Unsure relationship?

[close1]

Hi, I got my grandmother to do a DNA test, as she is the closest living relative to the person I'm trying to find.

I'm looking for her Great Grandmother's parents. I've ordered a marriage certificate and I believe the father's name is not correct as there is nothing that matches up with possible census records (e.g. Name and occupation).

I found a potential census record for 1861 of the G.Grandmother with a different father's name from the marriage certificate and that she may have had a sister.

I did a tree for the sister and a ancestry hint came up for a tree so i checked the DNA matches and i found that person's tree owner is also a DNA match (< 1% shared DNA: 36 cM across 4 segments)

Ancestry guesses 3rd cousin 2x removed or half 2nd cousin 3x removed which I know is a estimate

The problem is that my Grandmother's G.Grandfather's mother(bit long winded) had a sister who may be the mother of the G.Grandmother. (Potential cousin relationship)

My question is, Am I getting a match because of the G.Grandmother's sister or it is because of G.Grandfather' s mother + aunt?



 

[Biggles50]

Based on the information you have provided I do not see that a definitive answer is possible.

A 36cM match alone has so many relationship possibilities it is like looking of a needle in a haystack in all of east anglia.

If you are not subscribed to Pro Tools then do take out a subscription for at least a month, its greatest benefit is for each DNA Match you can also see in the Shared Match list how much cM they share with each person in the Shared Match list.  From this you can see who is the closest to your chosed DNA Match that offers the highest potential for tree linking.

There is the Cluster Tool that may also be helpful

Do remember is there is a rural population that Pedigree Collapse can easily have happened which in turn can skew DNA relationships to be closer than they actually are.

Another method of indexing DNA matches is to use the Grouping feature, see the top sticky thread for more advice on this.

[close1]

I did shared matches with the individual and both two matches with 22cm and 25cm

Of those two matches neither had a tree or enough information in their bio to try and do tree.

[Biggles50]

Do you know how much DNA they share with each other?

Does either or both have a user name that could indicate their birth name?

To give an example, I have a 240cM DNA match and they have a tree of 2, him and his late Father.  From that limited information and no response from messaging I eventually built a tree of 2000 and linked many of my DNA Cousins into the tree.  It took about 5 years so it can be done with a bit of luck.

[close1]

Thanks for replying. one tree had 4 private so i assume parents and sibling but nothing else and the other person had no tree at all.

Both accounts are named but nothing in their bios to suggest age or location

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I've built floating branches of matches that do have some tree and/or profile information to get me started, in some cases my 'deep and wide tree' approach leads to me linking no tree/no profile matches along the way.
Other times the no tree/no profile match has shared matches that can help narrow down the dozens of births in the name to a small number of more likely candidates. In that case  I'll make a list of births and try to rank them from most to least likely, I build the trees of two or three at a time and delete them if they don't intersect my existing tree and move on down the list.

In one case I had a an active but unresponsive match, no tree, profile, age or location. There were something like 60 births in the name on freebmd from 1925 onwards, it took me 5 trees to find the right one (his grandmother appears to be illegitimate), every fortnight or so he pops up in my tree viewers, he still reads and ignores messages but a month or so ago suddenly had a small private non searchable tree, I've just checked his profile and his private tree is now over 450 names. Maybe I've woken him up somehow.

[Biggles50]

Thanks for replying. one tree had 4 private so i assume parents and sibling but nothing else and the other person had no tree at all.

Both accounts are named but nothing in their bios to suggest age or location

If their user name is say “David Ian Lowe” then you have something to work upon that may give results, if it is “mikexzy” then the only way with one like this is to look for a DNA shared matches that shares a high cM with them.  This is where Pro Tools comes in very useful.

My Wife has a 100cM match with no tree and they have been unresponsive to messages.  Searches reveal that in England alone there are 120+ people who were born between 1940 and 1980 so no easy task and 8 years later and dozens of trees they are still unlinked.  My hypothesis is that her Great Grandfather had an affair and their Grandparent was the result, with their certification being falsified to cover the stigma.

I see that Glen has suggested some actions which may also help.

I used to use the Floating Branches technique but for a few years now I have adopted a different approach in that I build a standalone Tree.  If I find a link between the trees within software I can combine the two trees and sync the consolidated tree back into Ancestry.  It is a very quick and easy task and saves hours of deleting individuals in an Ancestry Floating Branch.