A match with Shared Matches from both sides of my family.

When sorting thru DNA matches at AncestryDNA, I like to note the connection for each of my matches as being thru the ancestors of one of my four Grandparents.  Both my parents have ancestors who were in Tennessee in the early 1800s. Most of the time I will only be connected to the match on one side.  There a few times when I will have multiple connections.  See the example below with Bill who shares matches with me who are from my PGF's Mom(King/Manire) and my MGF's Mom(Pittman/Adcock)  He has no tree and trying to figure this one out will take seeing the segments in a chromosome browser. 

Thru my admin and shared links, I can tell how much DNA Bill shares with Me, my sister, and my mother.  Unfortunately, we did not begin DNA testing until after my Dad had passed so he was never tested.

Bill's match with Me

Shared matches only show those in common who share at a 4th cousin level(Ancestry's minimum for 4th cousins is 20 cMs)  I noticed that my Mom isn't listed as a shared match.

Bill's match with my Mom

After looking at Mom's amount of shared DNA with Bill, I'm really hoping I will be able to check this match in a chromosome browser so I can identify the grandparent(s) who passed on the 2 segments I received.  On checking Bill's match with my sister's test it appears they do not share any DNA within the range that Ancestry would report.  This is a good example of randomness of DNA inheritance.   I've written to Bill and asked if he was planning on uploading to GEDmatch, MyHeritage or FTDNA.  Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to view the segments in a chromosome browser and see what occurred.  

Bill's match(or lack of) with my Sister

Comparing Shared DNA from paternal 2C1Rs

In one of my earlier blog post, I'd promised to do a comparison of paternal 2C1R(2nd Cousins once removed).    Below I am comparing segments that I and my siblings share with a paternal 2C1R.  This cousin is the 2nd Cousin of my Dad and our Most Recent Common Ancestor Couple is my Cook/Putman 2nd Great Grandparents.  The Cook/Putman couple are his Great Grandparents

Look at the difference in total that my sister and I share with our 2C1R as compared to what our brother shares.  If my brother had been the only one who tested we would have missed out on identifying over half of the DNA which was received via the Cook/Putman connection.  I should mention that this paternal 2C1R(who is kin to us thru his paternal lines) is also a maternal 4C1R(thru his Mom's McElroy/Shropshire lines )  He shares no matching DNA with my mother at the 5cMs/500SNPs threshold. 

Since our Dad passed on before we began testing we can't know what he would have had in common with this cousin other than looking at what all of his children have in common with this match.  Still, there may have been segments that my Dad did not pass on to any of us.  The next best thing we can do is test his sister and see what segments she shares.

By testing our Paternal Aunt who is a 2nd Cousin to this match we are able to identify 7 additional segments with this Cook/Putman cousin.  These are segments which neither I or my siblings received and are noted by the blue arrows in the above image.


This next set of 2C1R are children of a paternal 2nd Cousin.  They are half siblings to each other.  Our Most Recent Common Ancestor Couple is my Cook/King Great Grandparents.  The Cook/King couple is their 2nd Great Grandparents

There seems to be pretty good variation in the Chromosomes which I share and those which my two siblings share with each of these 2C1R  Thankfully I didn't stop at just testing myself as I seem to have less shared segments. Let's see how my Aunt compares.  She is their 1C2R.

It looks like our Aunt has most of the same segments in common with these two who are her 1C2R.  We were still able to identify a chromosome segment that my siblings nor myself had gotten which came from the Cook/King couple(noted by the dark blue arrow)  Also we were able to pick up more cMs on about 5 other segments which are marked with the lighter blue arrow.


There is a good deal of randomness in the heritance of DNA once you are back past your parents.  Test 2nd Cousins, Aunts/Uncles, and siblings. 2nd Cousins are gold mines.  They will really help you sort out the information you need in order to identify your matches.  Too, if you expect to be able to identify 3rd and 4th cousins you need to have a well-researched tree and know the descendants of your 2nd and 3rd Great Grandparents. 

A DNA match who shares 3 different kinship paths

Comparing Grandparent--Mom--Child
I have a new match from Ancestry who has uploaded to GEDmatch.  She has been on my Ancestry match list for a while.  She is kin on my Mom's side thru 3 different lines.
The closest is thru my Maternal Grandfather's Luna & Pittman line.
The other 2 lines are my Maternal Grandmother's Hale/Elzie & Hitchcock/Fleming lines.
While we have the Hale Hitchcock connection in one union the match has separate lines that go back to our common ancestors.  This means we have the potential for sharing segments from both my MGF and my MGM.  Fortunately, I have a sister and a brother who have both taken autosomal tests and I hope visual phasing will help to identify the ancestors responsible for these segments.

Let's look at how they were passed down from my Mom to me and from me to my daughter.

[image edited ch 13 info was inadvertenly placed in the ch 18 row in the Daughter table in my initial post and I've corrected the image so that it is now showing in the correct row.]

Comparing Matching segments passed to 3 children
We can also add my siblings to the mix and observe how Mom passed the segments to
3 of her children.  I have 2 brothers who haven't tested and neither of them has children so whatever they have inherited will not be passed.

