Running a Targeted Surname Search in my Smith Relatives' ftDNA Results

Now that I have found several Agee matches to myself on AncestryDNA, and I have entered their direct line ancestors into my Family Tree, I wanted to see which of my other Smith family members had matches to descendants of this Agee family. My Smith relatives having matches to Agee descendants would provide further evidence that our Smith family has a common Agee ancestor.

I logged in to each of my Smith family members' ftDNA accounts and searched for the surname AGEE.

This is what my list of results looked like for my cousin Shari. You can see that on the right side of the page, the Agee surname is displayed in blue bolded text. The 2nd match down does not have Agee in their list of surnames. They showed up in the results list because they have Magee in their list of surnames. I did not include them in my list of matches.

In order for the Agee surname to show up in Shari's matches' list of surnames as bolded blue text, I had to first add the Agee surname to MY list of surnames. You can do this by clicking on your name in the upper right hand corner of your ftDNA profile, then clicking the Genealogy tab, then clicking on the Surnames link. 

I added the Agee surname to the surname lists of all of my Smith cousins' ftDNA profiles and then I ran a search for matches who had Agee in their list of surnames. This is what  I found: 

My Relative	Match's AGEE Ancestor
Cousin Mike	1 match to a descendant of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son David
Cousin Linda	1 match who has Agee from France and VA, but no tree (related to Darrel's match who had Agee from France & VA, but no tree)
Cousin Shari (Linda's Half-Sister)	2 matches to a descendant of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Matthew (these 2 matches are related)
	1 match who has Agee from SC (no tree)
Grandfather Darrel	2 matches to a descendant of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Isaac Agee (these 2 matches are related)
	1 match to a descendant of Mary Elizabeth Agee & Jean Faure Ford via their son Daniel Ford
	1 match who has Agee from France and VA, but no tree (related to Linda's match who had Agee from France & VA but no tree)
	1 match to a descendant of Frances Agee from Wilkes County GA (same match as Tim)
My father Tim	1 match to a descendant of Frances Agee from Wilkes County GA (same match Darrel has)
Ginger	No Matches to Agee in ftDNA

I then pulled up each relative's Agee match in their chromosome browser and downloaded the chromosome data to excel.  I combined all of the ch data into one excel file and sorted by chromosome number and then by starting location (on the chromosome). The descendants of Anthony Agee's son Isaac and the descendants of Anthony Agee's son Matthew have a lot of overlap on ch 3. My grandfather's match who descends from Mary Elizabeth Agee, sister of Mathieu Agee, did not match up with anyone on more than 5 cM. He did match up on a small segment on ch 11 from 63-67 mil, 4.61cM, 900 SNPs with the descendants of Anthony Agee's son Isaac (not shown).

TESTEE NAME	MATCHNAME	CH	START LOCATION	END LOCATION	cM	SNPs
Darrel Eugene Smith	Descendant-1 of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Isaac Agee	3	169205391	184359986	19.34	3200
Darrel Eugene Smith	Descendant-2 of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Isaac Agee	3	169205391	184694720	19.35	3300
Shari Jo JENKINS-Free	Descendant-1 of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Matthew	3	171575778	180390543	13.09	2000
Shari Jo JENKINS-Free	Descendant-2 of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Matthew	3	171575778	180390543	13.09	2000

To be honest, I've kind of actually given up on looking at chromosome data to evaluate my matches, but I thought I would include a summary of my cursory findings here just in case anyone was interested. Also, I would need to run a comparison of the matches who are descendants of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Isaac Agee against the matches who are descendants of Anthony Agee & Christina Worley via their son Matthew to see if they, too, overlap on these same DNA segments. Assuming that Darrel and Shari also overlap on these same segments of DNA, then there is a 3-way match which would indicate a common ancestor shared by Darrel, Shari, and these matches.

If you are also wondering why I did not do this in my last post with my AncestryDNA results, it is because AncestryDNA does not offer the ability to look at your chromosome data. I used to use a 3rd party tool called Gedmatch.com, but that service is no longer reliable, so I just don't bother messing with the chromosome data much anymore.

Next Steps:

1. My next step will be to add the direct line Agee ancestors of these matches into my family tree and cite them as coming from ftDNA online gedcoms. I will then create an abbreviated family tree chart that I can reference quickly to see what matches came from what Agee Ancestors
2. My half-brother's AncestryDNA results just came back so I will run a surname search for Agee matches in his results; if there are several, I will organize them by patriarch and add them to my list of matches. Then I will add their Agee ancestors to my family tree if they have not already been added. I will also compare his Agee matches to mine to see if there are any overlaps. 

Previous Posts:
Looking for Connection to Agee ancestors via Autosomal DNA 

Looking for Agee Ancestors - Building my Match Trees

Looking for Connection to Agee ancestors via Autosomal DNA

My grandfather has several Y-DNA matches to men with the Smith surname.[1] We have not been able to figure out how they all connect to each other, however, we have been able to separate them into three distinct groups. I wrote about them previously here.

My grandfather, Darrel, descends from David Editon Smith, born about 1789 in Tennessee. [2][3] David was probably living in Jackson County, Alabama between 1830 and 1840 [4] and by 1850 was living in Johnson County, Arkansas. [3] His father was listed as James Smith on his daughter's Cherokee Citizen's Application. [5]

My grandfather's closest Y-DNA match, M Smith, descends from Patrick Smith, born about 1788 in Alabama. M Smith's daughter believe's Patrick's father might have also been James Smith. [6]

Two additional Y-DNA matches descend from Thomas Smith and Leah Agee, although there is some squabble about them being the ancestral couple of both of these matches and is therefore not conclusively proven. One of these matches descends from this couples' son Richard Smith who married Diana Braswell. The other match descends from Richard's brother, James Agee Smith. Both Richard and James were born in Tennessee, then followed the Mormons to Utah where they settled.[1]

The family of James Agee Smith was involved in polygamy which was outlawed at the time, but was still being practiced in the community where he lived in Utah. As you can imagine, this has made it difficult to define the exact genealogy of James Smith's family, not just because a man was allowed to have and live with multiple wives, but because it is nearly impossible to differentiate between the children of one wife from those of another. The multiple wives often co-habitated with their husband, "sisters," and their combined children. This is actually represented on the census reports. Here is an example of a polygamous family living in Saint George, Utah in 1880. You see Warren Hardy is the head of house and he has two wives listed with a bunch of children. [7]

1880 St George, UT Census record showing 

Polygamous family of Warren Hardy

The remaining two matches also squabble about who their ancestral couple was. I will list them individually here and link to previous posts I've written about this family. Their squabble is inconsequential to today's post, so I won't dwell on it.

