Sorting out groups

[Phoenix]

Folk in Dorset were often seafarers, and many ended up settling in Newfoundland.

I have more links there than in this country. Unfortunately, record keeping out there started fairly late, so there have been some rather wild guesses in Canada as to where their English roots actually were.

An ancestor's brother disappears from the English record after baptism, while someone of the same name is fathering families in Canada.

So far, so good, but the communities are so small and inter-related that I have scores of matches, but they are not necessarily on that line.

I start off with a match, but after a couple of clicks, I've forgotten who they are, and disappeared down the rabbit hole.

Can anyone suggest a procedure that keeps me linked to the original premise? I begin to think I need a spreadsheet, or two screens and a notebook to keep tabs on what I'm doing.

[kiterunner]

Yes, I often use a notebook for this kind of thing, and sometimes a spreadsheet.

[kiterunner]

Or I get a big piece of paper and draw the family tree on it.

[Mary from Italy]

Originally Posted by kiterunner

Or I get a big piece of paper and draw the family tree on it.

That's what I usually do.

[Phoenix]

I'm trying to put them in groups, but Pro tools is driving me mad: it only wants me to add one person to a group at a time.

[marquette]

I have used a spreadsheet for tracking DNA matches - it helps keeps the generations in line and you can add columns to add in a new person really easily - it can be as wide as you like. You can shrink the screen size so you can see the overall data.

I also did one to track the inter-marriages across 3 families - I could colour the cells of each couple and/or give them coloured borders and added coloured lines to make it clearer.

And yes, I use two screens - the spreadsheet on one and Ancestry or other records on the other.

[Phoenix]

Well, my month with Pro Tools is up, and I'm no nearer any solutions. I keep finding people from opposite sides of the family whose relationship to each other is greater than their relationship to me, or groups where there is a relationship, but not that suggested by Ancestry.

I think I need to wait until custom clusters arrive, and probably restrict myself to matches above 40 cM. Then I could start to see whether they represent discrete groups, or so varied that no sensible conclusions can be drawn.