Do you have an individual you’ve researched and have many pieces of indirect evidence pointing to him as your ancestor? Perhaps you’re unsure of the connection though, and wondering what to do next. With DNA now giving us a way to prove biological relationships, we can use this new tool to add evidence to our conclusions. Years ago, I hypothesized Benjamin Cox as the father of my third great-grandmother, Rachel Cox. Records in Texas in...
Gworks is a tool at DNAGedcom.com that quickly generates surname lists using information from your DNA matches’ trees. I have found this to be an efficient and valuable tool when seeking an unknown ancestor. When paired with a network graph it becomes very powerful. Gworks and a Network graph work well together for the following types of objectives: When you know the surname of the research subject and you are trying to find his or...
When you hear the term endogamy, what communities come to mind? French Canadians, Puerto Ricians, Mennonites, Pacific Islanders, and Ashkenazi Jews are common examples. Some of these examples are from island peoples, so what about the Irish? Last time, I discussed the effect of a clearly endogamous community, Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ), on a relatively non-endogamous community, German, within my dad’s match list. My dad has more AJ matches with longer segments (greater than 20 cM),...
As genealogists we want to understand our match lists. We want to identify the matches that will give us the solid clues we need to make progress on our target ancestor’s family tree. Endogamy and its close cousins, pedigree collapse and multiple relationships, complicates that. Diana laid out the definitions in the first blogpost in this series: “Endogamy, Pedigree Collapse, and Multiple Relationships: What’s the Difference and Why Does it Matter?” Nicole wrote about strategies...
Can segment patterns help you differentiate matches with paternal grandparent from a maternal grandparent? A tool at DNA Painter helps you do just that. The tool is called Library of Matches – https://dnapainter.com/tools/lom, developed by Cody Ely. In a blog post titled “Introducing the Library of Matches,” from May 2022, Cody shares how he came up with the tool. He was working on an unknown parentage case and was trying to determine if a 333...
Have you ever suspected that endogamy was affecting your DNA analysis? You might notice a large number of matches from an island population or isolated area. The matches might seem to share a lot of DNA but no common ancestor can be determined. Clustering matches doesn’t seem to produce clusters related along different ancestral lines. Instead, you find one big mass of tightly connected matches. The total amount of shared DNA points to a second...
Steve Little, one of our Research Like a Pro with DNA 4 Study Group members, wrote this guest blog post about how he uses diagrams to help visualize the multiple relationships with his DNA matches. He is from a community of mild endogamy — Appalachia. I hope his insights will help anyone dealing with multiple relationships with DNA matches, pedigree collapse, and endogamy. -Nicole Don’t panic! At first glance, the swirling tangle of lines below...
Would you like an efficient method to find clusters of DNA matches relevant to your research subject? In this series, I’m sharing the steps to create a network graph using the free, open source Gephi application, available for Windows or Mac. I use Gephi to create network graphs of my AncestryDNA matches. Throughout this series, I will be using my own matches from AncestryDNA, but I have changed their names for privacy. Below are the previous...
Pedigree collapse occurs in a person’s family tree if one of their ancestral couples are related to each other. This causes the same ancestors to be repeated in their tree. For example, if a person’s parents are second cousins through their great-grandparents Joseph Dyer and Anna Smith, then Joseph Dyer and Anna Smith appear in the test taker’s pedigree twice. Instead of having 32 unique third-great-grandparents, this test taker has 28 unique third-great-grandparents. These diagrams...
Would you like an efficient method to find clusters of DNA matches relevant to your research subject? In this series, I’m sharing the steps to create a network graph using the free, open source Gephi application, available for Windows or Mac. I use Gephi to create network graphs of my AncestryDNA matches, but you can use matches from other companies as well. Throughout this series, I will be using my own matches from AncestryDNA, but I...
