With the introduction of Ancestry’s new ThruLines, after signing on and clicking on DNA Results Summary, Ancestry asks if you still want to use Circles. The answer is a very definitive yes, although I don’t think my circles have expanded in some time.
One of my accounts does not have Thrulines, and that account sees the placard below.
Regarding people who don’t have ThruLines on your account yet, ThruLines are free for everyone for now, so currently no subscription is required. However, to receive ThruLines, you must assure the following:
- Your tree is connected to your DNA.
- Your tree is either public or a private searchable tree. Unsearchable trees won’t have ThruLines.
- Your tree is at least 3 or 4 generations deep.
- You only have one kit for any individual person connected to that person in the same tree. If you have multiple kits for the same person connected to one tree, only one kit will have ThruLines. If this is your situation, you can create a “twin” to yourself in your tree and attach the second kit to that person and both kits should get ThruLines. There aren’t many people like me who have tested twice with AncestryDNA, so this shouldn’t be a problem for most people.You can have multiple kits attached to the same tree, but each kit must be connected to a different person in the tree.
Or, the placard below for those who do have ThruLines.
This question suggests (but I can’t confirm) that Ancestry is no longer adding to Circles.
Why Archive Circles?
What Circles provides that ThruLines doesn’t is a nice neat concise place where you can view the descendants of an ancestor, those that match you and those that don’t match you but do match each other. In other words, a genetic network.
Using ThruLines, you won’t see the ones that don’t match you any longer. In the graphic below of the Nancy Mann Circle, I match the gold lines and the grey lines match other people in the Circle including people that I match, but don’t match me.
I have no idea if Ancestry plans to obsolete and remove either Circles or their New Ancestor Discoveries (NADs), but if so, I’d rather be prepared.
I would suggest that you copy your circles and the information to the right that lists the Circle members.
Each Circle includes links to the trees and information of the people in the circle.
Click on that link and then copy/paste the url.
You might want to do this in a spreadsheet for ease of use where you record the Circle name, a screen shot of the Circle, along with the name of each member and the associated url.
Yea, I know it’s a pain, but better safe than sorry.
Archive New Ancestor Discoveries Too
New Ancestor Discoveries NADs (which weren’t ancestor discoveries at all, but hints) were rolled out years ago, and haven’t been updated in many months, pending the new ThruLines.
NADs were hints that many people mistook for actual ancestors based on the name. They were comprised of people in trees based on matching DNA. For example, one of the NADs I received was the sister of my ancestor and another entirely separate NAD was the husband of an ancestor’s sister. Clearly the reason was that the descendants of the ancestor’s sister and the ancestor’s sister’s husband carried some of the same DNA as me and therefore my ancestor.
Eventually, I solved for nearly all of the NADs.
NADs are similar to Circles and may prove useful in the future.
Take everything in NADs with the entire lick of salt, but archive them, because you never know if the grain you need is held there.
The difference between a NAD and a Circle is that you are inside a Circle, because you and all of the people in the Circle share the same identified ancestor but may not all DNA match to each other. You are outside of a NAD circle.
A NAD circle, shown above means that you don’t have that ancestor, Mary Polly McKee, in your tree, but you do share DNA with several people in the circle who do have her in their trees. That could be a really important hint!
Archive Now
Better safe than sorry. I would recommend archiving both Circles and NAD information now, just in case.
I’ll be writing about Ancestry’s new ThruLines and other new features very shortly.
______________________________________________________________
Disclosure
I receive a small contribution when you click on some (but not all) of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.
Thank you so much.
DNA Purchases and Free Transfers
- Family Tree DNA
- MyHeritage DNA only
- MyHeritage DNA plus Health
- MyHeritage FREE DNA file upload
- AncestryDNA
- 23andMe Ancestry
- 23andMe Ancestry Plus Health
- LivingDNA
Genealogy Services
Genealogy Research
- Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research
I am so afraid they will dump circles. Truelines are a farce. Ancestry just keeps giving us fluff that no one asked for and doesn’t ever fix any broken links or misspellings or any of a hundred things that are wrong with the site. All they want to do is sell DNA kits.
