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Thanks for replying. one tree had 4 private so i assume parents and sibling but nothing else and the other person had no tree at all.

Both accounts are named but nothing in their bios to suggest age or location

If their user name is say “David Ian Lowe” then you have something to work upon that may give results, if it is “mikexzy” then the only way with one like this is to look for a DNA shared matches that shares a high cM with them.  This is where Pro Tools comes in very useful.

My Wife has a 100cM match with no tree and they have been unresponsive to messages.  Searches reveal that in England alone there are 120+ people who were born between 1940 and 1980 so no easy task and 8 years later and dozens of trees they are still unlinked.  My hypothesis is that her Great Grandfather had an affair and their Grandparent was the result, with their certification being falsified to cover the stigma.

I see that Glen has suggested some actions which may also help.

I used to use the Floating Branches technique but for a few years now I have adopted a different approach in that I build a standalone Tree.  If I find a link between the trees within software I can combine the two trees and sync the consolidated tree back into Ancestry.  It is a very quick and easy task and saves hours of deleting individuals in an Ancestry Floating Branch.

Thanks E.

It is a Paternal issue, the testers Paternal Grandmother’s line is OK, 6 DNA matches in their tree.

It is the Paternal Grandfather’s line where all the 75+ cM matches all look promising and as usual we have the big BUT, none have useful trees and none have been on Ancestry in the last year.  Social Media is so far not sowing any likely candidates, well there is one but they have not posted since 2011.

10 DNA matches who share 50+cM are also not helpful so far.

It looks like successive unofficial adoptions have taken place with the Grandfather and Great Grandfather so at present determining the surname is a WIP.

Another issue is surnames, they are all over the place with Belgian, Dutch and Germanic spelling of the surnames.

South African records are pretty poor but familysearch does have a few possibles.

The tester has to tread carefully obtaining information from their paternal family so it may take time to gather the family stories.

Try using another Browser.

Firefox is my preferred Browser on my Win 11 PC.

I have 1% Wales and zero evidence of any Welsh blood in my family for over 225 years.

Do take low %ages with a bottle of Saxa.

@ 2736 cM they are full siblings, 100%.

To help, this is the DNA share results with my half Sister, 26% shared DNA: 1,817 cM across 33 segments

I have seen similar sibling and half sibling results when using Pro Tools and looking at Shared Matches.  The lack of trees and apparent activity suggest that they may not even be aware of each other, especially if all they were interested in is their ethnicity.

Conversely if one of them is aware of Shared DNA amounts that then may have answered their search for a missing sibling and that could result in them not including them in their online info.

DNA shares in the 200-400 range do have a lot of relationship possibilities and can be difficult to map into a feasible tree and the clue here is the unweighted figures which do indicate closer MRCA.  If you have an idea of any generational distances between these matches then that too may help narrow down the possibilities.

Hopefully the 2736 cM siblings have enough information to incorporate them into a tree together which in turn could show family breakdown or indeed potentially a baby being passed on for adoption and if this is the case a paper trail will show totally different families.  In these situations we trust the DNA rather than records.