Tag Archive | GEDmatch

Finding common ancestors with automation: Compare GEDcoms or use a one world tree

Dec28

It is exciting when you find a new DNA cousin who actually has a family tree. However it can take days to wade through it looking for the common ancestor and more often than not, you do not find it. Sometimes that is because the ancestor is too far back in time. Other times it is on a line that is not documented or is just wrong. Also there can be spelling discrepancies or if you have Norwegians, naming differences (father’s name or farm name used for surname).

You would think that there would be good automated tools to do this and you would be right. These are the ones I know of.

GEDmatchGEdcom

Partial results of a GEDmatch compare one GEDcom to all run

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Finding Distant Relatives with Autosomal DNA Testing

Jan14

Maybe you tested your DNA to prove or disprove a genealogical theory. Or maybe you tested to check on your health risks or carrier status. But now you see all these possible 3rd to 5th cousins in your family finder or relative finder lists and you wonder if you are related and if you can find that relationship. Perhaps you contacted a few and had almost no responses.

DNARelativesSampleSYes you are probably related, but without both of you having a good paper trail you would be most lucky to actually find that relationship. It is likely to be further back than suggested if your ancestors were at all endogamous. Just living in the same location for a few hundred years can lead to much inadvertent intermarrying and more common DNA than degree of relationship would expect. So autosomal DNA testing is no genealogical shortcut. Some of the people you contacted already know this, so if they saw no common surnames or places on your profile they may have lost interest.

So be prepared before contacting those likely 3rd to 5th cousins.

  1. Have an easily readable pedigree chart in both PDF and online format (GEDmatch can do the latter, more on GEDmatch later)
  2. Another good tool is a list of about 12 generations of ancestors by place name. Much easier for a possible relative to scan.
  3. Do some reading on the basics. UPDATE 9-sep-2018 See my article – http://blog.kittycooper.com/dna-basics/
  4. Try to talk some close relatives into testing so you have more data to work with
  5. Last but not least, make a decision on how much time you want to devote to this project … warning it can be addictive

If you want to do the minimum, then scan the localities and surnames of these possible cousins and contact the ones with surnames or place names in common with you. Indicate in your message that this is the reason for contact. Include the URL for your pedigree or family site and offer to send the PDF files. Include your email address if you are using the 23andme messaging system. The more directed the contact, the more likely you will hear back. I recently went through and cancelled some of my early invitations and send new improved ones on the lines above and got four new shares.

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What to do at the GEDmatch site

Dec4

A DNA cousin who just uploaded his ftDNA results to GEDmatch asked me what he could do with them, so I decided to write a blog post to answer this question. Here are my favorite things to do there:

  • make pretty pictures of your populations ancestry – called the Ad-Mix page
     (see more on that below)
  • get a list of possible relatives who have tested with other companies as well as the one you tested with, that is the “One to Many” option on your home page. Email addresses are shown but you cannot just click on them, you can cut and paste the first part but then you have to retype the ISP  (prevents spam)
  • look at a specific area of one chromosome to see who else matches you there – “Find people who match
    with you on a specified segment”
  • compare your GEDcom to one other to see of you can find that elusive MRCA
  • compare your GEDcom to all your DNA matches that have uploaded GEDCOM files

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Phasing: or how to look at what you inherited from one parent only

Nov5

So in the images in my last post about GEDmatch you may have noticed that my Dad has less Mediterranean, Siberian, and Southwest Asian than I did. Perhaps you are wondering if there is a way to see what I got from my mother? Separating what you got from which parent is called phasing and you need to have at least one parent tested and uploaded to use this function at GEDmatch. The Genetic Genealogist has a good explanation of phasing in this blog post – http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2012/06/07/gedmatch-com-adds-phasing-tool/

Here is what I got from my mother although GEDmatch cautions that the phased data may not be all that accurate.

 

 

Eurogenes 12b does not have as many Northern breakouts but does include Finnish which is of interest since Dad has several Finnish matches so I collected all the Finnish percentages. As you can see Mom had some too and Shipley got more than I did:

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GEDmatch: a wonderful tool

Nov5

One of the best tools around for genetic genealogy is the GEDmatch site which allows you to upload your raw data from whatever service you used and compare it to everyone’s data at GEDmatch in many different ways. But my favorite tool is the pretty pictures of your ancestry mixtures (called admixtures). Here is mine using the Eurogenes K12 calculator which seems best for us Northern/Scandinavian folk:

 



What does it all mean? A discussion of these populations is here at the Eurogenes blog.

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