Match No. 5, Mr. H. Smith, claims to descend from William Smith and Elizabeth Eunice Ritchie via their son Richard Smith who married Alicia Combs. There is a LOT of information about this family on the internets, but word of caution here - don't believe everything you see as fact! [8]
Match No. 6, Mr. A. Smith, claims to descend from Samuel Smith and Eunice Joliff. He has documentation to support Samuel was his ancestor and not William, as well as Eunice Joliff, instead of Eunice Ritchie.[9]

As I mentioned earlier, we have not been able to figure out the connection between these three sets of Smith families. We assume that David and Patrick were somehow related because they were both in Alabama around the same time, and they both came from Tennessee. [3] [6] Thomas Smith and Leah Agee's sons Richard and James Agee Smith were also born in Tennessee prior to moving to Utah. [10] [1] William / Samuel Smith and Eunice Ritchie / Joliff were actually from Kentucky and their family stayed in Kentucky - so 3 distinct Smith families with no known apparent connection. [8][9]

We wondered about how useful the autosomal DNA test would be in narrowing down our list of common ancestors. My grandfather's closest match took the Family Finder test by FamilyTreeDNA (ftDNA), so we compared them. Unfortunately, although they were a match on the Y-DNA, they were not a match on the Family Finder test.

In case you are wondering, there is an Advanced Matching feature in your ftDNA homepage, that allows you to compare to your match across multiple test types (ie, Y-DNA, atDNA, mtDNA). To access this feature, I logged in to my grandfather's DNA results, hovered my mouse over the My DNA link at the top left of the page, and when a drop down box appeared, I hovered my mouse over the My Y-DNA link and then when a new drop down box appeared, I clicked on Advanced Matching.

How to access the Advance Matching Page

From the Advanced Matching page, I put a check mark beside the Y-DNA67 and the Family Finder test options, then I clicked "Yes" beside the "Show only people I match in all selected tests" option. I then clicked the Run Report button to see my results.

No Results

As I said earlier, unfortunately, my grandfather's closest Y-DNA match is NOT a match on the Family Finder test. You might be wondering why or how this could be? There could be a few reasons for this. 1) The common ancestor is too far back to be picked up by the Family Finder test. The Family Finder test is only guaranteed to work back to 5 generations. [11] David Smith is my grandfather's 5th generation back. If the common ancestor was beyond David, which I'm positive it was, then it is possible it is too far back to be picked up. 2) It is possible that my grandfather and his match did not inherit the same DNA segments. DNA gets mixed up or "recombined" when it gets transferred from a parent to offspring. Oftentimes, siblings do not receive the same exact DNA segments, so one sibling may match a cousin but the other sibling does not.[12]

Since I could not do much more with my grandfather's closest Y-DNA match, the descendant of Patrick Smith from Alabama, I decided to work with the second set of matches - the descendants of Thomas Smith and Leah Agee. I could try to do a search in my Family Finder matches for anybody with Smith in their list of surnames - but that would results in a high number of matches and a lot of Smiths to go through! Instead, I focused on the AGEE surname.

Background of Leah AGEE:

The Leah Agee who married Thomas Smith was born about 1755 in Manakin, Goochland County, Virginia. [1] She was the daughter of Anthony Agee and either Christian Worley [1] or Nancy Jane Benin or Binnion. [13] Anthony Agee was the son of a Hugenot named Mathieu Agee who fled France and came to Virginia.[14]

One of the most successful ways I have found to work with my autosomal DNA results is through a targeted surname search. I have tested with both FamilyTreeDNA and AncestryDNA. I've had better luck working through my AncestryDNA results because more matches have trees posted than they do in ftDNA.

I started by doing a surname search for AGEE in my AncestryDNA results.

1.  Click the View all DNA matches button on my AncestryDNA homepage.
2.  In the Search Matches box, I entered Agee and clicked the search button.

AncestryDNA Surname Search box

3.  AncestryDNA returned a list of 14 matches

• 1 of them was a 4th cousin, but his tree was private, so I couldn't see anything
• 2 of them had private trees (I would contact them later)
• 1 of them did not have a Agee in their list of surnames at all

4.  I reviewed each of the remaining 11 matches one at a time. 

5.  This is where most people look through their matches' tree for a connection to their own tree, don't find it, give up and throw in the towel. I have a different methodology that is much more helpful. 

My Method: 

1.  I open a notepad file, or an Evernote note, or break out a lined notebook and I record the user name of the first match. I will use this file to take abbreviated notes about how my match descends from their oldest known Agee ancestor. 

2.  I review the first match. The Agee surname does not show up in the little green "Shared Surnames" box because I don't have the Agee surname listed in my tree - I don't actually know how I connect to the Agee-Smith family (yet). A bunch of other names DO show up in the Shared Surnames box, but I will ignore them for now (remember we are focusing only on the Agee surname! - Just Say NO to the Shiny Bobbly Objects!)

The list of Agee ancestors of my first DNA match

3.  I then scroll down below the green box and click on the Agee surname. On this first match, there are 4 Agees listed - Anthony, Jesse, Mary Polly, and Mathieu Isaac Agee. I click on the oldest one, Mathieu Agee, born 1670 France, died Virginia and it brings up a profile.

