RLP 245: RLP with DNA 8 Part 1 – Genetic Networks Tools

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like A Pro. Episode 245 RLP with DNA eight part one, DNA tools and methodology genetic networks 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 genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.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 (44s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by newspapers.com breakdown Genealogy Brick Walls with a subscription to the largest online newspaper archive. Hi everyone Welcome to Research Like a Pro

Diana (58s):
Hi Nicole. how are you today?

Nicole (60s):
Great. I’m excited to start working on my study group project again after Roots Tech being over and and be able to work on the John Robert Dyer father case again, which takes me back to the very first DNA study group we did when I worked on that.

2 (1m 16s):
Oh that’s so great. It’s so fun to get back to your own research, isn’t it?

Nicole (1m 20s):
What about you?

2 (1m 21s):
I’m doing the same thing, getting back to my study group project, which is using DNA to confirm John Kerry Royston as the father of Thomas Beverly Royston. So this was my third generation for my four generation project for Accreditation and I have a very extensive research log from that from several years ago. so I’m now going to import that into Airtable so that I can add the DNA evidence and I’m excited to get back to that research as well. You know, it’s just so fun to return to a research project and I feel like the documentary evidence is so strong and all I had used before was why DNA? But now I really want to confirm it was the autosomal DNA, which should be really interesting.

Nicole (2m 3s):
That should be So. you already have Y DNA evidence for this generation. Right,

2 (2m 9s):
Right. For the entire Royston line back to the immigrant ancestor Thomas Royston who came to the United States in 1621. Yeah, our Royston project involved several different descendant lines of Thomas Royston and my Descendancy line that came all the way to California matched others that stayed in Virginia and went different places.

Nicole (2m 32s):
So you’re proving which generation and with autosomal DNA?

2 (2m 35s):
Well, for my Accreditation project it was the third to the fourth generation. So from me it is actually my third great-grandfather to my fourth great-grandfather.

Nicole (2m 46s):
And that’s Thomas Beverly to John Carey. Right. So do you have a test taker from John Carey that branches from a different line with the Y D N than your Thomas B. Roy stands line?

2 (2m 58s):
I do not have a test taker. I have DNA matches. He had several wives, so this would be from his first wife. So that’s what I’m going to be exploring. You know, probably half relationships unless I can determine some matches that came down from Thomas Beverly’s sister who married an Irwin. So I’ll be looking for some Irwin matches to see if there are any descendants coming down from her. And then looking for some matches from half-siblings as well that were coming from John Kerry Roy’s other wives. He had a son, Richard Royston and the, actually the town of Royston, Georgia is named after this Richard Royston and I believe there’s a lot of descendants that came through his line.

2 (3m 44s):
so I will be exploring that.

Nicole (3m 45s):
That’ll be great. Those half relationships can be so challenging back in time. There’s not a lot of data from the shared Santa Morgan project for like anything beyond half worth cousins.

2 (3m 53s):
Well luckily I have a test taker who is two generations closer to Thomas Beverly Royston than me And. so I’m actually using his results. He’s one of those long generational lines And, so that helps because it’s his great grandparents instead of like third great grandparents. Great as it is for me. So that will be helpful.

Nicole (4m 15s):
Well great. That’s just such an interesting project and I’m excited to see what you Discover with it.

2 (4m 20s):
Me too. I just have to get to work on it.

Nicole (4m 22s):
That’s always the case with our projects, right? We always wanna know and we have to dedicate the time and the the work to organizing all of our data. Right? Speaking of organizing our data, we announced in our last week’s podcast that we have our new Airtable quick reference available, which is a four page P D F that you can download from our website. It’s available for purchase now at an introductory price, so get that before it goes up. And also we have our Research Like, a Pro Webinar series that features monthly case studies from us and our researchers. And if you would like to join our study group. The next one is this fall Research Like, a Pro study group beginning in August to be a peer group leader during our study groups.