Whilst DNA circles have never been an exact science I would be extremely disappointed to see them go as they do provide links to other researchers and their family members which may help if you collaborate. Much more visual too than Thru lines. I’ve already provided that feedback to Ancestry. I agree that NAD’s should go – they come and go so frequently. I’ve wasted lots of precious research time only trying to connect them (unsuccessfully I might add) to find they disappear!
I just checked 6 kits all attached to the same tree – all have ThruLines, and I think they all did last week when rolled out.
I have two tests for myself, one a V1 test and one a V2 test. Only my V2 test has ThruLines.
I also have multiple kits attached to the same trees and all have Thrulines.
Thank you so much. You write in a way that I can understand.
I tried ThruLines but found that it didn’t tell me much more than I already know. For example, I looked at a family line that I have hit a brick wall on hoping that ThruLines would show me a DNA match that I had not identified in the family and is before the oldest ancestor. Nothing there. I tried it again on another family line and the same was true; there were no additional matches before my oldest ancestor and I am only looking back to the mid 1800’s! What this tells me is that Thrulines can’t identify a person in the family line unless someone else already has. This relies much too heavily on the accuracy of other trees and not enough on DNA.
Rory Bowers
<>
Doesn’t seem to be universally true as my maternal 1st cousin, connected to my tree and DNA managed by me has ThruLines, but a paternal 2nd cousin likewise, doesn’t.
Hi Roberta,
Just wanted to let you know that I think one of your comments about ThruLines might be incorrect. You said: “If you have multiple kits connected to one tree, only one kit will have ThruLines.” I have 11 kits connected to one tree, and thankfully all of them have ThruLines.
I’m finding the concept of ThruLines very interesting and helpful, and I like the fact that the paths to the common ancestors are clearly shown so you can do your own research to make sure they are legitimate. Now we just need Ancestry to give us a chromosome browser!
I have multiple DNA tests assigned to the same tree. All have ThruLines. All of the tests link to the same ancestral line. All are good strong DNA matches. Strangely, only one test has a ThruLine to the correct ancestor as documented in the tree. That test subject does have a “double dose” of the ancestral DNA but all of the other tests have good solid amounts of DNA too. And yet ThruLines connects them to an entirely different branch of the family where they share very little DNA. I’m concerned about the Ancestry science here…
Caveat: my Thrulines had a matching surname bias that caused many valid matches agreeing on a well-proven NPE surname as father of a third ggf to be ignored. We have an airtight autosomal and YDNA proof luckily but I cringe thinking of all the tree errors that can be reinforced based on seeing a thruline just when we had begun getting descendants to change their trees
Yup! DNA circles, too, have been a joke. I wonder if they haven’t done more harm than good. They are good at “verifying” trees, never testing them. A wrong tree, agreed upon by many descendants, will be verified, by chance, sporadic, weak matches to a real circle of real descendants of the mistaken ancestor. Upon close inspection, it will be clear what has happened — that the DNA circle is really two unrelated circles — but very few people know how to figure this out. The real value of DNA circles has been, as the article explains, in finding cousins whom we don’t match but can be very useful.
I have a ThruLine to a 4th-cousin-once-removed where the DNA match has just 2 people in their tree, the tester and one parent. My connection is via the other parent, the one not in the tree. Someone else must have both parents in a tree and that is enough for the algorithm to make the connection. I also have ThruLines that utilize the trees of at least 4 other people (who have not done DNA tests) in order to make the connection. It’s great when everything works well.
However, there are also some serious problems that arise from other people having incorrect relationships in their tree. Someone has the wrong mother for my great-grandfather in their tree. They have connected him not to his mother but to his grandmother’s second husband’s second wife (no genetic relationship at all). I’m being presented a ThruLine through this incorrect path and I don’t seem to be able to get any ThruLines via the correct path that is in my own tree.
There is a filter on the ThruLines page when you can select “Ancestors from your own Linked Tree” but this has absolutely no effect at all. I still see all of the incorrect ancestors that must be coming from other people’s trees.
This is happening to me 98% of the time. I am not related to my great grandmother’s 2nd husband/s wife’s parents!
I’d miss the circles. I’m currently using mine to focus on the Thrulines with proven ancestors. Thrulines themselves are a mixed bag. I’ve documented some distant cousins I’d never have found otherwise, but as others have noted the matches are far too reliant on trees instead of DNA.