The profile of Mathieu Agee

4.  I then click on Mathieu's father, Anthony Agee, born 1639 France, died 1735 France, married Judith Chastain. There is a father listed for Anthony, but I ignore him for now. 

5.  In my notebook, I list the abbreviated descendancy as follows: Anthony Agee, b. 1639 France, d. 1735 France & Judith Chastain > Mathieu Agee, b. 1670 France, d. Virginia & Cecelia Ann Godwin 

6.  I then go back to Mathieu and I click on his son, Anthony Agee, b. 1719 Goochland, VA, d. 1799 Goochland, VA & Christian Worley and I record him in my notebook. Then I click on their son, Jesse Reuben Agee, b. 1757 Powhatan, VA, d. 1837 KY & Elizabeth Childress, and I add him to my notebook. My notebook entry now says: 

Anthony Agee, b. 1639 France, d. 1735 France & Judith Chastain > 

Mathieu Agee, b. 1670 France, d. Virginia & Cecelia Ann Godwin >

Anthony Agee, b. 1719 Goochland, VA, d. 1799 Goochland, VA & Christian Worley >

Jesse Reuben Agee, b. 1757 Powhatan, VA, d. 1837 KY & Elizabeth Childress...

7.  I  repeat steps 1-6 for the next 10 matches. I color code the ancestors of my matches in my list. Every time Mathieu is listed, I color him blue. Every time his sister Mary is listed, I color her pink. Doing this allows me to look at my list quickly to see what matches descend from which ancestors and it allows me to organize my list quickly and efficiently. 

My "Notes" on the ancestors of my Agee matches

Results:

• I end up with 4 matches whose oldest known ancestor is Mathieu Agee & Ann Godwin and 4 matches whose oldest known ancestor is Mary Elizabeth Agee. Both Mathieu and Mary Elizabeth are children of Anthony Agee and Judith Chastain. 
• 2 of the descendants of Mathieu descend from his son Anthony and 2 descend from his son James. 
• I also end up with three matches who have female Agee ancestors who have not yet been traced back to this family. 

I have pretty good evidence, based on my AncestryDNA results, that I probably do in fact descend from the family of Thomas Smith and Leah Agee. Leah was the daughter of Anthony Agee, who was the son of Matthew. This would mean that my closest autosomal DNA matches would be to other descendants of Mathieu's son Anthony. There were at least two of them who descended from Mathieu's son Anthony. According to AncestryDNA, one of these matches was a 5th-8th cousin, with High Confidence and the other was a 5th-8th cousin with Good Confidence.  

How does this help me Interpret my Smith Y-DNA results? 

The other thing that these results tell me is that the common ancestor is an Agee (not a Smith). Since my proposed ancestor Leah Agee was the daughter of Mathieu's son Anthony, I can conclude the following: 

• With the four matches who descend from Mathieu Agee, the common ancestor between me and the descendants of his son Anthony is Anthony himself. 
• The common ancestor between me and the descendants of Mathieu's son James is Mathieu. 
• The common ancestors between me and the descendants of Mathieu's sister, Mary Elizabeth Agee are their parents, Anthony Agee and Judith Chastain.

Now that I have identified a new common ancestor, I can start tracing him and his children down the line to see if and how my Smith line might fit in. I already  know that Leah Agee was the daughter of Anthony Agee and she married Thomas Smith. So my next goal is to determine how my Smith family descends from one of Leah and Thomas' children; Interesting enough, I learned that Leah and Thomas died in Kentucky, which is where the third group of Smith Y-DNA matches are from - so that might be their connection as well.

Next Steps: 

In my next post, I will start looking at Leah and Thomas Smith's children to see if and how my Smith family might have fit in. Because I don't know any of my Smith ancestors past David and his supposed father, James, I do not know which son of Leah and Thomas Smith we descend from. I will have to employ the same surname search technique I employed above to go through each of Leah and Thomas Smith's daughter-in-laws' surnames to see if any matches pop up. That will at least enable me to narrow down which son of Leah and Thomas I might descend from.

Before I do that, I have to do some housekeeping. I will enter the direct line ancestry of these matches into my online tree (but not connect them to myself because I do not yet know how they connect). I will then go through the process of looking for Agee surname matches in my FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder test results for myself and all of my Smith family relatives (my father, grandfather, and 3 6th cousins). 