Nicole (5m 4s):
So you can apply at our website and you receive complimentary registration and your main job is to meet weekly with your small group of peers and facilitate those meetings and also give feedback on their assignments as we go through the study group to learn more about different things that we have posted or new podcast episodes and receive coupon codes. Make sure you join our newsletter that comes out weekly on Monday. And as far as conference news, Roots tech is over, but the videos from the presenters who created recordings of their lectures and those that were live streamed are available to watch on Roots Tech’s website and the National Genealogical Society Conference is open for registration and has many wonderful talks including several by my mom Diana.

Nicole (5m 51s):
Yay. So that’s exciting. And we are just highlighting that the Association for Professional Genealogist or APG is having their professional management conference this year and they have a call for Presentations open. The conference is October 19th through 21st in person or virtually on hova and it has some great lectures usually about business practices and ideas to benefit your career. so I know we have a lot of listeners who are genealogical researchers and professionals or considering going that way. So this is a great conference and they’re just looking for all kinds of Presentations that have to do with your Genealogy career.

2 (6m 34s):
Right? That’s a great conference. I went to that in Kansas City years ago and presented on Accreditation with my colleague and it was so fun to talk to other professional Genealogists and just get different ideas. so I’d highly recommend that for anyone interested. Well today’s episode is all about chapter eight from our book Research Like, a Pro of dna and this chapter is title DNA Tools and Methodology. And because this is a long chapter and it has a lot of great tools, we are dividing it into two episodes. So today we’ll be talking about using pedigree triangulation and then next episode we’ll talk about tools for segment analysis.

2 (7m 19s):
So let’s think about our documentary research. We use a lot of different methodologies, a lot of different record types and just like that in our DNA work. We also use different tools and strategies to help us in this process of working with our DNA and helping to visualize the information needed to make connections. So in the book we have a bell curve, which was created by our colleague and fellow author Robin Wirthlin. And the bell curve is how we’ve organized this whole idea of tools and it illustrates a methodology for working with DNA in our family history research And. so if you can picture a bell curve small on the left, larger in the middle and small again on the right, the far left are the simplest tools and then the most complex DNA research tools on the right and the highest point suggests where you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time.

2 (8m 15s):
The left half of the graphic shows tools not using segment data and right half depicts those using segment data. Just note, some projects may not require the more advanced tools, but others may benefit from their use. Just like in any research project, sometimes you need to use land or court records and other times you don’t. So it really depends on the project and the graphic. The bell curve can help you determine which tools to choose depending upon your research Objective. And remember that genetic Genealogy is continually maturing And. so that is why we do new blog posts on our website FamilyLocket and why we do new podcast episodes to keep you up to date on the latest and greatest with the tools.

2 (9m 4s):
So let’s start with the far left of the DNA tools Bell curve, which is Ethnicity estimates, which I believe Nicole is going to walk us through.

Nicole (9m 15s):
So Ethnicity estimates is something we covered in the last episode so we won’t talk about it too much, but it is a tool that we can use to help us sometimes separate the DNA matches and reviewing the Ethnicity estimates at the beginning of our research project can provide important clues for the analysis in some of our projects. And as we discussed, every major D N A company offers a view of your ad mixture or Ethnicity composition. so I just wanna refer you back to that previous episode about chapter seven that discusses all the details and applications of using Ethnicity estimates. But it is a very good thing to make sure that we’re checking at the beginning of a project, especially a project where we can group or separate matches into clusters based on whether or not they have a specific shared Ethnicity with our test taker.

2 (10m 10s):
Right? So let’s talk about this idea of finding the most recent common ancestor or the c a. And this is the purpose of using DNA N tools. We are trying to find the common ancestor between us and our D N A match And. so both a DNA n a test taker and a D n match inherited at least one and perhaps more pieces of DNA n a from a common ancestor And. so we can think of a visualization of a triangle and we have a common ancestor at the top of the triangle and then the legs coming down to the test taker and then the other leg coming down to the DNA match And.

2 (10m 55s):
so we have got a relationship between our test taker and our DNA match, which could be something like third cousins, first cousins, second cousins, fourth cousins once removed. We have so many different relationships, but regardless of the specific relationship, the lines for the test taker and the DNA match go back to a common ancestor or a common ancestral couple And. so that is our whole idea of DNA work is trying to find that common M R C A.

