DNA Matches
- Finding birth family of adopted grandparents
- DNA Segments?
- MyHeritage AutoClusters
Both of my paternal grandparents were adopted, I know who the birthmother of my grandmother was, but not the birth father. I havent a clue who my grandfathers birth parents were. I have had my DNA tested with ancestry.com, my brothers daughter had hers tested there as well (i manage hers). Both of our raw dna has been also uploaded to myheritage, gedmatch, FTDNA etc. The highest match i have to an unknown person is 816cm 24segments, my niece matches this person with 531/17; We also match with this persons daughter and grand daughter with mine matching at 545/18 for the daughter, 284/12 with the grand daughter; my niece matches the daughter with 171/7, and with the grand daughter at 55/14. This family was born and raised in the same town where my grandfather grew up... so my question is: is there a way to use these cm's and segments to between myself and my brothers daughter to narrow down our relation more accurately? ive used the misc "dna calulators" that are available online but theres no way to input both my results and my nieces results to maybe calculate the relationship based on both of us. does anyone know if this would be possible?
Also, I did the MyHeritage autocluster thing, and it makes no sense to me... anyone know how to use any of this when you dont really know the surnames or who your ancestors may really be?
@General Questions
@CarolynWebber CarolynWebber
@Adoption and Unknown Family Research
@Family History Research
@FamilySearch Tips and Tricks
@United States Genealogy Research
@Western United States Research
Answers
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YES! What you actually need to do is find out where the DNA matches stop matching. So you will need to contact that DNA match and start comparing matches. Have her ask you about DNA matches to her cousins and more distant relatives and you ask about yours. When you are looking at her family, you are trying to find out where both sides of the family match you and your cousins and there will probably not be very many limits! When you are looking at your tree, when you find all the cousins who don't match the other DNA, if you cross off all their ancestors you should get a pyramid shape pointing directly to the ancestor that is part of the other family.
Here is my comparison chart between my family and the unknown match. My family is on top (you can see 'ME'). Folks in Green match the other family. Folks in red don't match. The other family is the bottom family. You can see our theoretical match marked dark red on both trees.
When you find out where the limits of the matches are, you should be able to compare the overall closeness of the match to see which brother (I think you said this was probably the unknown grandfather's family?) is most likely to be your ancestor.
This is the closeness tree. I colored all the folks by how closely related they were to my grandfather (marked in shaded grey). My family is the stub tree in the middle that is all orange and red. I did this with my grandfather and his sister and my dad's cousins and you can see when you compare it to the previous image, that the person we are most closely related to wasn't the oldest brother that we had thought and wasn't my great-great-grandfather as we had thought.
You can't base either one of these charts off of only a handful of people. You really have to start comparing a lot of people. The grandfather that we decided isn't our grandfather was a surprise, as we had a really good paper trail on the people that we originally had in our tree and we had DNA matches to his other descendants which really didn't make sense at first! (We realized he was 2nd cousin to his wife). Having a missing grandfather may already put you on a good path to finding the right one for the place!
I've played around with MyHeritage's autocluster, and while it is interesting, I haven't exactly found a good use for it either. I think the point is that each individual in a colored cluster is supposed to be related to all the other individuals in that color. But I already know that some of mine are related in a couple different ways (make that on both father's line and mother's line), so it doesn't seem to be able to work with that!
Hope this helps. We can discuss further if you're not understanding what my charts show.
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Thank you @Anne LoForte Willson I have reached out to the person who manages the dna for the father, daughter and granddaughter... she is the father’s ex wife and the mother/grandmother of the other two. We were corresponding quite regularly then several months ago she just kinda stopped communicating with me. I’m not sure why. Also I was hoping there would be a way to figure it out on my own or without having to “bother” someone else ... I will reach out to her again and see if she responds. Thank you so much for your help!
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You really have to have someone clearly in the other tree to do it right. You need to find the people who don't match and Ancestry won't tell you if someone has a DNA test that doesn't match you. You could try to find someone else in that family who matches you who is willing to work with you. Search trees for some of the people in that tree and then go to the owner's profile to see if you match them.
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P.S. good luck in finding someone who really wants to know!
