FINDING COUSINS WITH DNA
or How to deal with all those DNA cousin matches
By Kitty Munson Cooper
Blogging at blog.kittycooper.com
My slides are always available at https://slides.com/kittycooper
One day I got an email from Mike who said I think my g-g-grandfather was the brother of your great grandmother Maren
My new 3rd cousin1R sent me photos of my g-g-grandparents Jorgen and Maren Wold which I had never seen before
WHY CONTACT COUSINS?
Do I really have 1000 fourth or closer cousins?
Maybe!
You will not match all your 3rd cousins
but you will match all your 2nd cousins
and closer relatives
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
Do I really have to look through thousands of matches?
NO!
Start with the low hanging fruit, "extended family" about 3rd cousins or closer
(75cM and larger)
Cousin Matches
- How much shared DNA in centimorgans (cMs)?
- Who else do they match?
- How many segments? (More than 2 is best)
- Closer cousins will have larger longest segments (20 cM or more. very important if endogamous)
When you contact a possible cousin give them as much information as you can. Offer them photos and stories ...
Ancestry now divides your matches beyond your immediate family (parents, siblings) into close family (aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, 1st and 2nd cousins down to 200cM), then extended family (down to 55cM) and finally distant
I indicate the actual relationship first thing in the little notepad on the match page which shows on the match list under the name
Cindy is actually the daughter of my first cousin who shares 1100 cM, so not surprising to share so much
Click on View match or the name to get to the match page
where you can click on the number of cM for more of an estimate
There is an online calculator at
https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
Enter the cMs and get probable relationships
619
At Ancestry click on the plus sign (or pencil) next to the right of a match to assign it to a group with the color you choose
Start by creating a group for each great grandparent's line. I like to use warm colors for the maternal side and bluish colors for the paternal
Each color stands for a great grandparent line except on the Bavarian side where there are no testers at Ancestry
You need a good family tree for this!
Blue icon= ThruLines, Green= hint
A quick digression to show what you see when you click one of those icons
And if you click on edit your tree tags you get a side bar with the possible tags you can add or remove
How those tags appear on the profile
Ancestry has done a lot of the work for you by searching trees for common ancestors
Clicking Common ancestors will display only those matches with shared ancestors found via any tree on Ancestry
Since I always add a colored dot plus a note showing how I am related, I can quickly look through the matches to see if there are any new ones since they will not have a dot yet
Easier: just click both Unviewed and Common ancestors
Clicking on a match name or image on the DNA match list takes you to the match page for that person which will show the common ancestors when there are some
Clicking on a "Common Ancestor" brings up a display like this showing the relationship pathways (this feature is part of "ThruLines")
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)
Clicking on the notepad makes a box slide in from the right where you can type notes like the actual relationship
(don't forget to click save!)
Click on the little icon to connect the match to that person in your tree via a panel that slides in on the right
Once a match is connected to your tree a little solid tree icon gets attached to their image on your match list
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!
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 I looked at Josephine's parents on the ThruLines page ... More matches than to her! So 6 Halling matches
Click on Peder
The ThruLines display for Peder Halling
click on any down arrow to see more
Click on the EVALUATE to see where the information is from the right column will slide in to show tree information
Ancestry explains why it thinks Anders is the son of Johanne and lists the family trees it used to determine that
But how do I copy this information to my tree?
Click on EVALUATE then click on the blue Next button which lets you pick a source, if a tree, more records
Sometimes there will be a new ancestor in your ThruLines list, click on that to copy it
clicking on evaluate shows a side panel with 2 trees that have no records, very suspect, best to look for records
click on the tree to use then you get a blue Add to tree button
Lets go back to Inga Olsen
We did add her to our tree, now to tag her and get more of her family added
To add more information about Inga, go back to the tree we copied from
To add a tag to a person click on the plus and tag
Click on her name to go to her profile in the other tree
then you can use Save to Tree to get her other family members copied over
Click on Tools then the + Save to Tree
Sometimes Ancestry can figure out the relationship from just the parents of your match!
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
this tool is 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
Melissa is a cousin I found at MyHeritage
Here is the MyHeritage theory, it only uses our two trees but many theories use multiple trees
An example of using multiple trees, in this case using the GENI world tree
As on Ancestry, to copy information over start with the person who is in your tree
Look at the profile in your tree first,
Click on the box to get a popup where you can click the View profile or View in tree
If the match looks good then use Smart Matches to find the other tree
When you find the smart match to the tree with the information you want,
click Review Match
Look carefully and if it is a match click Confirm Match
That takes you to the page where you can copy facts and other people over
Click the < to copy a new fact over
To copy over a missing child, click the add as a new ...
A large selection of her relatives can be copied over as well
Not just new facts but different ones or "improved" ones can be copied
Don't forget to click save when you are done!
My free presentation from last Fall about cousin matching at MyHeritage is posted on their FaceBook page - click here
Family Tree DNA
-
Takes uploads of other autosomal DNA tests
-
Has trees but no automatic tree searching
- Use the third party tool from GENETIC AFFAIRS to cluster and search trees for common ancestors
Click on the family tree icon to
see something like this
Family Tree DNA
-
You can email a match directly from the match list, no messaging system
-
If a match uploads a tree that is indicated and clickable
-
You can sort by largest segment, useful if your family is endogamous
-
The total cM are inflated since small segments are included so cut at a total 100cM and a longest of 20cM?
23andme
23andme has some excellent tools for searching your DNA relative list
At 23andme you can connect your online tree at another site to your profile for your matches to see BUT
it does not do any tree searching or matching of ancestors for you
23andme has an exciting feature, it predicts a tree from your matches (works less well with endogamy)
But if the tree recalculates you have to replace some of them
You can add names and people
Looking more closely, it predicts people who are descended from his grandparents and also from a set of great grandparents
Clicking an individual brings up a box where you can go to their profile or message them
Other sites you can upload your DNA to in order to find more relatives:
- Geneanet.org (French)
- LivingDNA (British)
- GEDmatch.com (includes Law Enforcement)
At GEDmatch the DNA relatives list is far from intuitive but it does include the email address and links to trees
example of the Beta one to many comparison
Getting New Cousins to Respond to You
- Have a family tree online
- Upload friendly picture of yourself
- Include details of who matches whom (they may have multiple kits)
- Offer them information when you write to them
Do not be disheartened by lack of responses, some rarely log in
Also the app for tablets and phones does not show the messages icon
Managing your Cousin Matches
- How much shared DNA in centimorgans (cMs)?
- Who else do they match?
- How many segments? (More than 2 is best)
- Closer cousins will have larger longest segments (20 cM or more especially if endogamous)
When you contact a possible cousin give them as much information as you can. Offer them photos and stories ...
Many useful posts on my blog, this one from 2013 is still relevant