Wishing for a DNA-centric Vacation

March 14, 2019 By 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago, both Ancestry and MyHeritage unveiled new tools for managing and figuring out your matches on their sites. These include tree matching suggestions, sortable colored dots to mark matches and make it easier to visualize, and auto-clustering of matches with a shared ancestor. I am eager to work with these tools, but as of yet have not. Why not?

My father.

More precisely, his DNA. His Ancestry test came through before the new tools, so I have been working through his many matches using the old interface, because that is how I started the process and the new one is very different. I am giddy with excitement over getting his results in for a few reasons, the first being that it took so long for it to process I was afraid it had failed.

The other reason is because it is an Ancestry test. His DNA is on other websites, but I have had the most luck tracking his matches on Ancestry. It is not unusual for people to have one company that garners more or better matches for them. MyHeritage, for instance, seems to do better with more recent European immigrant lines. It’s all about who tests where.

My mother is not on Ancestry (yet), and until my dad was, I had no way of knowing if matches to me were paternal or maternal. It is not uncommon to have a group of 10 or more matches who all match each other but you have no idea how that group relates to you. If you are lucky and can find one person in the group that you can trace back to an ancestor you share, then you know the rest of that group is also somehow on that family line.

I have been fairly lucky on Ancestry with figuring out matches. I have about 40,000 total matches on Ancestry. About 400 are 4th cousin or closer range. I have figured out how roughly 70 of them connect to me. Which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a much higher number than I have been able to figure out at the other DNA sites. And of course that means any people who match both me and one of 70, I at least know what line they are on. So they are sort of half-figured-out.

Now, with my dad also on Ancestry, Ancestry marks the matches that match him as Paternal. Which means that by default, the unmarked ones are my mother. So now I can mark those with colored dots and then sort my matches by her. This is great because her side of the family is much harder to trace than my dad’s. Now I can know for certain I am working on the correct side of the family!

Also, since my father is a generation above me, he will have stronger matches to people I match to, and he also has a higher number of 4th cousin and closer matches, which is important on Ancestry for Shared Matches. Where I have about 400 4th or closer, he has almost 700. By being able to spread the net wider and find a deeper pool of shared matches, I can hopefully figure out how some of these unknown groups fit into the puzzle.

So I have been fun working through my dad’s matches. Once I finish, I will jump into playing with the great new tools on MyHeritage and Ancestry and see if they smash down any brick walls for me.

Do you ever wish you could take a vacation just to indulge your hobby of choice?

Genetic Genealogy: Proving the paper trail

July 19, 2018 By 5 Comments

All my readers know genealogy has been a passion of mine for many years now. I’ve even written a book about my father’s side of the family (yes, Mom, your book is coming!). The advent of genetic genealogy has revolutionized the hobby and opened up secrets long kept in some families.

I have been using my DNA genealogy to try and confirm my long-established paper trails. My goal is to connect to all 8 of my great-grandparents. One more great-grandparent and I will have all 8. I also already have DNA matches that support 12 of my 16 great-great-grandparents.

My father’s side turned out to be laughably easy. Matches to him abounded, and in what seemed like no time at all I had matched through all 4 of his grandparents.

Then there was my mother. Her Scottish lines popped up rather quickly, but her Irish side…nothing. This was understandable, but frustrating just the same. You see, in order to really get anything out of DNA genealogy, you also need paper genealogy. You need names, places, dates, so you and the people you match with can figure out where your connection is. Scottish records are abundant. Irish records literally went up in flames, making anything much past the late 1800s almost nonexistent. Yet many of our DNA connections occur past the point where records exist, leaving us wondering how and who we connect to.

I had a specific group of matches who all matched each other—called Shared Matches. There were 6 of them: JW, BN, ME, FR, SC, and KN. I sent messages to all of them, and waited. I finally got an answer from JW—and we were able to find our link! Not only that, but it turns out JW was the first known connection to my mom’s Irish Hayden side. Yay!

So now I knew the other 5 must be on the same line, since we all matched each other. But none of them had trees posted, so once again I was stumped. I sent another message saying I believed they were on the Hayden-Bergin branch of my tree. And I waited. Just a few days ago, BN messaged me back! Not only did she know how WE were related, but she had personally known JW when they were kids, AND she knew how the remaining 4 testers were related to us. Whew! A ton of information in one fell swoop.

So now I know for certain that my mother’s mom was not an alien from outer space. Well, I know that at least half of her is human, LOL. I am still searching for that elusive Irish Sutton-Gorman line.

Perseverance and patience will bring answers, I am sure. Meanwhile, I will keep on with my paper genealogy as well, to expand my tree and make future connections easier to find.

What passion do you pursue when you step away from writing?

DNA & Genealogy: Finding cousins, connecting family

December 7, 2017 By 2 Comments

I recently have been getting involved on the DNA side of genealogy. It is a science, so there’s a lot to learn. Fortunately, I have always liked science. I am new to this, so I have barely scratched the surface of what there is to know.

So far, I have found about 20 “cousins” and how we connect in our family trees. That’s always exciting! They have ranged from 2nd Cousin 1x Removed to 8th Cousin 1x Removed. One of my new connections is actually a branch of the family that my mother’s family lost touch with some 55 years ago! The older members of our family who remember each other are still alive, and are happy to be back in touch.

DNA is confirming my paper trailThe other exciting thing about DNA is that it can confirm your paper research. Finding matches with these other cousins has enabled me to confirm many of the lines I have been researching for years. The red parts of the fan chart below are ones that I have found DNA matches for. In case you’re wondering, most of the unproven lines are Irish. Either my relatives haven’t tested, or there aren’t many left to test. For instance, I know that my Sutton family largely died out several generations ago, so any remaining Suttons will be quite distant from me.

I was hoping to solve a mystery 185 years in the making. In 1839, the Bergin family emigrated from Ireland to Australia, but left their 7-year-old daughter Johanna behind. I have a Johanna Bergin that would have been the right age, from the right area in Ireland. Research suggests strongly that she is the left behind girl. I have been working with an Australian descendant of her brother, and we had hoped that DNA might prove the tale. However, he and I didn’t match—which doesn’t prove anything, because we are just on the line where as cousins we might not share DNA even if we are related. I am trying to have him move his DNA to another website where my mother’s is, in hopes that a closer generational distance will unearth some DNA connection.

Many people do DNA testing for the fun of finding out their ethnicity. It can be fun to see, but keep in mind that the ethnicity estimates are just that—estimates. They will vary from company to company, as the algorithms are different, although they will be mostly similar. I got a good laugh over 2 tests showing me having <1% Oceania/Melanesia ethnicity when my parents don’t show any DNA from there.

There is a danger in DNA testing, though. In forums online, an amazing number of people who test have found they are not who they thought they were. Many find out that their father wasn’t their father, or their full sibling is only half. It can also shake out family secrets from farther back, when you don’t match anyone from, say, a grandparent’s line, but do match a whole bunch of names that aren’t on your tree. While the ethnicity is only an estimate, the actual DNA doesn’t lie.

I am enjoying exploring my DNA, and expanding the family as I do so. Hopefully, it will help me break down some “brick wall” ancestors at some point—although it hasn’t yet. I look forward to learning more about this science and my family!

Can DNA prove my royal link?

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