RLP 239: RLP with DNA 2 – Assess Your DNA Matches and Analyze Your Pedigree

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like A Pro, episode 239 RLP with DNA two, Assess Your DNA Matches, and Analyze your pedigree. Today’s episode is sponsored by newspapers.com breakdown Genealogy Brick Walls with a subscription to the largest online newspaper archive Welcome to Research Like a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist Professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at FamilyLocket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro, a Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume research like a Pro with DNA, Join, Diana, and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (50s):
Let’s go Hi, everyone. Welcome to Research. Like a Pro

Diane (56s):
Hi, Nicole How are you today

Nicole (58s):
I’m having so much fun working on our Research Like, a Pro at DNA study group assignment. It’s so great to be doing this again and thinking about what I wanna work on for the study group.

Diane (1m 7s):
Me too. It is a wonderful way to actually make progress because every week you’ve gotta get your assignment done and we just do it in little chunks. And so rather than think of this great big, huge thing you have to do and never getting started, you just do a little bit each week and by the end you have a report written. It’s like how I’ve gotten all my personal family history done through these study groups, so it’s been wonderful. Yeah. Well, for our announcements today, we’re so excited about our Research Like, a Pro Webinar series for 2023 with our monthly case studies featuring the Research Like a Pro and Research Like, a Pro DNA process. So we really invite you to join us for that. You’ll have access to all the live webinars and the recordings.

Diane (1m 49s):
So we are looking forward to a wonderful year of learning. The next research Psycho Pro study group is this fall, it will begin the end of August and go through November. And this one will be without dna. So if you wanna jump into a study group, this is a good place to start with just documentary work and getting your feet wet. And then you can always do the next one that adds DNA to it. If you’re interested in being a peer group leader, then we have the application on our website and you would get complimentary registration and that’s a really fun experience. Our peer group leaders love working with the small groups. As always, join our newsletter for any coupons, all of our news, find out what’s going on with FamilyLocket it.

Diane (2m 31s):
Then just a reminder about Roots Tech is open for registration and I love this time right before Roots Tech because it seems like every week they announce a new special speaker who will be appearing. And so it’s always really exciting to see who’s going to be coming to Roots Tech. We’re excited for that. And then the ngs, national Genealogical Society Conference is also open for registration. So if you’ve been wanting to get back to Virginia and do some research, research there or just have a fun trip, that’s where the in-person conference will be this year and we would love to see you there as well.

Nicole (3m 6s):
Well, today we’re talking about chapter two of research, like a Pro with DNA, and this chapter is titled Assess Your DNA Matches and Analyze Your Pedigree. And this chapter was written by Diana. So this chapter is kind of about how you know when you get your DNA results back, your autosomal DNA test, you’ll have thousands of Matches and this can be overwhelming. You may look at your match list and see your closer cousins at the top and recognize a few of them, but then maybe you’re puzzled over other people and your match list and I trying to figure out who they are. So in this chapter we’ll talk about using DNA evidence to Discover, confirm or reject family relationships.

Nicole (3m 46s):
So where do we start with that? Well, we’ll talk about setting up a system to Assess your Matches and that will really help you to reach your goals. Assessing a DNA match includes analyzing the amount of shared DNA against the relationship that you’ve seen in your family trees. You’ll ask questions like, does this second cousin share the appropriate amount of DNA with me? So here are some of the steps that we’ll talk about in this chapter. First, Assess your family tree. Then set up a system to track your DNA Matches, then cluster your DNA Matches into genetic networks. Check the amount of shared dna, calculate possible relationships with the shared Zen Morgan project tool and contact DNA Matches.

Diane (4m 31s):
This is such a fun chapter to work on because it’s some really beginning steps that you can take and we all need to know where to start and what to do. So first, let’s just talk a little bit about your Genealogical family tree versus your genetic family tree. We talked in the last episode about how you will inherit DNA from all your, your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents and back a few generations. You won’t get DNA from say a fifth great grandfather or grandmother and it’s just random. So some people in your family tree farther back, you will get DNA from everyone’s different.

Diane (5m 11s):
So when you are working with your dna, how easily you can identify a DNA match will depend on your trees fullness. So if you have a nice full family tree, it’s more likely you can find the common Ancestor. But if you’re missing a lot of branches, it will be more difficult. So for instance, my maternal line is fairly filled out. I have a few missing spots further back, but my paternal line has a lot more missing lines and those are female Ancestors that are stuck in southern states that don’t have good records and I’m still working on those. So when I look at my match list, if it’s on my mom’s side, I can a little more easily find where we connect.

