Ancestry Pro Tools

[Phoenix]

There seems to have been remarkably little discussion on these in the last few weeks.

They seemed like something I might use over a long holiday weekend, or to strengthen a particular theory, but not of abiding interest.

What do others think? Are they of continuing use?

[kiterunner]

I haven't found the tree tools to be much use, but the enhanced shared matches are very good. I don't know whether I would pay every month though, more likely just once in a while, though if I unsubscribe from it the price will be higher next time as I am on the £4.99 deal.

[Merry]

I'm waiting until I have time for this to be worthwhile.

[Mary from Italy]

I'm sticking with it for the moment because I'm on the £4.99 deal, too. I've found the new shared matches interesting, but no amazing revelations so far.

[Phoenix]

Thanks, everyone. In each of the sets of DNA I manage there is at least one group, all related to each other, who I assume have very high shared DNA, while my mutual bit is probably a vestigial scrap dating back centuries. I'm mildly interested, but not fixated.

[Mary from Italy]

You could probably find out the same information by using the free DNAPainter site if you have them on sites other than Ancestry (e.g. MyHeritage or FTDna) which allow you to download segments.

[kiterunner]

I had been finding it annoying that there was no way to jump to a certain page of enhanced shared DNA matches, you could only go forwards or backwards page by page, but I have just noticed they have added a dropdown list of page numbers to select from.

[marquette]

I have just enabled the ProTools features for a month. But after 2 days, I don't think I will be renewing.

I used the Enhanced Matches and made notes on anyone who shared more than 30cMs and was labelled as 3rd cousin (definite, and not "half ...or", so I can look at them later. It was a surprise to find several parent and child matches and siblings.

I will use the 1c1r and 2c1r to work out where others fit into the tree, anything further out has too many variables, I think. Especially where the match has no tree. There are no matches listed as distant or anything beyond 4th cousin, and they are the ones I want to know about, really.

Of the other ProTools - tree checker is useful for checking for duplicates and other mistakes, and the Insights was interesting and a little useful for finding errors, but I cannot see much use (to me) of the other features.

It was useful to find out how many duplicates I have in my trees, so I will work through those and merge them.

And the list of oldest people and "youngest married" in my trees made me look twice and find some typos in the dates! Interesting but not especially useful (or worth the extra money) more than once a year.

[kiterunner]

When you say, "was labelled as 3rd cousin", do you mean that is Ancestry's estimate, or that you have them in your tree so you know for sure they are full 3rd cousins? Someone sharing 30 cMs with you can be pretty distantly related. Ancestry can't tell someone's exact relationship to you just from the amount of shared cM's, other than a parent or a full sibling.

[marquette]

Originally Posted by kiterunner

When you say, "was labelled as 3rd cousin", do you mean that is Ancestry's estimate, or that you have them in your tree so you know for sure they are full 3rd cousins?

Some of each, I think. I have labelled a lot of the cousins I know for sure but I am not certain now, which ones I did, or which are ancestry estimates. For the ProTools third party, I did take the 3rd cousins as an estimate, but I can follow them up with a bit of research and may be able to place them on my tree.

Most of the ancestry estimates for my matches give an alternative, but the some of the ProTools give definites like mother, father, son, daughter, but "aunt or half sister" - at least is a better prospect than "half 4th cousin or third cousin 3 times removed".

I will be trying to place at least one of them into the family tree and then will have a chance to work out the others. I have so many floating trees worked out from DNA match trees, some connecting to my tree but others just out there waiting for the final connection.

You are right about the cMs being no real guide, I have a 3rd cousin once removed who has the same cMs as my 1st cousin 3 times removed.

Merry Christmas from Australia