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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: thecalifornialife on Sunday 09 December 18 20:32 GMT (UK)
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Has anyone had any luck in using any sort of chromosome browser or dna painting to determine the parents of an adopted ancestor? My moms great great grandpa was adopted. I’m wondering if anyone has and any success in using a program to sort certain chromosomes to narrow down a cousin that is related to you through that ancestor. For example finding a cousin that is related to the parents of my adopted ancestor. Then I can trace back their ancestry tree to see what makes sense.
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Hi @thecalifornialife,
I use Jonny Perl's DNA Painter free software and have a similar research project. Unfortunately I have not been able to use chromosome painting to unravel this problem yet. However, the tool is really useful for organising and visualising segments of shared DNA (>7cM).
My paternal great great grandfather Ingham was illegitimate but recorded a Crabtree as his father on his marriage certificate. He had twin sons who married Dixon sisters. Now, I have a "1st cousin once removed to 2nd cousin" match that descends from the other twin and his wife. Clearly, we could share DNA from the Ingham and/or Dixon lines. So trying to prove that Ingham was a 'Crabtree' would require a match from the Crabtree line and this match has not been forthcoming yet.
It is worth looking at Jonny Perl's DNA Painter tool but I have been unlucky so far.
Good luck with your search. :)
pughcd
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First you have to do the leg work to find the matches to use in the chromosome browser and DNA painter tool.
If your mother or anybody from her generation on the same line is available for testing, it could give you closer results. Or anyone from any generation on that line, to make use of shared matches, i.e. known cousins or 2nd cousins.
You may have an uphill job. You are looking for two unknown people out of 32 of your mother's ancestors, and 2 out of 64 of your ancestors.
My 5th to 8th cousins at ancestry, especially those sharing only 6 cMs and of American origin, are likely to be false matches. However, I think that most if not all of the 4th to 6th cousins may be valid, if only I could find the connection.
However, I only positively match with 55 out of my 193 4 to 6 or closer cousins (not a high success rate, but worthwhile to me).
Only one of my 2G grandparents is unknown, I have found only one potential match so far who could possibly be the link.
So the answer to your question is no, I have had no luck because I only have one possible candidate to compare with.
If you have 2 or 3 matches you think likely, browser or painter may still not be the initial thing to do, rather explore these matches, see if they know how they are connected, etc, etc.
Regards Margaret