Common Ancestor hints.

[Biggles50]

It is quite sometime ago now since my Wife and I took Ancestry’s DNA test, and as most find out you stumble around in the dark until you learn how it all works at least enough to make use of the results.

My Wife’s highest cM match initially was 100cM and mine 144cM.

The what is now the age old problems of a match with no trees, no link, a user name that gives no clue as to the ID of the match did cause frustration but once we learned how to use the available Filters we could omit these from the results displayed.

What did make a difference in successfully adding a match to our trees was the Common Ancestor feature.  First time around I was a bit sceptical as the suggested pathways seemed to be cobbled together from various Ancestry Trees, but careful working person by person in a logical manner resulted in getting the suggested pathway to the match incorporated into our trees.  Often there were errors in particular missing generations but these were overcome.

As each match is incorporated into our trees we now assign the Star to each one and additionally there are two Custom Groups that I created, mPaternal and Maternal and the appropriate Group is then given to the match.  As of today My Wife has 85* and I have 81* and out of these then about 90% are through using the Common Ancestor suggestions.  Our match’s that are now in our trees range from 240cM to 6cM with one only taking two minutes to add as their Brother was already in my tree.

So all in all a pretty good feature that has proved invaluable for us.

As you might guess there is a But coming, last night I did my weekly check to see if there was any new Common Ancestor hints and there were two for me one 11cM and one 14cM so both way back to c1750.  The 11cM was added person by person and the end results was a 5C1R.

The 14cM was nothing like the suggestion and after an hour’s work I got there but there is severe doubt over its accuracy so its flagged up in the assignable Note against the match to recheck in a couple of days.

How successful have you been with using the Common Ancestor hints?

[sstarr2008]

Funny, I was going through my common ancestor hints today and found a few of the more distant matches showing a connection to known ancestors but when I look more closely they turn out to be people of the same name but seemingly unrelated, same christian name and year of birth but totally different surname or just random people who I can't really match to.
Since these are distant cousins I often think that I will never really know how these people connect at all.
Rather than using the groups I like to just add notes to matches, that way as I scroll down the list I can see immediately how people connect. With these spurious matches I tend to put question marks.

[ray70]

My ggrandfather was illegitimate, according to the person who wrote out his details. Born 1838 in the uk. So the paternal line stops. I wondered reading the above posts if by looking at the DNA results of more distant cousins if a common name might appear. My reason for posting being I have read the above posts and wondered if I could possibly be  on the right track. I find it difficult sometimes to grasp meaning [mental age problem]. Thoughts appreciated.

[brigidmac]

Yes I found the common ancestor suggestions useful especially now  there is an "other connections " option so you can see alternative routes .

At the moment I'm working on someone with connections to Utah who has 153 suggested thru lines to on set of 3x great grandparents

31 to their 2x great grandmother
39+ matches thru one sibling  20+ matches to 3 other of the 6 siblings 3 lines show to

But of course the trees may not be correct 
All these people match but some to a higher amount than expected for 4th + 5th cousins

I'm checking routes to the top ones .don't usually look at matches under 18cm unless they have  unusual surname connection or DNA link to other matches

Ray have you tried adding surnames to the top of your tree ie mother  first name unknown second name your great gfathers birth surname if you know it from birth certificate
And father first name as maybe and second name a surname that comes up a lot
That way people with private trees can see which surnames you are interested in .

[ray70]

I never considered placing 'family' names at the top of the tree, one never knows what might pop up. Thanks for the tip and coming back so quick, Regards Ray

[brigidmac]

 ray  I've sent a message +

From past posts I know biggles uses  the colour coding  method
Do others use it

Here's an old post I started on  colour coding

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=862688.0

I'm interested in different methods people use
+ Am preparing a workshop on identifying  unknown parents .

So any feedback+ improvements on the wording would be appreciated .
Of course ancestry already has guidelines
But I think practical examples can help .

[Biggles50]

My ggrandfather was illegitimate, according to the person who wrote out his details. Born 1838 in the uk. So the paternal line stops. I wondered reading the above posts if by looking at the DNA results of more distant cousins if a common name might appear. My reason for posting being I have read the above posts and wondered if I could possibly be  on the right track. I find it difficult sometimes to grasp meaning [mental age problem]. Thoughts appreciated.

My Great Great Grandfather on my Paternal side was unknown until a 240 cM match showed up.

I built a tree from them and linked into it quite a few other DNA matches who we share.

When I fitted a certain Italian in his tree into my tree in the missing location all the relationships matched DNA Painters high probabilities.

The 240 cM match is a 2C so if you work though your DNA matches at about 3C level you may get lucky

[brigidmac]

My cousin's highest match on paternal side was  descende from an unmarried great grandmother
My cousin's great grandmother also single

From shared matches worked out that they must share a great grandfather

Both named sons John so I added John unknown with an approx date and place to tree top + linked the 2 families .as matches built up I changed the name to John probably
Then the surname with highest matches then I added John's potential grand parents with an extra  unknown child as John's parent 
tagged as hypothesis actively researching
 I added all the Siblings  spouses and  built their trees down til found more  DNA matches and potential thru lines
Was able to calculate the correct sibling from most matches with help from some ethnicity + place clues too .

[George52]

Wow, you guys have been lucky. To date we have no common ancestor matches on the fathers side for my father in law, every common ancestor is on the mothers side only. Strangely though we do have 4 people from the same family line that are on the fathers side but none of them show up as a common ancestor.