Sources:
[1] Smith DNA Project, Website, http://www.smithsworldwide.org, accessed 01 February 2015.
[2] The middle name of Editon was found on a land grant patent no. 1953, Clarksville, Johnson County, Arkansas, filed 01 March 1855, issued to David Edison Smith, of Johnson County, Arkansas. Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records, Http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/PatentSearch, accessed 08 December 2008.
[3] The birth year and place of David Smith were derived from the 1850 Johnson Co., AR census which listed David Smith as head, 61 years old, which estimates his year of birth to be 1789, born in TN. 1850 US Federal Census, Johnson County, Arkansas, population schedule, Horsehead, taken 11 Nov 1850, page 139, Dwelling 98, family 100, David Smith; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed ); NARA Film M432, Roll 27.
[4] David Smith's son Richard Smith was born 1838 in Jackson County, Alabama per my grandfather, Darrel Smith's personal notes given to me in 2006. The notes say this information was provided on Richard's enlistment papers, but I have not been able to find such papers. Richard's son William was listed as born about 1832 in Alabama on the 1850 Johnson County, Arkansas census (enumerated with his father David Smith); also David's daughter Sarah Smith was listed as being born in Alabama about 1826 on the 1850 Johnson County, Arkansas census. I have not been able to definitively locate David Smith on the 1830 or 1840 census report in Alabama.
[5] Cherokee Nation Citizenship Application of Sarah Grider, 1898. Obtained from the National Archives by Mike Freels. Sent to Ginger R. Smith by Mail, 2009. Scanned to digital Files by Ginger R. Smith, 07 August 2014.
[6] Briana Felch, brianafelch@me.com, to Ginger R. Smith, ginger.reney@gmail.com, "Smith y-DNA Test Results / Genealogy," 06 June 2014.
[7] 1880 US Federal Census, Washington County, Utah, population schedule, Saint George City, Page 11 (penned), dwelling 79, family 82, Warren Hardy; digital image, Ancestry.com, (www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 September 2013;
[8] Hilliard Smith, III, hilliard_smith@att.net, to Ginger R. Smith, ginger.reney@gmail.com, "FW: Family Tree DNA match," 18 March 2014.
[9] Al Smith, al.smith@insightbb.com, to Ginger R. Smith, grs3275@yahoo.com, "Smith DNA Match," 13 April 2011.
[10] Dana Ekins, dsekins@gmail.com, to Ginger R. Smith, ginger.reney@gmail.com, "Information Request for Kit #47033 from Smiths Official DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA :," 23 September 2013.
[11] Family Tree DNA Learning Center Beta, Website, FamilyTreeDNA, (https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/autosomal-ancestry/universal-dna-matching/generations-family-finder-analyzes/ : accessed 01 February 2015, "How many generations does Family Finder analyze or predict?"
[12] Judy Russell, "Looking at Recombination," The Legal Genealogist, posted 10 November 2013, (http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2013/11/10/looking-at-recombination/ : accessed 01 February 2015).
[13] Agee, Paul Myrtillo A record of the Agee family, Independence, MO, 1937, p. 322; Digital Image of the book downloaded from FamilySearch.org Family History Books, 01 February 2015.
[14] Public Member Tree Submitted by 5haags, "Rapp/Knutson Family Tree," submitted by 5haags, an AncestryDNA match to Ginger R. Smith, accessed 01 February 2015.

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Posts Related to this Topic:
Looking for Agee Ancestors - Building my Match Trees
Running a Targeted Surname Search in my Smith Relatives' Results

New Family Tree Settings for ftDNA

A couple of weeks ago, FamilyTreeDNA (ftDNA) revamped their family tree tool on their website. You can access your family tree by clicking on the "Family Tree" button in the middle of your profile page.

The new family tree tool has the same search functions, but is supposed to be more interactive. Supposedly you can upload a GEDcom that contains collateral lines in addition to your direct line ancestors, which might be helpful in determining where your matches fit into your tree. You can also add people to your tree from within the Family Tree tool.

These are all good improvements.

However, there is one thing you should be aware of: Your tree now comes with a default setting of showing people born in the last 100 years as "Private." I can understand showing living people as "Private," but why people born within the last 100 years? Who decided this new rule? Has there been anything in the genealogy news about privacy for people born in the last 100 years? Maybe.

By itself, this is not a huge issue. However, if you look at the trees of some of your matches, you will find that a LOT of their ancestors are "Private." People born in the 1700s are listed as "Private." So what is the problem? I don't have an answer. From what I can tell by looking at the trees of people before they were upgraded and comparing to their trees after they were upgraded, that many of the ancestors listed as "Private" have no death dates. It is possible this new default setting is being applied to other "null" values as well. We just don't know yet.

So, until we get this figured out, my advice is to change your default settings for people born in the last 100 years from "Private" to "Public" or "Matches." There's another unanswered question - what is the difference between "Public" and "Matches?" I don't know that either. We are still trying to figure that out. There seems to be a lot of bugs....or something. The best I can tell is that "Public" means the project administrator can see your ancestor in addition to your matches seeing them.

This is how you make these changes:

1.  Click on your name in the upper right hand corner

2.  Then click on the genealogy tab

3.  Then click the public radio button next to "Deceased people born in the last 100 years." Make sure the "Deceased people born 100+ years ago" is also set to public. 

4.  Make sure you click the Save button. 

Additional Resources: 

ftDNA webinar: Introduction of the new Family Tree Tool

ftDNA has a set of instructions for use of the new Family Tree Tool here.

There is a new thread to discuss the new Family Tree tool at ftDNA. Please feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments and suggestions here.

Additional GenealogyByGinger Posts:

The New Family Tree Tool for ftDNA - a look at the new Family Tree tool on ftDNA

How to upload a GEDcom to the new Family Tree Tool - if you don't have a GEDcom uploaded to your ftDNA profile, please do so because it helps your matches find connections

New Family Tree Tool for ftDNA

A couple of weeks ago, FamilyTreeDNA (ftDNA) revamped their family tree tool on their website. You can access your family tree by clicking on the "Family Tree" button in the middle of your profile page.

The new family tree tool has the same search functions, but is supposed to be more interactive. You can now upload a GEDcom that contains collateral lines in addition to your direct line ancestors, which might be helpful in determining where your matches fit into your tree. You can also add people to your tree from within the Family Tree tool.

These are all good improvements. But there are some limitations with this new tool.

Here's a look at the new Family Tree tool on ftDNA:

You can see me in the center and my parents above linked to me. I have uploaded a profile photo, so you can see that too.

When I click on my photo I get two options: 1) to add a relationship and 2) to view profile.

If I click on Add a Relationship, I am given the option to add a Spouse, Sibling, Son, or Daughter or to Go Back. I don't have anyone to add at this time, so I will click the Go Back button.

If I click on the View Profile link, it opens a box with information about me including my most distant ancestors, surnames, and ethnic profile (called "Shared Origins" here). There is an envelop icon used to email me.

I can click the edit link above this box to edit my profile. I added my place of birth to my profile. Then I clicked the Save button.

I can add notes to the Story box of my profile as well.

If you have other relatives who tested with ftDNA, and they are a match to you, and they are listed in your Family Tree, there will be a little pink or purple link icon beside their name. You can click on that icon to link that relative to your Family Tree.

