DNA match

[cathieee]

hi, could anyone on here explain to me why whenever i get a DNA match 99% of the time i can see no familiar names on their tree to connect to my family ?thanks cathie

[Gadget]

Hi

This would be for various reasons:

They haven't gone far enough back with their tree
You haven't got back far enough with you tree
Errors in the trees
etc.

All this really depends on how close a relationship you have with the match - cousinship/DNA measurement. This table will give you some idea of the possible relaitonship:

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

I had a second cousin match but the person hadn't gone very far with his tree. I found him by constructing a tree from the limited tree info given.

Gadget 

[sugarfizzle]

Considering that I have 458 pages of matches, approx 22,900, and that I only positively connect with 54, that means about 99.8% I haven't found the connection to.
Some of them obviously have matching surnames, but not necessarily with the right family.

Methinks you are in the same boat as the rest of us!!

Regards Margaret

[Gadget]

Following from Margaret's comment, I have many matches who share  surnames with me (common ones like Jones, Williams, etc but also more unusual ones) but these are very rarely the same lines.

Gadget

[Mart 'n' Al]

Sugar fizzle and gadget, although I don't comment on every one of your comments I do read them enthusiastically. Have either of you been contacted unexpectedly by somebody else? I only mention this, as I have not tried to contact anybody. I thought I would just sit back and emails would come rushing in, but this hasn't happened.  I remember reading that, gadget, you have made some contacts, but did you ask any of them why they hadn't tried contacting you?

Martin

[Gadget]

I've had 3 contacts from others. I've had about 50% replies from those I've contacted.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Gadget, over what length of time is that?

Martin

[Gadget]

From May to now.

I must admit that I don't send messages to every one of the matches. I select the closest matches that I don't recognise and then I do a shared matches with them. The one that's closest gets the message. I've also done some to those who match with the close matches that I know. I've got a lot of 2-4 cousin matches on one line and have managed to trace them back to common ancestor, so haven't written to many of them.

This is from Ancestry. I've had replies from all I've written to on My Heritage but I've not written many there.

With ref to original query, I've found the shared matches the most useful tool and rarely bother with surnames as a first 'go to'.

Martin - you can rest easy - I ran a check on Gedmatch and we aren't related 

Gadget

[Mart 'n' Al]

I think we are related, you just haven't looked far enough back.

Martin