Diane (5m 58s):
Whereas with my dad’s side, it could be in one of those black holes where we connect. So it’s important to understand how full your actual Genealogical family tree is,

Nicole (6m 9s):
Right? And when there’s a big gap in your tree, like closer up, it can be challenging because you don’t know what you don’t know. And so some of those DNA Matches that are unknown could be from that gap in your family tree. And so it’s just good to be aware of what your tree looks like as you’re looking at your Matches and assessing them.

Diane (6m 26s):
Right? And something else you might wanna consider is if you have any instances of pedigree collapse, if you have any Ancestors that are in two places over your chart because of, you know, cousins marrying cousins or or some instance like that, that’s also going to skew your results. So you wanna have a pretty good idea of your tree when you’re working with your dna. And of course there’s situations with an adoptee or an unknown biological parent or grandparent where you do have a huge hole. And so we do have strategies that will help with that, but you just do your best to get that tree filled out so you can work with your DNA better.

Nicole (7m 12s):
After you’ve kind of analyzed your pedigree like that, then you’re ready to start tracking your DNA Matches and really figuring out who they are. It’s really important that when you do this, you have some kind of master document or spreadsheet to record details that you find out about your Matches. So if you figure out a connection or have a conversation through the company’s messaging system, you’re going to want to keep track of what you learned so that you don’t forget it. One of the tools that we recommend for tracking your Matches is Airtable dot com, which is a database program that is web-based. So you can use this free tool to create a DNA research log base and keep track of your Matches there in the tables.

Nicole (7m 60s):
And Airtable is part spreadsheet and part database and its superpower is enabling you to link information between tables. So you can have one table that lists a bunch of your DNA Matches and then another table that describes correspondence you’ve had with those Matches and so forth. So this is a wonderful way to streamline your data entry and keep track of the things that you’re doing in your DNA assessments,

Diane (8m 26s):
Right? Airtable has been so wonderful for working with DNA and I love it because the template that you created reminds me of all the different things I need to record, like how many Santa Morgans I match in the longest segment and the proposed relationship and a place to keep track of things. So I love it because I can put all my results from 23 and me and Ancestry and my Heritage and family tree, dna n a and living dna, you know, they can all go into one place rather than having them spread out among all the different companies. So it’s really great to have a method and whether you use Airtable or you just have a master spreadsheet or a notebook, you know some way that you can track your Matches.

Diane (9m 10s):
Now another thing that you can do is to keep good track of your Matches on the company. And every DNA testing company has a place to put notes and you have to just see where that is. You have to get comfortable with each website where your DNA is. But I would recommend that you create a protocol for what those notes look like. It just makes it easier if you already have something set up. So the one that I like to use is how much DNA I share with that match and then the pathway back. So for instance, I will just read you an example of my protocol, and this is for a second cousin I discovered and she only showed up as pH on the match list.

Diane (9m 55s):
And so I messaged her, it was through Ancestry and we found that we shared great grandparents in William Houston Schultz and Dora Algae Royston, who I’ve talked about a bit on this podcast. And so it was really fun comparing notes with my second cousin Patty and she actually came to my house and we shared photos. It was wonderful. So in the note system I put two C for second cousin Pat and then the sideways carrot and then I put our line back. So her mother was Lola Margarine, Jordan Johnson, and then the little sideways carrot, Lola Schultz Jordan was the next Ancestor and then William Houston Schultz and do Al Royston who are shared great-grandparents.

Diane (10m 40s):
And then I put sharing 200 Santa Morgans across 15 segments. Now one of the things that can happen after you’ve identified a match if you don’t give yourself a note is you can forget who they are. and I did this a few years ago. I connected with a cousin on my mother’s side and we had emailed, we had shared all sorts of things and then a couple of years went by and embarrassingly I messaged her again and said, who is this? And she goes, this is your cousin Mary. And so you know, I highly recommend keeping track, use that little notes area to put in what you know and if you don’t know your res, your relationship, sometimes I will put something like suspected descendant of John Smith, you know, in a group of shared Matches with this Ancestor just so that I have my hypothesis in there as well.

