Hi,
There is some misleading “ideas” about the accuracy of DNA family research. It’s not that your DNA is fudged or misinterpreted, its the database the DNA companies use to match yours with others. Ancestry specialise in North America and Myheritage specialise in Europe. I’ve had my DNA checked by both and results were startlingly different. One had me 4% Scandinavian the other 68% Scandinavian. I’ve traced my tree back in most roots to the early 19th century, some as far back as the 1670’s, none were Scandinavian. Two were Jewish (not picked up by either) and one was Italian (again neither picked up). Both were quite good at Identifying my recent roots to South Staffordshire, but neither picked up that a large group came from Essex. I have made contact with a DNA match from my Grandma’s family so it wasn’t a complete waste, but there is nothing like the hard graft of paper trails and BDM records.
But you're referring to ethnicity estimates, not autosomal segment matching. Ethnicity estimates are nothing more than somewhere between a gimmick and a guesstimate based on the sampling of sometimes very small groups of people in a particular testing companies database, whereas autosomal matches of around 20cM or more can be taken as almost certain genetic matches between the individuals concerned, and beyond any doubt for matching segments even just a little larger than that.
Apart from very close family matches though, if you sit back and just wait for matches to land on your plate, you're likely to be somewhat disappointed, and if you really want to "collect" every match that you can find, you've really got your work cut out unless you are going to rely to a lesser or greater extent on assumptions that your matches' research is unquestionable, rather than proving or confirming it for yourself.
The great benefit of DNA testing for me, apart from the obvious finding of hitherto unknown close relatives or breaking down brick walls, is the ability to use it as another tool to verify (or cast doubt) on your traditional paper-based research. But to do that properly, you have to research your tree as large and wide as possible - expand all the collateral lines that you can, and bring them forward as far as possible. Then you will maximise the chance that you have a match to someone whose own research has identified common ancestors in their lineage, or whose name you recognise as also belonging to people in your tree.
But you still need to be prepared to verify your matches' assertions about their ancestors, by researching and checking the relevant part of their tree, to satisfy your self that what appears on the face of it to be correct actually is (or isn't). I'm not particularly interested in obscure and remote relatives of my Gx4 aunts and uncles for instance, but I still research them and their families, and bring their descendants forward as near to the present as I can, just to maximise the chances of finding DNA matches who will confirm by association that my research of the lineage that really matters to me is correct, or otherwise.
Similarly if you appear to have a match to someone and you don't know who they are, you may have to research both their and you own trees to see if you can find the connection.
Up to two years ago, I had no information at all about my grandfather's ancestry. Neither he, nor my parents or uncle had been able to find out anything during their lifetimes. After months poring over paper records, I felt I had identified a likely candidate, but it wasn't until I identified a DNA match with whom I shared about 16cM who was prepared to work with me and exchange information, that by researching both our trees I found a connection which supported my assumption. Armed with that discovery, I have since found tens of matches that confirm my research.
One of my highest matches is to a man with a tree consisting of 9 people on Ancestry. He hasn't replied to my messages and I had absolutely no idea how we might be connected. I've spent the best part of a year researching his ancestry, with no help from him at all. Having taken several false turns along the way, and buying BMD certificates for a number of his ancestors, I started getting somewhere. I still couldn't find a family connection, but his GGM lived in the same street as some of my ancestors, and going back another two generations on all his ancestral lines, that was the only possibility I could find. Then I found his GGM's husband had died 18 months before their daughter, my matches GM, was born. The father named on her birth certificate was apparently fictitious, but bore the same first name and occupation as one of my great uncles, who lived nearby and was "between marriages" at the time.
Still supposition though, and not nearly enough to be certain. But then the 1921 census arrived, and lo and behold, an illegitimate and hitherto unknown daughter of my same great uncle's has appeared. Birth certificate applied for, but the mother's surname on the GRO index happens to be the maiden name of my unknown DNA matches GGM!
I'd never have been aware of my match or made the possible connection without investigating as a result of DNA, and it's opened up a whole new can of worms that neither I or any other relatives that I know and who have researched our ancestry were aware of.
