 |
My mother, wearing the hat, and
her sister were not surprised
when their DNA differed. |
I have been a fan of Ancestry.com since I started my membership in
2000 so was very pleased to try their new Autosomal DNA test last summer. Since
then, I have coerced three family members to take the test and have several
thousand matches, but organizing and taking the time to look at them all is an overwhelming
task.
I have 58 pages of DNA matches with 50 matches per page - that's 2,900
matches. One match is immediate
family (my mother), another
is close family (my aunt), and I have two 3rd to 4th cousin matches; one who I know and love and
one who also matches my mother and my aunt, but we don't have a clue as to how she
matches us. Ninety-eight of my matches were in the 4th to 6th cousin range
making the remaining 2,700+ matches distant cousins in the 5th to 8th cousin
range.
Now, triple the 2,900 matches as I am the administrator for both my
mother's and my aunt's DNA. And, add my brother's DNA as his is processing.
This will give me approximately 11,600 matches to wade through and more are
added each week! Looking at over 11,000 matches is impossible so I don't look
beyond 4th to 6th cousin matches.
Of all of those matches, I have had a few new leads,
but I have yet to find any new conclusive matches. Honestly, I can find
more by searching the Public Trees at Ancestry.com.
A newer tool at AncestryDNA puts a leaf next to any match that
contains someone in my tree, but, in all of my current matches (almost 8,000), I
only have two leaves.
I have read that having the raw data from
AncestryDNA will really help with the matches and that will come soon. I
know that if I can access that raw data, I will need to upload this data to
another site such as GEDmatch or FamilyTree DNA. However, are all those persons who match my DNA going to upload to another site?
So AncestryDNA, make our matches easier
to manage and please grant my wish!
Diana
© 2012
Wow! You really do have tons of matches. So far I have only eight pages of matches! And none of my close relatives has tested with Ancestry. After I created a pedigree tree and connected it, about 6-8 of my matches show the leaf (probably because I included "reputed" connections way out there). For the rest of the approximately 40 matches where I think I may have spotted the connection, I used names, dates, and spouses' names on my matches' trees to figure out the connections - but that's a lot easier to do with less than 400 matches. I wish you good luck in figuring out a system for managing this large body of information!
ReplyDeleteThanks!I looked earlier - my mother and I each have 58 pages of matches and my aunt has 60. One could say that I was lucky to have so many matches:) I started an easy to use spread sheet to help me determine matches within my family, but the numbers are just too large. I think that I will wait to see what happens in 2013!
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