Nicole (11m 32s):
So the next part of this chapter is all about creating genetic networks and this concept of finding the most recent common ancestor between two matches is key in understanding the use of these genetic networks tools. So in the DNA tools bell curve, we do suggest using genetic networks tools early in your process. We use these tools first because they separate DNA matches into groups based on their relationships to each other and that grouping makes it easier to determine the common Ancestors for a group of shared matches. The cluster groups may include descendants of grandparents, great grandparents, And, so on And.

Nicole (12m 16s):
so we do have to do some detective work to figure out the most recent common Ancestors for each cluster and a cluster may be composed of matches who have different common Ancestors with the tester, but usually along the same line. So some may descend from the tester’s, great-grandparents while other matches might descend from the great-grandparents, parents or grandparents. And in other cases the common Ancestors may not be the same for all cluster members. Some may be descended from a particular ancestral couple and others may be descended from collateral relatives of that couple. So to start, you will separate your matches into groups related to maternal versus paternal sides.

Nicole (13m 2s):
Next you can subdivide those groups into four groups related to your maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather. Then you can continue to subdivide the group’s into people related to great-grandparents, second great-grandparents And, so forth. And it isn’t always as cut and dry as separating each group into then two more groups and sometimes the groups like are combined and are overlapping and we just have to do our best to try to figure out what line that group is from and see if that helps us narrow down to the relevant group of matches that are relevant to our research Objective,

2 (13m 42s):
Right? So we have a lot of different methods that we can do for this and DNA testing companies each give us shared matched tools or reports and these reports identify DNA matches, who shared DNA with you and another match in your list. Then you can use these tools and reports to create genetic networks manually. So here are the different names for the testing companies. They each have a little bit different name for how to find these shared matches. 23 and me titles at Relatives in Common Ancestry DNA titles at shared matches family tree DNA uses in common with or I C W.

2 (14m 24s):
My heritage uses shared DNA matches, living DNA uses relatives and Jed Match uses the term people who match both kits or one of two kits. So it would be nice if they all have the same name such as shared matches but they don’t So. you just have to recognize that and learn how to find that in each of the autosomal DNA testing companies. So once you have figured out what they’re using for shared matches, you can use the shared matches report from any any company and create a color cluster chart that separates matches into four grandparent groups with the leads method, which is a wonderful method developed by Dana leads where you use a spreadsheet and separate out your matches into your different groups.

Nicole (15m 8s):
Great. And we can just follow the tutorial that Dana leads has on her website. One tip that we like to share when using the leads method is to focus on confirmed second cousin matches when you’re selecting the starting person for each shared match cluster. Because if you’d accidentally choose somebody who’s actually a child of your cousin, they’re actually a first cousin once removed, then the common ancestor is your grandparents, then it won’t help you separate it out into the four grandparent groups because they will create a group that’s actually a descendant from both grandparents. So it’s important to kind of be thoughtful as you’re choosing the starting person in your leads method cluster groups.

Nicole (15m 52s):
So we recommend starting with the leads method because once you understand that manual method of separating into clusters, then it’s easier to understand how the automated methods work. Let’s go into these automated methods which were created after Dana leads came out with her method and they were based upon her method. One of those methods is the AutoClusters, which is heavily dependent on the same idea of the leads method. So the AutoClusters programs are one way to automatically separate into groups. And then another way which we’ll talk about is network graphs. And both of these tools make use of techniques from a variety of disciplines to simplify and streamline genetic network analysis.

Nicole (16m 38s):
What’s great about them is that they’re efficient in putting the clusters into groups for you, but we really think it’s important that before you jump to these, that you’ve at least tried the leads method on your own so that you can see how it works.

