Do I really have 400/800 4th or closer cousins?

Maybe!

https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics

https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics

What percentage of your cousins will match your DNA?

Simplified version of the relationship chart from the ISOGG wiki (courtesy Dimario, Wikimedia Commons)

The "G" trick

The cousin level = the number of "G"s , else the greats plus one

If you are in different generations take the shorter path and the other is removed by the generation difference

The matches called 2nd cousin at Ancestry share 200-600? cM but can easily be other relations, most of mine are 1st once and twice removed

I indicate the actual relationship first thing in the little notepad

There is an online calculator at

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

Enter the cMs and get probable relationships 

Clicking on a match name or tree on the match list takes you to the match page for that person

My real 2nd cousins are at the bottom of the 2nd cousin list and also at the top of the 3rd cousin "bin"

Notice that most have either a green or blue dot, the first one has both because he is a 1st cousin once removed so shares 2 great grandparent lines (dots = groups)

At Ancestry click on the + next to a match to assign it to a group with the color you choose

You need a good family tree for this!

Ancestry has done a lot of the work for you by searching trees for common ancestors

But typically when you log in you want to see your new matches, if you catch them early they are more likely to respond to your messages

Personally I used to look at just 4th cousins or better who were unviewed and recent but then Ancestry added a centimorgan filter!

Click a match name or tree and see how you are related

Clicking on a "Common Ancestor" brings up a display like this showing the relationship pathways

Next go back to the match page and click shared matches, give them all a dot for this family line (Munsons are green)!

Shared matches only go out to 4th cousins (20cM)

One problem with that is that a second cousin shares BOTH great grandparents so more distant shared matches might be HALLING not MUNSON

Another approach is to look for the descendants of a specific ancestor via ThruLines on your DNA home page

Unlike the Shared Matches feature, ThruLines finds even distant cousins

put your cursor on an ancestor on this page and see how many DNA descendants are here

So to check for Halling side matches look at Josephine's parents on the ThruLines page ... More matches than to her! So 6 Halling matches

Click on Peder

Click on the EVALUATE to see where the information is from the right column will slide in to show tree information

But how do I copy this information to my tree?

When you click on the family tree name in the EVALUATE panel

up comes the information about this person in the same box -

every name in blue is clickable

Save to tree brings up a box, start typing, it looks in your tree for that person

Scroll down the page and see all the family members. Just like when you click a green leaf.

Any facts can be clicked over to your tree

Add a tree tag showing this is a DNA Connection

Click on her name to go to her profile in the other tree

then you can use Save to Tree as before

One last tip: Click on your match's name on their match page to get to their profile and see whether they have logged in recently

MyHeritage also finds the relationships using many trees

called the Theory of Family Relativity

You can select just the matches with "theories"

click on Filters then All tree details then click Has Theory ...

MyHeritage matches are presented on card like boxes with much information

Here is the MyHeritage theory, it only uses our two trees but many theories use multiple trees

An example of using multiple trees

As on Ancestry, to copy information over start with the person who is in your tree

Look at the profile in your tree first

If the match looks good then use Smart Matches to find the other tree

When you find the smart match click Review Match

Look carefully and if it is a match click Confirm Match

A large selection of her relatives can be copied over as well

23andme does not have trees but it connects to FamilySearch, a Beta feature, one you have to set up

https://blog.kittycooper.com/2019/08/23andme-now-connects-to-the-familysearch-world-tree/

23andme has an exciting new feature, it predicts a tree from your matches

A "Beta" feature it is accurate for close family

You can add names in here also

Looking more closely, it predicts people who are descended from his grandparents and also from a set of great grandparents

This is really just an advanced form of clustering, the most exciting recent tool for DNA

Clustering can be a quick shortcut to finding the common ancestors with a cousin. The idea is to display your matches who match each other in an easy to understand visual format

Recently, Genetic Affairs has added a tree building feature. These are the trees it made for the top 2 boxes in the previous picture

Jack

Jack

Even more recently, Genetic Affairs has added the ability to cluster a specific Ancestry group or all but a specific group

GEDmatch.com shows the matches that triangulate when you use their Tier 1 cluster tool also which ones have trees

Text

To create that clustering graph I used select all on the first page of my match list and then clicked on Visualization Options

MyHeritage includes a cluster tool from Genetic Affairs

Remember Melissa? Her cluster must also be Munsons

In the lists of people for each cluster your notes are included and everything is clickable

DNA2tree is only on iPhones and iPads via a paid subscription but it is a real game changer for unknown parentage searches

https://borlandgenetics.tools

https://genetic.family/

QUESTIONS?