Diane (11m 36s):
And we may not know whether we’re second cousins or second cousins once removed or fourth cousins, but you can put in some ideas and then you can edit those notes. As you figure out more about that match, you can certainly go in and edit and I love it because as soon as I see a note I can click on it, it and Don don’t have to refresh my memory cuz my note does that for

Nicole (11m 57s):
Me. Yes, I love how when you have a note in one of the testing companies like Ancestry or My Heritage, you can even just hover over the note icon and it will pop up and you can read your note in the match list and it’s just so convenient to see, oh yeah, I already figured out who this person was A lot of the time you’ll figure out who a match is, but they’re not relevant to your current objective. And so it’s just nice to put that information on the testing company note part of the website. Alright, well we talked a little bit about keeping track of your Matches that you’re learning about and putting that into a research log, whether it’s a document, a spreadsheet, or an Airtable base. So let’s talk a little bit more about research logs.

Nicole (12m 37s):
There’s different ways that you can do this. You maybe would want to create a master research log for your closest Matches. This can be helpful for when you’re first starting out with your match list and you’re just, you know, really working on identifying those closest Matches at the top of your list. This also works well like if you don’t have a parents test results in the database. So you can’t identify whether your Matches are maternal or paternal, then maybe you just have one master research log for your close Matches. Another way to do it is to just divide it into maternal and paternal Matches. So having like a separate research log for your maternal Matches and separate for your paternal. Now that ancestry side view has come out, it’s a lot easier to figure out maternal and paternal Matches because the ancestry algorithm is so accurate at placing people on parent one side or parent two side.

Nicole (13m 28s):
And all you have to do is go in and tell ancestry Parent one is maternal or paternal and parent two is the other. You can usually figure that out by looking at some of the trees anyway. So the idea to have kind of a master research log for your closest Matches can help you as you go through this first part of the process of just assessing your closest Matches and keeping track of who they are in your log. Then later in the Research Like a Pro with DNA process, you’ll choose a research objective and you’ll want to create a new Airtable base or spreadsheet that just focuses on relevant Matches to that objective. And then every time you create a new research objective, you can start a new Airtable base or other KI type of research log,

Diane (14m 7s):
Right? And it’s so nice when things are electronic because you can copy over Matches that may be applied to a different project. It can be tricky to figure out how to organize and I love the idea of doing a maternal and a paternal log for those closest Matches because they might be spread across multiple websites and it will help you remember where, where everybody is.

Nicole (14m 29s):
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Nicole (15m 11s):
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Diane (15m 34s):
After you have started looking at your Matches, it can be really useful. In fact, the most useful thing that you can do with getting organized is to start separating them into genetic networks because that’s how you’ll start figuring out which family line your DNA match comes from. You know, you may recognize those, those close cousins, but very, very soon down your match list you’re going to find a bunch of unknown people. So being able to separate them into groups of family members is going to help you a lot. And you can do this using manual tools or using automated tools is one of the things that you can start off with is manually doing that and using what we call shared matching at each company website and I really think it’s advantageous to start out just doing this manually by yourself without using a special tool.

Diane (16m 28s):
You start learning more about your Matches and you start understanding how it all works. So each testing company lets you view the people you share DNA with and with your DNA match. So you would select a match and then you would use a special tool. And each company has a little bit differently. 23 and me calls it relatives in common ancestry calls it shared Matches family tree DNA says in common with, and my heritage calls it shared DNA Matches then living DNA says relatives and Jed Match calls us people who match. Both kits are one of two kits. So each one has a little bit different terminology, but the basically the idea is that you would click on your cousin Mary and then you would click on in common with or shared Matches, whatever it says.

Diane (17m 18s):
And then you would see all the people that shared D n A with both you and Mary. Those people all come from a common Ancestor. A sometimes right away you figure it out, it’s clear who it is and Ancestry will even suggest the common Ancestor for you. And so then you can use some of the tools. Ancestry and my Heritage both have colored.systems. So for instance you could find all of the people who shared Matches through your grandparents and give them, you know, a special color and then all the people who come through your great-grandparents on the maternal line and and so forth. And so a lot of people love to use the color.systems and we highly recommend that as a good way to begin making those manual clusters.