Click the Link button to link that relative to your tree.  You will get a message telling you that linking to this person's profile will update their biographical information and you will be asked to proceed. Click the Link Button.

My mother is now linked to my Family Tree. My mother's circle now has the blue Family Finder box filled in.

You can also click on the little link icon on the bottom right of your page for other possible matches. The system found additional matches to my father and his parents. I think this feature is still being worked on because nothing happened when I clicked on their name.

The new Family Tree Tool is still pretty quirky and ftDNA is doing their best to make it an exceptional experience for their users. I have included some informative links below as well as information on how to upload your GEDcom and how to change your privacy settings.

Additional Resources: 

ftDNA webinar: Introduction of the new Family Tree Tool

ftDNA has a set of instructions for use of the new Family Tree Tool here.

There is a new thread to discuss the new Family Tree tool at ftDNA. Please feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments and suggestions here.

Additional GenealogyByGinger Posts:

How to upload a GEDcom to the new Family Tree Tool - if you don't have a GEDcom uploaded to your ftDNA profile, please do so because it helps your matches find connections

New Family Tree Settings for ftDNA - the default setting for your tree now is to hide all persons born in the last 100 years!!! - Please follow these quick steps to change this default setting.

Uploading Gedcom to Family Tree DNA Profile

Last week ftDNA released a new version of their new Family Tree tool. This new Family Tree replaces the old system which displayed only the direct line GEDCOM. The best feature of this new Family Tree is the ability to attach your matches to your tree! If you already had a GEDCOM uploaded to your ftDNA previously, then it has just been converted to the new Family Tree display. If you did not yet have a GEDCOM uploaded, you can do so now following these instructions. I recommend starting with a direct line ancestor GEDCOM for now. Collateral lines can be added at a later time.

Uploading a GEDCOM to your Family Tree DNA Profile

Log in to your ftDNA homepage with the kit id and password you got when you ordered your kit

From the home page, click on the "Family Tree" button

In the lower right hand corner of the page, click the gear icon next to the red box that says "Have a GEDCOM? click to upload it now."

Select "Upload a GEDCOM" from the drop down box

You will be asked if you want to overwrite your current family tree - Click the upload button.

Select the GEDCOM you want to upload.

Select your name from the drop down box of the newly uploaded GEDCOM

Then click the "This is Me!" button. 

A message will appear saying this GEDCOM is being processed and might take a few minutes.

After it's uploaded, look through your Family Tree to make sure it uploaded ok.

If you have other relatives who tested with ftDNA, and they are a match to you, and they are listed in your Family Tree, there will be a little pink or purple link icon beside their name. You can click on that icon to link that relative to your Family Tree. In this picture, the GEDCOM is for my mother, and it is asking if I want to link my profile to hers.

Click the Link button to link that relative to your tree.

A message will appear telling you that linking to this person's profile will update their biographical information and do you want to proceed?

Click the Link button to continue.[1]

That's it! You're done!

You can then adjust your settings for who can view your tree by clicking on your name in the upper right hand corner, then clicking on the genealogy tab.

Notes:

We do not yet know exactly how this linking system works. We think Family Tree is still working out the bugs. You might get links for matches who don't even have a family tree uploaded. In that case, it might be that you have a surname in common. If you figure it out, please let us know either in a comment below or email me.

Additional Resources: 

ftDNA webinar: Introduction of the new Family Tree Tool

ftDNA has a set of instructions for use of the new Family Tree Tool here.

There is a new thread to discuss the new Family Tree tool at ftDNA. Please feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments and suggestions here.

Additional GenealogyByGinger Posts:

The New Family Tree Tool for ftDNA - a look at the new Family Tree tool on ftDNA

New Family Tree Settings for ftDNA - the default setting for your tree now is to hide all persons born in the last 100 years!!! - Please follow these quick steps to change this default setting.

Identifying descendants in Gedcoms to Compare your DNA to

In my last post I talked about looking for the parents of my ancestor, Mary Polly Allen. When I looked her up in Ancestry.com, many online trees had her parents as Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable from Virginia. However, when I looked through the online gedcoms that were uploaded for each of my grandfather's matches on FamilyTreeDNA who had Allen in their list of surnames (there were 40 of them), I did not find a single one of them mentioning this ancestral couple. Since I struck out finding Charles and Ann in this list of matches, I decided to cast a wider net, though not by using the same methodology.

Gedmatch.com is a 3rd party website that allows you to upload your DNA results and then compare them to results that were uploaded from the other two testing companies. Since my family and I tested with ftDNA, we are able to compare our results with people who tested with Ancestry.com and 23AndMe. I am also able to compare to other people who tested with ftDNA. Why would I want to do this? Because I might want to be looking at lower resolution matches that did not meet the minimum 7cM and 700 SNP threshold that is required by ftDNA to be considered a match.

Gedmatch.com offers several tools by which to find and compare matches; but it also offers some unique Gedcom utilities. One that I have just started using is the search feature. I can "Search All Gedcoms" for an ancestor and it will give me a list of all of the Gedmatch members who have submitted Gedcoms and their email addresses. I can then enter their email address into the Gedmatch User Information Lookup Utility (new) and it will tell me what their kit id is. Then I can run a one-to-one comparison between their kit and one of mine to see if there is a match.

In order to determine if Charles and Ann were my ancestors, I did a search of all Gedcoms for their names and it returned one match to a descendant of Charles Allen's sister Anne Allen. (The email was scrubbed for privacy).

I then entered the Gedcom owner's email address into the Gedmatch User Information Lookup Utility to get a list of their Gedmatch DNA kit ids to compare to:

(In this example, I entered my own email address and scrubbed some names for privacy).

Once I got a list of all of the Gedmatch Kit ids for Charles Allen's sister's descendant, I compared them one-to-one with my own family members who descend from Mary Polly Allen. Remember I am trying to determine if my ancestor, Mary Polly Allen (who married Abraham Huddleston), was the daughter of Charles Allen (who married Ann Venable) who was the brother of the Charles Allen mentioned in the Gedcom above. I can probably determine this if one of my family members is a match to one of this Gedcom owner's family members (he also managed multiple kits like me).

