Tag Archive | Automated Tree Building

Automated Tree Building with Genetic Affairs

Clustering has changed the way many of us work on genealogy mysteries and unknown parentage cases. Genetic Affairs was just one of the sites offering automated clustering (click here for my first clustering post), but then they added tree building. That’s right, they make tree diagrams for each cluster that has at least two people with trees that can be matched up. They even include a GEDcom for those trees in the zip file they send.

One way I use these diagrams is to show cousins how we are related. Another way I use this feature, is to solve unknown parentage cases. I use both DNA2tree and Genetic Affairs and then go with whichever seems to have the more relevant looking trees. The advantage of Genetic Affairs (GA) is that it will look at the unlinked trees and at your ThruLines. Also the output is easy to glance over to see what is worth pursuing, once you are used to the format. Click here for my recent post on automated tree-building tools.

Above is the diagram GA built for the descendants of my gg-grandparents who are in the lonely box on the far left. Click on the image for a larger image in a new tab. My great grandparents lived on farm Skjold in Etne, Hordaland, Norway and had eight children, four of whom, plus the child of another, emigrated to the USA and have many tested descendants at Ancestry.

Here is a key to what you are seeing. The green box on the bottom line is me. The mustard yellow box means that the match’s unlinked tree was used from that person on down. The people in pink in the middle were determined from my ThruLines. Living people are shown as just id numbers, except for your matches who are shown by the name they have chosen to be seen as. All DNA matches are on the far right and are also colored pink with the source and the amount shared listed. Clicking on a match gets a little box to pop up in the lower right corner (as shown) with the name of their family tree, clickable to their Ancestry tree.

UPDATE 24 Jun 2020: Clustering on Ancestry is no longer available as they issued a cease and desist order to Genetic Affairs and many other 3rd party sites. Please click here and send a suggestion to Ancestry that they implement clustering on their site.

The purple box with the word ANCESTRY indicates the source of the tree information. Another GA feature is the ability to cluster both your Family Tree DNA matches and your Ancestry matches together.

When names are listed differently in other trees they will be shown in these diagrams as separate people. Notice that in the second from the left column, that the software could not tell that the A. Skjold who married L. Stephenson is the same person as the A. Halvorsdtr skjold who married L. Stephenson Fjaere. Norwegians did not have fixed surnames so we usually use the farm name as a surname in our trees. Often upon arriving in this country they often chose to use the patronymic, so Stephenson rather than Fjaere (click here for more on Norwegian naming). However the other Anna Halvorsdtr Skjold listed between those two really is a different person and she married a Thompson. Reusing first names is another bane of the Norwegian genealogist.

This tree building capability from Genetic Affairs recently helped me solve an unknown father mystery.

When “Amy” discovered her brother was only a half brother by doing an Ancestry DNA test, she was very surprised. She had heard that her mother was pregnant with her when marrying her late father, but everyone knew he was her Dad, or so she thought. Her mother was not willing to discuss this, so she asked for my help to figure out her biological father from the DNA.
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DNA2Tree: Build Trees from DNA Matches

Since I do not have an iPad, iPhone or any other Apple device, I could not evaluate this product. It sounds like a real game changer for adoptee searches! Like the DNAgedcom.com client, it finds common ancestors and can make cluster charts. However it goes a step further and shows you the common ancestors for each cluster and can build those ancestor’s trees for you! Here is a guest post from a beta tester. – Kitty

DNA2Tree: New Adoptee Search Software by Jason Schneir

There are approximately 120,000 adoptions each year. When these adoptees become adults a substantial percentage want to find out more about their biological parents. Unfortunately, state privacy laws often stand in the way of identifying and learning about their biological relatives.

DNA testing has proved a boon to adoptees wishing to find their biological family. In the best case an adoptee is tested and the adoptee’s biological family is also tested. For those lucky individuals, finding their biological relative is just a matter of looking at their match list and seeing a close match. No skill is needed.

For the majority of adoptees, close biological family is not DNA tested. Fortunately, there are DNA search techniques that can find biological parents from other tested relatives. Unfortunately, this methodology takes considerable skill and practice. For that reason, many adoptees find a geeky friend, search angel, or paid genetic genealogist to help them.

In December 2018, my wife Beth and I joined SearchAngels.org and watched every video we could find on using DNA search techniques to find an adoptee’s parents. We were excited to have the opportunity to help adoptees, but were very nervous about whether we could be successful. To our great joy, we solved over ten adoptee search angel cases in our first four months. Beth worked with me on most of my cases – especially the successful ones! A key element contributing to our success was a new IOS app, DNA2Tree, which runs on an Apple iPhone.

Screeen Shot from SearchAngels.org – the Adoptee Searches page on the Services menu

We chose our first case carefully in the hope it would be easy. There was a first cousin match and the mother was already found – we just needed to find the father. Almost immediately our simple case fell apart and the complexities began to mount.

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