New to DNA and Finding unknown GGrandfather

[RainySK]

Happy new year all

I am returning to Family History research after quite a long break. DNA research was not around when i first started so i am brand new to this side of research and i am hoping it will be the key to unlocking the biggest mystery in my family tree.

My maternal grandmother was born with "Illegitimate" on her birth certificate under father, and as a result he is unnamed on her marriage and death cert also.

The closest living relative to my grandmother would be my mum so i had her do an ancestry DNA test in the hopes that we could find a relative following her maternal matches.

Here is where iv come unstuck I'm not sure who and how to approach these unknown matches, I feel a little like a jerk saying hay could your relative be the father of an illegitimate child considering the implications that could bring up.

what do DNA experts recommend to do in a situation like this?

thank you for your help

[Biggles50]

Without listing your Mum’s DNA matches by their actual names can you list the unknowns by the cM amount that they share with your Mum?

Simply getting any sort of response out of a DNA Match is in my book a major success, but if you do not try you may not know.

With the unknowns that I have had I state in a message that we are related via DNA, but I do not know how and would you like to help me.  Anyone taking a DNA test should be aware that skeleton’s in the past might be uncovered and hence any DNA match contacted should be responsive.  After all your Mum’s DNA that she shares with them will show in their own DNA Match list and we have had some of ours make first contact with us.

If your Mum’s unknown Grandfather went on to have more children and then his Grandchildren would be Half First Cousins to your Mum and if they took a DNA test then the mean shared DNA would be a mean 449cM between them and your Mum. 

There are a range of shared DNA with any relationship and we use a site called DNA Painter, Shared cM Project where we enter the cM value and the tool responds with possibilities regarding relationships and a percentage likelyhood is displayed.  This helps in guiding initial research.

If DNA matches have a Family Tree then access to the tree can help, any live person will show as Private so you would need to have access to view live people and the tree owner can be contacted with the request.

In reality what you may be faced with is unknown matches where the Most Recent Common Ancestor with your Mum may not be her unknown Grandfather but someone more distant and to find likely candidates does require tree building.  During the tree build a series of likely Father’s could possibly be identified and often this can be one of perhaps a few Brothers. 

With each DNA match it is also useful to click on the Shared Matches tab to see them, pictures may develop and signing up with Ancestry’s Pro Tools will enable the cM that each Shared Match has not only with your Mum but with the selected DNA match. 

What I try to do is to build shared DNA matches into the family tree of the DNA match who is the home person in the tree that I am building around them.

It is a detective hunt and slowly a prime candidate can emerge. 

[julianb]

I found the first thing I needed to do is to sort matches into family groups (ancestry allows you to colour code matches into groups).  So if you can find a relative on your mother's father's side of the family (or get one or two to do a test  ), these should identify which matches can be discounted in terms of who might help you find your great grandfather.

You may also find it helpful if you can load a skeleton family tree (ancestors only) which you can associate with your test which again will help you sort your matches.

My second cousins (ie people with whom I share a great grandparent) have been mostly within the range of 100 cM to 350 cM - so if you have a direct descendant from the unknown great grandfather who has done an ancestry test, they should quite noticeable.

I did my test to check out a few unknowns, and have resolved 2 of the three target questions.  I also found some eye-rolling info I was not aware of   

Good luck

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Grouping matches has already been mentioned and it's the foundation everything is then built on.

Building the trees of matches is a big part of solving where mystery matches fit in relation to each other, build their trees as deep and wide as possible on what are known as 'floating branches', as the name suggests the branches aren't connected to any others but as they are researched and expanded some will merge and join others. One of my floating branches now has over 40 matches linked to each other but initially it started as 40 distinct and separate branches. The groundwork building those trees before contacting a match can be useful, I say that in hindsight after eagerly sending message to a match when my results first came back, at that point they could see who our shared matches were and they included several cousins, children and even grandchildren of my match but I was unaware of that as I rushed in before any tree building attempts. They did reply with 'we're not related' despite sharing almost 200cM with me which I can now see is because there is a branch of their tree with a questionable character in it, they appear to have disowned that branch and it's the one I have the strongest connection to.

Accuracy of trees and lack of responses to messages are the biggest issues I've had to overcome but I find it better to do my own research rather than accept what others claim. I've used the instant download option for the odd cert here and there to disprove other trees. It's probably not the best idea as dna trumps anything on paper but it has shown there's a batch of trees that appear to be more fiction than fact.   