I entered the two Gedmatch IDs into the Kit No 1 and Kit No 2 boxes, and I entered a 1 into the Minimum segment cM size to be included in total. I like to add a 1 here so I can see the values for all chromosomes. Sometimes it's good to see if there is any matching DNA on a particular chromosome and you can do this by putting a 1 in this box.

I compared the oldest family members first: my grandfather and his father's aunt.

My Grandfather vs Gedcom owner's Paternal Aunt

FamilyTreeDNA recommends to have a minimum of a 7.0 cM segment with 700 SNPs on that segment in order to be considered a match. The relationship between two people is determined by the total of these segments. In this comparison between my grandfather and his father's aunt, the largest segment is only 2.7cM (987 SNPs). This is nowhere close to being a match.

Gedmatch doesn't have such strict requirements. I believe they only require a 5.0 cM segment in order to be considered a match. When I compared my mother to the Gedcom owner's paternal aunt, there is the possibility of being a match:

My Mother vs Gedcom owner's Paternal Aunt

On Chromosome 8, there is a 5.7 cM segment with 1,232 SNPs of shared DNA between my mother and the Gedcom owner's paternal aunt. There is also a total of 20.6 cM of shared DNA between them. Gedmatch has estimated that the MRCA or Most Recent Common Ancestor was 6.7 generations back. These are just estimates, so they are not exact. If you count my mother as generation no. 1, then James Allen, who is supposedly Charles Allen's father and the father of the Gedcom owner's ancestor, is the 10th generation ancestor from my mother. It is possible that this match with an estimated MRCA of 6.7 is from a different common ancestor all together.

10 generations is pretty far back. In fact, it is completely possible that this DNA test might not even pick up matches to an ancestor this far back! This test is only guaranteed to work back to 5 generations.

Conclusion:

These inconclusive DNA results between my family and that of James Allen's family (the Gedcom owner) leads me to believe that my Mary Polly Allen probably did NOT descend from Colonel Charles Allen who was married to Ann Venable. Even though there is a possible match between his paternal aunt and my mother, there are no other matches between any other his other family members and mine, leading me to conclude we are not descended from the same common ancestor.

However, it is possible that this ancestral couple - Colonel Charles Allen and Ann Venable - is too far back to be picked up by the autosomal test. But I really don't believe that is true. Mary Polly Allen is only my grandfather's 7th generation back (if you include my grandfather as generation no. 1). See chart below. I have found common ancestors with 8th and 9th cousins with several of my matches, so I know it's possible to do.

But DNA is fickle. Actually, not really. But there are so many factors to consider and possibilities to ponder. My main goal of this post was to show how you can try to verify or eliminate your questionable ancestors by identifying descendants in Gedcoms to compare your DNA to.

X-Chromosome Matches by FamilyTreeDNA

Family Finder Does it Again!

Back in November, the project administrators got together and made a list of all of the things we would like to see implemented in the new FamilyTreeDNA website. One of the items, a matrix designed to show which of your In Common With matches were matches to each other, was implemented most recently. This upgrade has already been a huge help to me in working with my matches and trying to determine common ancestors.

Another huge improvement came out this New Years – X Chromosome Matching! With this new tool, you can now see who all of your X – chromosome matches are in addition to your autosomal (chromosomes 1-22) matches. Having this ability allows you to narrow down who the common ancestor might be between you and your match.

Before we see how this works and how it might benefit your research, let’s go over a little bit of background information. Males have 1 X and 1 Y chromosome. They get their 1 X from their mothers. Females have 2 X's, so they get 1 X from their mother and 1 X from their fathers. Because I am female, I have 2 X’s, which means I got 1 X from my mother and 1 X from my father. My mother also has 2 X’s, therefore, she got 1 X from her mother and 1 X from her father; however, my father only has 1 X that he got from his mother. He did NOT get an X from his father. Therefore *I* did not get any X chromosome DNA from my father’s father.

There are a couple of X chromosome charts out there to help you figure out who your X chromosome ancestors are. Here is the fan chart, which is one of my favorites.  WikiTree will also allow you to see who all of your X chromosome ancestors are. I have identified my X chromosome ancestors directly in my genealogy software. For each of my X chromosome ancestors, I have added a photo of an “X” in either a pink box for females or a blue box for males. In my pedigree below, you see that my father Timothy received only 1 X chromosome from his mother; therefore his father Darrel did not contribute any X chromosome DNA to me.

Since I’ve had my paternal grandfather, Darrel Smith, DNA tested, I would have to create a new chart if I wanted to follow HIS X chromosome ancestors. In that chart, his mother, Reba Fox would have a pink X beside her name because she contributed to Darrel’s DNA.

In order to see your X chromosome matches, log in to your ftDNA account as usual and bring up your Family Finder matches.  Click where it says “Show All Matches” and select “X Matches” from the drop down list:

Now you have a list of all of your X Chromosome matches. Here is my list. You see that my paternal grandfather, Darrel Eugene Smith, is missing from this list:

That is because I did not receive any of my X chromosome from him, but I DID receive an X chromosome from my father Timothy, who received his X from his mother Barbara. 

My X Chromosome matches can be viewed in the Chromosome Browser just like the autosomal matches can. Lucky for us, ftDNA also incorporated a brand new feature which allows you to load your matches directly into the Chromosome Browser from your match list and compare. To do this, simply click on the little arrow below your match’s name to unhide the advanced options, then click the “+ Compare in Chromosome Browser” option to load them into the Chromosome browser. You are still limited to loading only 5 matches at a time into your chromosome browser (at this time).

