Author Topic: Help needed for beginner please  (Read 542 times)

Offline Wendy15

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Help needed for beginner please
« on: Tuesday 02 July 24 19:15 BST (UK) »
Hi I am looking for any help available please . I have done my dna on ancestry and have received lots of matches but no hints or anything to my maternal side. I do not know my father's name but I added a man's name I think could be my father . I got 6 thrulines for 4th and 5th grandparents with dna and all lead back to this man's family trees . Would that mean it's definite that he's my father or just coincidence. 
Thank you in advance

Offline Peter L. Mitchell

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Re: Help needed for beginner please
« Reply #1 on: Tuesday 09 July 24 02:38 BST (UK) »
Hi Wendy.

Welcome to RootsChat. In order to give yourself the best chance of getting help, you need to provide more details: family name, where they lived; occupations; births, marriage and deaths you know about; any migration you know about; years covered; etc. There are many brilliant people who can help on this site and it makes it so much easier if you can provide this kind of information.

Good luck with your search.

Peter

Offline Ayashi

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Re: Help needed for beginner please
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday 09 July 24 10:04 BST (UK) »
I would consider it suggestive, but not definitive at that distance. If your mother and father came from the same geographic area it isn't impossible that they were distant cousins. It could be someone else from his family. Part of the problem with doing DNA is that a lot of the comparisons / hints requires both parties to have accurate trees (Thrulines uses family trees, which may be incomplete or incorrect) and for people to have tested in the first place- no comparison if no DNA.

Start with the matches closest to you and figure out where they fit in- add notes on their match. The more people you figure out, the more information you have when you look at Shared Matches and see notes for the same branch or two. The part that says "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" can be allocated to "mother" and "father" once you figure out who is who.

As a clarification to Peter's post, living people's details cannot be shared publicly on this site for privacy reasons, so if your mother and (suspected) father are or may be still alive, such details cannot be shared here. That makes it a bit difficult for us to help with DNA matching, since you are essentially trying to connect with current living people. We can help look for people further back though.

Offline aghadowey

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Re: Help needed for beginner please
« Reply #3 on: Tuesday 09 July 24 12:13 BST (UK) »
I would add that once you have assigned parent 1 and parent 2 to maternal/paternal lines do not accept Ancestry's future assignments for them. I, and others, have found lots of errors in their system even if (as in my case) the paternal and maternal families are not related to each other.
Away sorting out DNA matches... I may be gone for some time many years!


Offline Biggles50

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Re: Help needed for beginner please
« Reply #4 on: Tuesday 09 July 24 20:40 BST (UK) »
Your post does indicate to me that you are unsure of your Parentage, more info will help.  Bear in mind that revealing the details of people who might be still alive is not permitted.

Literally the first step is if you have siblings then they really need to take a DNA test.

You should have DNA matches on both sides, if not then query this with Ancestry and you may need to take another test.

Ideally I would be wanting to find a much closer DNA matches to help determine parentage.

Uploading your Ancestry DNA to MyHeritage, ftDNA and Gedmatch may produce closer DNA matches.

E.G
If you can find other children of who you think is Father then approach them with a view of them taking a DNA test.  Of course any approach would need to be undertaken tackfully.

If no luck, then the next step is to look at siblings of Father and their children.