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More Automated DNA Match Clustering!

Dec30

Have you been wondering why are all your favorite bloggers are going crazy for automatic clustering? Well it is a fun visual technique to see which matches belong to which family line by making a chart with your matches across both the top and side, grouping them by who matches who, and then coloring those boxes in. This creates visual clusters which will roughly correspond to your great grandparents or their parents.

My perfect cousin has many matches on all her great grandparent lines (green is my Munson side) so I used her to showcase the new DNAgedcom clustering above. Notice how similar it is to her cluster from Genetic Affairs shown in my previous blog about that site and tool.

Here are all the new ways to cluster our DNA matches:

  • DNAgedcom now has a clustering tool in their client (DGC) which uses your ancestry match list and ICW files (described in detail in the read more below)
  • Genetic Affairs has Ancestry clustering working again
  • DNApainter created a tool to create a CSV from the Genetic Affairs html cluster file. Some of us love to use spreadsheets.
  • Andy Lee of Family History Fanatics figured out how to take an autosomal match matrix from GEDmatch and cluster it in a spreadsheet program, Click here for that video – the explanation starts just after 42 minutes and this is really fun!
  • Rumor has it that GEDmatch may add automatic clustering sometime in the new year…

All of this is based on the method developed by Dana Leeds to organize your matches which is easy and simple to do. Click here for her blog about that.

Read on for how I used the new DNAgedcom clustering tool for myself and my brother, where I know all our great grandparents.

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Solving unknown parentage cases with DNA

Sep26

In the last few months, I have helped solve five out of six unknown parentage cases in just a few weeks from mainly third and fourth cousin matches. How? By using the GWorks automation from DNAgedcom combined with AncestryDNA results. These searches used to take many months, even years, with much tedious spreadsheeting and segment analysis. What has changed?

Well, Ancestry.com now has a database of over 20 million tests [number updated on 5 dec 2021] plus software to connect trees and DNA. This can make the search easy for Americans without having to use the segment data.

My attempt to explain the technique I use of combining GWorks with mirror trees met with glazed eyes in my Adoption workshop last June. I thought my previous write-up was pretty clear but I have not heard back from anyone saying that it had worked for them. So I am trying again with this post today.

In an unknown parentage search, the object is to find a common ancestral couple among your DNA matches and build a tree of their descendants until you find someone in the right place at the right time. It seems pretty obvious to me that an automated way to compare trees is best; followed by surname frequencies to check for the spouses, in order to figure out which lines to follow. So why does everyone tune out when I try to explain how to do that with GWorks? Too many steps? Too geeky?

By using GWorks to find a likely ancestral couple, I have been able to build down to the grandparents or great grandparents of the adoptee fairly quickly. Then I build the trees back in time for each child’s spouse to find the most likely line. At this point I start using “mirror” or research trees.

Here is the step-by-step approach:

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