Ancestry Grouping Crisis?!!

[kiterunner]

Originally Posted by Merry

Oh, so sorry, that was me misleading you! I didn't type what I meant to say...…

I meant (expanded version!), I have come across three people now with detailed trees of my maternal grandmother's ancestors where the common link doesn't appear to be very far back and have around a 40 cM match with me. These people don't seem have shared DNA with my second cousin but they should (as she is also descended from my maternal grandmother's parents and she shows up 'correctly' in my own matches, yet they appear to have shared DNA with my dad's side, which they shouldn't! (and that apparent shared DNA to my dad is on two separate lines!)

I am now wondering, if I were to study these trees more carefully, whether I would find they were originally copied from me and these individuals have copied both my mum and dad's sides? Ancestry had then showed me a link from my tree to their tree rather than a link that actually leads through to them? I don't recognise their user names, but I do know there are a couple of people on Ancestry who had Gedcoms from me years and years ago which included 'everyone' and so they added 'everyone' to their trees. They may have then passed them on to others. I can usually tell because notes I made on my original tree also appear.

When I have stopped losing the will to live, and hopefully after you have told me whether I'm talking a lot of nonsense or not, I might go back and have another look.

Oh, that makes sense, yes. If they have linked their DNA tests to their trees then you should be able to see whether they are descended from your maternal grandmother's ancestors or not, but if they have "unlinked trees" then it could well be that they have copied a load of unnecessary stuff from your tree.