Can you help make sense of these close matches?

[pickpin]

Hi,
I'm hoping you might be able to help with this matches scenario.

I'm looking at someone else's dna results so I'll anonymise.  Hope it will still make sense!

Person 1 has had their DNA tested.  They got 14 matches with over 100cm shared dna.  The top match (600cm) was recognised straight away as a known maternal first cousin (person 2).  None of the other matches were familiar.  I plotted the shared matches on a spreadsheet to find family groups (I forget what this method is called!).  From this I've grouped all the matches with the first cousin as being maternal side and everyone else as potential paternal side.

I looked at the top matches on the paternal side:
person 3 570cm
person 4 250cm
person 5 220cm
All three of them are matches to each other as well as person 1.  They all had public trees but there are no shared ancestors in the public trees.  On paper, they look unrelated (although some tree branches are incomplete).

Person 1 has discovered that their father's first cousin's daughter has done a DNA test and they do not share DNA so there is a question mark somewhere in the 'on paper' family tree on the paternal side.

I just wondered if anyone had any suggestions of where we can go with our research on this?  We have tried contacting the 3 matches but no reply as yet.

Many thanks in advance.

[Biggles50]

I am in a similar situation ten 100+ cM matches of which three are known and in my tree.

I would double check the persons tree for missing parental and grandparent siblings before continuing, if elderly relative are alive talk to them to see if they are aware of children being given up for adoption etc.

I used the Leeds method like you using a spreadsheet to colour code and narrow down my shared matches to to give a better picture of which side was the most likely.

The 570 cM has a high probability in DNA Painter that they are most likely to be a 1/2 first Cousin.

Persons 4 & 5 could be 1/2 first Cousins once removed or 2nd Cousins.

First thought is that there is a NPE (none parental event, parent unknown or certificates incorrectly documented by the person registering the event).  In these cases it is difficult to be totally certain, but all is not lost.

Having more Cousins tested will help especially if one of their parents was born in a geographically remote location compared to the other parent (this is the stage I am at).

Trees for each match should resolve by Great Great Grandparent level relative to your host person but they may resolve to each other further back.

I would upload the Raw DNA Data to Gedmatch and to the other comparison sites where you may be lucky in finding others with more knowledge of your matches, I have successfully used this and am in contact with three matches who are related to my high cM match.

Gedmatch has tools available to dig down into the DNA and this can help in narrowing down the likely source of the NPE.  I am still learning this so cannot advise in more detail. 

If the Cousins who are known and agree to be tested then their Raw DMA Data can be uploaded to Gedmatch and the Triangulation tool can help.

First action would be to park further research, and get Cousins tested and uploaded and resolve the actual relationships within the family.  Once resolved you will have a better idea of which branch is most likely to yield results.

[brigidmac]

Definitely check at a higher level for second marriages and also one way to see if the non paternal event comes from your friends side is to do surname searches with all maiden names of wives up the generations .finding several distant matches with same surname can confirm  who is bio mother and that there is not a case of adoption . Also look at married names of the sisters in higher levels

If the matches have trees you can build another hypothetical tree with floating branches  to see if you can find a mutual ancestor that they haven't reached

And use the shared location clues
For example if your math has no links to one of the men on her line or doesn't know a great grandmothers parent ..you can add ""location"
Instead of name

I helped someone who had high level match and single mother grandmother so put Yorkshire MAN as birth father and added him as birth father to the match whose grandmother also had a single grandmother (but kept tagged as living so it wouldn't show on public tree)
Then looked at their shared matches from further back
And shared matches of shared matches
Added a parent "maybe ROLLASON"
then added the potential siblings and worked back down .
When tested matched descendants of more than one sibling on a line I could confirm I had the correct line ( thru one of the parents at least) have to do the same with each of them and their siblings it's very painstaking but gets results in the end .

We worked out who the great great grandparents were before working out who the mutual great grandfather must be

For a long time I had "Yorkshire man "
Then was able to change tot " Yorkshire FARNSWORTH". Now have a first name .
As does the original high match ...and they compared photos of their mutual grandfather s who were half brothers !