I finally ordered my AncestryDNA kit when it was on sale
last month because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. Actually, what
really happened was that I was helping a couple of people out with their
AncestryDNA results and I was really impressed by how well they were finding
matches and making connections.
I usually recommended Family Tree DNA as a testing
company because they are the most transparent and because they offer testees
the most tools with which to analyze their data. But frankly, I had burned
myself out a year ago trying to do all that chromosome mapping and analyzing
of the numbers.
So late last year I switched tactics. I've been
downloading and building out the trees of my matches and looking for
intersections between their trees and my own. This is also a very tedious
process, but I found that I preferred doing this kind of "research" over just
trying to crunch numbers that changed all the time. This process started
working better for me. The number of connections I found doubled.
Since this new process of working the trees was working
so well for me this past year, I decided I would try my hand at the AncestryDNA
test which is based on finding matches within your trees.
Boy was I in for a big surprise!
I was on the site for 10 minutes and in that time I found
connections to 3 cousins!
I don't have all the numbers to share with you, like the total number of matches - I actually can't find that. So if anyone knows how to determine what my total number of matches are, please let me know. I can tell you that I have 2 3rd cousin matches! I've already determined the connection to one of them (see below). I have about 3 pages of 4th cousins and the rest (about 253 pages) are distant cousins.
I don't have all the numbers to share with you, like the total number of matches - I actually can't find that. So if anyone knows how to determine what my total number of matches are, please let me know. I can tell you that I have 2 3rd cousin matches! I've already determined the connection to one of them (see below). I have about 3 pages of 4th cousins and the rest (about 253 pages) are distant cousins.
Let's take a look at one of my 3rd cousin matches:
I clicked on his name. He only has 9 people in his tree, but it was enough to see that yes, we are, in fact, cousins. We descend from a common King line in Howell and Oregon Counties, Missouri. His great-grandfather, WilliamFletcher King, was the brother of my 2nd great-grandmother, Dora King.
I clicked on his name. He only has 9 people in his tree, but it was enough to see that yes, we are, in fact, cousins. We descend from a common King line in Howell and Oregon Counties, Missouri. His great-grandfather, WilliamFletcher King, was the brother of my 2nd great-grandmother, Dora King.
So if you've used Ancestry.com to build your family tree, you are all too aware of their little shaky leaves that offer you "hints" of records that might pertain to your ancestors. Well evidently they've applied these hints to your matches as well. Unfortunately, I did not get a shaky leaf with this match. But I could tell by looking at
his little tree where the connection was - Along the King line.
Family Tree of my AncestryDNA Match |
Then I clicked on “King” inside the yellow box and it
brought up a list of King ancestors for each of us. This is very helpful, especially if I have forgotten who my King ancestors were! His King ancestors are on
the left and mine are on the right. I am not sure why it did not pull up a
relationship chart.
Our King Ancestors |
I entered my match into my Family Maker Software, synced with my online tree, and then asked my online tree to calculate my relationship to Mr. King. Here’s what it produced:
It says we are 3rd cousins once removed. This
lines up with what AncestryDNA predicted which was 3rd cousins. I'm not sure why it chose to display Tabitha House as the common ancestor between us. She was married to Robert King. He is also one of our common ancestors. We share both common ancestors - not just one.
DON’T STOP THERE!
I always try to remind the people I work with and the
people who attend my presentations that they shouldn't stop with just
identifying the connection with their matches.
These are some of the Next Steps I take:
1.
Add my match to my tree. If they have additional
family members tested, I add them as well
2.
Send him information about who his grandfather’s Virgil’s
parents & grandparents were
3.
Ask him to upload to Gedmatch so I can compare our
results to another known King cousin match from ftDNA
4.
Foster the relationship – Exchange photos,
stories, and information about your families
KEEP IN TOUCH!
If you have King ancestors from Oregon or Howell Counties in Missouri, I would love to hear from you.
Email me.
GenomeMate.org
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