I had a very plausible looking link which was actually via a second marriage and not the biological mother. Another hint merged two different people with the same name and approximate year of birth. The one I’ve just been looking at was for a maternal ancestor, but listing a paternal DNA match. If they don’t match mum, what were they doing on the hint?
I can’t be too mad at this one though. Amazingly the suggested maternal link was correct. I’ve been able to document links from my cousin to common ancestors on both mum and dad’s sides. That has to be the rare exception though.
My feeling is that there’s some gold in there, but validation is essential. How many people will bother when it looks so right? I remember blindly copying hints when I started. If this was around then I dread to think what my tree might be like now!
Oh, and please, please, please stop listing ancestors where only other DNA matches are my immediate family!
-David
Since I was never given a/any circle, I was pleasantly surprised to suddenly have ThruLines. However, I find their use limited so far.
so, the url’s will work even if the circles feature disapears? i have been web clipping the info to Evernote.
I don’t know for sure. I would think you at least would be able to get to that person’s match. At least you would know who it is. I do see that the circle word is embedded in the url.
To be sure, copy the link to the profile page of th match or test administrator.
I meet all the qualifications stated at the beginning and STILL NO THRULINES … tree has 14,000 people – how much bigger does it need to be! Had 40 circles before ….
Me, too!
An Ancestry representative contacted me to explain that you can only have one kit for any individual person connected to that person in the same tree. If you have multiple kits for the same person connected to one tree, only one kit will have ThruLines. If this is your situation, you can create a “twin” to yourself in your tree and attach the second kit to that person and both kits should get ThruLines. There aren’t many people like me who have tested twice with AncestryDNA, so this shouldn’t be a problem for most people.
You can have multiple kits attached to the same tree, but each kit must be connected to a different person in the tree.
My public tree is over 5 generations deep and connected to my DNA, and I never got a DNA circle. I don’t expect much withs this new feature. As long as Ancestry gives me matches I will be ok…..
On Ancestry, my original 2010 DNA and a tree which now has only my maternal side on it, seems almost worthless of late. My Circle information dropped my Murphy line and dropped all the people I had matched on there, including the ones I ‘supposedly’ was a DNA link match to from my tree. Also removed was the Irish, Scottish Welsh, but added ‘British and Welsh’, dropped my Asian, dropped my Iberian and Spanish. My 24 Circle files are down to 12. I no longer will use Ancestry’s Raw data as an upload to other labs. Within the last year, i did 23andMe and uploaded that to MyHeritage where I also have the old Ancestry Raw Data. I also did FF at FTDNA and asked them to ‘remove’ my Ancestry Raw data. Every lab I’m with has me with Irish, Scottish Welsh, British Isles.. Methinks old DNA and today’s newer science, is producing slightly better results. The DNA Circles were quite helpful – very, especially since there are half relations and those of incest. I’m not so sure the new ThruLines will be helpful in my case, especially with the latest Ethnicity results, but thanks for this article and info, I will try it out and see if it helps. What everyone here so far has posted, is helpful.
I’ll be honest. I’ve never had many DNA circles. This is not surprising. I had two for my dad which for some reason have disappeared. It still technically lists them with my DNA circles. And it mentions who was in the circle. It vanished around the time I attached my parents’ DNA to my tree. Mom’s came back fine and picked up another one. That’s cool, I guess. In all I have nine. Not that much. Eh, it is what it is.
When Thrulines rolled out, I was skeptical. They were going to put the DNA matches in for me? Okay…Sure. I checked them out and to my surprise many of them were spot on except for one couple. That was an easy mistake. They draw from peoples’ trees and maybe people didn’t know? I really wasn’t sure to be honest with you. If anyone asks questions I’d be happy to show where I got the correct information from. I’m here to help. Not to be a jerk.
Thrulines is pretty good. There’s one hiccup. But, that can be forgiven because of human error. They just need to be researched. I found that some didn’t have DNA symbols for people I know didn’t do a DNA test. A few 4th cousins didn’t even show up in a group they should have been in. That struck me as odd. Then again I only filled in her tree to a certain point. Gen 6, I think? I’ll have to look. Her tree is also private and unsearchable and like you said to be on that thruline, you need to be searchable. That’s probably why she wasn’t there.
Can’t wait until you talk about potential ancestors. I’ve got a story about that one!