[rebeccaclaire86]

As others have mentioned, the first step is to group the matches. If you assign your larger matches to three groups that fit with the grandparents families you know, in theory the last cluster of big matches should point to the family of her missing grandparent.

I did this with my Nan’s mystery grandparent - same scenario, she’s still living, her mother was illegitimate, and my Nan kindly did a DNA test for me. I only used the larger matches >70cM to cluster with. When I had identified a group who didn’t fit any of the known grandparents, I set about building their family tree and working out how they were all related to each other. I used https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 this website to try and figure out the possible relationships to my Nan. It took a lot of hard work, but I’ve now confidently narrowed it down to two brothers (who funnily enough lived in the next household to her teenage grandmother in the census taken the year before the pregnancy!). Neither had any living legitimate children whose descendants might pop up on a DNA test so I doubt I’ll ever know for certain unfortunately.

The biggest challenge I’ve found has been pedigree collapse when you’re dealing with small towns where everyone was related one way or another, so be wary of drawing conclusions from smaller matches is my advice!

[Biggles50]

Deleted

[julianb]

It took a lot of hard work, but I’ve now confidently narrowed it down to two brothers (who funnily enough lived in the next household to her teenage grandmother in the census taken the year before the pregnancy!).

This is a good reminder to look at who near-neighbours are when building a tree.  Unfortunately 1911/1921 England and Wales census's don't show neighbours on the source document, so it's a bit more difficult to look!

[RainySK]

Thank you everyone for your prompt replies, I was unfortunately delayed with work, so I didn’t manage to get back on yesterday.

I will get back into ancestry and start by grouping my matches as everyone has suggested, iv only had the results since just before Christmas so I haven’t had a lot of time to dig in and have a look as this time of yeas has been busy I didn’t realise there was a grouping function that is going to be very helpful!

Biggles50, I did a quick skim of that thread that looks like it is going to be very helpful I have pined it to read in depth, you are also the second person I have heard mention Gedmatch as a DNA search tool, would you recommend I upload my mums results there also?

I did separate the matches by the maternal line (found that button easy enough LoL)
Biggles50 here are the matches that have shown up on the front page, the close family matches are all known and I have linked them to the appropriate people in the tree.
These are the results that are listed under extended family. I have copied and pasted straight from ancestry deleting the names and just leaving initials.

W S
2nd cousin
Maternal side
236 cM | 3% shared DNA
Unlinked tree

R G 1
2nd cousin
Maternal side
191 cM | 3% shared DNA
Public linked tree
1,477 people

T H
3rd cousin
Maternal side
94 cM | 1% shared DNA
No trees

K L
2nd cousin 2x removed or half 2nd cousin 1x removed
Maternal side
93 cM | 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
42 people

S B
2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
91 cM | 1% shared DNA

Distant Family

R C
half 2nd cousin 1x removed or 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
64 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Private linked tree
326 people

m b
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 3rd cousin
Maternal side
54 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Private unlinked tree

A G
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
54 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Unlinked tree

P ON
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 3rd cousin
Maternal side
54 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
14 people

M S
half 3rd cousin or 3rd cousin 1x removed
Maternal side
50 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Tree unavailable

S J
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
48 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
11 people

G P
half 3rd cousin or 3rd cousin 1x removed
Maternal side
48 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
28 people

S-A M
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 3rd cousin
Maternal side
46 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
3,433 people

A S
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
46 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Unlinked tree

K R
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
45 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Unlinked tree

cc47
half 3rd cousin or 3rd cousin 1x removed
Maternal side
45 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
15 people

R.B.
half 3rd cousin or 3rd cousin 1x removed
Maternal side
43 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
30 people

J M S
3rd cousin 1x removed or half 2nd cousin 2x removed
Maternal side
43 cM | < 1% shared DNA
Public linked tree
43 people

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

 It's certainly worth downloading the raw data and uploading to other sites to catch matches that are on other platforms. As the sites interpret result differently they aren't always a like for like comparison and the shared cM figures may not be as accurate as Ancestry but it's about finding matches as much as anything else. I'm not a fan of MyHeritage as the shared cM figures can be way out and the relationship predictions are just weird (by default they assume every match is a full relative and it takes a bit of digging to view the half relative options), but did find an important match on there.

It was through an MH match I learned my mother is an NPE (her birth cert names the wrong man as her father), so I'm trying to find a grandfather too though I had a big mystery group of matches on Ancestry in the 50-200cM range so had my suspicions about mum's birth cert long ago anyway. The MH match just confirmed it.