Looking at the Amount of shared DNA for each of the 3 siblings and the match
Looking at amounts she is my 2C1R, 4C & 4C1R.
It's not as easy as adding up the avg amounts for all of those relationships and getting a guesstimate on what she should share because 10% of cousins do not match once you get to the 3rd Cousin range.  When you get to 4th cousin level it is about 50%.  Let's see how they compare 2C1R, 4C & 4C1R average amounts added together are 123+35+28 = 186 cMs.  With me and my siblings, she matches highest with my brother at 161.5 cMs...with me at 150.1 cMs and my sister at 91.7 cMs.  There probably won't be many if any Hitchcock/Fleming segments and only a little more likely are the Hale/Elzie segments.  The majority of the segments are likely Luna/Pittman segments.  I feel that since 2 of the relationships were a 4th cousin and beyond, that the multiple relationships really didn't play that big of a part in inflating the amount of shared DNA.

Looking at these comparisons it's easy to see how over a few generations the segments from those ancestors can dwindle away.   I see something odd on Chromosome 18 where my brother's segment is 36.8 cMs which is considerably more than my Mom's 21.8 cMs.  Maybe an identical by chance portion.

Ancestry doesn't include the X in any of its results.  You can, however, download your raw data and upload to GEDmatch.  Let's take a look at how my Mom, siblings, daughter and myself compare to this match on the X chromosome.  Remember the inheritance pattern of the X Chromosome.(<---see additional="" at="" bettinger="" blaine="" blog="" info="" p="" s="">This inheritance pattern only applies to segment matches on the X and not on the other 22 chromosomes which can come from ANY of the ancestors who you have in common.

Notice the 3.07 cM segment that my sister shares on the X that Mom doesn't share with this match.   Also, there is a 5.57 cM segment that my sister and I both share.which isn't shared with Mom.  Likely false positive segments.

Eventually, maybe I will be able to "assign" the segments to specific ancestors or ancestor couples at least.  I have a feeling this is going to take a good while.

If you are looking for tools to use for DNA analysis, I have a listing of my favorite tools, blogs and educational sites on my DNA Tools and Reference page.

Comparing Paternal Aunt to her Nieces & Great Niece in Chromosome Browser

I think this is a good illustration of the randomness of DNA.   I'm comparing Me, my sister, and my daughter to my paternal aunt(my daughter's maternal great aunt.)  Click on the image to enlarge.

The above segment matches are of segments matches which are  5cM or highter  on the FTDNA chromosome browser.  I've uploaded to GEDmatch and can do One To One comparisons.  I'll be able to run a list of matches and other comparison reports once it batch processes.

At GEDmatch with a threshold of 7 cMs or greater:
I match my Aunt at 1610 cMs over 39 segments(largest segment of 102cMs)
Sis matches Aunt at 1548 cMs over 45 segments(largest segment of 158 cMs)
My daughter matches her Great Aunt at 785 cM over 25 segments the largest is 72 cMs

For more DNA tools and reference click on the link in the blog menu at the top of the page (DNA Tools & Reference Links)

Google Sheets for Collaborating and Visual Presentation of DNA Matches

When I am working with an adoptee or with any researcher to help them "see" their DNA matches and to get a handle on the amounts each one matches, possible relationships and groupings,  I've found that the Office Documents at Google are great.  I use the Spreadsheet for DNA matches.This is really just an adaptation of the technique I use when working with the information from my AncestryDNA Circles which I blogged about in my post from August 2016.  (Click below to get a better look--I have edited out the usernames and GEDmatch numbers to protect the privacy of those in the spreadsheet shown below )

I keep a template of this sheet and just make a copy when I need one to work with for another researcher.  You can adapt this to fit your needs but this is what works for me and seems to be the easiest to understand.  If you are working on your own matches you can start making the sheet...if not you will need to get the person to send you a share link to the DNA account with which you will be working.  If they don't know how to do that I have a blog post that I wrote about Sending a Share link to AncestryDNA test results.  Feel free to share that link with them if they need instructions on how to do that.  Also if they aren't at GEDmatch you might also want to refer them to the Upload to GEDmatch post.

1st Column =  Ancestry Matches User Name(or any username if you are adding those from another site)
2nd Column =  cM amount/  # of segments
3rd Column = Possible relationships--keeps you from having to constantly check chart)
There are many charts but I consult the ones at the shared cM project page.
4th Column = GEDmatch numbers--helps you to see who is already at GEDmatch and who it would benefit you the most to ask if they will consider uploading.
5th Column = Notes section--I put common surnames and notes on any patterns I see emerging in this section.
6th Column = ICW/Shared --you can use this section to color code groupings with the fill color feature if you want.  If you know the grandparent you could put PGF MGM etc. here.  You may not need this if you choose to color the entire rows for the groups.  I just have an alternating color applied here so I can read across the row without losing my place.  But coloring the entire row will work if you can to use a different color for each group of shared or ICW matches.

Once your spreadsheet is formatted to your liking, visit the DNA Insight page of the test you will be working with and click on See All Matches From the main match consult each match's page and click on the "i" to collect the amount of shared cMs for each matches you want to catalog.  Typically I only do this with an adoptee's matches that are 50+ cMs.  Also look at the shared matches and start filling in info if you notice any patterns of surnames.  Go ahead do this now while you are at their page.

Once you have the spreadsheet set up click on the SHARE button in the upper right and enter the email(s) of anyone who is going to be helping or observing and set their permissions.  They may view, comment or edit.

If you find this helpful, please share.  Also if you have ideas or comments I'd love to hear those as well.