RootsChat.Com

unless you have attached Charles, his parents and grandparents plus his descendants into your tree you won’t be able to see if there are any matches…

you will need to do this and wait for thrulines to update then check again. if it comes up with several matches then you might (just might be onto something) if it still says 0 matches then it’s unlikely but thulines is a bit hit and miss but a good place to start. If there is one, hopefully its Sarah’s descendant, look at her shared matches with you, sort them in relation to her order. there are usually a few, hopefully they some will have trees you can check and then go through verifying for correctness. Some of mine have 2 or more pages, even at this level.

if you have managed to get 1 or more match on thrulines for Charles, you are halfway there… now check Charles’s parents and grandparents and look for shared matches on thrulines. If Charles is the father of both girls then you should have some matches.. if you have 0 returning for any of Charles’s ancestors then you are unlikely to be related to Charles.

This is a bit rough and ready but a good place to start. Note thrulines don’t show all matches, it’s only when you start working through shared matches and matches of matches that you can unearth more.. and this can reveal relationships but you have to verify as you go along as Ancestry can be throw some false positives and shared ancestors suggestions are not always incorrect.

just to add to biggles explanation of how to use protools, when I look at the shared matches list, I find it helpful to sort them in order of closest relative to my selected match, quite often someone in the family has asked close relatives to all take tests for some reason, then check who has the most complete tree, you might find how you connect to this group of matches this way.  It can also overcome some matches that just give their initials or  a nickname but are the son/ daughter brother or sister of your match.

you might find it helpful to transcribe how they match each other onto an excel sheet so you don’t lose this info. Biggles and I both have rootsmagic and that allows me to enter the dna matches and it sorts them too.  I already had a large tree, which has proved helpful sorting the matches.

sorry didn’t see the post yesterday but yeah it’s a good call for anyone just starting to try and get to grips with matches.

All very nice and pretty but they don't include all the dna matches that we identify but they don't, and worse yet they include all the nonsense ones that they identify and we can't reject.

I have yet to receive the new version and quite disappointed. I would prefer they fix the evaluation to allow me to reject  peoples dubious tree matches which are obviously wrong.  Personally I don’t think AI  should be part of family history when there are so many people believing in Ancestry’s claim “just enter a name….”.

I am getting frustrated with how many shared (maternal/paternal or unassigned) matches I am getting and Ancestry removing confirm your match beyond 4th cousin… I have so many I can confirm which are 4th x1r or 2r which I have to mark up as distant on Anc..
I have managed to verify my lines back to beyond 4th grandparents which is good but my distant and wider matches are a right mixed bunch! ok if they come from the same area, I accept there’s  a possibly of meeting and getting friendly but not when I get one verified paternal match who never left the UK and the rest are maternal coming from the US  🤣  Trying to tell myself they are false positives.