Although my tree is private, and not searchable, I still have Thrulines. In my case, the ball is not advanced because the hints/ancestors are from really BAD trees and are incorrect.
This is not science, just speculation, IMHO. If they decide to charge for these new features, do not think they will reap any rewards.
Yes, I also wish they would fix the broken tools.
I have a question. Do we have ANY reason to think that Ancestry pays any attention to where we all match on the Chromosome strings when they create these applications? I ask this because early on one of my Circles contained several DNA cousins who were on GEDmatch and been triangulated to a different ancestor. I read in an Ancestry Blog that the match and the tree were all that was taken into consideration – no string overlap matching at all. I admit at this point I wrote off the Circles and haven’t looked at mine in several years.
Have the folks at Ancestry actually publicly said they are paying attention to overlapping chromosome strings? (never mind triangulation – I am not entirely sure they know what that means) Do we have any reason to think they started actually matching based on more than just a tree?
They have not published anything about ThruLines.
I’m on obviously out of sync with everybody else. I have used thru-lines for three days and I have added 45 new cousins that I couldn’t resolve before. I have been at it for 10 hours a day and I’m not anywhere near finished. I also don’t understand the tree vs dna. In each case I match dna wise to another person and thru-lines is showing me how I match!? Why would I care whether it’s using trees or dna?
If the trees are wrong, you’re adding them in the wrong place. Coming forward in time to current when the common ancestor isn’t so far back in time and they are using your as the primary tree isn’t so bad, if you’re tree is accurately researched. Every “potential ancestor” I’ve looked at is wrong, and many times they’ve suggested replacing a known, proven accurate ancestor with an erroneous ones. Just be super careful.
I manage 5 kits and meet the linked dna, tree entry requirements and have not a single option for Thrulines.
As much as I like the idea of ThruLines, I’m afraid it’s not as accurate as some people may think. Circles were based on DNA connections and trees, but ThruLines seem to be based entirely on trees, whether they are accurate or not. I’m already seen a handful of false positives for connections with people who happened to have connected their ancestor to my ancestor with incorrect information. This is a common theme (incorrect trees) for endogamous cultures such as mine. Ancestry makes it super easy to copy people’s tree info, and beginners don’t understand the importance of citing sources. When these Frankensteined trees are public, now they create confusion for all. But that’s a topic for another day! 🙂
I manage DNA kits for several family members. It is interesting that the DNA circles and ThruLines vary widely among my family members. This is ok. It takes me to family associations that my DNA might not indicate. The big problem I see with ThruLines is that it has linked my bunch to an incorrect ancestor. In this particular case, Y-DNA testing confirms that the possible ancestor is not accurate. I do appreciate the fact that ThruLines shows the connection to many who do not have a tree that I can view on-line. I have been able to pinpoint a bunch of cousins that I would not known otherwise. That is very useful.
I manage 12 tree of various family members. Before Thru Lines I had 77 DNA circles. (It almost makes me feel guilty when I realize that others have none!). I found the helpful for some of the same reasons that you listed….and really appreciated seeing the names/trees of people who were in the circle but didn’t share DNA with me. I think there’s great value in knowing all of that! (Although, oddly, before Thru Lines came out, I had 3 of my family accounts that had NO DNA Circles—-which I could not figure out!). So, I’ve seen some very interesting and helpful things on Thru Lines, and also some areas that I’ve been skeptical about. The main issue I’ve had is that I have a 3rd great-grandmother who’s line they’ve completely LEFT OUT! (On my dad’s and aunts that would be a 2nd ggmother.). Oddly, this is a line that is huge and we have SO many connections to…..It’s left out on my account and all of the others on that side of the family. I did send them feedback about the issues I was having. There were a couple of things that were fixed the next day…..but the omission of this family line? Nope….still missing. So,I currently have mixed feelings about Thru Lines—-definitely some interesting finds, but missing a huge chunk of our family!
By using ThruLines I have actually been able to confirm a couple of guesses I had for third and fourth great grandparents based on distant DNA matches who have these ancestors documented in their trees. This information was not apparent in DNA Circles. I agree that the format is clunky and annoying, as you can’t see the information without clicking multiple times and there is no way to sort the various ancestors.
