What's the largest cM DNA match you have where you can't identify the link?

[medpat]

I have a 288cM over 11 segments second cousin and we don't know the connection . He's French and thought all his recent pedigree was French and no British married into his pedigree. We share gt grandparents and I can eliminate a few of my gt grandparents as he doesn't match other links I have.

I believe it's WW1 time and one of my gt uncles is responsible. We may never know which one but hopefully in the future I'll find which gt grandparents we share.

[weste]

Using those coloured dots on ancestry to group them and using auto clustering helps with some and doing mini trees. Its even harder when women put their dna under their married name.

[IgorStrav]

Wow!!!

Only just been able to get back to this thread and I see that my 100cM of match that I can't identify is but a minnow compared with some 

I'm frustrated enough with this one, so what I'd be like with a very much larger match - with a well researched tree - where we STILL can't see the connection, I boggle to think, medpat and sinann and ansteynomad.

Like many others I thought DNA matches would be simple, and found different quite quickly.
But in some strange way, it is comforting to know for sure we are all working with the same problems.

I will just get on with researching and adding relatives to all the siblings I can find and hopefully - one day - at least some things may become clearer......


 

[Janethepain]

I think every one must have a set of these, for me I have 7 ancestry matches between about 100 cM's and 140 cM, that, mostly, I might know which side of my family they are on, because I got my Dad to do a test, so the matches are either, Fathers Side, or not.  But apart from that I am just guessing for some and I know the brances for others,  but I cant trace them on paper at all, and mostly they dont reply to being contacted.

For me it is very difficult, as I am 100% Irish by origin, but living in Scotland for up to 5 -6 generations.  Problem is brothers and sisters of the original emigrants went directly to the other ends of the earth, USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand etc.  These cousins never have any knowledge of their tree before emigration to say USA, and dont know where they came from in Ireland. Additionally after spending 1 or 2 or 3 generations in Scotland, many of my ancestors then emigrated, and again thet didnt know much about their families in Scotland, or where they came from in Ireland, before that.  PS - I know we dont have the info about Ireland either!

We dont have cheap access to foreign records, of bmd's so it is harder to find the paper record, you need assistance from the matches, and as we all know they dont normallt reply!!

Well that was Ancestry, on My Heritage i know my top 4 matches, but on Family Tree DNA my top 4 matches are completely onknown to me - I have no clue, at about 80- 100 cM's.  On Gedmatch, my top match, (until i uploaded my Dad) was and is a mystery, he's on my Mum's side ( and I use He's generically, not specifically), because he is not a match to my Dad, and he's not on My Heritage or FTDNA, so I have worked out he was probably uploaded from 23 & Me. Any way, we have 135 cM in common, and I have no real idea at all.  His email address is not indicitive of  a persons name, and I have only 1 other match in common that I know, which puts him on my mother's paternal side, but there is nothing else to go by - no tree - have they disappeared from Gedmatch, since it went Genesis??  And gyess what, no reply to my gentle email!


Yep it is very frustrating!

Jane

[rsel]

I have a 229cm across 11 segments on Ancestry, who hasn't responded to any messages and has no tree :-(  Based on shared matches, and using the shared cm Projects site, I am 90% convinced she is going to be an illegitimate daughter from my great uncle who was a bit of a ladies man (5 wifes so far, and 5 known daughters by 2 of the wifes), but its not something I want to ask him or his daughters about for understandable reasons :-)

[roderickpaulin]

261 cM over 17 segments on ancestrydna - they predict a second cousin on my mother's side, but even contacting known relatives has yielded nothing.  Also shows up as a second cousin for my mother with 335/22.

[IgorStrav]

Well I had no idea that this question would produce such amazing results from people here who - after all - have been researching generally for some time and have some well-researched trees.  Such high levels of DNA match, with no real idea where the connection might be.

I guess it goes to show that we are as yet just at the beginning of DNA researches amplifying what we know on family research.

It's reassuring, really, that I'm not alone when I see a match, think it should be close enough to easily recognise where it comes from.  I have quite a few of these - and some which aren't so easy.  But none as high a cM match of some of the people here!

Good luck to everyone with their investigations! 

[IJDisney]

I'm impressed by how high other people's DNA matches are!! Of the 100s of matches I have on Ancestry, barely a dozen are over 50 cM, and only three are over 100 cM!! That being said, my highest non-identified (to within a branch) is 56 cM across 3 segments.

[Nova67]

I helped someone who was adopted and they have the non-biological tree attached to their DNA results and no indication that it is not their genetic family. This would make it impossible to understand, though experienced researchers would question the shared matches against the tree.