How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 3 – Building connections to your unknown DNA matches

In Parts 1 and 2 we walked you through the basics of DNA (How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 1 – Getting started), of the importance of having a good tree to your 4xGGP, and how to label you AncestryDNA matches that already have hints (How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 2 – Leveraging your strongest matches to make quicker work of your more challenging matches!). In this part, we start to do the hard work of building out DNA matches where we don’t have a matching trees, and we don’t know how they’re linked to us.

Once you have all of your hints with notes attached, look for your largest unidentified match that has a Public Tree, even if it’s unlinked. Since the tree has no hints you’ll know their tree doesn’t match yours (yet!), but the larger the amount of cM the closer your match…so the fewer relatives you’ll have to build out.

Before we dive in with our first example, here’s the first of several surprising truths about doing genealogical DNA work: you will spend most of your time doing other people’s trees. In a perfect world your DNA match built out their tree to their 4xGGP too…but you’ll find most times you won’t be so lucky!

DNA match surprise #1: You will spend most of your time making DNA matches building out other people’s trees.

Example #1: Eileen Wilson

As an example, let’s look at a match with an Unlinked Tree and 242 cM of shared DNA. Looking at the match’s Public Tree, the names don’t jump out (other than the very common “Smith”), but based on our notes, we know it’s on Michael’s Father’s Mother’s Mother’s Father’s line…which was William Arthur Smith. To confirm, we entered the cM in the DNA Painter Shared cM Project tool (Link), and the results (eliminating the ½ siblings) indicate the most likely matches are from our tester’s Grandparents or Great Grandparents.

Expanding our tree, we see that we had already identified Wallace David Smith in our tree, his wife Mabel, as the brother of William Arthur Smith. We also had their daughter Lula, which all of which sync’s up with the match’s tree. From there, it’s pretty easy to prove out that the DNA match is the daughter of George and Lula (Smith) Hopkins.

This is the same process whether the DNA match is 242 cM or 12 cM: use common matches to narrow which line the DNA likely matches you, identify the most likely target for your match through tools like the Shared cM Project charts and the “What are the odds?” tool. From there, build out the likely tree based on your estimates until you find the match. Then, you update the notes so when you find another shared match, you’ll have the info to narrow down their DNA line!

DNA 3 - Edwin Jewell collage — From DNA Painter Shared cM Project tool: When you enter the total cM for your DNA match, it will display both the position of your possible matches and a breakdown of how likely each of those positions are to be your match. In this example, excluding any “half” relationships, we’ve highlighted the most likely matches on the chart, and the second most likely.

Make sure to make a note in your match, as we did in Part 2 of this series, so you’ll be able to focus in on other matches with less shared DNA later.

Let’s try one more match that’s a little further out.

Example #2: “A.G.”

The next target is going to “A.G.”, a woman that shares 26cM with the same tester as the first example. The first thing we do is review A.G.’s shared matches with us, and we see notes indicating that the match is on our tester’s Father’s side, so we just narrowed our focus to that ½ of the tree. Next, we went to DNA Painter Shared cM Project tool and maped out the most likely matches for the level of shared cM, which shows that it’s likely our shared match is around a 4^th Cousin, Once removed or a 5^th Cousin. This means, it’s most likely we’re looking for 3x/4x GGP as our MRCA.

The good news is that we have a strong tree to 3x/4x GGP’s for our tester. The bad news is, we have no tree for A.G. and we’re going to have to build hers out to understand where we match. We followed our own instructions on building out a “quick and dirty” Ancestry tree (Building a good Public Ancestry.com tree – Part One: sources, citations, facts, and proof), especially paying attention to find proof of relationships between each generation. And, in the end, after about 16 hours of total work we found…nothing. No match.

DNA 3-Built out Geske tree — The family tree of “A. G.”, after 16 hours of building it out and confirming relationships.

Which brings us to our second of our surprising truths about doing genealogical DNA work: Your DNA matches will mostly be on family lines you already have great information on, and conversely most of your unlinked DNA matches will be on family lines which are already your brickwalls.

DNA match surprise #2: Your DNA matches will mostly be on family lines you already have great information on, and conversely most of your unlinked DNA matches will be on family lines which are already your brickwalls.

