MyTreeTags, ThruLines, and a Major Discovery

*taps mic*

Is this thing on?

Seems to be.

All right. Let's get into it.

Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. I went offline long enough for my entire site to go down for quite some time. I'm currently getting things fixed up and running again. It will take some time. I have a huge backlog of messages and issues on various platforms to address. I'm working my way through them and I appreciate your patience while I do so.

Where have I been?

Dealing with a lot of the issues I talked about in my last post on family fragmentation and revisionism. That post was autobiographical. The 2016 US election and COVID-19 have done permanent damage to several relationships in my family. Doing genealogy, in light of those conflicts and fractures, became incredibly painful. For my own health, I had to step away. 

Healing has been slow to come, so my reentry from that hiatus has been gradual. But in the short time I've been back, I've started several new projects and made a major discovery on one of my longest standing mysteries.

Let's talk about it.

MyTreeTags

I missed the major updates that Ancestry has been doing to their tree tagging system. The last time I was using them, the only utility I had for them was marking off folks in my tree as "DNA Match" whenever I successfully identified them on one of the DNA testing services and could put them in my tree. The obvious problem with that system is all the matches from the testing companies I use are mixed together, with no easy way to sort or target them.

That is, until now.

Ancestry's MyTreeTags added custom tagging at some point, which means I now have tags for all the testing companies and matching services where my DNA exists. I can now tell, at a glance, which matches are from which services, and which ones are available on multiples services.

My Access database was born out of a desire to have this information from all of the various testing services in one place. Ancestry has made the tree I work in the most the ideal place to store and handle this information now.

Documenting Slavery and Freedom using MyTreeTags

Additionally, Ancestry has added more Life Experience tags, including ones for slave holders. I spent an entire weekend documenting the slaveholders in my tree across the American South. It's the most comprehensive effort anyone in my family has ever taken to accurately document slavery. Because the slave schedules in the US censuses of 1850 and 1860 provide only first and last names of the owners, these records need to be cross referenced with other records to positively identify both the enslavers and the enslaved. It's an ongoing project that took me through wills, vital records, and various other record collections in the communities I research, trying to figure out how to identify the names of people enslaved by my family and to make that information accessible to researchers who need it.

On deck, I have other Ancestry default tags to utilize, including for the Free People of Color in my tree. I've been slow to circle back around to it because the tree tags aren't accessible on the Ancestry app, which is something I definitely need future updates to address. These tags are so much a part of my work process now, it's a huge inconvenience not to have access to them on my phone.

Other Opportunities to Use MyTreeTags

Other tags I will eventually use: Immigrants, Military Service, the Adoption tags, and the ones that indicate when a person Never Married or had No Children. There are several places in my family where aunts raised generations of children in my family that could easily be mistaken for their own.

I think it's also worth creating and documenting the LGBTQ+ folks in my tree with their own tag or tags. How to implement that is something I'm going to put more thought into and explore with other researchers before implementing it to make sure I do it in the most respectful way possible. It's a feature I'd love to see Ancestry adopt themselves to remind all family researchers that LGBTQ+ people have always existed and they deserve to be identified correctly and remembered for who they were and who they loved.

Using ThruLines and Common Ancestor Hints to Trace Private Trees

At some point, these ThruLines got good enough to document relationships to cousin matches with private trees. I have had cousin matches on my AncestryDNA match list that have been there for years, never being positively identified. Using the Shared Matches tab, I had a pretty good idea how several of them were related to me. But I recently discovered that once these relative matches have a Common Ancestor hint, clicking on View Relationship enters a space that uses public trees to provide match details to aid in identification.

When working on documenting matches from my DNA about a week ago, I saw multiple instances where my own descendancy research in my tree filled in the blanks on the Common Ancestor page. I was able to work down to the relative match, with the assistance of the algorithm, then use public records to identify them and add them to my tree. I've operated for years off of the assumption that the more information I fed to the algorithm through my own tree, the more heavy lifting it would ultimately do for me. I'm seeing now that this is coming to fruition in how I can now process matches with private trees.

I'm not entirely sure how this works. But based on the information that was being filled in for me, it appears to use a combination of other public trees, as well as information in my own tree, to populate the lineage from the Common Ancestor hint to the cousin match. It's especially effective, however, when the information is in my personal tree. In one instance, I knew I wasn't going to be able to deduce the mother for one of my relative matches on my own. I added all the siblings for that generation of the mother's family to my tree anyway. I was surprised to see the Common Ancestor match filled in which of the siblings was the match's mother. The algorithm gave me that confirmation simply because she was in my tree, even though the cousin match was not. 

I'm fairly certain that the anonymization of living people applies in these cases, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm also unsure how much of what I was seeing was the algorithm using the information in my own tree to help me identify this match locally, without necessarily sending that confirmation to other people on the platform. I do have questions about this because there were instances where the lineage the algorithm was populating for me was pulling information from other public trees. Does it do that with my public tree and all of the descendancy research I've been feeding to it? If I input this person and their connection to me into my tree, how much of that information gets fed to other AncestryDNA users via their Common Ancestor hints?

I'll be honest: I'm not asking because I care. But there are a lot of people with private trees connected to their DNA who definitely care about these answers. I don't think it's clearly understood how much the algorithm is working around their privacy settings right now. The only thing that seems to be off the table, from what I've seen, is an actual positive ID of the match themselves. But depending on what information they provide about themselves on their AncestryDNA page through their username, personal details, and location, even that's not a guarantee. 

I identified at least half a dozen matches this way that have been sitting unconfirmed in my match list for years. Maybe this isn't news to anyone else and I'm simply the last one to know. But somehow, I don't think so.

To target these kinds of matches, activate the Common Ancestor filter and the Private Tree filters at the same time. Since the layout on these Common Ancestor hints is identical to the ThruLines interface, I suspect the two of them are connected and they work together to make this happen.

What does this mean? It means having a private tree attached to DNA results can be functionally meaningless in certain situations. And while I find that to be incredibly convenient and exciting for me and my purposes, it's pretty important for folks who think they're keeping secrets and protecting privacy in their private trees to realize it doesn't work that way once you connect them to your DNA results.

The Major Discovery

I started doing genealogy when I was 14 years old. I still have the first pedigree chart I ever made, handwritten, in the back of the journal I kept at the time. That pedigree chart had two blanks on it, which I've been trying to fill for eighteen years.

I filled the one years ago when I identified my maternal grandmother's birth father. My paternal grandmother's birth father was the only one who was still missing.

That is, until a couple weeks ago.

Because of DNA matching, I had my paternal grandmother's birth father narrowed down to four brothers in a family from Ontario, Canada. I had matches to three of the four brothers on AncestryDNA and had been trying to narrow it down further from there. With my own match, the centimorgans were inconclusive, being indicative of too many possible relationships to be useful by itself.

