We welcome any query on Who When Where. If you have previously posted it on another forum (including the old WDYTYA forum), please state this in your opening post - this will save people redoing the research which has been done before: they can look at it and possibly go further with it.
I took a DNA test quite a few years ago, and had problems with one of my close matches (2nd-3rd cousin). Despite us both having reasonable sized trees, we couldn’t find a match, all we knew was the match was somewhere in my mothers tree.
She has just found out that from another distant relative of mine, that her grandfather wasn’t her real grandfather, and that her grandmother had an affair with one of my great uncles, resulting in two illegitimate children, one of whom was her father!
Just goes to show one should never give up, if you find a close DNA match, you will be related somehow amd share a common ancestor
Do you feel relieved to have the answer? I've got an identical problem of a mystery 400+cm match and no obvious connection in either tree. I can't contact the other side and the only other shared match doesn't have a published tree and doesn't answer messages! However, I'm hoping someone will get test results soon to help one way or the other. Fingers crossed.
Norfolk Nan wrote: ↑24 Sep 2023, 21:05
Do you feel relieved to have the answer?
Well, before we found the common ancestor, it did cause me to doubt the efficacy of DNA testing
It does annoy me when people publish their DNA without linking it to a tree. What is the point, or are they so selfish that they are relying on others to find the matches and complete their tree for them?
Personally, I find Gedmatch better for localising matches, as it not only tells you who you match with, but, more importantly, how you match. Which chromosome etc. This really helps to narrow down where the common ancestor fits into ones tree.
I'm fully in agreement with you Mick. In fact, I think it is a great shame that Ancestry is the most successful company with regard to autosomal DNA testing because so many people who test with them seem to have no idea about how to utilise DNA testing to get the most out of it. Ancestry don't offer a chromosome browser and that is a vital tool in atDNA testing, especially if one has known illegitimacies in the family. Even more so, as you point out, if one is scratching one's head because one is unable to make sense of matches. Those chromosomes and segments that are shared can really help pinpoint who or when the shared ancestry began, as you indicate.
I'd go further than you though, in that a chromosome browser is essential because it is DNA people we share, not surnames, and a paper based tree alone can only tell you so much. The DNA tree is the only accurate tree if it can be tracked. I suspect though many folk don't want to know if they have illegitimacies or false paternities in their family as they rather have a neat tree than one with more question marks raised or overcast with impropriety.
For those of us with false paternities though, having so many matches, all related to each other, but with not one known to have tested with other companies or uploading to GEDmatch, a great frustration arises. I have one group that I share with thirty matches. I'd dearly love to know the identity of my ancestor's father born in Nottingham in c1815. I suspect his father may have been a soldier, as many were garrisoned from other parts of the country in industrial towns around the time of Napoleonic Wars to prevent rioting during a period of great social upheaval. The irony is that when a known 4th cousin of my mother, and his wife, took DNA tests, she turned out to have the closer match to my Mum than him! Still can't figure out how come, as there is no apparent geographic crossover between the paper based trees.
