Tag Archive | GEDmatch

Come celebrate DNA day with me!

Apr23

This Friday is DNA Day; a day we honor the discovery of the structure of DNA. To mark this occasion, most of the personal DNA testing companies are having sales. There are also special events all over this country at museums, schools, and web sites. GEDmatch has a sale on for its premium tools plus I am doing a presentation there at 2 pm Eastern time on Friday.

Click image for the page at GEDmatch about its DNA day. At the bottom of the page is a link to register for my talk.

My last talk at GEDmatch was an attempt to make it easier to use the site by explaining the main tools and how to use them. That talk is still available — just click here. Of course, by now, the home page has changed and new features have been added.

Friday’s talk is focused on how I myself use GEDmatch when trying to understand a new match. In other words, why I ask my matches at other sites to upload to GEDmatch! I will also discuss some mysteries that the tools at GEDmatch have helped me solve. Last, but not least, I will answer questions from the audience. Hope to “see” you all there.

UPDATE: The presentation will be posted on the GEDmatch YouTube channel soon. The slides are available online at https://slides.com/kittycooper/advanced-tools-at-gedmatch-using-segment-data-and-more

Nice New Features at GEDmatch

Apr17

I love the new notes feature at GEDmatch; it helps me keep track of which matches I have figured out. Plus it even works for all the kits I have there. For example, if I make a note on a match to my own kit, that same note is available when I run my brother’s or my Dad’s one-to-many. Here is how it looks on my one-to-many listing:

One-to-Many with some added notes (gray boxes in middle) – click image for a larger version


Clicking on “Add” in the notes column lets you give it a title and then put in some text. Only the title shows on the list so I use it for the surname of the line the match is related on. Warning, on my iPad the old text for title does not disappear when you type over it; however it is gone once the note is saved and retrieved again.

Another benefit for me, with the long list of kits I have uploaded on my dashboard, is that I can use the notes feature on that list to make the ones I want to use stand out. Personally, I have several DNA test results for myself and other family members which I have combined into one master kit (click here for that post). Now I can easily see which one I want to use as per the image below.

I am less delighted with the new tree presentation, although I am grateful that I can click “Classic View” to get the old text heavy version.
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Genetic Genealogy in Literature

Oct29

Mystery and crime are among my favorite leisure reading genres; you might well call that a busman’s holiday. I have watched the evolution of DNA mentions in that literature with great interest. From simple “does the DNA match” to more advanced concepts like contact DNA in the gun residue test (from Michael Connelly‘s most recent Lincoln Lawyer book).

The other day I was enjoying a play at TheaterWorks in Hartford when a discovery made at 23andme was mentioned. Sorry if that is a bit of a spoiler. It is a superb three person play called Fever Dreams, by Jeffrey Lieber, co-creator of the television series LOST. I recommend it highly.

But the most amazing reference to DNA came when one of my favorite writers, J.A.Jance, mentioned a site I use regularly, GEDmatch.com, in a recent novel. That is a site used primarily by serious genetic genealogists, thus not one I would expect an author to know about.

Now I am on the lookout for more of these advanced DNA mentions in literature. Feel free to add yours to the comments below. Here is the J.A.Jance quote from Den of Iniquity page 200 (Note, the names are all made up so there are no privacy violations when quoting fiction!):

“The DNA profile obtained from Caroline Richards led to a woman who was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 12, 1977. Her birth name was Patricia Ann Bledsoe. She was the daughter of a Princeton philosophy professor named Arnold Bledsoe and a stay-at-home mom named Lila Anderson Bledsoe. Her sister, Marisa Bledsoe Young, who was three years younger than Patricia, aka Phyllis Baylor, entered her own DNA into NamUs and also in GEDmatch two years ago in an effort to locate her long-lost sister as well as Patricia’s daughter, Serena, aka Lindsey Baylor, both of whom disappeared without a trace in 2002.”

In case you have not heard of NamUs here how that book describes it:

“… a national database of missing persons. Individuals as well as law enforcement are able to post entries including names, dental records, and DNA profiles. They’re also able to do their own online searches. A similar organization in the private sector is the nonprofit DNA Doe Project, which focuses on human remains that may have gone unidentified for decades.”