2 (16m 52s):
Right? And a lot of people like to use the color dot system as well to separate into genetic networks and doing that manually And. so Ancestry and my Heritage both have the color dots that allow you to do that to separate out your matches by shared Ancestors. So let’s just go over the AutoClusters programs that are available and and how to work with those. So an automated AutoClusters program will display your DNA connections in a matrix and this can also be called a design structure matrix. It’s a widely used technique for comparing engineering and project management information. So there are a number of third party tools that offer these colorful matrix cluster reports just at the click of a button, genetic affairs you may have used or heard of.

2 (17m 43s):
And that works with 23 and Me and family tree DNA and then My Heritage AutoClusters, which also work licensed through genetic affairs. We have JED matched tier one, the co leads method at DNA jed com, dot com, DNA to tree for iPhone and iPad and Shared Clustering by Jonathan Brecher So. you can see we have a variety of third party tools that do this clustering for us. So let’s start with genetic affairs Everett. Jan Blum, the creator of Genetic Affairs, was one of the first analyzed DNA using AutoClusters and it uses a computer algorithm that compares you to your DNA matches and then your matches to each other.

2 (18m 27s):
And as I mentioned, you can use this AutoClusters analysis at Genetic Affairs for 23 and Me and family tree DNA and then my Heritage Jed Match licensed the genetic affairs AutoClusters analysis for use directly from their websites. Now the Collins lead method is built on the methods developed by Dana leads that we were just talking about the leads method And. So that does the work automatically for you. You do go through the DNA jed com website and you use the DNA jed com client to gather matches match data from family tree DNA 23 and Me My Heritage and Ancestry DNA.

2 (19m 8s):
And then the Cons Leads method will separate the DNA matches into clusters for you. Now the DNA to tree app is iOS based and it’s a subscription app So, you have to have an iPad or an iPhone to use it and you load your ancestry DNA matches into the program, find common Ancestors. You can calculate DNA clusters and even build a birth family tree ancestry.com. So let’s just try to visualize what this matrix cluster report looks like. So if you have ever done this, you will know that you have got colored clusters and they show up as a matrix. So they show up as big squares, a lot of little squares making up a lot of big squares.

2 (19m 54s):
And we will find that you also may have some gray squares intermixed in between the large colored squares. So in a cluster report the DNA match names are listed both along the top and the left side of the chart. And generally your DNA matches or grouped with others that share a connection to a common ancestral line and the colors distinguish the clusters. You don’t get to choose your colors, that is automatically done for you by the program and the arrangement on the chart will suggest how the clusters connect. So how do you Discover the common ancestor of each cluster? Well you have to look at family trees to see what might be the common ancestor of all these different people in a cluster.

2 (20m 41s):
We have seen some reports that are just one huge cluster where everyone is related to everyone else And. so if you see something like that, that will give you a clue that you are maybe dealing with end domy or severe pedigree collapse. So when these matrixes are created, you will see that a DNA match can only be in one cluster at a time because that is how the computer algorithm works because they might also appear or need to be with another cluster, they will have a gray square outside of the main cluster showing another connection. This could be just the result of being included in another more distant generational cluster.

2 (21m 27s):
So someone could be in a grandparent cluster, but then they also appear in a great grandparent cluster or a great-great grandparent cluster. As you were looking at it, just keep in mind that you will have to do some work in understanding what this cluster chart is telling you. So EJ Blum explained how a DNA match is assigned to a cluster and he writes, the number of Links with a cluster is used as the deciding factor in cases where a relative could be a member of two clusters. For example, if DNA match A has 10 Links to cluster five and 12 Links to cluster six, it will become a member of cluster six.

2 (22m 7s):
If there are new matches available that result in more Links to cluster five, it will switch cluster membership. So just know you might have a DNA match that appears in more than one cluster and the algorithm has its own way of figuring out where to put that specific DNA match.

Nicole (22m 26s):
That was such a great explanation of the automated AutoClusters tools that we can use to help us expedite the grouping of our matches into clusters. Another tool that I love is the network graphs tool and the concept of network graphs is wonderful. They’re actually several tools you can use to build one, but they are a little bit different looking than the matrixes. They are connected groups of related people who form circular clusters and the clusters of matches show that they are shared matches within that cluster. And there are also lines connecting matches to each other and lines connecting each cluster to other clusters so they can show you how the clusters could be related to that M R C, A couple of that one cluster going back further on the line so it gives you clues to which cluster to Analyze.

