DNA results in... what now?

[Alders]

Thank you all for your replies, i will do the ged thingy after the summer holidays when i have no children to pesker me!
The ethnicity marker was half right, it said Yorkshire & the Peninies however it made no mention of the South side, Devon. I guess it's early days & i shall have to learn to be patient.  Something will come up!

[Mart 'n' Al]

I started my research 3 years ago. One of the first things I did was to put known information on my own website, including the names of my father's parents. Three months later somebody searching on the internet found my webpages and told me that my grandparents were her great-grandparents. Further research showed that they were actually my great grandparents as we found out that my father had been adopted by my (now) great-grandparents after his mother was unable to bring him up. The person who found my website is a half first cousin. We share a grandmother.

A year later I was contacted in exactly the same way, after somebody again found my website, to tell me that he was another half first cousin, this time we shared a grandfather. The three of us are now in contact with each other although my two half cousins are not related to each other. I don't think we would have all found each other, even using the popular family history websites. It was just two people being proactive who found my own website.

2 months ago I had my DNA tested and this confirmed that the half first cousin with whom I share a grandfather is definitely a blood relative.

I am currently going through the same data overload which everybody goes, when they get their results. The only advice I can give so far is to do a lot of background reading so that you understand a lot about genetic DNA. It then becomes slightly less bewildering.

Martin

[sugarfizzle]

Well what a disappointment!
So my results came in this morning & i have to say it was very quick as i only sent them off on the 26th July!
Any how Ancestry tell me i have:-
 0 Shared Ancestor Hints
 0 Starred matches
 210 4th cousins or closer
of those i recognise no surnames, a good 85% have no trees the rest are either private or i'm just to stupid to see what Ancestry think the connection is!

Also it correctly surmises that my ancestry is from Yorkshire, however that is only on my fathers side, my mothers is Devon & for many generations.... not a single mention of that just Yorkshire & the Penines?

Any tips or advice on moving forward? Do i contact these people? I'm guessing if they have no tree the likelihood is it's doubtful they can go back the 10??? generations to 4th cousins?

What a waste of birthday money! :-(

If you only got your results back recently you will have no shared ancestor hints. Takes time for ancestry to search through your tree, if you have one, and compare with those matches that have a tree. Bear in mind, these will be people you probably already know are connected to you, or you can find their trees easily enough. They are not going to help you with any brick walls, or any lines where you are uncertain and have not connected them to yourself. (e.g. if you have a possibility for an ancestor, but have not attached them to your tree, you won't get a shared ancestor hint)

You will have no starred matches until you give one a star.

You will have to work hard to find valid matches. I have had one person contact me to see how we may be related, whereas I have sent many messages to other people, trying to establish the connection.

Somewhere in your 210 matches there will be some positive ones, also in your many thousands of 5th to 8th cousins.

My suggestion is to stick with it for a while, perhaps following Peter Calver's Lost Cousins DNA Masterclass as suggested by Gadget

Regards Margaret

[sugarfizzle]

'Of those I recognise no surnames, a good 85% have no trees the rest are either private or i'm just to stupid to see what Ancestry think the connection is!'

At this stage, Ancestry doesn't necessarily think there is a connectIon between you and and any of your matches. It only knows that you share DNA with your matches.

After a few days you may or may not get some shared ancestor hints, which may or may not be useful. Ancestry will also put you in DNA circles, but I have found these to be of limited use.

Shared matches is a useful feature, as is shared surname/birthplace. Stick with it.

Regards Margaret

[Nanna52]

Xin, I too have been hit by the wandering life story.  Apparently there is a Victoria in Trinidad and Tobago.  I know because my great great grandparents appear to be buried there.  I am in the process of checking all Victorians, (there are quite a few of them) to make sure their life story follows the facts.  When I told helpful son he suggested that he would take me in cricket season.  . Think it is a while since Australia played there.

[Finley 1]

 


I was feeling a little 'early morning mardyish'


so nothing can please me in that mood...   old fool

I am just working my tree to suit me..

I just had a real cafuffle with my Wright family.... eek   re-worked and re-worked, cos the kids marry the kids of the same next door family if you know what I mean..    and rest
enuff without Ancestry--- helping..xin

[Alders]

Excited, i got a reply!  Now maybe not so excited!
It seems to be to easy to be true though! I have in my tree a chap say "Fred Blogs" b 1909 Chester immigrated to Wayne Michigan age 6 ish. This person has 3 people in her tree, herself no details, a John no details & a "Fred Blogs" b 1909 Ireland, immigrated to Michigan aged 5.

I said that i have a chap in my tree sounding similar but either it's a huge red herring or i've blown apart what someone thought of as their family history! It would appear by some of the sentences in the response that this was done for ethnicity rather than genealogy.
I'm hoping the obvious is to easy! I don't what to do now! 

[familydar]

Is your match's Fred Bloggs her direct ancestor?  The way you describe it, her Fred Bloggs is supposed to be her grandfather.

Is Fred Bloggs your direct ancestor and if so how many generations back?  If blood but not direct, eg if he's your great uncle, 2nd cousin etc, how many generations further back to you have to go before Fred and you share a common ancestor?

Ancestry do attempt to illustrate the match in diagrammatic form but I'm not sure that this happens as soon as you get your results through, it might take a few weeks, and it can only happen if both you and your match have a tree attached to your DNA results.  Attached is an example from my results.

Does the proximity of the match (Ancestry possible range for example 3rd to 4th cousins, 4th to 6th cousins etc) align with how many generations you need to go back for the two Freds to be the same person?

Jane :-)