Once you have your matches selected, click the Compare button to open them in your Chromosome Browser:

Here is a comparison of my Mom, maternal grandfather, and paternal grandmother who all match me on my X chromosome:

You can also filter on X matches in the Chromosome Browser:

I am looking forward to diving into my X chromosome matches.

What about you?

Do you have your X chromosome ancestor chart ready?

Have you found any connections on your X chromosome yet?

If so, please tell us about it below.

Get Into the Cycle

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to, you can blame it on FamilyTreeDNA and their darn Family Finder test. Chasing after all the matches of my of two 6th cousins, three grandparents, two parents, and one friend is almost as bad as chasing down those little green leafs in my Ancestry.com tree. If I’ve learned anything at all from this experience, (1) it is VERY time consuming and (2) YOU HAVE TO BUILD YOUR TREES! The latter has brought me the most success. I know it may seem counterproductive since the whole point of taking a DNA test is to help you with your genealogy…but once you get into it, it eventually begins to make sense.

You might even see a cycle form:

Here are some tips to help get you started. 

1. Go back through your notes to see if you missed anything
2. Talk to old contacts to see if they’ve found anything new
3. Take advantage of the online trees that are posted with your match’s profile
4. If you and your match’s ancestors with a common surname lived in the same place at the same time, chances are, they were connected
5. Don’t just build your tree – build theirs too and look for an intersection between your family lines

You can download your match’s online tree from your ftDNA match page by following these easy directions: 

1. Click the little green pedigree icon beside your match’s name 
2. When the new page opens, right click then select to “view page source”
3. Click Ctrl + A then Ctrl + C to copy the entire page
4. Go to James Kelly’s website and paste the source code into the box and click the submit button

A GEDCOM will download. You can then import the GEDCOM into your genealogy software. I usually create a new file in my Family Tree Maker software then use Ancestry.com to build it out. 

Check out my latest post about finding a new Nix cousin through DNA testing and genealogical research – DNA Testing – My Closest Match Yet

DNA Testing - My Closest Match Yet

My grandfather got a “close match” recently, falling between 2nd and 4th cousins on FamilyTreeDNA. Out of all eight kits that I manage, this is the first time I have seen a “close match.” I didn’t pay it much attention at first because the surnames he had listed were Davis, House, and Nix which I’ve found are common in just about every single one of my grandfather’s matches. But I kept it in my radar because his match also listed Missouri in his location list.

A couple of months went by and then I received an email from this match’s wife. She was proposing a possible connection based on some documentation she also sent to me. Her husband’s ancestor was Winnie Frances NIX Crafton. She wanted to know if it was possible that Winnie was the daughter of John NIX of Marshall County, Tennessee, and if so, did my Nix ancestor also happen to descend from the same John Nix.

The John NIX she referred to was enumerated on the 1870 Obion County, Tennessee Census Report.[1] According to the census report, John was 45 years old, placing his date of birth around 1825. Although relationships are not indicated on the 1870 census, it is implied that the next person in the list, Elizabeth Nix, is his wife. She was ten years younger, born about 1835 in TN. There were ten additional people listed in the household, including my ancestor, Dora G NIX, 6 years old, born approximately 1864 in TN. Also living in the household was a Winnie F NIX. According to the people who transcribed this census report, her name looked more like Minnie and was indexed as such. Someone made a correction to her name, though, and changed it to Winnie F NIX. Winnie F Nix was 13 years old, born about 1857 in TN.

1870 Obion Co., TN Census Report for John Nix

Here is an abstract of the above census report -

1870 Obion Co., District 3, TN census report:
21 July 1870 225/225
John Nix, 45 yo (b. abt 1825), TN
Elizabeth Nix, 35 yo (b. abt 1835), TN
Milton M Nix, 16 yo (b. abt 1854),  TN
Mary S Nix, 15 yo (b. abt 1855),  TN
Winnie F Nix, 13 yo (b. abt 1857),  TN [Indexed as Minnie] ← My match’s ancestor
John Robert Nix, 12 yo (b. abt 1858) TN
Minerva P Nix, 9 yo (b. abt 1861),  TN
Sarah I Nix, 8 yo (b. abt 1862), TN
Dora G Nix 6 yo (b. abt 1864),  TN ← My Ancestor
Tennessee F Nix 3 yo (b. abt 1867),  TN
Zilpha L Nix, 2 yo (b. abt 1868),  TN
Acy N Nix, 7 mo (b. abt 1870),  TN
NARA Film M593, Roll 1552, Page 91 (penned)

In 1860, John and Elizabeth NIX were living in Marshall County, Tennessee, which is located in the middle of the State of Tennessee. Evidently they moved “West” between 1860 and 1870 as Obion County, where they were enumerated on the 1870 census, is in the North Western part of the State. There are about 225 miles between Marshall and Obion Counties today.

According to the 1860 census [2], John NIX was 36 years old, born about 1824 in Tennessee. “Winnie” NIX was 3 years old, born about 1857 in Tennessee. My ancestor, Dora NIX, was not yet born. Monroe, Mary, John and Minerva were also living in the household along with his presumed wife, Elizabeth NIX. They were still living in the house on the 1870 Obion County, Tennessee census as well, so I’m certain these two families are one and the same.

1860 Marshall Co., TN Census Report for John Nix

Now you might be wondering how we were so sure that this was the right family for our Winnie and Dora Nix. Good. Because I did just that too. If you question your own work, that means others will question it too. And if that happens, then that just means you haven’t built a solid enough case to prove your point. And we don’t ever want that to happen, now do we? The key to conducting good research is to follow all leads. In this case, that means looking at the other family members.

My ancestor Dora Nix married to William or James Davis about 1882. To date I have not found any documentation of this marriage which probably took place in either TN or AR. The date of 1882 is estimated from the birth of their first known child, Lou Ella Davis. She was born either 1882 or 1884 in Hardy, Sharp County, Arkansas. Her date of birth is unclear because her death certificate says she was born in 1882 [3] and her headstone says she was born in 1884 [4]. But that’s a story for another day. Also, it is unclear what the name of Dora’s husband was because the death certificates of her two daughters had two different names listed - one said Bill Davis [5] and the other said James Davis [6]. I will eventually need to come back to this conflicting information and resolve it. But for now, let’s move on.