Nicole (23m 19s):
Next three of the tools that you can use to create network graphs include Roots Finder, node XL and Gephi, which is spelled G E P H I, starting with Roots Finder. This is a user friendly tool designed specifically for Genealogy. It helps you create a family tree and it also allows you to upload your DNA match information and shared matches. If you download, download that first with d n jed com. You can also import triangulation data from GEDMatch to visualize relationship clusters based on segment data. Gephi and node Xcel are not designed for genetic Genealogist, they’re designed for network analysis for other business professional type things.

Nicole (24m 2s):
However, if you can invest the time to learn the programs, then you can manipulate the results in many ways and you can make your own network graphs that are very flexible to your needs. Shelly Crawford wrote a series of blog posts at twigs of your about how to use note Excel to create network graphs. That’s a valuable resource. After we wrote this book, I came out with a series about how to use Gephi to create your network graphs So. You can see that on our website and we’ll put a link in the show notes, which I learned how to use Gephi from Shelly Crawford as well. So she really was a pioneer in creating network graphs and very grateful for her sharing her knowledge.

Nicole (24m 43s):
So to understand a network graph, you need to know that a node in the graph represents your D N A match and the lines connecting the matches to each other indicate that they are shared matches. And when a group of matches has many connections to each other, they form a cluster and each D N a match in a cluster of matches is likely related or connected along a shared ancestral line. And an individual in the graph might connect to several clusters and this scenario could mean that they are a closer relative than other DNA matches. Those closer matches can help you identify which side the cluster is on. For example, your first cousin would connect to many clusters, those with descendants of your shared grandparents, great-grandparents, and second great-grandparents.

Nicole (25m 30s):
Usually we exclude really close D N A matches like your immediate family members because they would connect to like every cluster. So that would be difficult to read the network graph if you have so many connections to some of your biggest closest matches. Another challenge is that individuals who have pedigree collapse or inmy will not have clear separations of clusters all the time. You will have some clusters, but depending on how severe the end is and how many of your grandparents were from that endos group, you may not be able to see any clear clusters emerge at all. So it’s important to recognize the limitations of this tool for those with pedigree collapse and especially with Endo.

Nicole (26m 15s):
In the book we have an example of my network graph that I used with my John Robert Dyer case and there was a cluster that I identified as descendants of John Robert Dyer and his wife Bari Harpe. And then there was another cluster very closely connected to that one that included a lot of descendants of a group from North Carolina who all seemed to descend from two sets of comedy ancestral couples, Moses Taylor and Elizabeth Provat. Also some people from the Doherty family who married the Taylor family. So there were just kind of these few ancestral couples that I kept seeing over and over, which gave us a hypothesis about John Robert Dyer’s mother, who we had one source, which was a family narrative that they thought maybe her name was Sarah Taylor.

Nicole (26m 58s):
So that cluster of matches seemed to confirm that the identity of John Robert Dyer’s mother was probably someone named Sarah Taylor. And she still hasn’t been identified because there were several different Sarah Taylors at that time and none seemed to have any connection to our John Robert Dyer who lived in Hawkins County, Tennessee. But further analysis of that network graph and that cluster who all came from that group with additional test seekers and finding more matches could eventually help us tease that out.

2 (27m 27s):
And then I remember when you were first working on that network graph and finding Sarah Taylor’s name popping up of a fun, fun discovery network. Graphs are like a huge puzzle to figure out what’s going on in them. So fun. Well now we have a word from our Sponsor newspapers.com. Did your ancestor disappear from vital records? Maybe they moved or got married. newspapers.com can help you find them and tell their stories or have you had trouble figuring out how people tie into your family tree? Newspapers are filled with birth notices, marriage announcements, and obituaries. Items like these are a great resource for determining family relationships. On newspapers.com, you can explore more than 800 million newspaper pages from across the United States, United Kingdom Canada, and beyond in just seconds.