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You might consider making copies of all matches, their trees, if any, and any associated information on any of the sites that you find a match. Lest you find them mysteriously "Gone Missing" the next time you log into your account. Build your own working trees for your matches with your own
research to find your presumed common ancestor and don't forget to make this tree private. DNA Painter has a tool that may help to answer some of the questions posed https://dnapainter.com/tools/wato . Blaine T. Bettinger
s "The Shared cM Project-Version 4.0 (March 2020) is freely available online
https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/wp-Enter the total number of cM for your match here:
Then any relationships that fit will stand out below
Click here for a shareable link to the cM amount above
New Click on any relationship to view a histogram
Read more about cousin relationships
Relationship probabilities (based on stats from The DNA Geek)
- 95%
- Great-Grandparent Great-Aunt / Uncle Half Aunt / Uncle 1C Half Niece / Nephew Great-Niece / Nephew Great-Grandchild
- 5%
- Great-Great-Aunt / Uncle † Great-Great-Niece / Nephew † Half Great-Aunt / Uncle † Half Great-Niece / Nephew † Half 1C 1C1R
- † this relationship has a positive probability for 816cM in thednageek's table of probabilities, but falls outside the bounds of the recorded cM range (99th percentile)
How to read this chart
- Relationship
- Average
- Range
- (low to high;
- 99th percentile)
- Great-Great-Great-Grandparent
- GGGG Aunt / Uncle
- Great-Great-Grandparent
- GGG Aunt / Uncle
- Half GG-Aunt / Uncle
- 208
- 103 – 284
- Great-Grandparent
- 887
- 485 – 1486
- Great-Great-Aunt / Uncle
- 420
- 186 – 713
- 1C3R
- 117
- 25 – 238
- 2C3R
- 51
- 0 – 154
- Other Relationships
- Half 1C2R
- 125
- 16 – 269
- Half Great-Aunt / Uncle
- 431
- 184 – 668
- Grandparent
- 1754
- 984 – 2462
- Great-Aunt / Uncle
- 850
- 330 – 1467
- 1C2R
- 221
- 33 – 471
- 2C2R
- 71
- 0 – 244
- 3C2R
- 36
- 0 – 166
- 6C
- 18
- 0 – 71
- Half 2C1R
- 66
- 0 – 190
- Half 1C1R
- 224
- 62 – 469
- Half Aunt / Uncle
- 871
- 492 – 1315
- Parent
- 3485
- 2376 – 3720
- Aunt / Uncle
- 1741
- 1201 – 2282
- 1C1R
- 433
- 102 – 980
- 2C1R
- 122
- 14 – 353
- 3C1R
- 48
- 0 – 192
- 4C1R
- 28
- 0 – 126
- 6C1R
- 15
- 0 – 56
- Half 3C
- 48
- 0 – 168
- Half 2C
- 120
- 10 – 325
- Half 1C
- 449
- 156 – 979
- Half Sibling
- 1759
- 1160 – 2436
- Sibling
- 2613
- 1613 – 3488
- SELF
- 1C
- 866
- 396 – 1397
- 2C
- 229
- 41 – 592
- 3C
- 73
- 0 – 234
- 4C
- 35
- 0 – 139
- 5C
- 25
- 0 – 117
- 6C2R
- 13
- 0 – 45
- Half 3C1R
- 37
- 0 – 139
- Half 2C1R
- 66
- 0 – 190
- Half 1C1R
- 224
- 62 – 469
- Half Niece / Nephew
- 871
- 492 – 1315
- Niece / Nephew
- 1740
- 1201 – 2282
- Child
- 3487
- 2376 – 3720
- 1C1R
- 433
- 102 – 980
- 2C1R
- 122
- 14 – 353
- 3C1R
- 48
- 0 – 192
- 4C1R
- 28
- 0 – 126
- 5C1R
- 21
- 0 – 80
- 7C
- 14
- 0 – 57
- Half 3C2R
- 27
- 0 – 78
- Half 2C2R
- 48
- 0 – 144
- Half 1C2R
- 125
- 16 – 269
- Half Great-Niece / Nephew
- 431
- 184 – 668
- Great-Niece / Nephew
- 850
- 330 – 1467
- Grandchild
- 1754
- 984 – 2462
- 1C2R
- 221
- 33 – 471
- 2C2R
- 71
- 0 – 244
- 3C2R
- 36
- 0 – 166
- 4C2R
- 22
- 0 – 93
- 5C2R
- 18
- 0 – 65
- 7C1R
- 12
- 0 – 50
- Half 3C3R
- Half 2C3R
- Half 1C3R
- 60
- 0 – 120
- Half GG-Niece / Nephew
- 208
- 103 – 284
- Great-Great-Niece / Nephew
- 420
- 186 – 713
- Great-Grandchild
- 887
- 485 – 1486
- 1C3R
- 117
- 25 – 238
- 2C3R
- 51
- 0 – 154
- 3C3R
- 27
- 0 – 98
- 4C3R
- 19
- 0 – 60
- 5C3R
- 13
- 0 – 30
- 8C
- 11
- 0 – 42
content/uploads/2020/03/Shared-cM-Project-Relationship-Chart.png
With this information you are off to a great start! Good Luck.
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Thank you all! I would like to say that I just tried the WATO tool at dnapainter and all I can say is WOW!!! Even though I haven’t the slightest clue what I’m doing, and I’m almost 100% certain I did it wrong, I am super impressed with the info it provided ... I uploaded my gedcom, asked “how am I related to xxxx surname”, plugged in the cm for father daughter and grand daughter ... and Presto chango! It gave me a huge list of possibilities and even added people I don’t think I have in my tree! I think maybe after I learn how to use it correctly it will become an invaluable tool for my research!
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My wife found out at age 66 she was adopted and I found out at same time my father was not my birth father. I cannot praise Search Angels enough about the help they gave us to find out who my father was and who my wife’s parent are. They had an optional service for $75 (you do not have to pay for their service) to move to the top of the list which we both did and within three days both my wife’s angel and mine had our parents Identified. My wife had over 4500 names in her tree to then start over on her biological family. If you decide to go this way you can ask the person helping how they use DAN to find your parents. Both my wife and I are working so we can help others down the road in the same situation. You are taking the correct steps with putting your information on as many sites as possible as this widens your search area and increases your odds to make connections with other family members.
Good luck with you search.
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