Diane (18m 5s):
And then there’s also the leads method, which is a wonderful method created by our colleague Dana Leeds. She uses a spreadsheet and she teaches all about how to do that on her website dana leads.com. And it’s a really fun way to clearly see how people start forming these clusters or networks or groups, whatever you wanna call it, along family lines and the colors kind of help to separate them out with her methods. So after you’ve done some manual work. So then if you need to include more Matches and it gets more complicated, you can use an auto cluster tool. And so My Heritage has an in-house auto cluster tool through genetic affairs or you can go out to genetic affairs and do auto clusters.

Diane (18m 54s):
And then we’ve talked a lot on the podcast about gey network graphs. It’s another way of doing an automated grouping that brings in lots and lots of Matches And so there are a lot of tools out there that you can use, but they are all trying to do the same thing to get you a group of people and you have to figure out the common Ancestor between that group of people and it helps you to make more progress on finding DNA connections and identifying these people.

Nicole (19m 24s):
Right? It’s so helpful to do this at the beginning of a project to just get some basic clusters going and see okay, I’ve got these descendants from this great-grandparent couple and then these Matches are from the other great-grandparent couple and at least divide them into those four grandparent lines, you know?

Diane (19m 41s):
Right. And each company does have their special things to help you. So it’s another plug for really learning how to use the tools on each company because family tree DNA has their bucketing that helps you divide up, you know, your maternal and your paternal lines, but you have to do some work to get there and so you just need to learn how to use the tools of the company and then you can expand into some of the third party tools that will really help you.

Nicole (20m 8s):
Yeah, totally. One thing I didn’t wanna mention while you were talking is that while you’re looking at the shared Matches and you see a whole bunch of people on somebody’s shared match list, most of them will belong to the same ancestral line as each other and and you and that match. But some of them could just be random Matches between your match and them where they match each other on a different ancestral line than you. So it’s just good to be aware that a lot of them will be on the same line, but some of them could be connected in another way too

Diane (20m 42s):
And sometimes they’re connected through a couple of different lines.

Nicole (20m 45s):
Yes. Alright, let’s talk about analyzing your DNA n Matches and checking the amount of shared DNA n a and looking at the Shared Center Morgan project, the total amount of shared DNA n a is vital when you’re analyzing the possible relationships with a match. Each testing company tells you the amount of DNA N that you share with a match and they generally will report it in two ways. The number of Cent Morgans shared and then percentages 23 and Me and My Heritage, they show you both percentages and Cent Morgans ancestry and family tree DNA usually just show Cent Morgans.

Nicole (21m 25s):
But the general idea is that the more DNA you share with a match, the closer the relationship. Sometimes if you share more Ancestors, like two ancestral couples with one of your Matches, then then you might share more DNA than you expect. But in general that’s how it works. So the testing company will give you an estimate of their relationship, you could share with that DNA match and that’s usually based on a range of shared cinema Morgans. But despite the fact that they’re giving you an estimate like maybe they say first or second cousin, there’s still a whole bunch of other relationships that are possible within that range, like First Cousin once removed or a half first cousin or a great great niece or whatever.

Nicole (22m 12s):
So we need to think about all those possible relationships. For example, ancestry dna, they estimated a relationship of second or third cousin for Diana’s match with Patty and they share 200 cent Morgans and they are actually second cousins. So the testing company had estimated second or third and they were right. One thing to be aware of is that each testing company, they can report slightly different amounts of shared DNA with the same individual. So sometimes like Diana Matches Patty with 200 cent Morgans at Ancestry, but they might share 215 at My Heritage or at family tree dna.

Nicole (22m 52s):
And that’s just because they have different algorithms and test different SNPs. And so the amounts might be a little bit off. So after looking at the amount of shared DNA and looking at the testing company’s estimate of a relationship, it’s helpful to go to the Shared Center Morgan project tool at DNA Painter. This was created by Blaine Beiner and Johnny Pearl and Blaine Beringer’s shared Center Morgan Project had gathered information from over 60,000 people who reported the amount of DNA they shared with known relatives. And then Johnny Pearl who created DNA Painter, created the interactive tool for the shared center organ project and then later he added in Leah Larkin’s probabilities.

Nicole (23m 38s):
So all of these tools help you and you can put in the amount of shared DNA with a match into the tool and then it will pop up up with some different relationships that it could be and the ranges of DNA that those relationships are observed to have. And then you’ll see the probabilities that those three or four relationships are going to be when you have that amount of shared dna. So it just gives you some ideas of what relationship is more likely. So for instance, when we put in the 200 cent Morgans shared between Diana and Patty, you’ll see there’s a lot of different possibilities besides just a second or third cousin. You could have been a a half second cousin, second cousin once you’re moved, great great aunt and the tool suggested over 18 different relationships between Diana and Patty.