2 (28m 13s):
They’re easy to use. Search feature lets you filter your results by date, location, a specific paper and more. When you find something interesting, the newspapers.com clipping tool makes it a snap to share it with family and friends. You can even save it directly to your ancestry tree For listeners of this podcast, newspapers.com is offering new subscribers, 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription. so you can start exploring today. Just use the code FamilyLocket at checkout. Well now we’re going to talk about pedigree triangulation and after we have grouped our DNA matches into these genetic networks. Next we are seeking pedigree triangulation, which is a methodology that most genetic Genealogy projects will utilize.

2 (28m 59s):
This identifies the common ancestor among a group of shared DNA matches by comparison of family trees. So triangulation brings to mind a triangle, a shape with three sides. And in this case it’s actually a three-dimensional pyramid and the base corners represent you and at least two of your DNA matches. And the top represents the shared ancestor from whom you each descend. So picture this triangle or maybe a pyramid with three bases. And you have you a DNA match one and DNA match two and you all share DNA with each other.

2 (29m 41s):
So we are trying to identify the RCAs that we share with DNA matches. Now we’re looking for the common Ancestors that are the closest generationally to us. So the three or more DNA matches considered in Confirming. A common Ancestors should descend from independent lines and other words the D N A matches should descend from three different children of an ancestor. So there are some steps that we take to achieve pedigree triangulation that we will explore. Those are to estimate relationships between you and your D N A matches, comparing trees and then building diagrams And.

Nicole (30m 21s):
So the first step is to estimate the relationship between you and the match. And if you can do this, you’ll have a clue about how many generations back your shared ancestor will be. So each DNA company website gives you the amount of shared DNA n and they will either give it to you and send Morgans or in percentage. And then you can use the shared Santa Morgan project tool at DNA painter to identify possible relationships that can then be analyzed and verified by looking at the trees. So some of the tools that you can use to Analyze the amount of shared DNA n are, first of all the DNA match list that D company websites.

Nicole (31m 3s):
So 23andme, DNA relatives, ancestry, DNA, DNA matches just the list of matches at all the companies. And then at Jed Match, it’s the one Toman DNA N comparison. And then you’ll use the Shared Cinema Morgan project tool at DNA painter to identify possible relationships.

2 (31m 22s):
Those are the tools we use to Analyze the amount of shared dna. And then we need to compare family trees. This is so key to this step And. so we’re going to talk about some tools for building and comparing family trees because we need to know how to do that. So we have to remember family trees as they are found online, show the family going back in time perhaps with an entire family group. But rarely will they show you the path between you and your DNA match. Instead, they show parts of the path that must be completed through your own analysis of matched family trees and correlation of those trees with documentary evidence.

2 (32m 3s):
So if you can determine which ancestor you and your DNA matches share, you can verify that you’re genetically related to that ancestor. Now as you compare your family tree with those of your DNA matches, you can really only look at one family tree at a time. But you can consider the family tree of multiple DNA matches and So. you can open separate tabs on a computer screen or you can print the horizontal pedigrees of DNA matches and look for shared or common Ancestors. And when multiple DNA matches share a common ancestor. This is robust support that an ancestor is biologically related. One of the things that you can do is look for common surnames as you compare family trees attached to DNA profiles.

2 (32m 46s):
Then you would want to explore the pedigree and localities to find the common ancestor shared by you. And your DNA matches or shared between genetic cousins in that same genetic cluster. There are a lot of tools for comparing family trees. First of all, if the DNA testing company has family trees, you would use those And. so those are founded Ancestry, family tree dna and My Heritage. They all have trees that can be associated right on the website. But another thing that I like to do is use the family search family tree, which is a big collaborative tree and can be a really great tool for looking at descendants of an ancestor and trying to find the common pathway between you and your DNA match.

