNER samples.

A couple of lines are marked in special colours as they are of special interest to me. Very few of the COLLIS samples match to the TUPPER and BISHOP lines, so I am especially interested to find more matches for them.

I also tried out using our GEDMatch comparisons, but its a lot harder to set up.


Di

I'd love to have a look but I can't open it! I'm running Windows 10, I'm sure there must be a way but I don't know it :(

Thanks Di, you have given me plenty to think about!

If you're the same as me,(I'm also on Windows 10) it doesn't come with Excel so you will have to either buy it or find some other way of reading it. (I'm still trying to work it out, if I find a solution will let you know)

I will try and post it in another format. It may not work like Excel but you will be able to how it works.


Di

I have changed them to Word Docs, so you may be able to open these.

If not send me a pm and I can email them directly to you

Di

Thanks, Di. Very interesting!

Hope this might help somebody else. On my iMac I do not have Excel, nor even the Mac version, Numbers. But I have
downloaded your first (Excel) zip file,
double-clicked to unzip it, then
right-clicked on the unzipped file with extension .xlsx and
chose "Open With"
Preview.app.
Of course it no longer functions as a spreadsheet but it is big and beautiful with all the colors visible.

Thanks Janet.

I hope it helps others with understanding what to do with all those DNA matches.

As very few people seem to answer Ancestry messages or link a tree to their sample, or even have an Ancestry tree at all, it seems the only way to use the information.

I have two promising Matches for Dad - his Sussex ancestors have given me lots of problems, so I was hoping for matches which would point out families to investigate.

Already I have been able to work out the family tree of the only Tupper match which shows we have the right Tupper family.

Di

Thanks Janet - that did help!

I do have Excel but it wanted to open the file in Photo Viewer which Windows 10 doesn't support. I've now unzipped it using something called "10 Zip RAR archiver" which seems to come as standard as I've never downloaded (as far as I know!)


I'm now studying the spreadsheet to see if I could get it to work with my DNA matches. I've had two attempts using the method I posted earlier but couldn't get my head round it. Maybe using Di's as a reference tool will help.


Thanks to both of you!

I can't open them as I don't have a zip program.

I'll have to google for a free program

Google said to open with Windows or file explorer, and then the excel or word document is available to see. Then we can just double click and it opens. :)

Not having matches or anything to look at of my own, this seems very complicated. I think I have an understanding of what you are doing but it needs to be put into practice.

Hi Toni

Yes I think you are right. It is hard to understand when you look at someone's else family. When you get your results, you will see what needs doing.

I think the best result has been my daughters - its much more evenly spread over the families - too many of my Dad's matches come from the same family - now I have worked my way down the list there are over 40 over them.

That's cool that so many of the family have been tested, but that family has no mysteries and only three of them have any links to the maternal lines I want to research.

Di

So I was a bit bored yesterday and expanded my Leeds Colour Chart for my Dad's DNA matches.

My 3xgreat grandfather had 6 children, 4 of whom settled in Australia. I grouped and coloured the DNA matches by the children, where I know or could find them by research.

I have 11 matches who are descendants of Edmund (my 2xg gf), 6 for Henry, 4 for Elizabeth and just one for Alfred.

Plus another 15 or so who are clearly closely related to them but I cannot work out which one from the information available.

So far no trees or information available to check for descendants of John or George (who stayed in England).

Those who are identified as Edmund's descendants, they come from 4 of his 10 children, so there is lots of research to do there. I stopped when I had listed 80 matches !

There are only a two who show matches with others who could be related to Dad's paternal grandmother and great grandmothers - though these will be restricted by the women being the only one of their siblings to have children.

On Dad's mother's side. There is only one match for her fathers family, in all of the Ancestry files - he and Dad have no other common matches. On her mother's family, there are matches with her fathers family, and her mothers family, but none match both, meaning, I presume that none of my grandmothers siblings or cousins descendants have done DNA tests.

The Leeds Colour Charting has been very useful in sorting out who Dad's matches are, but no so much in finding matches to prove or disprove my theories on his Sussex ancestors. I live in hope that more and more people are "doing" their DNA.

Di

I am banging my fist, demanding that others test themselves - and realising what a clever marketing ploy this is. DNA testing is demonstrating the ancestry of those interested in testing. Those with Norfolk ancestors clearly don't want to waste money on such tests, and that is the area I am fascinated by.

I find it quite strange when a whole family group appears in my list of DNA matches (where most of them have had their DNA tested pretty recently) but none of them seems interested in contacting their matches or exchanging information about their family tree.

After a cursory examination, my ancestors from the southern counties don't seem to be widely represented in my DNA matches. Now OH is quite interested in being tested as he is curious to see whether he will get matches to discover his grandmother's father.

It will be quite a bit of work to discover his grandmother's father, unless the matches have a family tree, and you know who you are looking for. You also need to know as many descendants' surnames as possible - I could see the male lines immediately, but the married females don't even retain their maiden name and some even use a pseudonym or nickname on their ancestry results.

Dad has a match with a weird nickname in the second cousin range - she matches with all his paternal cousins but has no family tree on ancestry. Its annoying because she also matches with the one Tupper family member I know and a few others linked to him, but I cannot tell why.

If he does test, I wish him lots of family trees linked to the DNA matches, who name his grandmother or great-grandfather in them.

I have managed to figure out who my grandmother's biological father was from DNA matches (mine and my Dad's), and before I did my DNA test I didn't even know that her official father wasn't her bio father. It did take quite a bit of work though.