Nicole (24m 27s):
So if you don’t know the relationship with the DNA match, you can look in the tool for some possibilities and then you can narrow it down as you look at the family trees of the people clicking on the shared center Morgan project tool for different relationships shows you a histogram and gives you some more information about all these data points and kind of the statistics behind it. So there’s a lot of math that goes into the Shared Center Morgan project that you can really dive into to understand,

Diane (24m 57s):
Right? The Shared Center Morgan project is amazing and I would add that they have since added a way that you can compare the DNA from two separate peoples. Like if you have two siblings you could put both of their numbers in to how much they share with a match and get an additional bit of analysis. So I love that things are continually being developed to help us. Yeah. Well let’s talk about the final part of this chapter, which is to contact your DNA Matches. So you’ll only recognize your closest DNA Matches and so you’re going to have to contact more people to see where they fit on your family tree.

Diane (25m 39s):
And you can use the DNA testing website messaging system or provided email address. Some companies do give you the email address and then you can message them and I recommend that just as you have the protocol for noting who the match is, you develop some type of a, you know a message protocol as well and I like to write it out in my word processor and then I can just copy and paste it into a lot of different Matches. So it would be something like, hello Ancestry says that we share 300 Santa Morgans of dna. That puts us in the range of second to third cousins.

Diane (26m 19s):
I’d love to connect with you and figure out our common Ancestor. I have family infor history information for you, I’d love to share and you can contact me through the DNA message system or email me at and give your email address. I look forward to hearing from you. Sometimes that works and you get a response. And then other times I have sent the same message to 10 different Matches and one of them responded. Not everybody looks at their Matches or looks at their ancestry account or their DNA testing website accounts very often. And so sometimes you have to resort to figuring out other ways to contact them, which could be on Facebook or tracking down a phone number or an address some other way.

Diane (26m 59s):
And so you do your best and see what you can do with figuring out who is who. And then as soon as you figure out who they are, you can update your notes and or even add an note. An easy way to help a DNA match see their connection to you is to include a link to your online family tree. So if they don’t have an ancestry subscription, you might want to use a link to say the family search family tree or wiki tree. And if you don’t have a tree there, you might wanna consider making sure you’ve got a tree somewhere. Some tips for catching some attention from DNA Matches would be to use an exciting message header like if you’re sending an email.

Diane (27m 41s):
And another really big tip is to contact your new Matches as soon as they appear because people who are just brand new will likely be checking their results more often. If you have kind of figured out where they fit in the tree, you could entice them with that. I know I was doing a project on my Benjamin Cox and so I sent a message that said I’m working on Benjamin Cox and he was a Texas Ranger. He’s our shared Ancestor and I’d be happy to share information. Well, I got a lot of responses because people were really interested in the Texas Ranger connection. So whatever you can do to get their attention and offer to help give them something in return or help them with their family history to figure out who they are and how they connect with you.

Nicole (28m 30s):
Absolutely. We are a Genealogist, right? So we should have some details about our Ancestors that would be fun to share. and I love that that increased your response rate.

Diane (28m 39s):
Yeah, it’s funny and I think there’s probably interesting things about each of our Ancestors we could think to put in a little message or maybe even, you know, I’ve got a really great photo of, you know, our great-great-grandfather doing something. You never know what’s gonna take their interest.

Nicole (28m 56s):
You never know. All right, well the task for chapter two is all of these steps we’ve been doing. So Assess your closest Matches on each DNA testing website. Use the notes feature to keep track of what you find about your relationship. Start a research log, record information in your research log about these DNA n Matches that you’re learning about. Begin clustering your closer DNA N Matches into genetic clusters. We really recommend the leads method for this. And analyze the amount of shared DNA with each match using the shared Santa Morgan project and keep track in your log and then send messages to Matches you don’t recognize and track your correspondence in your research log.

Diane (29m 39s):
Those are all really doable tasks, so we would encourage you to try it out and see what you can do. All right, thanks for listening everybody. We hope you have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.

Nicole (29m 50s):
Bye bye-bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email and box each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.