2 (33m 30s):
Wiki tree is another collaborative tree that can be used. And then there are trees on Jenny annette genie.com, fe.com. Find my past jed matched and DNA jed com G works. So those are all some different tools that you can use for comparing your family trees at the DNA test company. The trees are associated with the DNA match profile. Unfortunately, many of our DNA matches do not have a tree associated And. so we have to contact them and try to find more information about their family and we may need to build the tree for them. But these collaborative family trees such as family search and the wiki tree can be very, very helpful in trying to figure out if family.

2 (34m 18s):
So some of the tools are available at DNA jed com and they help you search online family trees attached to your DNA match and help you identify common Ancestors. And one of my favorites is the one through DNA jed com called G Works and it compares jed com files consisting of family pedigree for separate matches and it lets you identify common surnames that helps you search for your Ancestors. So if that sounds like something interesting to you, you can explore DNA jed com and G Works.

Nicole (34m 52s):
G Works is great because you can sort by different things. You can sort by birth location, last name you can filter. It really has a lot of tools to help you with different hypotheses. Like if you have a a certain surname that you think you’re gonna find in your DNA matches, you can filter everybody with that surname and see if they are in that correct cluster that you are hypothesizing about. So it’s pretty great. Next well let’s talk about building trees. So creating family trees and diagrams will help you visualize the family connections and evaluate the shared D N A like we’ve talked about in a previous chapter. This can help you see if there’s missing information or conflicts and help you Analyze everything.

Nicole (35m 35s):
And it also can help you explain your research when you are going to be creating a research report. So it’s useful for your own analysis and for sharing your conclusions. If there’s no family tree associated with a critical DNA match, you might need to build their tree for them. Building the tree back 50 years before the time when the ancestor you’re attempting to identify lived can be a good rule of thumb. And you can use public record databases, obituaries, newspapers, Google vital record indexes, et cetera, to look for clues about a DNA matches parents or grandparents so that you can then construct their tree. Sometimes you just have to send them a message and ask them who their grandparents were to help you build their tree.

Nicole (36m 18s):
Some tools available to help us build a tree, even if it’s private or stumpy. We can look at the 20th three and Me Your family tree tool through lines at ancestry D n A, the theory of family relativity at My Heritage, the Genetic Affairs Auto Tree and Auto Pedigree and the what are the Odds Tool. So let’s go into each of these a little bit. 23andme generates a tree solely on the amount of DNA N This shows your matches in kind of different branches of the tree based on the shared matching. And it’s great because it takes into account not only how much DNA you share with them, but how much they share with each other.

Nicole (36m 59s):
So that is based purely on DNA with no reliance on documentary data. So parts of the tree could be inaccurate, but it can also be useful for clues when you’re trying to figure out who a DNA matches to see how 23 enemy thinks they fit into the tree. You can edit the tree but you can’t share the tree with anyone, it’s just for you. So this is just a a helpful tool for separating your matches into meaningful groups and seeing where they might fit in through lines. At Ancestry DNA is a program that searches for people who appear in both the family tree that is connected to your DNA N Results and other ancestry member trees. And the feature creates a descendancy chart that shows suggested connections between you and your matches.

Nicole (37m 40s):
The potential relationships between you and your matches are shown in the Descendancy chart along with the amount of D n A you share. It’s essential to verify these relationships though because the trees are sometimes inaccurate just because of the nature of a user submitted tree at Ancestry. So sometimes we just need to do additional analysis on through lines. Theory of family relativity at My Heritage is very similar to through lines and it shows a Descendancy graphic that illustrates the generations from you to your common ancestor and it uses the smart matches and shared ancestral surnames.

Nicole (38m 20s):
And all of these clues are available to you at My heritage to help in identifying the connections between you and your matches. Genetic Affairs has an auto tree program which reconstructs family trees for family tree DNA profiles and identifies common Ancestors among the matches. And they can directly gather the info from family tree DNA n a, which is great, and create an auto tree for the DNA N matches that have a family tree in their account. Another tree building tool at Genetic Affairs is auto pedigree. And this uses auto tree predictions to offer multiple hypotheses about how a person can fit into a created auto tree, which can be vital in unknown parentage cases.