In this case, we have limitations on several key areas of our family tree. Our tester is Michael’s grandmother, and on her paternal line we run into a pretty solid brickwall at her 2x GGP. They likely were born in either New Hampshire or Vermont, before they migrated to Michigan through New York, but 3 generations of family historians haven’t gotten past Alvin Jewell (1830-1911). In A.G.’s line, there are two couples from Vermont, from about that time, but there’s not enough evidence to pursue a solid line of inquiry.

This brings us to of our third surprising truths about doing genealogical DNA work: Even with the best of trees, and hours of effort, you’re going to have a lot of matches that you’re not going to be able to link to your tree.

DNA match surprise #3: Even with the best of trees, and hours of effort, you’re going to have a lot of matches that you’re not going to be able to link to your tree.

This is also where the limitations of AncestryDNA start to become apparent. There are nearly no tools there to help us determine which side of our match’s line do we expect we match. How can we leverage DNA triangulation to further narrow down where we should be researching? When you’re trying to figure out where to look amongst 32 GGP’s who might be a key to your DNA match, being able to eliminate ½ of those potential matches is a huge boon. But, beyond what we’ve already gone through, there’s not much more they can offer.

One of the other limitations of AncestryDNA is that you can never prove your matches. Even in our first example, we have a good tree match, and the amount of shared DNA (242 cM) matches exactly where we’d expect the two samples to match (2nd Cousins), but without tools like a chromosome browser, it’s impossible to prove those two kits match as we’ve assumed.

We’ll be looking at other tools in later installments, including how we can narrow down the search for our MCRA link to A.G.

In our next installment we’re going to go through a GREAT set of tools in GEDmatch that will demonstrate what we wish we had in Ancestry, and we’ll show you how to leverage you DNA results there to really unlock your matches.

How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 2 – Leveraging your strongest matches to make quicker work of your more challenging matches!

Last week we discussed the (very!) basics of DNA testing, and we’re going to take that jumping off point and walk you through how we identify our AncestryDNA matches.

So, congratulations you got your test results back! Now what?

Check out our Ethnicity, and then move on

We wrote extensively why Ethnicity is not a valid part of genealogy and it often does more have than good (It’s time to stop giving attention to “Ethnicity” and genetic admixture), but everyone wants to look at it first (including us!), so give it a read through…and then be done with it. You can go back when you’re bored, but for now let’s get to some real work!

Export your results to GEDmatch

AncestryDNA has the largest DNA database, and the largest set of trees to help establish DNA matches, but their toolset isn’t even basic. Their tools are essentially non-existent. GEDmatch is a free site that provides a great tool set, and results there are used for some of the most important tools you’ll use as you progress deeper in mining your DNA matches. Plus, tests from all of the major sites can be compared on GEDmatch, so you will find 23andMe and Family Tree DNA kits matched to your AncestryDNA there. You’ll also get direct email addresses to your match!

Fair warning however, this is a publicly accessible database that’s specifically used to allow strangers to find your DNA and match it to theirs. This is the tool that’s being used by law enforcement to close cold murder and rape cases, and some people are worried about how publicly accessible their data may be. We don’t share those concerns, and we’re comfortable with their privacy policy and we know we can permanently take our data down if we want to (they do NOT share your raw DNA data, only provide matching segments), so the work we can do there is worth the trade-offs. We wrote about this when the Golden State Killer was ID’d off of GENmatch (Family History is a hobby…but DNA is serious business).

Assuming you want to move forward, we suggest that you start the transfer process first thing since it will take a few days for GEDmatch to full analyze your Raw DNA data.

To download your data from AncestryDNA, follow the instructions here: Download your DNA results

To upload your data to GEDmatch, follow the instructions here: Upload your AncestryDNA results to GEDmatch

We’ll come back to GEDmatch in a future post in this series, as we dive deeper into some of the great tools available there.

Evaluating your matches

Now, let’s get to the first matches! That first look at what’s likely to be 2000-3000 DNA matches is overwhelming, but we’re going to break everything into smaller and smaller bits until we can really start to leverage these matches.

If you followed our Part 1 advice of building our your tree to your 4xGGP, with any luck you’ll now have matches with “Hints” (indicated by the little shaky leaf next to the “Match” button). In the “Filter’s” section, click on Hints, and it should show you only your matches with the shaky leaf. When you click “View Match” button, the path of connection between you and your match should come up.

In the example to the left, our Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) is our Great Grandparents, and Ancestry has mapped out each of the steps between us. Given AncestryDNA’s limited tool set, we only have a few ways to successfully build out our matches. The first of these was Hints, the next one we’ll use is “Notes”

How to use “Notes” to quickly identify your matches

There are literally a million ways of using the Notes fields in AncestryDNA, and we don’t claim this to be the best way…or even a good way. It’s just the way we’ve found most helpful.

For each MRCA we assign a Line #, and in this example Charles and Rhoda Smith are Line 11. This is the note we’ll use:

Rick-MMF (Not Researched, Charles Henry Smith and Rhoda Upper) – Line 11

Which breaks down as:

Rick-MMF – We do our genealogy from the standpoint of our son, Michael, and so this helps quickly identify that the match on Michael’s Father’s Mother’s Mother’s Father’s line.
Not Researched – Ancestry, or other quick research like a “Notes” entry has said this is a match, but we haven’t gone through yet and confirmed the genealogy nor have we added this match to our tree yet.
Charles Henry Smith and Rhoda Upper – The Most Recent Common Ancestor (MCRA) between us and our match.
Line 11 – The line # for these MCRA’s.

These notes help us quickly identify the MCRA for unmatched DNA matches, they quickly identify the matches we need to work to make official, and they give us line numbers we can use later to search for all matches with the same MCRA.

An example of how we use these Notes

After we’re done identifying and validating all of the DNA matches with Hints, and we start trying to identify how other matches tie into us, and what we can learn from those ties, we’re going to start with some very limited ways to identify the MCRA and/or the path to that MCRA. In this example we have a DNA match that has an unlinked Public tree, but with a strong 48 cM of shared DNA.

When we click through to the test page, and select the unlinked tree, we find a dead-end: everyone is Private.

In GEDmatch we’d have a series of tools we could use to narrow down this match, but in AncestryDNA we can’t tell if this match is even Paternal vs. Maternal. But, if we go into the “Shared Matched” and look for any kits listed there that have a Note, we can click the note and see who they match. In this case, they match our Lila Miller match, which has the note we made before attached, so we know this match also is likely to be on Rick’s MMF’s line, and that they are also on Line 11. We will make the same note in this match, and return to our searching.

These notes will be invaluable as we get into the next installment of “Making the Most of your AncestryDNA Matches”, and use Ancestry as deeply as we can to build out/prove our family trees.

Until next week, update all of your Hints with the proper Notes, and we’ll start blazing new trails!

How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 1 – Getting started

As we approach Christmas 2018, and given the massive push to have cheap DNA tests given out as gifts this season, it seems natural to finally write a series on how to make genealogical use of a DNA test you, or your loved one, may have just taken.

We’re going to start with the very basics on how DNA testing works, and walk through both how to leverage AncestryDNA to track down ancestors as well as using GEDmatch and other advanced tools to go even deeper.

Assuming you have a few weeks before the test results are in, here are a couple of things to learn and prepare before you dive into the matches.

First, understand that while the commercials like to highlight the joys of learning your ethnicity, DNA testing raises serious issues that will likely come up as your journey progresses. You may uncover family relationships, both inside and outside of your family, that could have serious negative impacts on people. We’ve uncovered children born outside of marriages that were never known to the family, and we know of adopted children who were outed by tests where their parents had never told them. We wrote about an example of this last year (Dangers of DNA Testing).

Second, they key to effectively making matches will be a good, solid family tree through the test subject’s 4x Great Grandparents. Most of your matches made will be through 3x or 4x GGP, and in a perfect world the match will also have a good tree so the link will be obvious. We can’t over state this, or stress it enough: your success/failure of matching DNA tests from unknown relatives will rely on the quality and depth of your tree. We’ve walked through how to build a good “quick and dirty” Public tree on Ancestry (Building a good Public Ancestry.com tree – Part One: sources, citations, facts, and proof), and the process would be about the same on other sites, many of which are free.

It’s also important you have the tree available publicly…many of your interactions are going to be about exchanging trees to build a match. It’s ok if you have just a skeleton tree with basic information(names, date of birth/death, locations, children, etc.), but it will be key that you have something available publicly.

Finally, we covered some of the same advice we’re going to cover here previously, it’s not a bad idea to go through the highlights to get an idea of what to expect from your results. (What to expect from your genealogical DNA results).

Basics of DNA

The main new term/concept you’ll need for effective Genealogical DNA research is a measure of distance: centimorgan (cM). Now, it’s not technically distance…but for all intents and purposes, it’s used as a measure of distance.

What does cM measure?

Centimorgan measures length of DNA strands. More specifically, it will be used to measure the length of matching DNA segments between your test and a test that is a genetic match. For example, you have roughly 6800 cM if you take all 22 chromosomes and strung them out end-to-end, and your matches will have varying levels of matching DNA, measured by centimorgans.

How do we use centimorgans to identify matches?

Since you get about 50% of your DNA from each parent, your DNA tests will match a test from your parents with about 3400 cM. You will match a Grandparent with about 1700 cM (50% of your parent’s 50%). The more cM you match someone, the closer a relative they are, and the more likely that you will confirm a match with them.

We’ll use both charts from ISOSG (The Shared cM Project table) and an interactive version of that chart from the DNA Painter site (Shared cM Interactive Tool), which both break down the average cM to expect with various relatives, and helps us identify where to look to establish a match. For example, if a match is 311cM then we can guess they match the person with the DNA test at around a 1st or 2nd cousin…which means our common ancestor is likely a Grandparent or Great Grandparent, which narrows down our search!

What’s next?

So, there’s the first part of this DNA journey. There’s a little homework while you wait for the test results, a basic understanding about how we’ll actually leverage the DNA to make matches, and why your basicGenealogy and a solid family tree will be key to this process. Next week, we’ll go over what to do when you first get your DNA results!

Next installment: How to make the most of your AncestryDNA matches: Part 2 – Leveraging your strongest matches to make quicker work of your more challenging matches!

How to leverage the power of deed records in Family History research

This post takes a little journey to get to the point…but we think it’s worth the trip, and it should help demonstrate the power of old property records. In case you missed it, we’re building off of last week’s review of DeedMapper (Product Review: DeedMapper 4.2 – An essential tool to bring land purchases/sales into your Family History research)

Deed Books are a great tool to move forward some of your most stubborn research questions, and there is a great deal of data in them, but without a tool like DeedMapper you’re likely not going to get the full picture of what’s found in them!

On Michael’s paternal line, the Tradewell’s are one of the two brickwalls left on that side of the tree…which is all the more ironic because the matriarch of family history research on that line was Myra (Tradewell) Morse (1870-1962). In all of her genealogy notes, and DAR applications, and family history presentations she never recorded the name of her Great Grandfather…and thus we have a brick wall.

About a year and a half ago we wrote about discovering formal genealogical “Research Reports” (Elizabeth Shown Mills has just the right guidance at just the right time!) and started drafting them for our toughest cases. Of course, the Tradewell line was the first subject. We knew that James B Tradewell is our 4x GGF and that he arrived in Racine County, Wisconsin Territory ca. 1844, where he and his wife Catherine lived until their deaths. We also knew that there was an Ephraim Tradewell, and his wife Marina, also arrived in Racine County around 1844, and that both men listed New York as their birth location. A little research showed that there were a James B and Ephraim Tradewell in Schoharie County, New York for the 1820, 1830, and 1840 U.S. Census but each disappeared after that and no further records were found for them there.

We wrote an “Analysis and Research Plan” for them, and it laid out the following questions we’d hoped to answer:

Were the James B and Ephraim Tradewell in Wisconsin from after 1844 the same men as those listed in the 1820-1840 U.S. Census in Schoharie County, New York?
Were they related, and/or did they even know each other?
Who was each of their fathers, and was either of those persons the brickwall 5x GGF?

Reviewing the Schoharie County Deed Books for 1797-1850 gave us some of the answers, and DeedMapper filled in a major piece of the puzzle.

Were the Wisconsin Tradewells the same as the New York Tradewells?

The answer is now a proven yes! Deeds were usually recorded with the Husband as the only purchaser, but almost always the wife is listed when a property is sold. In fact, every Deed we reviewed where we know we had an ancestor selling property, the wife isn’t just listed, there’s a statement from the County Clerk that recorded the deed that the wife was taken aside out of the presence of her husband to confirm she was willingly agreeing to the transaction. Besides making us wonder if any wife EVER felt empowered enough to say “no”, several sales gave us the names of the New York Tradewell’s wives: James B Tradewell was married to Catherine (Edwards) Tradewell, and Ephraim was married to Marina Tradewell. A perfect match!

We also saw a clean break in New York, with the last Tradewell land transaction completed in the summer of 1842, and the first Wisconsin transaction being conducted in 1844.

Were James and Ephraim related, and/or did they even know each other?

We still do not know if they were related, but we know they were likely very close and in fact lived next to each other…and we never would have known that without DeedMaker. Just reviewing the Deed Books, we learned that they were involved in one land transaction that indicates they were likely in a close relationship. On 7 April 1838 James sold Lot #7 of “Tradewell’s Tavern Stand” in Gilboa, NY to Ephraim for $200. Two weeks later, on 21 April 1838 Ephraim sold the same property to Sidney Tuttle for $200. We’re not sure exactly what was going on there, but it’s very likely there was coordination between the men for this to occur.

But what really sold us on DeedMapper, was what happened when we mapped all the plots we discovered in the 1797-1845 Deed Books. The biggest breakthrough came when we first mapped two properties, with no common points in their Legal Description, and they clearly fit together. Without sharing Metes & Bounds points in the description (like a Willow Tree), there’s no easy way to determine how they relate, but when you map them visually you can see them like jigsaw puzzle pieces and get a great feeling of location for the land.

Once we had those two properties mapped (both were owned by James B Tradewell and recorded in 1806), we drew another plot owned by Ephraim (recorded 1834) and we immediately knew they lived together as neighbors with an adjoining property line.

Here is the first Legal Description for James’ largest plot:

Beginning at a Willow tree near the Schoharie Creek marked on the east side with the Letters C.E. and runs thence south 15 degrees east 10 chains and 60 links, thence East 25 chains, thence north 21 degrees 30 minutes east 32 Chains, thence north 10 chains 50 links, thence west 17 chains and 50 links to the Schoharie creek, thence along said creek to the place of beginning containing 117 acres of land be the same more or less.

And here is the Legal Description for Ephraim’s plot:

Beginning at a hemlock sapling on the East side of Schoharie Creek marked on 4 sides with 3 notches and a blaze on the North side B.H, on the South side I.D. and runs thence North 30 degrees East 8 chains, thence, North 24 degrees West 12 chains, thence, due West 25 chains, thence, North 15 West 10 chains 60 links, thence, South 41 degrees West 12 chains to the west side of said creek, thence, South 2 degrees West 5 chains 75 links, hence, North 52 degrees East 2 chains, thence South 62 degrees East 6 chains to the North East side of said creek, thence, up said creek to the place of beginning.

These two plots, recorded almost 30 years apart, and showing no common marker other than Schoharie Creek, when drawn, revealed just how closely these men lived:

Tradewell Map — The pink lines are the boundries of Ephraim Tradewell’s property, the black lines are James B Tradewell’s two plots. (Note: The maps don’t fit perfectly the boundary lines, because they specifically reference the edge of a creek that no longer exists and likely changed frequently after floods, etc.)

The beauty of DeedMapper is that this is first time we worked with Metes & Bounds land descriptions, the first time we’d recorded large amounts of deed information, and this was the 3^rd time we’d ever entered information into the software. We literally knew almost nothing about what we were doing, and DeedMapper brought home how closely these men lived.

Now, it doesn’t prove James and Ephraim were related, and it’s likely only DNA will ever do that, but there is now no question these men had a close relationship. They weren’t distant cousins that lived miles apart in the same County, their families lived right next to each other.

Who was their father?

We still don’t know. This creek that’s referenced in so many of the deeds was dammed up in the 1920’s to provide drinking water to New York City, and all of this land is under a reservoir. However, that project caused the local Gilboa cemetery to be relocated, which gave us strong evidence that our 5x GGP were Reuben and Esther Tradewell, and if we can ever prove that James and Ephraim were brothers, we’ll then likely know Ephraim’s father too.

So, Deed Books are a great tool to move forward some of your most stubborn research questions, and there is a great deal of data in them, but without a tool like DeedMapper you’re likely not going to get the full picture of what’s found in them!

Matching unmatched DNA matches by Casting a Wide Net, Part 6 – Our crazy attempt to leverage 288 DNA matches to expand our tree comes to it’s conclusion

In the five previous parts of this series: We identified a plan to tackle what looked like a large group of DNA matches (Part 1), we went through and tagged all 288 of our Ancestry DNA results that were related to a group of matches that had Woodley/Woodson surnames in their attached trees (Part 2), we then built out a common tree for as many of the matches as we could, to nail down common ancestors, and to gain clues on where these matches link up with our tree (Part 3), we used GEDmatch and DNApainter to target the most likely line of “Mary’s” that leads from her to the group of 12 DNA matches (Part 4), and last week we broke through a brick wall with some old fashioned genealogy (Part 5). In this installment, we wrap up the story of this journey and the lessons we’ve learned.

This journey also highlights the paradox of genealogical DNA: Your matches will come easiest on lines where you have a complete and accurate tree, but you’ll struggle to match those that are on the lines where you really need the help of DNA…because you don’t have a complete and accurate tree.

As we ended our last installment, we’d identified Sam Caswell’s wife as Annie (Moore) Caswell, daughter of Robert Moore and Henrietta (Bradford) Moore. We were able to quickly identify Henrietta’s mother, Sallie Bradford and five of Henrietta’s siblings. It was amazing, the links came easy, and the tree fell in-place just how you’d hope. The only problem was…we weren’t getting any closer to linking Roman and Mary Jones to “Mary”.

Going back to our work with the “What Are the Odds?” tool (Part 3), it’s 48 times more likely that “Mary” and Roman/Mary’s Most Recent Common Ancestor was our “Mary’s” 3x Great Grandparents, than it was her 2xGGP, and 77 times more likely that it was 3xGGP v. 4xGGP. That means Annie (Moore) Caswell’s parent all but needed to be the MRCA. One thing became increasingly clear as we shrubbed out our tree with the new information: Sam and Annie weren’t a link to Roman and Mary Jones.

Roman Jones was born around 1840, and his wife Mary was born around 1838. Annie (Moore) Caswell parents were both born around 1880, and for them to share parents would be…incredible. We looked back a generation (hoping to defy the 48 times odds!), and the lines still didn’t match. We had good info on “Mary’s” 4xGGM Henrietta Bradford and her siblings…and while we couldn’t rule it completely out, it was very likely she wasn’t a link to the Jones either.

We went back to review everything we had on Annie Caswell, and in the 1910 U.S. Census it jumped out at us: Sam and Annie listed themselves as having no children, despite the fact that Mattie would have been 7 years old. She also indicated that she never had children.

When we looked at our notes, and research we realized we fell in the most basic trap in genealogy research: we had accepted family lore as fact, and built around that “fact”. We had an uncle that had done some basic Ancestry-based research, and when we first built out a skeleton tree, we’d used his info as the bones of the Caswell line. We had all the right facts on Mattie Caswell, we had all the right facts on Sam Caswell and Annie (Moore) Caswell…but we’d never proven their link. We went back and reviewed the transcripts of other family interviews we’d done with Mattie’s granddaughter (and others) about 4 years ago and there it was. They described that Mattie’s mother had died soon after Mattie’s birth, and her father died soon after. Mattie had been raised by others, her parents weren’t Sam and Annie, and the brick wall we’d broken through wasn’t ours…in-fact it wasn’t anyone’s, since they never had children who would be researching their ancestors.

So what did we learn in all of this?

The crazy strategy of casting a wide net across 288 DNA matches worked..even though it was a LOT of work.
We identified a key ancestor, and we know where we can expect the MCRA to fall in our line once we know more about our line.
In the end, no matter how high-tech genealogy research becomes with DNA, it still comes back to the basics of a solid tree, with strong evidence, supported by old fashioned family history research. Without a solid tree, we can’t take full advantage of DNA links.