No Paternal DNA matches

[calvert]

Thanks for your help. I’m on myheritage but not to confident on how auto clusters work, but I’ll give it a go. Was thinking of purchasing the y dna test on familytreedna as well.
Thankyou

[David Nicoll]

Hi, autoclusters works by grouping together people who share DNA. Including you, although it does not make this very clear. The first cluster will be people who share most DNA with you and each other. Say cousins, then you might get a group of your grandfathers/mothers cousins descendants, they all share bits of their shared grandparents DNA so they Cluster together.
If you look at each cluster, can you assign that cluster to an ancestor? Looking at your tree, depending on whether people have built a tree on myheritage this can be easy or not. You may have to do some work to extend their trees. I would pick the easy ones first. The ones you can’t find obvious links to are likely related to your mystery Grandfather. This link may also be helpful. There is a whole new world of DNA out there for you if you have not done this before.

https://dna-explained.com/category/clusters/

[Nanna52]

I have broadly sorted my dna matches into categories relating to my grandparents.
My results on ancestry, above 20 cM, are  1120, 145, 179 and 60 matches.
I believe the first one is so high because my great grandfather was from North America, they had large families and didn’t know where their beds were.  So many illegitimate children in that line searching for answers.
So numbers may vary.

[Ruskie]

I agree with David. I believe some people have success with Y tests, but it is a gamble.

For my husband with one of the most common names in the UK he has about 8 matches in total, and not one with his surname. Any connections to Y matches could lead back thosands of years.

I would revisit the autosomal results which are likley to be more useful than a Y test.

[TonyV]

I'm with the idea of clustering. I had my Y DNA tested with FamilyTree DNA in 2004 and still get new matches. They seem to be a reputable company but although I have approximately 30 "Exact Matches" none of them has an appropriate surname. The problem with Y-DNA is timescale. Even your exact matches may relate to something that happened 100s of years ago, which is not a lot of use for most purposes. You may however get lucky and find an exact match with a surname that is meaningful but unless you know the name beforehand how will you know what you are looking for?

MyHeritage has a very neat auto-clustering tool which takes seconds to use, but I found it reasonably hard to decipher once it's done. If you are comfortable using spreadsheets you may find the more laborious but still quite fun idea of doing your own clustering helpful. Having to do it yourself may give you a better understanding of why and how you are doing it. The Leeds Method of clustering is very well explained by Dana Leeds, who invented it, here https://www.danaleeds.com/the-leeds-method/   Essentially you start by listing your matches between about 400 and 90 cM in a column then, using the shared matches information, group them into separate columns using your own colour scheme. It should help you to see which of your matches are associated with your paternal and maternal sides and even your 4 grandparents. 

[Ruskie]

A lot of people find the Leeds method useful but you need to have matches in that specific cM range for it to work - so not useful in every case.

Both My Heritage and FTDNA have useful tools which may help you.

Every tool is worth trying, and I think persistance is necessary. 

Added:
Thinking again, and apologies if this has alreadybeen mentioned (I just skipped over the thread) …. But if you have tested with Ancestry who group matches into parent sides, and you have plenty of maternal matches, won’t the rest be either paternal or unassigned? You could start by looking at the closest matches on the “paternal” line. Do you know who the closest match on that side is? (Eg a known cousin).

If your father or any earlier generations are still living I advise that you have him/them DNA tested too, as well as any of his siblings.

Before going down the Y DNA route, which is expensive and likely to disappoint, I suggest exploring all aspects of your autosomal results. If money is no object, there is no harm in taking a Y test. FTDNA are good and you might as well opt for the BigY - biggest and best.

If you go ahead with it, please pop back and let is know how you get on.

[Alexander.]

It sounds like most people haven't had much success with Y-DNA testing so I just wanted to add it has been quite helpful for my research.

I did a Y-111 test and have only one match at that level, but his surname is similar to mine (Neale and Naylor), and ancestors from same general area of England. Tracing my paternal line back to the 1700s I find Neale was spelled Nail, so the jump to spelling Naylor is not a stretch. Although I think the link to my Y-DNA match was a few generations further back, it does seem to confirm the paper trail research and maybe with time will be able to more definitively establish the connection with the match.

To research my paternal grandfather's surname (a quite rare one), I asked two cousins on different lines with my grandfather's surname to take a Y-DNA test. Reason for two tests was in my grandfather direct line there was illegitimacy a few generations back, so the Y-DNA of this branch is different to most people with the surname. I was hoping this test may help establish the father of my illegitimate ancestor, and it hasn't disappointed. I have not got a definitive identification of the father but have two close Y-DNA matches that narrow down the unknown father to one family, several brothers are on the possible list at the moment. After knowing the probable surname of our ancestor from the Y-DNA I went to my mum's autosomal DNA matches on Ancestry, and I am currently working through these matches to narrow this down further.

The third test has linked my paternal grandfather's surname to a similar but much more common surname which branched probably in the late 1600s. This one I upgraded to BigY to further evaluate.

I might be lucky that these tests all were helpful in my research, and certainly it's not inexpensive, but was worth it. I tested with FamilyTreeDNA as they have the largest Y database. I would suggest starting with a Y-37 test. If you have matches at this level, then it may be worth upgrading to a higher level, however if there are no matches at 37 then there's probably no reason to pursue higher level testing at this stage (unless you are just looking for a more refined haplogroup).

[jc26red]

My husband tested with familytreedna back in 2014 at the request of someone else with the same (not common) surname.
We had a name group forum going back then and this other person came back with an unusual result which didn’t  match with anyone else in the group. His paper trail was almost identical to my husband originating in the same area of Limerick, same social standing etc., his line went to America/Canada and our line came to London.
Because of the unusual result indicating Native American heritage no less, our group name administrator suggested the least expensive test just to rule out the connection. I was positive it would be right unless there had been a NPE. The result came back with a match… dating back to 1720. As our line hadn’t been anywhere near America, we took some further SNP tests along with another match originating from Limerick who had done Y111.
The results came back showing that there was a genetic difference detween the native american  and an European/Asian origin.

I should add the FTDNA administrator was also part of our surname group forum. Most people on the forum had done a YDNA test, the results were sorted into clusters by the administrator.

I would suggest you join FTDNA, and search for the name group for your grandfather first to see how it is organised. You can also email the administrator for that named group to ask for their advice, some are more helpful than others.

The tests are not cheap, and a general rule of thumb for a reasonably accurate match would be the Y111 test.

https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna

When the results come back, check out your matches which you will see in your profile pages.

[jc26red]

A further note…

Read up on Haplogroups.

 Older haplogroups like the one my husband has are rare and we have very few matches. The ones we do have which have different names all originate from the same area.

Younger/later haplogroups are more common and there will be more people matching, hence the need to do the more expensive Y111 test.  Make sure your tree is accurate, locations and dates etc., this will help when trying to make connections. You can email your matches, not everyone replies though or has enough info to help make the connection.