Nicole (39m 5s):
So there’s many tools out there to help and assist us. These different tree building tools are logical starting point or sometimes a shortcut to figuring out who your DNA matches are and how you connect. Before there were these tools to help us and give us shortcuts, you had to look for common surnames in each of your DNA matches tree and build a connection between your tree and their tree. And it was a little more challenging and sometimes that’s still how we prefer to do things. It just depends on your project and what tools you want to use. So after you use pedigree triangulation and documentary research to find Common Ancestors, the What of the Odds Tool is an advanced tool at DNA painter that can help you work out where a DNA N test taker may fit into the family tree.

Nicole (39m 50s):
And it’s often used for unknown parentage cases because you’re looking at a bunch of genetic networks, but you’re not sure where your adopted person fits into that genetic network. And you can use the amounts of shared D N A input into WADO to help you come up with some different probabilities and consider the most likely relationships scenarios. So like any tool wado or what are the odds has different limitations and strengths. And one of the strengths is that you can enter the amount of shared D n A from various companies to help you figure out where a person fits within a known family tree So. you can enter amounts of shared d n A from Ted Match 23andme, my Heritage, all different places.

Nicole (40m 34s):
However, it doesn’t work well for families with end domy pedigree collapse or multiple relationships. And it doesn’t work well for matches less than 30 to 40 cent Morgans. So it also can’t definitively tell you which person in the genetic network or known descendancy tree is the correct parent or grandparent, but it can give you probabilities and then you have to reason and correlate that with documentary evidence to come to a conclusion.

2 (41m 3s):
We are very lucky now to have so many tools. It’s amazing. Well, let me illustrate how I used Pedigree triangulation with my Benjamin Cox case. In this case, I used Ancestry through lines as a tool. I have found so much indirect evidence pointing to Benjamin Cox as the father of my fourth great-grandmother, Rachel Cox. But I wanted that additional proof of DNA. So assuming Benjamin Cox was Rachel’s father, his other children’s descendants would likely be related in the range of fourth to eight cousins. And so I could have so many different relationships.

2 (41m 44s):
Third cousins three times removed, fourth cousins twice removed, fifth cousins once removed, And so forth, And. so I have a very large matchless like many of you listening at Ancestry with thousands upon thousands of matches. And I knew that these matches would be sharing less DNA and be hidden in larger categories of relationships. And so I decided to add Benjamin Cox to my tree, connected to my DNA test as a hypothesis to test, and then Ancestry’s technology searched user created trees to find DNA matches that also had a connection to Benjamin Cox and through lines found 66 DNA matches that had Benjamin Cox in their family tree And.

2 (42m 28s):
So then I started the work of checking the trees and I looked at the parent-child relationships for each of the lines from these DNA matches back up to Benjamin Cox to see if they all genuinely intersected at Benjamin Cox as the most recent common ancestor. And I also have my tree on my heritage. And I was able to use the theory of family relativity to also explore there. And in this case, I searched through all the suggestions just by typing in Schultz, Rachel Cox, Mary Hickman, Monroe Schultz. And so I was able to find some more documentation there for trees and DNA matches And.

2 (43m 10s):
so after all of the dna, the trees, the documentary work, I concluded that Benjamin was the father of Rachel Cox and I found that there were matches that descended from all of Benjamin Cox’s children. There were several and they shared DNA with me or other family members. I had recruited at least four other people who were descendants of Benjamin Cox and they shared their DNA results with me on ancestry and I used their DNA matches as well. And two of them were a generation closer and they had better matches than I did. But having this large body of evidence using DNA shared matching and the pedigree triangulation, I was able to prove that Benjamin was indeed the father of Rachel Cox.

Nicole (43m 58s):
Thanks for sharing how you did that. And it’s useful to really understand how you can use through lines and pedigree triangulation to come to a conclusion. Well, next week we’ll talk about segment triangulation using segment data and chromosome browsers in part two of this chapter, chapter eight about D n A tools and methodology. So we will talk to you again next week.

2 (44m 18s):
All right, bye-bye. Everyone

Nicole (44m 21s):
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