Autosomal DNA success (at last)

[familydar]

My parents tested with FTDNA in summer 2015.  I tested a couple of months later, using the kit I had bought for another relative who had subsequently decided they didn't want to test after all.  In the past few days I have had my FIRST real, proven by the paper trail, match to a distant cousin I knew nothing about.  She tested with Ancestry, the match was found on GEDMatch and we managed to narrow down the search to just 16 surnames because she also matched a known paternal cousin of my father.  We had a significant four-way match on a single chromosome.

My "new" cousin has also uploaded her results to FTDNA.  We both have trees on GEDmatch and FTDNA, she also has hers on on Ancestry.  These trees have names, dates and locations going back several generations.

I know I'm preaching to the converted here but we'd never have found each other if we'd been content with the matches provided by the companies we tested with, or hadn't uploaded pedigree trees to support our results.

I'm glad FTDNA no longer charges to add test results from other companies to their database.  I wonder if Ancestry will follow their example.

Jane :-)

[Seaton Smithy]

Congrats on your confirmed result!

I think it is unlikely that Ancestry will accept transfers as there is no commercial incentive for them to do this.  They already have the largest database of testers and only sell the autosomal test.

FTDNA have two commercial incentives to accept transfers.  The first is that it is a quick and cheap way to grow their own database, and the second is that people who do a transfer may go on to buy  mtDNA or y-DNA tests as well.