It’s DNA Tuesday!

Part of getting things organized is figuring out what to do with my DNA results.  I had tested with the 3 major players in the genetic genealogy field, AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and 23 & me several years ago, and enjoyed some initial interesting results but really didn’t know what to do with the rest.

The Successes

Earlier this summer, I had reached out to one of the unknown matches and found some new, rather close family.  What a HUGE success that was!  I am still floating on that one!

I have relatively few close AncestryDNA matches- I have only 2 that Ancestry calls 2nd cousin, 4 that are called 3rd cousin and about 80 4th cousin.  Knowing these are broad ranges and not exact- for example my 2nd cousin matches are actually 1C1R and 2C1R, I’ve been successful in identifying who and how we are related for all the 2nd and 3rd cousins to a reasonable degree of confidence.  Part of being able to figure these out, even if I was unable to connect with the match, was knowledge of all the potential grandparents, and having a somewhat well developed descendent chart.

But what to do with the rest?!

The “problem” is the 4th cousin category.   For Ancestry DNA, this match is at about 10 degrees of separation. Fourth cousins share 3rd great grandparents and are at 10 degrees.  Third cousins twice removed are also 10 degrees, as are 2nd cousins 4 times removed.  In addition, Ancestry provides that the actual relationship can be between 6 and 12 (for example a  degrees of separation, so there is some variability there as well.  In addition, I can only name 12 of my 16 3rd gr-grandparents.  In terms of opportunity, I can potentially learn alot from this category of matches if I can only figure out what to do with them!

It has taken me some time to wrap my head around the idea of cMs, segments, chromosomes and how they are inherited.  It seems like in my 1st page of matches, I keep running into people that don’t match anyone else, and I’ve had a hard time with that!

My recent steps have been to read, read, read!  I’ve joined a few social media groups to get more insight.  I’ve attended an educational lecture about genetic genealogy.  I am going to rewatch some videos. I plan to regularly schedule time to work on these matches.  And I plan to post about what I learn, and how its going.  In school, I always found that writing about things helped me to clarify and solidify my understanding.

I welcome comments and suggestions, especially about how to physically or digitially keep track as I go along.  I tried first to use posterboard to make a chart.  My plan was to use post-its to stick Ancestry test/user names on lines that represented each ancestor couple, but actually trying to do that became quickly unwieldy.  Currently I am using Evernote- indicating each user, the real name if I know it, how many cMs, how many segments, who else they match, and if the test is also on Gedmatch, where the match is. I’m collecting alot of information, but I’m not sure its in a usable format.  Just writing this now, I think I also need to add in the ancestor if known.

I know some use Excel, I haven’t tried that yet.

Author: Gustavo Rezende / gustavorezende Licence: Public domain license. http://all-free-download.com/free-vector/download/dna_143971.html