On February 12th, 1890, Dora remarried to William Carpenter in Sharp Co., Arkansas [7], with whom she had four more children, and they were enumerated together on the 1900 Sharp Co., Arkansas Census Report [8].

William Carpenter had also been previously married to a woman named Catherine Warren. Their daughter Ellenora Carpenter married Dora and Winnie Nix's brother John Robert Nix about 1880. They had six children before Ella Nora died in 1898. She was buried in the Old Baptist Cemetery in Ash Flat, Sharp Co., Arkansas along with her father William Carpenter, husband John Nix, and several children [9].

Did you catch the fact that Dora Nix's brother John married to Dora's step-daughter? Sigh. Well yeah, that's how things were done back then I guess.

Back to the DNA....

I gave you the story about Dora and John Robert who both moved from Tennessee to Arkansas, but what ever happened to their sister Winnie Frances Nix? Well we know that she got married and had children because one of her descendants came back as a DNA match to my grandfather. It just so happens that Winnie married to William Robert Crafton in 1871 [10]. They had six children together, all born in Tennessee. In fact my grandfather's match's family remained in Tennessee while my family remained in Arkansas. There is no indication that the families knew one another.

Before I learned about my grandfather's match, I had no information about his ancestor, Winnie Nix. After corresponding with his wife, however, I was able to fill in a good chunk of information about her and her family, thus expanding my tree out even further. This is the fun part about corresponding with your matches. I also learned that my grandfather and his match are third cousins once removed. This means they share the same set of 2nd great-grandparents. However, because they are "once removed," my grandfather's match has one more generation between them; therefore John and Elizabeth Nix are his 3rd great-grandparents. I have included their relationship report below:

Relationship Report between my Grandfather and his match

Family Tree DNA predicted they were 2nd to 3rd cousins, so an actual relationship of 3rd cousins, once removed falls right into line with that prediction. They share a total of 126 cM of DNA between them with the longest segment of 29.39 cM being on Chromosome 1.

I hope this blog post will help to encourage you to work with your matches and to keep digging for those common ancestors. More and more testees are being added to each of the three testing companies' databases each month. I know it is overwhelming at times, but finding a connection such as the one outlined in this post can be very rewarding!

I'd love to hear your success stories. Please feel free to leave a comment below or email me.

Sources:
[1] 1870 US Federal Census, Obion County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 3, Troy and Union City, Page 91 (penned), dwelling 225, family 225, John Nix; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : downloaded 24 September 2013); NARA Film M593, Roll 1546.
[2] 1860 US Federal Census, Marshall County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 12, Page 11 (penned), 105 (stamped), dwelling 92, family 75, John Nix; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : downloaded 4 November 2013); NARA Film M653, Roll 1265, FHL Film 805265.
[3] Oklahoma State Department of Health, Death Certificate No. 10879, Ella Otten, 1 August 1947; Vital Records Service, Oklahoma City.
[4] Lou Ella Otten grave marker, Fairview Cemetery, Shawnee, Oklahoma, Photographed by Ginger Smith, researcher, November 2007.
[5] Death Certificate of Ella Otten, 1947.
[6] Los Angeles County, California, death certificate (22 March 1955), Oceola Clark; County of Los Angeles, Registrar-Recorder / County Clerk, Norwalk. (See her post here)
[7] Michael L Peters, grandnephew of Lou Ella Davis.
[8] 1900 US Federal Census, Sharp County, Arkansas, population schedule, Highland Township, enumeration district (ED) 119, page 44, William Carpenter; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 08 November 2013 ); NARA Film T623, Roll 77.
[9] Old Baptist Cemetery, Ash Flat, Sharp Co., AR. Visited by author, May 2009. Also, see Find-A-Grave Memorial No. 21767505.
[10] 1910 US Federal Census, Houston County, Texas, population schedule, Justice Precinct 4, enumeration district (ED) 71, dwelling 112, family 112, William R Crafton; digital image, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 October 2013); NARA Film T624, Roll 1565, FHL Film 1375578; William Crafton was listed as having been married 39 years which in 1910 would have put their date of marriage around 1871.

Using 3rd Party Tools to work with my Family Finder DNA Results

In order to determine if 3 people have a common ancestor, you need to have the following two requirements:

1. All 3 of them must match each other on the same part of the same chromosome
2. All 3 of them must be in common with each other

I often cannot get my In Common Filter to work on the ftDNA site using the procedure I outlined in my last post. So I switched to using a 3rd party tool designed by Rob Warthen called DNAGEDcom.

In order to use this tool, you must first have all of your match's relationship status assigned. You do so by clicking on the orange "assign" button next to everyone's names.

I assign everyone as “distant cousin.”

In order to determine if everyone is set to a relationship status, I log into my account, change the filter to “Show All Matches” and then I click to download all matches to a CSV file.

I open the downloaded CSV file in excel. Then I sort by “Known Relationship.” And if there are any names with a blank known relationship, I go back into my Family Finder match list and search for them and then I change their relationship to “distant cousin.” I then download again to make sure they all “took.”

Once you have all your matches assigned, then you can go to the website http://www.dnagedcom.com

And register for an account.

Then click the Family Tree DNA button at the top.

Enter your kit id and password and then click the “Get Data” button. It will probably 15-20 minutes to download it all.

A zip file will be downloaded to your computer. Unzip the file and it will contain 3 files – match list, ICW list, and chromosome browser list.

Open each file and save as an excel file. Now you can check to see if a match is in common with other matches easily. You can also start analyzing your Chromosome data. It is all downloaded for you nicely and you didn't have to download it 5 people at a time!

Many Thanks to Rob for developing this wonderful tool~!