Regarding people who are not seeing ThruLines on your account yet… it looks like the latest Firefox update doesn’t “play well” with some Ancestry features. This also happened a few months ago. The Create and Manage Trees does not currently work. I went over to Chrome, and it worked. But also, “waa-laa”… the ThruLines badge that was not showing up on Firefox was now there on Chrome. So, some you who are not seeing it on Firefox may want to try another browser.
Today ancestry.com.au wasn’t showing my Thrulines and nor was Ancestry.com but I logged into ancestry.co.uk using Chrome and they were back again. Ancestry’s servers can get busy and trying one of their other sites helps in my experience. I have worldwide membership.
They’ve been up snd down all day.
From Ancestry, I CAN print with Chrome; but canNOT print with Firefox. Even my IT guy could not help me. Any suggestions?
I manage several DNA kits for several of my direct family lines (maternal and paternal, upward). My tree is quite large so in most cases my tree content does have 4 or more generations, so Truelines beta does seem to provide valuable information on DNA matches that Circles did not readily connect so crisply. I see Truelines as possibly a tool that may encourage those submitting DNA results with NO TREE at all that most of us think why did they both to take a DNA to only find out they had ancestors of IRISH descent is ludicrous to me. Those matches I have without a tree I don’t bother with in most cases unless it is a VERY HIGH match and I’ll try to make contact requesting at least a basic tree. Then is that person is not setup to receive ancestry messages, I can’t get in touch with them anyway. So I like the Truelines tool as it MIGHT help get DNA submitters to put together some sort of tree and then Truelines is very crisp as to how many DNA matches you have under specified surnames and lays it out as a tree.
CONS: I have many TRUELINES now, but have found one very critical one that needs to be fixed by the developers. I have DNA matches on my SHELTON-BYRD 2nd great grandparents. John Elbert Shelton and Sarah Frances Byrd-Shelton. When I first started researching Sarah I found a Sarah F Byrd in an OBIDIAH BYRD & ELIZABETH BYRD (parents) census in 1850 and some trees have that in their tree today as being the same as my Sarah who married John Elbert Shelton. That is NOT my Sarah but TRUELINES picks up that error from other persons trees. My Sarah F Byrd is of approx. same age as mine, but the siblings do not match my known facts. My Sarah is not found in a census until 1860 residing in Hunt county, TX JAMES M BYRD and ELIZABETH BEVERS. but I have researched in Mississippi and found in 1854 JAMES and other family members have legal Gift of Deeds, her sibling marriage records etc. to prove that my Sarah IS NOT from OBIDIAH but rather from James M Byrd and Elizabeth Bevers. So my TRUELINES has picked up the wrong BYRD parents from other persons trees just because they have SARAH with the wrong parents, but with my SARAH’s lineage. I have proof these are two different families and the siblings etc. are not even similar names.
Now NAD my guess which as you said hasn’t had anything new in it anyway in a year or more…. would be replaced by the new label “POTENTIAL MATCH” in Truelines. But I still have two NAD’s that do not show up yet in TRUELINES as potential matches, so not sure about my theory yet. I haven’t had time yet to dig into the Potential Ancestor label in Truelines.
My thru lines disappeared, how do I get it back?
Has anyone found a way to mark the wrong stuff as wrong? I don’t plan on using true lines. I might check on occasion but I don’t need to have the same wrong people show up. From my own research on my own blood relatives I have found 99% of trees to be copies of someone’s tree and it is not right. No doubt these are old trees and no sources. If there are 19 trees agreeing and my 1 tree disagrees…who ya gonna copy?
No feature like that yet. I sure would love to see one.
I hope they add the feature to be able to flag as incorrect.
Welllll … in my case, there are 14 total trees for an ancestor with 9 of them being correct, but they used one of the 5 that are incorrect in the ThruLine! I also would like to be able to flag things as incorrect.
