DNA Analysis Summary 2018 - Sat, 29 Dec 2018

The layout of the DNA match summary by Nancy Jarman-Dunn in a Facebook post in the Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques group caught my eye.

I think I’ll summarize my results this year using Nancy’s layout and update it every year in the future to see my progress. I keep track of this information in a page for that purpose in OneNote. But I haven’t summarized it until now.

Not counting my uncle, who I had tested, these are my numbers:

Ancestry – I have figured out the exact connection to 8 people
Ancestry – I have communicated since the discovery with 3 of them.
Ancestry – I have 27 people who Ancestry says are 90 cM or closer.
Ancestry – Of the 27, I’ve connected 5 and the other 22 should be possible.

23andMe – I have figured out the exact connection to 5 people
23andMe – I have communicated since the discovery with 2 of them.
23andMe – I have 15 people who 23andMe says are 1.3% or closer.
23andMe – Of the 15, I’ve connected 4 and the other 11 should be possible.

FTDNA – I have figured out the exact connection to 1 person.
FTDNA – I have communicated since the discovery with him.
FTDNA – I have 43 people who FTDNA says are 140 cM or closer.
FTDNA – Of the 43, I’ve connected 0 and all 43 should be possible.

MyHeritage – I have figured out the exact connection to 0 people.
MyHeritage – I have 37 people who MyHeritage says are 90 cM or closer.
MyHeritage – Of the 37, I’ve connected 0 and all 37 should be possible.

LivingDNA – I have figured out the exact connection to 0 people.
LivingDNA – I have 3 people who LivingDNA says are 90 cM or closer.
LivingDNA – Of the 3, I’ve connected 0 and all 3 should be possible.

GEDmatch – I have figured out the exact connection to 2 people.
GEDmatch – I have communicated since the discovery with both of them.
GEDmatch – I have 155 people who GEDmatch says are 90 cM or closer.
GEDmatch – Of the 155, I’ve connected 1 and the other 154 should be possible.

I picked 90 cM which is 1.3% as the cutoff which has a 90% chance of being 3rd cousins once removed or closer. For FTDNA, I used 140 cM (2.0%) because they include small segments in their totals that the other companies don’t.

I expect that a year from now, the numbers of matches I have at these thresholds should go up because of new testers. But more importantly, a year from now, I hope/expect I’ll have figured out the exact connection to many more of my close DNA matches through research and using new tools that appear during the year (including Version 3.0 of Double Match Triangulator). When it comes down to it, these new connections are the important results you want from your DNA matches.

DNA Tools

There were many new DNA tools made available during 2018. The ones I found most interesting included:

• DNA Painter by Jonny Perl
• The Leeds Method by Dana Leeds
• Borland Genetics by Kevin Borland, and
• Genetic Affairs by Evert-Jan Blom

The latter program, Genetic Affairs, among other things it does, gave my most interesting result of the year. It produced the following genetic network for my Ancestry DNA matches using a Leeds-type of methodology:

Despite my endogamy (all the grey squares), I was able to assign about 90 of my Ancestry DNA relatives to a particular ancestor in about 12 of the clusters. That was very useful information that will very much help me identify how those matches are exactly related to me.

I also tried and found some use out of the following DNA tools this year:

• Ancestry DNA Helper by Jeff Snavely
• DNAGedcom – by Rob Warthen and others
• DNA Kit Studio by Wilhelm Halys
• DNA Match Analyzer by Bret McKee
• DNA Match Labeling – by DNA Central (Blaine Bettinger)
• DNA Match Manager – by Heirloom Software (Lillian and David Mann)
• Genome Mate Pro by Rebecca Walker
• MapS Converter by Hendrik Wendland
• MapS Phasing by Hendrik Wendland
• RootsFinder by Dallan Quass
• Overlapping Segment Mapper by Kitty Cooper

All these genetic genealogy programs and more are listed at GenSoftReviews, awaiting your review and rating of them.

Genetic Genealogy Facebook Groups

Prior to 2018, there really was no one place to go to discuss your genetic genealogy problems with others. But this year, that all changed, and many useful independently run Facebook groups came into being.

Other than the pages of the DNA companies themselves, in 2018 I joined and started participating in these Facebook groups:

• Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques, 50,585 members, run by Blaine Bettinger, Paula Williams, Leah LaPerle Larkin, Drew Smith, R S Vivs Laliberte and Angie Bush
• International Society of Genetic Genealogy, 17,308 members, run by Katherine Borges, CeCe Moore, Mags Gaulden and James Lick
• DNA Tools, 4,257 members, run by Rob Warthen, Don Worth and Karin Corbeil
• DNA Software Programming, 251 members, run by Rob Warthen, Svetlana Hensman, Edmundo Diana Edmundiño Nerea Alicia, Keven Borland and Jason Porteous
• DNA Detectives, 103,719 members, run by CeCe Moore and 29 others.

These are all closed groups, but they’ll let anyone in who has an interest in what they discuss.

I also joined a number of groups related to my own genealogy research as well as some Facebook groups created for some of the DNA tools I use.

It seems with the impending closure of Google Plus next year and the problems at RootsWeb since it was taken over by Ancestry, that Facebook Groups have become the go-to place for your genealogical discussions.

Genealogy Questions and Answers

I should also mention that the Genealogy & Family History Q&A site is still the go-to place for your genealogy and genetic genealogy questions and answers. The site now has 260 excellent questions tagged DNA. I personally have participated in asking or answering 84 of those questions.

This site is a tremendous resource for genealogists but is not well advertised and much under-utilized.