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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Mart 'n' Al on Friday 13 July 18 17:20 BST (UK)
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I am trying to create a new match profile. My half cousin and I have totally different parents, but share a grandmother. After pasting the match data, I am prompted for,
"Enter your ancestor's name (or the name of the couple)". Am I right in thinking that that should be our mutual grandmother's PARENTS?
Then I am prompted for,
"Is this match on your mother's side or your father's?" It is on my father's side, but on my half cousin's mother's side. If my cousin and I both created the same match profile, we would answer this question differently. Could someone explain that please? Does it matter?
Martin
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Do you share a grandmother or do you share a grandmother and a grandfather. Whichever one it is that is what you should record. I.E if you just share a grandmother that is where the match is and so you just record her. However if you both share a grandmother and a grandfather you do not know where the match came from (its a mix of both) so you have to record both.
Re you recording it as a paternal match and your cousin recording it as a maternal match that is the correct way to do it. Your DNA paintbox is specific to you.
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David, that was fast. We share a grandmother. My father was born via granny's first husband, and my cousin's mother was born to a later husband.
Could you explain again, in different words, why we say the match is to our grandmother, and not to our grandmother's parents, from whom my cousin and I are both wholly descended.
In anticipation of getting my results (last week) I had spent the previous two months preparing, studying intensively, and it is still overwhelming, but I am loving it.
Thanks,
Martin
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You record where the match is nearest to you. As you have now explained that you have the same grandmother but different grandfather's the match has to be with the grandmother.
The reason why you do not record the great grandmother and great grandfather that you share in common is that that is one step further back and it is very unlikely that the match you have with them is fully the same as your cousin has (ie he will have inherited bits from them that you have not and vice versa).
Re being wholly descended from the great grandparents yes you both are but you have a closer descent from the grandmother and that takes precedence. The significance of this would come into play when you encountered a part of your, or another person's tree, that had gaps and you were trying to identify a missing ancestor. In that instance the closer a match the greater it helps
Yes it is overwhelming but the developments in this area are fascinating in my opinion and who knows what they will be like in a few years time ….
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David, thanks, I will read that several times and see if it gets through.
Bizarrely, my female half-cousin "C" is descended from my grandmother's second marriage, and my OTHER male half cousin "D" is descended from my (wait for it...) grandmother's first husband's second marriage. "C" and "D" have no blood connection (and almost no DNA in common), but they are both my half-cousins, and both found me independently by searching the internet for different family names which I had mentioned on my own web site. Until I heard from "C" and "D" (whose respective parents had emigrated to the other side of the world) I didn't know of their existence, nor that my grandmother had such a wild time in the late 1920s and 1930s. (And that's only part of her story!)
We are now working together to get to the bottom of our overlapping ancestors.
Thanks again.
Martin
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Its very interesting what you say about cousin C and cousin D sharing almost no DNA with each other but both matching you.
The match I was trying to make a couple of weeks ago where I share DNA with three people in New Zealand is a bit like that but haven't found the answer yet due to gaps in the other peoples trees and also that it is a few generations further back so more possibilities of where the match is.
Good luck with the searching.
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To clarify, my half cousins each share one (different) grandparent with me, but have no shared blood relatives with each other .
Martin
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I use DNAPainter, but I have found very few matches at Gedmatch, or anywhere else that I have uploaded my DNA to. Despite its many failings, ancestryDNA has produced the most confirmed matches for me, but unfortunately does not have a chromosome browser.
So I use it in an way that I like, which is what anyone else can do.
I paint unproven matches in to see if I can make sense of where they connect to me. I don't often assign people to groups, as there are rarely any groups. I don't always assign them as maternal or paternal, because I very rarely know.
I have one profile for people associated with my maiden name, none of whom match DNA with me in the accepted sense, but I connect with them through a well documented paper trail. Obviously these go under paternal. Lowering parameters to 1 cM I get some matching DNA, sometimes 3 cM or 4 cM. I am hoping to see a trend. Some sites imply that small matches are insignificant, but my theory is that if my grandfather would have shared 12 cM, a decent match, my father might have shared about 6 cM, a semi decent match, and I might share only 3 cM, a rubbish match. I don't think this theory could apply to anyone where there wasn't an excellent paper trail.
However much you read before you get your results back, it doesn't prepare you for the reality. It is often a case of experimenting with new sites and tools, it is always a case of hard work if you want to achieve results, and it is always disappointing when a likely match who could break down a brick wall or help prove a theory fails to respond.
Regards Margaret