Wow, a mention of the DNA Doe Project as well!

Here is another J.A. Jance quote from Blessing of the Lost Girls, Pp 98-99:

‘When cops find DNA at a crime scene, once they have a profile, they run it through CODIS—the Combined DNA Index System—a national database that includes DNA of all kinds of people, including ones arrested for and convicted of violent crimes. The Golden State Killer was a rapist and murderer who operated in California for decades. Cops had his DNA but his profile wasn’t in CODIS. Then they asked for help from a genealogist who went to the public databases . . .” “Like Ancestry.com?” Deb asked. “Yes, sites similar to that one,” Jenny agreed. “She located a familial match, a partial match, to a distant relative who had submitted his DNA just to trace his own roots. Once she found that first relative, she was able to go back and create a family tree that finally, generations later, led to the killer. Some jurisdictions call it genetic genealogy while others call it forensic genealogy. Both work.” “Wait,” Deb said. “Are you saying, if the cops have the DNA of the guy who attacked me, they might be able to do that kind of family search to locate him?” “I am,” Jenny said. “And he might be the same guy who killed that other girl?”

Jance explains the use of forensic genealogy extremely well. For more about DNA and law enforcement plus more about Barbara Rae-Venter, the genealogist who uncovered the identity of the Golden State Killer, click here for my post titled DNA and Law Enforcement

UPDATE 25-Apr-2025: Also there are many mysteries from Nathan Goodwin which include genetic genealogy see https://blog.kittycooper.com/2023/01/genetic-genealogy-fiction/

Disclaimer: All book references use my affiliate links to Amazon

All My GEDmatch Articles

Apr7

GEDmatch is one of my favorite sets of genetic genealogy tools but it can be hard to get started with. I have done many presentations over the years attempting to help people master the basics there, most recently for Family Tree University (click here). Plus I wrote a GEDmatch Basics article for their magazine (click here) which explains all the column headings on the one-to-many report. [UPDATE 15 Apr 2024: Click here for the interview I did for the FTU podcast.] Impact-Site-Verification: d124adea-1323-4f60-a2fb-f1fdf846aa56

Over the past 12 years I have written many posts about GEDmatch, most of which are still useful. So I decided to make a new tag – GEDmatch tools – which brings up just my posts that explain a specific tool. Now I can see which tools I still need to write about!

Here is the list of my articles in reverse chronological order (click any title to go to that post):

GEDmatch: What’s New and my Basics Talk

Mar6

The people behind the current GEDmatch have been working hard to improve its usability and its appearance. Tom Osypian, the QIAGEN GEDmatch Product Manager, gave a talk at the recent Rootstech about what’s new there. I hope some of you went to that! I was sad not to make it this year, other than virtually.

Meanwhile on this Thursday March 7, I will be giving an updated version of my talk on GEDmatch Basics for Family Tree University.  This webinar is designed to help the new user understand how to use the terrific tools on that site.

Now to list the main new features.

  • Most every function now has a drop down list of your kit numbers
    (cut and paste still works)
  • You can import your family tree from the FamilySearch website if you have an account there
  • You can click over to the People who match both of two kits function from the one to many.
  • Emails are now partially concealed.
  • Use of computerized collecting will shut down your account.

Personally my favorite new feature is the click point called Match on each match in the one to many tool. That takes you to a pre-filled form for the person you did the one-to-many for to compare them to the person in the resulting list. This gives you a quick way to see which of your relatives on GEDmatch match the new match, and thus what family line they are likely from.

I also tried the import of our family tree from FamilySearch for my brother’s kit and it worked beautifully. One small problem was that my Norwegian grandmother has a foreign character in her middle name so she came over as ? Lee (just her surname). I have reported that problem.

Showing the first three characters of the email plus the provider seems a good compromise to increase privacy while allowing you to see when kits belong to the same person. Clicking on that partial email address takes you to the user lookup page for that user which gives you the pseudonym or name of the kit owner, their email address, and their GEDCOM numbers if there are any

As to computerized collecting, if you are a programmer, it may seem efficient to write yourself a script to scrape the information you want but computers are too fast and that bogs down the GEDmatch servers and thus affects everyone else’s response time.