I like the DNA Circles as they give actual viable information to my Biological DNA Family. On the same day Thru Lines was released, I gained three new Circles on my new Biological side. Mom just learned she was adopted a year and a half ago. Through Ancestry DNA matches we have found her entire biological family. She is 85, so naturally her parents are deceased. But, we have spoken with several of our new cousins. Thru Lines does not include the Biological Family matches in their hints what so ever. Our adopted family is back. We obviously cannot ask people to remove them from their trees as they are their families. Mom was part of their family as an adopted child. How do we get Thru Lines to recognize our Biological DNA Family that my DNA is attached to in my respective well researched tree? The other issue I have is that Thru Lines is listing my Step Great Grandfather as my GreatGrandfather, not a potential hint, but listed as if I have him that way in my tree, but I don’t. They have his ancestors as mine. My actual Ancestors are MIA. I have him as Step with his children married to our mutual Great Grandmother. I have her married to my Great Grandfather and it says as much, with my Grandmother and her siblings. They are completely separate. Maybe Thru Lines knows something I don’t? Thank you. For always helping. You and my husband are actually cousins through your respective DNA-Miller’s. By the way, I deleted an entire tree that had once contained all of our Adopted Family information. Some of it just wouldn’t go away.
Cheri Gates Shepherd
So pleased to meet you, cousin!
My problem right now is that over a year ago, I deleted my tree and replaced it with another. I did that because one fourth of it was completely wrong. Either: (1) the man my mother knew as “Daddy” and I knew as “Grandpa” was not her biological father, or (2) the couple who raised him were not his biological parents.
I discovered this through DNA evidence. I don’t want to present that evidence here, but suffice it to say that I know who my mother’s paternal grandparents were with a high degree of certainty, which is what led me to create a completely new tree.
I currently have over ten DNA Circles which connect with my maternal grandfather’s part of this tree — but they don’t connect with the people I had listed as his parents in the “old” tree.
Unfortunately, ThruLines is not using my current linked tree. It’s reverted to the old tree — which, again, was deleted over a year ago. I called Ancestry about this, and the rep could see what I was talking about — including the fact that I connect *closely* to my maternal grandfather’s parents in my current tree. My fellow descendants of my great grandparents include: one of their grandsons (344 cM shared across 18 DNA segments), one of their great grandsons (265 cM shared across 15 segments — although at GEDmatch it’s 333 cM shared across 17 segments, including two on the X chromosome), and a 2nd great grandson (196 cM shared across 9 segments).
I also have about eighteen “3rd cousins” at Ancestry who are “shared matches” with the 1st cousin once removed, the 2nd cousin, and the 2nd cousin once removed — and on both sides. That is, fifteen connect in some way on my great grandmother’s side, and three connect on my great grandfather’s side.
The Ancestry representative had no idea why ThruLines is using my deleted tree. She said she would bring the issue to the attention of her supervisor, but I don’t know what sort of follow up is happening — if any. And the frustrating thing is, I think this could be a really useful tool — I just wish Ancestry would pay attention when a tree has been deleted and another tree has taken it’s place. I *thought* they were — my DNA Circles reflect this — but not, for some reason, “ThruLines”.
Roberta, thank you so much for posting this about Circles. Presently I have started a Word doc where I have copied snapshots of all 57 Circles for myself (will need to do it for hubby, uncle and 1st cousin) and the Circle info for each one. Using the spreadsheet to enter circle name with name of those in it and the link to them on the match. When Circles disappear, just what information that I saved on the link is going to disappear? Right now, it shows a list of any other Circles we share and assume all that will be gone in time. But the shared DNA data should not be changed, should it? So the link I saved is respective to the match itself if we had DNA match.
Side note, we are cousins on our mutual Speak lines. I have recently tested one of my cousins for Y-DNA and auDNA whose father was illegitimate. His Y-DNA proved Dotson and one of the matches is to my Dotson cousins via our mutual Overfield lines. And Dotson cousin just commented to you on Facebook regarding a recent article on ThruLines that you matched his mother.
I have only one tree with over 8,000 people on it. The account is in my name. I, my sister and brother and both my children have dna tested and are attached to this one tree. I am the only one that does not have thru lines. I still have circles and a message that I should grow my tree. Then to top it off the thrulines lists my brother and he has the blue male profile with 1800 shared cM as my childrens mother. Can I change this or should I just leave it with mine as it is knowing it could only get worse?
I’m afraid it’s too late for me. I had 25 DNA Circles before “ThruLines”, and according to Ancestry I still do. BUT, in fact if I try to take a look at my DNA Circles, only four of them — on two pages! — can still be seen.
In addition, I have no “ThruLines” for anyone in my maternal grandfather’s portion of my tree, even though I had previously had ten DNA Circles. One of those circles had over 400 members.