Then my sister tested. Her match to the daughter in Canada was significantly higher than mine. But before I tried to call it confirmed, I wanted to be sure.

A couple of months ago, one of my cousins in Canada took an AncestryDNA test. His match was high enough that it became clear that this woman was our grandmother's half sister. It's physically impossible for any other relationship to align with our centimorgans, age differences, and generational compositions, which is why the technique of triangulation is so valuable. While there were many explanations for my singular connection to this woman in Canada, there is only one that explains the relationship between her, me, my sister, and my first cousin.

After eighteen years of searching, the blank in our tree has been definitively filled because of DNA testing. At 32 years old, I can fill out a four generation pedigree chart accurately for the first time in my life. That may not be a big deal to some people, but it's a tremendously big deal to me. It's what 14 year-old me set out to do at the outset of this journey almost two decades ago.

I'm proud of her for taking the first step, and I'm proud of me for sticking with it for as long as it took to make this happen.

Linking Trees and DNA Results Together

When your tree has large families in it, working some cases with DNA testing takes a long time. Especially when you're trying to help someone with a Non-Paternity Event (NPE), you can easily dedicate weeks, months, or even years from start to finish on a single project. So anything you can do to create shortcuts for yourself is time well spent.

Because honestly. How many times has this (or some version of it) happened to you?

Okay, today's the day I'm finally going to fill in this blank on my family tree. Let me pull up those cousin matches I found last week that I want to look at again. Shoot. Can't find them. What was that surname they had I thought looked familiar? I think I have it in my tree. Let me open that, too. Was it in this census record? OH! This neighbor's surname looks familiar! I saw that on one of my cousin matches' pages! 

But that was 20 minutes ago, and I have no idea which one it was.

I'm over it just thinking about it.

Bouncing back and forth between our trees and our cousin match pages is part of this process of solving family mysteries with DNA. But keeping track of all the moving pieces becomes really hard, especially as we're managing lists for multiple relatives who have tested. So how can we do this more efficiently? How can we make the seams between our cousin matches and our trees disappear? That was my question as I added 23 and Me as the final player in my testing lineup. And I believe I've found the solution I was looking for.

I'm going to gear these suggestions towards Ancestry/AncestryDNA and their tree building platform, but much of what I'm about to share will work on others too. I checked MyHeritage, and they have similar functionality in their tree builder. Many other tree building websites, apps, and hordes of desktop software will as well. But to achieve the full end result I'm going to discuss in my approach, you'll want to use a web-based option, for reasons that will become clear later on.

Using the Notes Section

In an Ancestry tree, every person has a personal landing page. From that page, you can access all kinds of tools that Ancestry has tucked away. One of those tools is the Notes feature. To use them, you first need to activate the hidden toolbar so you can see them.

Notes are private places to leave plain text information for each person in your tree. Some people use them for research logs. Others use them to record private information that needs to be remembered, but not broadcast to the rest of the world. I've seen others use them to transcribe and annotate all the sources they've attached to the person. (If you're already using them for one of these purposes, sit tight. I have an alternative solution for you that I'll cover in a bit.)

For most people, however, opening the Notes section is going to give you a blank slate.

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know I advocate for having a separate tree strictly for tracing biological relationships. Every time you find and confirm a DNA match, it's wise to add that information to this tree. For each confirmed match you have on your DNA match list, ideally there would be a corresponding person in your biological tree.

And it eliminates a lot of confusion when your biological tree is the one linked to your DNA match results.

Stop! Attaching! Your DNA! to Trees! that Don't! Belong! to You!

So you've been working through your cousin match list, and you've found some relatives that you recognize. Maybe even some others that are more distantly related. You want to keep track of this information because it won't be long until there's too much information to remember. So let's make things easier and tie knots at both ends, as it were.

Open the DNA match page for the person in the AncestryDNA interface. In this example, I'm using the entry for one of my close relatives.






I copy the link from their tree page and paste it into the Notes section of their AncestryDNA page.

Then I copy the link from their AncestryDNA page and paste it into the Notes section on my tree.

No more hunting to get back to a match I can't find on AncestryDNA. No more wondering if the person in my tree is the same one from my DNA match list or not. I'm still in the process of setting this up, and I've already come across so many lines in my tree that are missing. And since every testing service (except Family Tree DNA) creates unique URLs for each of their cousin match results, you can add testing data from MyHeritage DNA and 23 and Me to your notes in a similar fashion.

Bonus Tip: Link from the Ancestry Profile page instead of the AncestryDNA match result

Another option for creating these links from AncestryDNA is to click on the person's name to go to their Ancestry Profile page instead. Well, most of the time you'll click on the person's name—unless they have a "managed by" link instead.

Clicking on whichever one they have will take you to the Ancestry Profile page of the person who either took the test, or the one who administers it. If you'd rather use this page, copy the URL from this page and paste it into your tree instead.

This is an especially useful thing to do if you manage multiple tests, or the person you're linking to does, as is the case on both sides with this particular relative. On this page, I can see all the tests she administers and compare them to each of the tests I manage. Since I manage four kits of my own at this point, this saves me a lot of time. And in the event that my relatives take or administer more tests, I'll be able to see that any time I click this link. If I linked to the individual match result, I'd lose out on a lot of that additional functionality.

Using Web Links

If you're already using your Notes section for something else, you have another option. If you scroll down to the Web Links section of the person's tree page, you can enter the URL link for the match there instead. Label it "AncestryDNA" rather than something like "DNA test" to distinguish it from others you might add in the future from other sites.

And before you panic and think putting these URLs in your tree means anyone could see or use them, that is not the case. You must be logged into the respective accounts from each testing company for the URLs to open the match pages. The links are there purely for your own personal use and reference. Even if someone with full access to your tree clicked on these links, they'd be prompted to login before the sites will display the match.

A Greater Purpose

What I like about this approach is how it serves a two-fold purpose. Yes, it enables me to be as lazy as possible by making it easier for me to click on less things to get to where I want to be. It also provides the ability to solve another problem that really doesn't have any easy solutions.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about these DNA connections I work with, and how to give them permanence. I don't feel like our community has reconciled the absolute expectation on us to honor the privacy of DNA testers with the need to document the discoveries we're making because of them. We need the ability to record what we're learning, and to discuss the evidence we've used openly. For years, I've struggled to know how to do this without causing a maelstrom of personal attacks from others about being "careless" with other people's "private information."

Me to the people in comments. And on Twitter. And in my email. And on the internet in general.

But where did this illusion come from that anyone taking a DNA test gets to maintain ANY kind of privacy? Who lied to you? And do you realize how badly you've been lied to?

The fundamental transaction behind DNA testing is completely incongruent with privacy. In agreeing to take a DNA test, we trade away our right to privacy in exchange for knowledge. We can't have any illusions about that. There's no other way to interpret what we're after, and what we're giving up to obtain it. And if the people we're inviting to test have any other understanding about this transaction, we've promised them something that DNA testing is going to prevent us from delivering.

I don't have a perfect solution for how to reconcile privacy with documenting and discussing DNA as evidence. But creating a paper trail in our trees for these connections is a start, even if we're the only ones who can see them. Hopefully the act of writing down our findings will take away some of the stigma surrounding this issue, so we can all prepare ourselves to openly admit there is no other solution.

Genetic Genealogy Simplified: Intro to AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA is the Goliath of genetic genealogy. They broke 7 million testers in their database at the end of 2017, and will likely only continue to grow as we enter the 2018 holiday season. To give you an idea of how many people that is, it's roughly the population of the entire state of Arizona.

So what does this mean?

It means that more people than ever are taking AncestryDNA tests to learn something about themselves... and more people than ever are going to look at their ethnicity results and think, "That's it? That's what I paid all that money to find out?"

But it doesn't have to be that way!

The AncestryDNA test, like all genetic genealogy tests, does more than cheap scientific parlor tricks in estimating your ethnicity. It can tell you volumes about your genealogy, your personal history, and your connections to all the best highlights of history.

The trick is, it takes work. And time. And research.

All those commercials that told you finding out about yourself was as simple as spitting in a tube? Gimmick. Pure and simple.

 

But don't let that stop you! AncestryDNA has some amazing features, which I talk about in my newest video. There has never been a tool like it to document and discover the story of your family. And because DNA tells the stories that have been lost from memory and written records, it's likely the only way to find the secrets your ancestors took to their graves... or never knew about.

So if you're looking for a guide to AncestryDNA for beginners, look no further. Get ready to dig into all the best tips and tricks right here. And if you want to get even more bang for your buck, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more tutorials on all things genetic genealogy.

Downloading Your Raw Data from AncestryDNA

If you've tested your DNA with AncestryDNA, you might be wondering if you should invest even more money taking additional tests from other companies. If you're looking to find someone, or the answers to a very specific question, it can make sense to fish in as many ponds as you can access?

But why not see if the matches you're looking for are already available without having to spend that extra money?

That's where GEDmatch.com comes in. Because people from various testing companies have uploaded their results there, it's like taking multiple DNA tests for the price of one. And since you have upload your results there yourself, the people you reach out to are looking to make connections and actually write back to you!

But before you can upload your results to GEDmatch, you have to download your raw data from the AncestryDNA website first. And with this video, you'll know exactly where to go, what to click, and how to get the data that rightfully belongs to you.

Emily Michaels: Daughter of the Commonwealth

Do you ever fall so far behind on so many projects that you become crippled with indecision about where to begin and how to catch up? And the inability to make a decision means you willingly chase down every distraction you can find?

That's where I've been for several months on sharing one of my newest and greatest discoveries... because it's not quite finished yet. And maybe never will be.

As I've mentioned previously, neither one of my grandmothers knew their biological fathers. I've just talked about my maternal grandmother and her Italian roots. Finding that family and getting to know their story has been in the works for fifteen years, and has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I was walking on air for weeks afterwards, burying myself as deep into Italian research as I possibly could until I couldn't do anything else.

I was so hyped up on that discovery, I couldn't be stopped. I decided that once and for all, I was going to solve the mystery of my paternal grandmother too. And having ruled out the cousin matches from a major section of my tree, I felt confident that there was no reason I couldn't succeed. I didn't care how many nights of sleep I lost. I would do it because fifteen years is long enough to stare at a gaping hole in your family tree. I wanted that part of my identity to be filled in, and I was tired of waiting.

 So I spent hundreds of dollars on additional testing. I worked the DNA Day sales to death. I won't tell you how many kits I purchased. But I'd learned from researching my Italian family that the drop-off rate for cousin matches over even a single generation was much more than I imagined. It was likely my sample just wasn't pulling in the cousin matches I needed to solve the problem. I needed to fish in someone else's pond who had DNA I just didn't inherit.

My sister was among the people I tested. And sure enough, she had the matches I was missing. None of what I'm about to share would have come together without her. And true to the same pattern I followed with my mother's family, I found the ancestors I had in common with my cousin matches, then worked forward through their descendants until I arrived at the correct family who is related to me.

The unique thing about this case is that, in the process of doing that, I was actually able to document various older branches of this tree long before I narrowed Emily's connection to any specific list of men. And in many ways, I'm much more sure of my great grandfather's ancestors than I am of his identity at the moment, having documented his lineage across the Commonwealth.

Emily Michaels: She's British!

Let's pick up in 1939 in Ontario, Canada. That's where my grandmother Emily Michaels was born. She was born to Muriel Ince Michaels, who was abandoned by her husband several years previously, which I've talked about before. And unlike the rest of her Caribbean family, Muriel was the only person living in Ontario province. Everyone else was in Montreal, having moved there together from Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War II. Living apart from the entire extended family was not typical for them. How she came to be in the area surrounding Toronto and why is a mystery I've not yet solved. But I do know she gave birth there.

I may not know who her birth father is yet, but I do know who his parents are--and by extension, much of his heritage. To get to this point, I had to find the relationship between several different cousin matches I knew had to be related to Emily because they weren't related to anyone else. And for a long time I couldn't find any relationship between those matches, even though they were all supposed to be related. Then I got a much closer cousin match who tied them all together, and started working from her tree. If I could find the relationship between her and all our shared matches, I could narrow down who in her tree had to be Emily's birth father.

So that's what I did. I made a copy of her tree and went to work. The closer I looked at her tree and our shared matches, the more certain I was that I was on the right track. Based on the amount of DNA we shared and our relationship estimate, I was pretty sure I'd found our common ancestors. The only way for us to share the cousin matches we had, spread across England and Canada, was if she and I shared Charles Newman-Jones and Ada Cheffins in our trees.

Charles Richard Newman-Jones was born in Kent, England, which he left as a young man to start a new life in Canada. He met and married Ada Maud Cheffins, who descends from an English father and a mother whose stock goes back to early settlers in Canada. Charles and Ada were married in Regina, Saskatchewan, where they had their children and spent their lives together. They moved to the Northumberland region of Ontario some time between 1921 and 1924. Charles died and was buried in St. John's Anglican Church Cemetery in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada.

Put a pin in that last piece of information. We're going to come back to it.

They had four sons: Eric, Lewis, Charles, and Elton. I'm still working out which one of them is Emily's father and how he would have come to know Muriel. My theories up until now have all centered around brief encounters and accidental conception, with no further contact and a birth father who had no idea my grandmother existed.

The one thing that makes me question that now is a single record I never saw until after my grandmother passed away.

The Cradle Roll certificate for Emily Michaels
From Saint John's Anglican Church in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada

It took me a long time to figure out what this certificate was because I'd never heard of a Cradle Roll before. An archivist explained to me that it was a children's auxiliary in the Anglican church, and this certificate would have been issued after she was baptized. And you'll notice the church it was issued from is...

(Wait for it)

...Saint John's Anglican Church in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada.

Charles Newman-Jones was buried at the same church where my grandmother was baptized. Whatever the full story is, it's not as simple as a connection between two people who never saw each other again.

Getting Closer

The only way to narrow down the situation from here is to analyze DNA from descendants of each Charles and Ada's children. And to date, we've been able to document DNA from two of them. It may not be possible to obtain a sample from the youngest because he has no known biological descendants, having lived as an openly gay man. That is not to say he has no descendants. It would be inappropriate to exclude him from consideration based on his sexuality alone. Gay men throughout history have been involved with women and conceived children. But based on the conversations I've had with members of his extended family, they know of no children he may have had. And for all we know right now, my grandmother could be his only descendant.

It's strange to think that it's possible to fill in our family tree with perfect certainty around and beyond this one person because of DNA. Everything I've learned from traditional research is screaming at me that it shouldn't be possible to just skip a generation like this. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: DNA doesn't care about your feelings and hang-ups. All it can do is tell the truth.

And the truth is, the story that's emerging is stranger than fiction. And I can only hope that more answers are out there, just waiting to be uncovered.

Taking Risks

Talk to any genealogist, and they likely have a bucket list. That list of impossible dreams they hope to accomplish someday, provided they can ever get their act together enough to achieve the lofty goals they have set for themselves. The research trips they may never be able to afford. The compendium of knowledge they may not ever write. The unsolved mysteries they hope to put their names on as "the one who figured it all out." The innermost, heartfelt wishes of one introvert's strange little heart.

At the very top of my list was a single item: find my grandmother's birth father, and share that discovery with her while I still have the chance.

The possibility that I might be able to do this was why I took my DNA test years ago. It was the impetus behind giving my mother a test for Christmas last year. I've dedicated years of my life, literally hundreds of hours to research and training classes, trying to obtain the proficiency to make my goal even remotely realistic. I've spent countless hours combing through lists of cousin matches, carefully documenting each line of my family tree. And the waiting! The patience that goes into simply waiting for the right person to come along.

But I did it. I finally did it! I found him. And I've never been more proud of myself, and every person along the way who made this all possible. Every person in the genealogical community who has ever taught me, helped me, or invested in me. I couldn't have done this without all of you.

To talk about how it all happened, it probably helps to begin the story by telling you about Nancy. Nancy is the world's best DNA cousin match. She has a fully-documented public tree. She answered the message I sent her almost immediately. And she dug in with both hands to help me find the person I was looking for. I wouldn't be telling you this story right now if it wasn't for her.

Her tree was truly fabulous, and the records she had attached to it were the most extensive I'd ever seen in a tree that wasn't mine. Because she'd had multiple people tested, she approximated where in her tree we needed to start looking. Within a day or two of writing back and forth, I was combing through every inch of those lines. And the more I worked with the surnames I was seeing, the more other cousin matches began to appear.

In less than a week, I had the answer. The name from my grandmother's birth certificate was, in fact, real. Horribly misspelled, and the age of the man in question was very wrong. But there was no mistaking him. Immediately, I pulled his name up on a census record and just stared at it in disbelief.

Then I pulled up his obituary. It had a picture, so I could see his face. All the work I'd ever put into this weird hobby of mine had directly led to this. This moment I never thought would happen, and I will never forget for as long as I live.

I called my mom to tell her the news. She was still figuring out how to log into the Ancestry app on her phone when I came to her with the answer.

"You told me to take the test," she said in disbelief. "You didn't say it was actually going to work!"

It's one thing to be able to put together a discovery from the privacy of your own couch. It's another thing to reach out to someone else's family with what you've found. From the obituary, I knew my grandmother had some half siblings. I knew roughly where they lived. So I took a wild stab in the dark and checked the phone book. Sure enough, I had addresses for all three of her half siblings.

The secret to having nerve is to act without thinking, which usually means taking a series of actions before your brain can get you to stop. So without thinking, I wrote three letters--front and back of a single handwritten page. I put them in an envelope, one for each sibling. I was putting stamps on them by the time my brain managed to catch up to me.

I don't know how long I sat at my dining room table, staring at the three envelopes in my hand. What were the consequences of what I was about to do? What impact would these letters have on the people I was about to send them to? Would they be excited? Devastated? Angry? Suspicious? What if I was on the verge of ruining someone's life? What if I got no answer? Was I going to be okay living with whatever reaction I was going to get?

This post, as much as it's about finding this connection, is even more about this single decision. I've come to refer to it in my own mind as a Hail Mary pass--the impossible shot. The decision to do something that you can never take back, to put yourself out there, to believe in a stranger, to take a risk for the sake of a new discovery. No amount of research, education, or training can tell you what the right thing to do is in that moment. And finding the courage to act, when every risk-averse part of your brain is screaming out for you to stop, is a weird kind of skill all its own.

And I got lucky. The people on the other end of my Hail Mary pass were delighted to reach out and talk to me. They were eager to share stories, photos, documents, and memories of the people who were only names to me in the beginning. They're becoming so much more than that now, and building this sense of kinship with new family is such a privilege. And of course, they had answers to questions and mysteries I was never going to solve without them. My only hope is to use what they've shared with me to give something as precious back to them as what they've given to me.

I still have a lot of work to do, forming new connections, doing loads of new research, sharing what I've found with families old and new. I don't know when I'll be back with more stories from this newest chapter in my genealogy journey. I can't wait to share what I'm finding as I uncover my Italian immigrant roots, and the adventures I'm having trying to work my way back into Italy.

If your family is from Naples, hit me up! I have questions!

But for anyone out there who is wondering whether the risks in genealogy are worth taking, especially in the era of DNA when what we have to discover can be so explosive, I don't have the answers. And there are all kinds of reasons to hesitate and re-think the risks we take in genealogy.

I just know that without risk, there's no chance of success or connection. And some dreams are incompatible with giving into any kind of fear.

Using Ancestry Tree Hints for DNA Discoveries

Here's a tip for those who have taken the AncestryDNA test, and are trying to solve a mystery for a particular missing ancestor.

I'm missing both of my biological great grandfathers in my tree, and I've been on the lookout for cousins who could possibly lead me to them. A while back I finally made a really good match to someone who HAS to be related to one of them. How do I know? Because she isn't related to anyone else in the other lines I've already documented. Let's call her Wanda, since that's not her real name.

I made a copy of Wanda's tree to work from, where I've done extensive amounts of descendancy research. Since I don't know who I'm looking for, I had to cast a really wide net. I have spent more time working on Wanda's tree over the past year than I have on my own. I probably know her extended family better than she does at this point.

Because, you know, genealogy is basically asking yourself "Would a stalker do this?"
Then doing that thing anyway.

The benefit of having my own copy of Wanda's tree means I get all the same Ancestry tree hints to her other cousins and relatives. That was how I found one of her maternal cousins, who shares both of Wanda's maternal grandparents. Let's call her Corrie.

This wasn't the first time I've combed through Ancestry tree hints looking for DNA matches. If I find a tree for another descendant, the first thing I'll usually do is click on their profile to see if they've tested. Sometimes I get lucky.

But most of the time, I see this page. 

Either the person hasn't tested, or I'm not related to him or her. Most of the time I'll move on when I see this. But when I saw Corrie's page, I just had to know. Has she really not tested, or are we not related to each other? If Corrie and I weren't related, that meant Wanda and I had to share a match on her paternal side. I would be one step closer to hitting paydirt.

I wrote Corrie a message, asking if she or her relatives had done any DNA testing. Not only had she done testing in her family, but she knew of several other relatives who had. She gave me screen names and kit numbers. I couldn't have asked for better collaboration on this. And I wasn't related to any of them. 

Through one conversation, I was able to eliminate all of Wanda's maternal ancestors as the potential relatives to my grandmothers. It's the biggest leap forward I've made so far, and it was with someone who wasn't even on my match list. Exactly BECAUSE she wasn't on my match list.

With DNA, every person you connect with is a chance for new discovery--whether they're related to you or not. By using Ancestry tree hints for DNA, you could be one step closer to finding your missing relatives.

Uploading Your Tree to GEDmatch

GEDmatch has become an essential tool to everyone who is serious about genetic genealogy. I'm not sure how many matches you have there. But the last time I saved my match list as a PDF, it was 23 pages long. And the last time I checked, the last page of matches stopped at about 10 cM. As more people take these tests and upload their raw data to GEDmatch, making traceable connections to our distant cousins becomes easier every day.

But are you taking full advantage of everything GEDmatch has to offer you? If you don't have a tree uploaded, the answer is "No!"

Why You Should Have a Tree on GEDmatch

In order to take full advantage of what genetic genealogy has to offer, you need three types of information:

1. Segment data
2. A tree
3. Shared matches

I like to compare this to a car. In order for a car to function, at the bare minimum it needs wheels, an engine, and a fuel source. Without any one of those elements, the car simply couldn't move. In genetic genealogy, these same three elements are THAT fundamental. Some testing companies create this data scarcity by not providing tools to convey this essential information to their users. And given that some of the newest testing companies are gravitating away from this bare minimum, it leaves some newcomers in our community at a disadvantage.

Whenever a testing company has refused to offer one of these necessities to its customers, GEDmatch has been the equalizer. AncestryDNA won't provide segment data? GEDmatch will do that. MyHeritage DNA won't provide segment data or shared matches? GEDmatch will do that. That same capacity for tree sharing is also available. The ability to cross reference people on all of the sites on which they've tested is there. But how many of us are taking advantage of it?

I've used trees on GEDmatch to match users there to their original testing companies. Once I know I have the right person on AncestryDNA, their shared matches become a powerful finding tool. I compare those shared matches to what I know about the segment data. A much clearer image of the relationships at work in my DNA begins to emerge. It makes my job on GEDmatch AND AncestryDNA easier. And when I invite these shared matches to upload to GEDmatch, and they accept that invitation, documenting and preserving this record becomes possible.

How to Upload a Tree to GEDmatch

Now that I've been focused on linking GEDmatch users to their original testing companies, I'm noticing a trend. Many who provide trees at their original testing companies haven't done so on GEDmatch. Some of these users may not realize the capability to add a tree exists, or how to do it. So I've made a video for our YouTube channel to explain the process.

The trees they produce are not fancy, by any stretch of the imagination. But they provide needed information to the discoveries we're all trying to make. If you haven't uploaded a gedcom to your GEDmatch kits, be sure to add one today!

Family Tree DNA: My Review

Over the past couple of years, you've gotten ample insight from yours truly on AncestryDNA and GEDmatch. Clearly, this conversation is incomplete without giving Family Tree DNA some long-overdue attention. So today, I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on their Family Finder/autosomal DNA test. Specifically, I'll be sharing my experience with their autosomal transfer service.

As I did in my AncestryDNA review and the follow-up, I'll be breaking down this review into a couple of different categories. I'll grade them individually, and average them together for a final score. Here are the categories:

• Cousin Matching
• Admixture
• Projects

I'm also giving them extra credit right out of the gate for offering the autosomal transfer at all. Their biggest weakness, at this stage of the game, is the size of their database of matches. It's difficult to compete with AncestryDNA's 4,000,000+ tests analyzed, especially with their last million being added between January and April of this year. Having such a common sense incentive for the customer is one of the industry's best bargains. If 23&Me would follow suit, I'd have a full house.

Cousin Matching: C+

There are so many different fronts to approach this from, so let's dive in! Family Tree DNA has an overall great interface. In my opinion, their interface has always been better than AncestryDNA. While the capability of Family Tree DNA's interface isn't as robust as GEDmatch, they have many more analysis tools to offer someone out of the gate than AncestryDNA does. And by using all of the features available on Family Tree DNA, I can see how it would help someone transition much more smoothly over to GEDmatch.

Family Tree DNA's match list is like GEDmatch's One-to-Many match list, on training wheels. It's a sortable table that allows you isolate matches in a variety of ways. You can click the column headers, which allow you to sort X-DNA matches to the top of the list. You can also use the "In Common With" button, to see which matches you share with a given relative. What AncestryDNA customers usually have to find on two different websites, Family Tree DNA has consolidated into one.

Their match list also has an additional field for surnames, which is unique to this site. Those surnames are searchable, as are your cousin matches. This feature is only available with users who fill out their profile, but many of the most active users fit that description. While I do like being able to sort by location on AncestryDNA and feel it is missing here, Family Tree DNA still has a running head start. They could easily add that functionality without a significant disruption to their interface. Which is still more than AncestryDNA can say when it comes to revisiting a cousin match. (Does anyone else realize you can use the Membership Directory to do this? Yeah, no one else does either.)

Family Tree DNA has a chromosome browser, which is also more than AncestryDNA can say. As nice as that is to have, it's actually my least favorite part of working with Family Tree DNA. However, the chromosome browser isn't the problem. It's how inefficiently it operates to do a very simple job.

I greatly dislike that this is the only way to access the full segment data for each match. To do this, I have to systematically input all 2700+ matches into the chromosome browser in batches of 5. And of course, there's literally no way to pull up 5 matches on the same chromosome in the chromosome browser. So they're just 5 random matches from an alphabetical list.

I click on each segment that appears, and copy the data from a pop-up box that has a nasty habit of disappearing if I click anywhere else. This is particularly annoying to do when the segments are small, and there are multiple segments to analyze for the same person. Since I also use Microsoft Access for my data entry, this means I have to move my Access window around my screen based on where the box appears. Many times, I lose the box while trying to situate my windows, and have to start all over again.

First World Rage!

This interface has so much potential, and has so many great features on it. I don't understand why they have it programmed to function only one way, which is the least efficient way possible. They have TWO other options through which they could present the segment data, and THIS is the one they chose. They have the match list and the Excel/CSV download feature they could be using instead.

As an Access user, I can't tell you how valuable it would be to me to export segment data on an Excel spreadsheet. I would be able to do a bulk import of segment data into Access. This would save me hundreds of hours of work, and allow me to spend more time on analysis instead of data entry. And really, what exactly is the purpose of exporting matches into an Excel spreadsheet without the segment data? Like so many things going on with Family Tree DNA, it's a fantastic idea that falls short in the execution.

[NOTE: When I used the Excel/CSV feature in preparation for this post, I used the link available from the Match List page. The matches exported from that page are as I described them: just about useless in every way. It provides the user's name, contact information, relationship estimates, and no full segment data. I didn't know that using the Excel/CSV link from the chromosome browser page would produce a different match list, which DOES include exact segment lengths and locations. The mistake here is mine, and I apologize for the confusion.

However, upon receiving this second match list, I find it equally dissatisfying for the following reasons: it does not include any of the pertinent identifying information from the previous list. It has an entire column dedicated solely to my name, and no contact information or relationship estimates. Having the relevant information I need broken up across two Excel workbooks does not, in fact, allow me to import that information into Access. And given that the segment data match list has matches smaller than 6 cM, I would have to manually remove each of them myself. According to my personal user needs, I'd like to see these two lists combined. And with the knowledge I have of DNA comparison, segments smaller than 5 cM are best removed from that match list.]

I'm also not a fan of Family Tree DNA's matching criteria. They give too much emphasis to smaller segments, with no way to set your own match criteria. With 2700+ matches to process on their website alone, I don't have time to waste with 5 and 6 cM matches. And yes, considering some of my research challenges, those matches are a waste of my time. The closest thing that Family Tree DNA has to custom match criteria is a drop down list of options on the chromosome browser. And since I haven't had anyone else closely related to me tested, most of the options are useless to me.

Family Tree DNA has room for improvement when it comes to cousin matching. But they're in a much better position to address those issues than AncestryDNA is, and I hope they recognize it. They have the potential to be a much more comprehensive service than AncestryDNA probably ever will be. What AncestryDNA has done by being the lowest of all possible fruit, Family Tree DNA can accomplish by superior performance.

Admixture: B-

It's no secret that I'm not the biggest fangirl of admixtures. We've all heard the wacky stories about how ethnicity estimates revealed that babies born a hundred years ago were switched at birth. But really, for most of us, ethnicity estimates don't have that kind of potential unless you're biologically diverse. Nevertheless, I was still curious to get a second opinion on my AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates.

European Ethnicity Estimates from AncestryDNA

myOrigins from Family Tree DNA

You'll note that there are some pretty large discrepancies here, including between ethnic groups that both companies test for. The largest disparity is the 26% Scandinavian from AncestryDNA, versus 0% from Family Tree DNA. With a difference that large, someone here is wrong. I don't have much of sense of who it could be. The more detailed view of the AncestryDNA test seems consistent with what I suspect about the unknown branches of my family. But without more traditional research and confirmation of details to back it up, it's not a question I can resolve myself right now.

I will say that unlike AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA has a separate, distinct testing region for South America. This was news to me, and has been added since I originally did the autosomal transfer. AncestryDNA treats the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America as one homogeneous region. As someone with Caribbean heritage, with rumors of Native American ancestry I was trying to squash, being able to distinguish the two is useful. Anyone with interests in these regions will receive more detailed results from Family Tree DNA than from AncestryDNA.

Projects: C

AncestryDNA has 4,000,000+ samples in their database. There's no escaping that fact. If Family Tree DNA is going to compete with the statistical probability of making a match, they need to deliver superior service. They can accomplish this by updating features they already have, and maximizing on AncestryDNA's weaknesses.

You can't make money if you don't exist.
#Duh

From what I can see, a significant portion of Family Tree DNA's attention is still focused on Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing. And before anyone challenges me about it, I recognize that these tests have their place. But those tests are niche at best, and stubbornly nostalgic at their worst. There is no sense in encouraging the average person, let alone a new customer, to spend hundreds of dollars on one line in their genome anymore. Commitments to niche tests take resources away from developing autosomal testing offerings. And anyone who isn't committing the lion share of their resources to autosomal testing is making a big mistake. They are going to seem crazy when they try to explain their reasoning in ten years, if they're still around to talk about it.

One example of where I see this happening is with their projects. They are most analogous feature they have to AncestryDNA's newest Genetic Communities. With Genetic Communities, AncestryDNA approximates the geographic regions your ancestors belonged to, based on DNA and family trees. Family Tree DNA has had this feature for years, with user-operated location, lineage, and surname projects. But it's still set up specifically from back in the day when Y and mT DNA tests were all the rage.

Why haven't these been upgraded to function with autosomal testing? They're literally sleeping on one of the biggest advantages they have over AncestryDNA. The might as well stand on a street corner and give away free money, for the amount of good it's doing them.

To those who have taken DNA tests, imagine being able to pull up a map to find collaborative discussions about the communities you care about most. Everyone there is specifically talking about DNA. As you scroll in deeper on the map, more specific projects appear, on state, county, or even the city level. Each one would have surname and lineage projects associated with it, with the ability to add more projects. As much as I enjoy Ancestry's Historic Insight tree hints, these don't create or engage people in conversation. Having projects based on historical events and common experiences would spark those conversations for DNA. And unlike Facebook, where a lot of these community-based conversations are happening right now, Family Tree DNA can integrate their features into these projects and conversations.

One of AncestryDNA's critical weaknesses is not fostering effective communication between it's users. They ignore this in favor of automating as much of their user's experience as possible. Family Tree DNA already has, as part of its offerings, the solution to this problem. But those features are only available for the most expensive, niche components of their offerings. (And that's if you don't want to go as far as I will, and say that Y and mT DNA are already dead.)

As a user experience and a business strategy, it simply makes zero sense. You can't be everything to everyone. It's the same trap that restaurants fall into when they have too many choices on their menu. Instead of trying to provide value through eleven different offerings and options, why not focus on the one thing that matters, and doing it the best way you know how?

Final Grade: B-

Out of the box, is Family Tree DNA a better service than AncestryDNA? In terms of the product they offer and the features that come with it, yes. But when you factor in the size the of their respective user bases and the company's ongoing leverage, the story changes. If you're going to compete with a much larger company, and a growing playing field with increasing amounts of competition, you have to focus on innovation. You can't rely solely on carrying obsolete products your competitors don't have, and charging more for them. That is not a strategy for growth. That's a memoir for Radio Shack.

The Eighties called.
They want their DNA test back.

But from where I'm sitting, there's no reason for Family Tree DNA to be in the position they're in. They have everything they need to give AncestryDNA a serious run for their money. They just aren't using any of it to their advantage. And as a customer who is approaching the decision about purchasing secondary kits for family members, I'm finding it difficult to decide who deserves my money more. The company that doesn't listen, or the company that is moving precariously close to the wrong meaning of "throwback"?

Some might say that "only time will tell," but I disagree. It isn't time that will tell. It will be innovation and common sense that determine the future of Family Tree DNA and their Family Finder test. And the silver lining here is that innovation and common sense are 100% within their control.

Your DNA Cousin Match Database: Getting Started with my Excel Template

A reader from a recent post requested a template for setting up a DNA matching database. Because it's quick and easy to set one up in Excel, I threw one together quickly. Please feel free to reuse for non-commercial purposes, but not to repost.

When you open this file, it's going to be a View Only file in my Google Drive. In order to use it yourself, you need to download it. The link to do so is on the top right corner, next to the Print option. You'll then be free to use it in Excel, or with whatever other spreadsheet software you want to use that is compatible with Microsoft Excel.

I've got the Filters already set up and enabled, which means you'll be able to sort and filter information when you analyze the data. In order to see those matches with the greatest similarity/longest segments, sort your Segment Length column from largest to smallest. If you want to see the other matches that might also connect to a given cousin on the same chromosome, sort the Starting or Ending Point from largest to smallest. Reading the ranges between these two numbers, determine where there may be overlap. Use the matching utilities from your testing company or analysis website of choice to determine whether a match exists. Record your findings in your Notes section. If you're able to determine who the common ancestor(s) are that you share with a match, record that information in the Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) column.

If you decide you want to move different columns around, or add more columns, I recommend turning off the Filters (highlight headers, Data > Filter button toggled off), changing things around, then turning the filters back on.

If you use the table in Excel, I've frozen the column headers, so they continue to show up as you scroll down through the data. To enable or disable this option, highlight the headers, go to View > Freeze Panes > Unfreeze Columns, Freeze Top Row, or Freeze First Column, according to what your preferences are. I don't know if this option works in Google Sheets or not, or in any other spreadsheet software. So bear that in mind.

However, now that I'm seeing this open in Google Sheets, I think anyone who decides to use this may want to consider using it there. Not only will this allow you to access your spreadsheet from multiple devices at once, the layout of the file itself is much nice in Sheets than in Excel. Because of the way Excel scrolls the tabs across the bottom of the screen, you have to click through a series of tabs over and over again to get from Chromosome 1 to Chromosome 22. In Google Sheets, however, all of the tabs display across the bottom without any of them being hidden. This may not be an issue, depending on the size of your monitor or display resolution. But definitely check around to see what you like/makes your life easier!

Let me know how it works out for you in the comments, and be sure to like and subscribe to our Genetic Genealogy series on YouTube!

AncestryDNA: A Year Later

As some of you may recall, I did a post about my initial experience with the AncestryDNA test. That post is more than a year old now, and AncestryDNA has undergone two major changes since then. There are new features to consider, and how they have fundamentally changed my experience with their DNA test.

Like last time, I wanted to give myself ample opportunity to use these new tools before doing a follow-up review. And unlike last time, I have something else to which I can compare my experience. Not only have I been using GEDmatch.com, I’ve also uploaded and unlocked my free trial matches at Family Tree DNA. While my experience with these sites have informed my perspective, I will try to save my comments on each of these sites for their own respective posts.

I won’t be reviewing the Ethnicity Estimates again, because my opinion of them has not changed.

Cousin Matching: C-

My experience with cousin matching has improved significantly. The first impact my DNA test has had on my tree came from using the tools at AncestryDNA. I began the process using the surname search, which is one of the best tools on AncestryDNA. It allows me to search through my cousin matches’ trees for a surname, a location, or both at the same time.

An example of the surname search, using the surname Halsey

I reached out to one of my cousins, then decided to compensate for her lack of response by researching her family tree for her. Thanks to what little information she provided on her parents, I was able to use obituaries and newspapers to trace her family until I arrived at our common ancestors. I never knew where they went after the 1920 census, and the answer was with her line of the family. They moved to Somerset County, Maryland. Her ancestor was the youngest sibling in a family I’d never realized had more children—the only ones still living with them ten years later at the time the 1930 census was taken.

The names and new census records were added to my tree—and my cousin is none the wiser. Which is probably for the best, because I don’t know how to explain to her what I did without using the words, “Don’t freak out, but I stalked you a little bit.”

A general lack of communication is still one of the predominate issues with DNA testing. This was my chief complaint in my previous review, and over time I've come to understand that this isn't a problem unique to AncestryDNA. With every DNA testing service to which I've been exposed, responses to inquiries are rare and wait times are long. It's the human element of the equation that no DNA testing company can control.

The surname search, plus some extra elbow grease, was enough to find the match between us. AncestryDNA deserves credit for that--and the maps, surname lists, the search functionality, and all of the other tools they've come up with to analyze your cousin match. But the set of tools AncestryDNA provides is still incomplete. The single greatest thing they can do to improve the cousin matching experience would be to have a chromosome browser. I still believe it's unadulterated stubbornness that perpetuates their refusal to build one. A chromosome browser, together with the other tools they provide, would make their DNA test a tour de force of unstoppable discovery.

I understand that people take DNA tests for different reasons. Based on my experience with reaching out, I'd say that more than half of the people with any genetic connection to me have no interest in collaboration. That means that more than half of the messages I send will never amount to anything. This makes me think that some people come into this relationship already knowing they don't wish to contribute. But rather than wasting my time lamenting about it, I'd rather we simply created a way to be upfront with each other.

What reaching out to DNA cousin matches feels like

In my mind, this situation could be handled with a single check box--either as part of the registration process, or a prompt to every person who is part of the AncestryDNA system. “I am currently interested in collaborating with other researchers for the purpose of finding our common ancestors.” Check yes or no. I envision this as a status update type of feature, where we all can act like grown ups and communicate our intentions from the outset. I'm even envisioning that after a person hasn't been active on AncestryDNA for more than 3 months, that status is automatically changed to "No."

Imagine being able to filter your cousin matches by the people who are actively using their DNA tests. No more wasting time sending messages to people who never had any intentions of responding to them. If we can't change other people's behavior, we can at least communicate the behavior we all intend to exhibit.

DNA Circles: C

This was the first of the two newest features to the AncestryDNA test since my last review. A DNA Circle is where AncestryDNA points out the people who share DNA with you, as well as a common person in your trees.

I questioned this feature when it first launched, because all it takes to throw it off is for several cousins to have the same wrong information in their trees. While the DNA Circle links people together with shared DNA, the DNA Circle does no good if the ancestor it claims to represent is wrong.

However, this is not entirely AncestryDNA’s fault. Relying on member trees as part of this process is necessary. Research will always be a part of genealogy, including genetic genealogy. It’s on us to do a better job with our research, so the matching algorithms can do a better job of connecting us together. Being more exact is a necessary part of that process.

Moving forward after my DNA test, I made a lot of changes to the way I used my Ancestry member tree. I created a second tree in which I placed biological relationships only. I removed all extraneous information, including photos, to streamline my work with this DNAonly tree. I expanded the scope of my research for this tree to include all descendants, all siblings and half siblings, second marriages--anyone with a biological link to my direct line ancestors. At the same time, I cleaned up the dates and places in the Facts section, since these drastically improve the Map tool for the cousin match tree comparison. If we want better quality DNA Circles, we each need to participate in some aggressive housecleaning.

What I dislike is how the DNA Circles come with a page for the common ancestor, and that page is a random assortment of stuff from the trees of everyone in the Circle. Photos, Stories, Facts, dates, and names become an unattractive, oftentimes inaccurate jumble of ugliness.

There are no source citations, no criteria for anything that is placed automatically on that page. Being able to clean up and correct these DNA Circle pages is a much needed feature. Unless we're trying to create the world's largest (and worst) Ancestry member tree.

Rather than seeing an assemblage of what everyone has collected on the DNA Circle, I’d rather start with a blank slate, to which my cousins and I may add information. Provide us with the ability to collaborate, allowing us to choose what to add to this ancestor's page. Make valid source citations a requirement for submitting anything to an Ancestor's DNA Circle page. Otherwise, it becomes a compounded source of ignorance instead of providing genuine insight.

In fact, increasing the quality of the DNA Circle ancestor pages and Ancestry member trees could go hand-in-hand. Ancestry.com currently provides shaky leaf hints to member trees, which have a certain reputation for being garbage. These hints and copying data from other member trees is how errors spread and become entrenched in the family consciousness. Instead, why not hint everyone to the DNA Circle page? Let it become the single, authoritative source for researchers as they assemble their trees together--whether they've taken a DNA test or not. I'd much rather be introduced to cousins who haven't tested yet this way. If/when they do take an AncestryDNA test, I'll already know who they are!

I'd also like to see some better communication tools for the purposes of DNA collaboration. With each DNA Circle page, I envision a Google Hangouts-style interface which would foster online meet-ups/family reunions, group research discussions, and individual conversations between descendants. These meetings could be private, or publicly stored as part of the DNA Circle page.

A DNA Circle as it stands now seeks to reconstruct the identity of the dead. In order to do the greatest good, it should foster communication and a sense of kinship among the living.

Ancestor Discoveries: C+

Of all the new features on AncestryDNA, this one has me the most excited. This feature has done great things for me already, despite the accuracy shortcomings of the DNA Circles. Over time, I imagine this being one of AncestryDNA’s biggest assets—the thing that sets them apart from other testing services and websites.

So imagine a DNA Circle has been formed for an ancestor. It’s well established, and there are plenty of cousins all matched together. The only thing missing is you, because you share the same DNA as everyone else in the Circle. But the matching algorithm hasn’t matched you to the Circle, because you don’t have the ancestor in your tree yet.

Bummer, right?

Not anymore!

Ancestor Discoveries is intended to do exactly that. It has already done this for me. My Greene family is a hot mess. That’s what happens when the courthouse that services your ancestors burns down… Twice. I was stuck on Henry Greene for ages, until the Ancestor Discovery for his grandparents came along. I did the research to back up the information, because I know better than to believe people on the Internet. I had to go into some unusual places to find the evidence I needed, but finding it was a direct consequence of my Ancestor Discoveries. In terms of results, it really has delivered.

Part of why I like the direction AncestryDNA is going with Ancestor Discoveries is because the lovely so-and-so's with private trees are included. If they fit into a DNA Circle, they become a part of my potential Ancestor Discoveries. Everyone else with a private tree that isn't connected to a DNA Circle can be triangulated via the Shared Matches tab on their cousin match page. I now expend less effort on figuring out where these people fit into the puzzle, and move on to other research problems. AncestryDNA is figuring out ways to avoid giving me an inferior product because of someone else's privacy settings. As one of my chief complaints from my first review, the privacy settings of other users is one of AncestryDNA's areas of greatest improvement.

My only complaint regarding the Ancestor Discoveries is one specific place I've seen it fall apart. To put it delicately, I come from Southern communities in which endogamy was a common practice. I'm one of the lucky ones whose ancestors moved away before the family tree got too tangled, and our current generation is far removed from it. But some of my cousins who are still living in these communities haven't been so fortunate. I connect to them in a multitude of places. We have multiple sets of common ancestors. How well do the Ancestor Discoveries reflect situations like these? Because I know just enough about the science of how the relationship estimates are calculated to know this effectively hoses the entire thing. And some of the Ancestor Discoveries I'm getting suggest the matching algorithms are struggling.

And don't y'all go making fun my endogamy. There are two types of people in this world: people who are inbred, and people who don't know it yet.

In situations like these, having segment data matters. I need to see the exact length of the DNA segment. Comparing it to standard genetic inheritance estimates is crucial to properly calculating my relationships to my cousins. I can't judge how skewed my inheritance is without the numbers--data that AncestryDNA does not display as part of its test. While I'm able to use GEDmatch.com to get this information, I would love so much more to have it as part of my Ancestor Discoveries. Localizing these connections, as well as analyzing them for accuracy, would be so much simpler with the segment data than it is without it.

Final Grade: C

AncestryDNA has made promising progress. I no longer consider it the worst $99 I ever spent. I still encourage anyone who is planning to take a DNA test to consider all of their options before purchasing one from AncestryDNA. Understand that you are making sacrifices of functionality no matter which testing company you choose, so be sure you choose the one that aligns with your reasons for testing.

Regardless of which testing service you use, your plans should also include uploading your results to GEDmatch.com. As a more open source option, it provides many of the analysis tools and data AncestryDNA is currently lacking. While there's a bit of a learning curve to using GEDmatch, it's time and effort well spent. If you need a beginner's guide, be sure to also check out our Genetic Genealogy for Beginners video series.

Good luck, and happy testing!