Trying to find my Mum's unknown Father.

[scotmum]

As well as using the colour coding of matches on Ancestry, have you tried doing a Colour Cluster spreadsheet using the Leeds method https://www.danaleeds.com/dna-color-clustering-the-leeds-method-for-easily-visualizing-matches/ ?

[atlantikman]

Hi scotmum,

Thanks for that info.  DNA Colour Clustering seems to be for close matches (2nd-3rd cousins).  But I only have four 2nd-3rd cousins listed on my Ancestry DNA, of whom I know which side they are on, along with only one 3rd-4th cousin who I suspect is on my unknown Mum's Father's side, who has not responded to my email.  The majority are 4th-6th cousins (44 of them), of which 16 are possibles on my Mum's Father's side.  The rest of my 450+ matches are classed as distant cousins by Ancestry.

Paul.

[brigidmac]

How are you getting on Paul ?

I realized I'd advised you to download to gedmatch

But I can't remember how to access and haven't checked to see if she has any matches on there let alone download my own DNA to gedstch site

Will need a tutorial from cousin

[scotmum]

Whilst I appreciate it might not help atlantikman, colour clustering can work with 4th cousins etc. I'm posting these links,  as they may help someone who hadn't considered trying:

https://www.danaleeds.com/color-clustering-working-with-4/

https://www.danaleeds.com/dna-color-clustering-does-it-work-with-4th-cousins/

http://theenthusiasticgenealogist.blogspot.com/2018/08/color-clustering-top-25-fourth-cousins.html

[Seesure]

I had the same challenge last year, a half 1st cousin wanted to try and find the name of one of her grandfathers.

She had very little to go on other than a couple of rumours regarding names but they seemed to be either just forenames or surnames nothing to complete to work.

I used Ancestry to build a tree with as much as the know information as possible, very quickly and maybe luckily a match was suggested on another persons tree.

What was incredible was that the unknown names I was looking for appeared to be complete on this persons tree and vice versa.

I reached out to the tree owner and between us we actually were able to fill in the gaps.

My cousin was thrilled especially as her father had just celebrated his 88th birthday. He was amazed that at last he knew who his real father was...

Maybe we got lucky in that the names we had to work with as forenames included Cecil and Horace and one of the surnames was bullock which I guess helped reduce the matches.

But building the tree was the real door opener.