Marquette, we ask that you don't post identifying details of your DNA matches, such as usernames. Thanks.

oops sorry !

Dad did his dna test for me and thanked me for it, which I found funny as I'm getting more out of it than he has. He just wanted the ethnicity results. It is amazing how DNA is shared or not shared. Dad's first cousin and another first cousins son have had the test too as they all match. Dad's cousin however does not match with 2 of the great grandparents lines at all, while the cousins son has an even spread. I have come across an unknown who only matches with Dad and the first cousin and no other matches. There is no tree of course.

Dad has a pretty Leeds chart though. It wasn't hard either as he only has 92 4th cousin or closer matches.

According to Ancestry's matches, I only have one 3rd cousin who has tested (101cms across 5 segments) but I do have another who appears as a 4-6th cousin sharing only 23.8cms across 1 segment. The paper trail does confirm she is my 3rd cousin, but the amount shared is much lower than the other known 3rd cousin. I've found similar anomalies with 4th cousins, many of which are 10-20cms only yet confirmed by the paper trail. I don't seem to have inherited a lot of DNA across those lines.

I've one 5-8th cousin match who shares 6.1cms across 1 segment. Very low but her tree suggests 7-8th cousin on a line that I'm pretty sure is correct but there has always been a bit of a doubt because my last direct female ancestor on that line never used her middle name after she married (which would have confirmed her identity beyond any doubt and she died before 1851). However, balance of probabilities suggests that the research is correct but should I read too much into a link with someone at that level who has the family on their tree?

Out of 247 4th cousin or nearer matches, the vast majority are less than 25cms. Those with a bit more don't have trees and I can't quite work out where they link in. Bit frustrating but early days. I have managed to confirm a few pieces of research which has been helpful.

One thing I have noticed you can do is to search your DNA matches by location. I am just starting to do this to see whether it makes it easier to identify common ground.

With either a name search or location search, you can get a match with a private tree. One of my less common surnnames is Kingshott, someone with a private tree matched on both that name and a search for Fernhurst so I messaged him and we do indeed share a common ancestor and have swapped emails to our mutual advantage.

When I got my results I jokingly said to my sister that as my ethnicity was 8% European Jewish that one of our East End Great Grandmothers had had a fling with an exotic immigrant. Now I'm wondering if I was right!


I have a new 2nd cousin match with 231cM and nothing matches on his tree apart from the locations - all in the areas where my lot were living. He also matches one of my first cousins and his son so at least I know it's a paternal match but beyond that I don't know where to start. He also has a strong Jewish branch on his tree!!

I'd be interested to know how you worked out the relationships for your Grandmother, Kite.

As in your case, Sue, it was the unexpected percentage of European Jewish DNA that showed that someone's parentage wasn't what it was supposed to be, and as my Dad had about 25% European Jewish DNA from his test, it had to be on his side (and I now realise, that 25% meant that one of his grandparents was Jewish, but when I started out on this I wasn't sure of how accurate the percentages were.) We had enough DNA matches to both sides of his father's tree to be sure that it must be on Granny's side. Then I had found DNA matches to Granny's mother's (Mutti's) mother's line, but none to Mutti's father's line nor to Granny's father's line, so I still wasn't sure exactly where the Jewish DNA came in.

I contacted my closest Jewish matches and managed to get a look at the tree of one of them, but it didn't go back very far, so I had to work back from it to add more generations. Another one didn't reply but had an unusual name, so I could figure out who their parents and grandparents were from Googling around and construct a tree. I could see that these two people had some ancestral surnames in common from the same area, but not exactly how they were connected, until I was lucky enough to find a family tree on a site called Geni which showed that one match's ancestor was a sibling of the other one's ancestor (surname Straus). I drew up a tree for the family of those siblings, and managed to work out how a few more of my DNA matches were related to them, and eventually, after being led down the wrong path for a while because Wikipedia had some wrong information about the Straus family, I managed to establish that all those matches were descended from a Straus / Uhlmann couple, and searching my matches for the surnames Straus and Uhlmann showed that I had other matches who were only related to the Uhlmann side of that couple, but I didn't find any who were only related to the Straus side. Also the Uhlmann family had lived in the town where Mutti grew up, not where her mother lived before marriage, so it looked likely that Granny's father was an Uhlmann. I looked at my closest Jewish matches on some other sites where I had uploaded my DNA, and managed to connect them to the Uhlmann family too.

Then I drew up an Uhlmann family tree and showed the lines of descent to the various DNA matches, with notes of how much shared DNA I had with each of them, so I could see whereabouts on the tree Granny's father was likely to fit, i.e. near to the lines with the most shared DNA. It turned out to be a bit more complicated than that, because two Uhlmann cousins married each other, but anyway, it turned out that their family had lived just round the corner from Mutti's family, and also that Granny had said that Mutti had not been able to marry her first choice of husband, so it all fitted together. That Uhlmann family had two sons but the elder one had emigrated to America a few years before Granny was born, so it had to be the younger one (unless the elder brother travelled back from America for a quick visit, but I haven't found a record of him returning to America from one.) So I suppose not absolutely certain but pretty much.

Hope this makes sense! Feel free to PM me with specific details if you want some help with your puzzle, Sue (or anyone else!)

I have been searching my surnames and found three very low matches for my mother's maiden name. Two have no information but the third has a tree with just parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, with two people matching the surname.

I had a look and the name resonated with me so I checked my tree and this person and I are 4th cousins once removed. We share 4x-great-grandparents. The person doesn't seem to know much about this ancestry so I hope he replies to my message as I have a huge amount of information on the family.