Many of my nearest relatives at Ancestry are related to me through my maternal grandfather. This includes three people from the “2nd cousins” section of my match list (one of whom is actually a 1st cousin once removed — a nephew of my grandfather). It also includes eighteen people from the “3rd cousins” section. The number from the “4th cousins” section is in the hundreds.
But even though both my grandfather and his parents, grandparents, etc., are in my linked tree (and some of them used to head DNA Circles), not since “ThruLines” came out.
Try incognito through Chrome.
My Ancestry tree now shows zero DNA Circles. I tried incognito through Chrome as you suggested, but got the same results.
Mine are messed up too.
After using ThruLines, I’m now told that I have zero DNA Circles. I tried incognito through Chrome, but still got the same results.
My dna circles were fine yesterday but now they have no descendants in them anymore unless they have a dna connection to me. I was just starting my fourth cousin branches which is when I really needed those records. I am really sad. They would’ve made my job easier and more accurate. Is there a privacy reason that Ancestry doesn’t want us to connect with these cousins?
It is more efficient and effective to work with DNA Circles & ThruLines data in EXCEL. Copy and Paste is the only method that I have gotten to work consistency. With moderate GEEK tricks, parts of this Copy and Paste can be automated. Once in EXCEL, VBA and POWER QUERY can be used to extract data and Ancestry web links to a table. This method can be used to capture DNA Circles LISTS and ThruLines DNA Matches at the individual level. Contact me if you are interested in exploring this automation and are willing to work through issues. You need a version of EXCEL with a current version of Power Query.
Pingback: Using Ancestry’s Tree Tags | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
Pingback: Using Ancestry’s New Match Grouping Dots aka “MyGroupDots” | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
Roberta, I purchased my DNA kit from Ancestry.com in 2008. When I received my letter informing me of my DNA connection, it said I didn’t match anyone in the database. Several years later I have tried to get my tree connected to my family tree with ancestry. It is in the vault in the mountain. I still don’t know how to connect this tree. August 16, 2017 I emailed Ancestry.dna and received a response saying my DNA was performed by Genomies, which went out of business in 2009. Meredith who responded said their laboratory purchased a portion of their assets but unfortunately Ancestry does not have access to DNA Print Genomies’ case records.
Where do I go from here?
Last week in your blog you published a clip of Kait8.com about 2019 Arkansas state girls golf, my granddaughter Madison was included in this clip as she won the 5A state golf last year. Thanks for your post.
In 2008, Ancestry did not sell autosomal DNA testing and they obsoleted those products. You’ll need to purchase a current kit if you want to be in their database today.
Where does the info for the story of Ancestor DNA Circle come from? I just found my husbands maternal 3rd GGrandfather’s name and the story was of 3rd Paternal GGF. Really strange.
FYI: I can no longer see the trees of “DNA matches to the Circle” when I select them in the DNA Circle lists. I thought that I would have until July 1st to get this data. But the links appear to have been disabled. Is anyone else experiencing this?
You are not the first to report this.
Thank you for helping with this issue. Something I found to be interesting is that the DNA Circles probably have things a bit messed up somewhere. They show one of my great-step-grandfathers as my great-grandfather. They also show my true great-grandfather as my great-grandfather. What gives?
Save them how? I can’t get a link by saving to Dropbox. Otherwise just copy and print????
I created a spreadsheet. I described this process answering another comment if you want to take a look.
I have a private but searchable tree and have never had any circles and have never understood why. I do have NADs, however, and about half of them are already in my family tree which is contrary to what Ancestry is telling me. When I click on them, I do get the list of descendants like you show above. Have I been missing something with no DNA circles? I have been trying to find the father of my great-grandfather for several years with absolutely no luck and wonder if the circles could have helped me.
NADs were supposed to be not ancestors and Circles were supposed to be ancestors in everyone’s tree who is in the circle.
I’m sorry if I’m dense, but I’m not finding your instructions to save NADs to a spreadsheet. I’ve looked through the comments…am I missing it?
If you have NADs, the instructions are the same as for circles. Not everyone had NADs and they haven’t been updates for a very long time.
Pingback: Reminder: Ancestry’s DNA Circles Will Vanish July 1 – Act Now to Preserve | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
Pingback: Ancestry’s ThruLines Dissected: How to Use and Not Get Bit by the ‘Gators | DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy