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Leave No Stone Unturned, No Ancestor Behind: 10 Easy Steps to Capture DNA Clues

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There’s a lot, a whole lot that DNA testing can tell you. Not just your own tests, but the genetic information carried by your relatives that you do not.

Recently, I’ve been reviewing my brick walls, which led me to realize there are several ancestors who are missing their mitochondrial DNA and/or Y-DNA  results. I need these to learn more about my ancestors that can’t be revealed any other way – and to break down those pesky brick walls.

I’ve solved two mysteries recently, one thanks to a Big Y-700 test, and a second very unexpectedly thanks to mitochondrial DNA – both thanks to cousins who tested. These revelations were very encouraging, especially since there’s no way other than DNA for me to break through these brick walls. The mitochondrial test had been sitting there, waiting for what seemed like forever until just the right other person tested.

I am in the process of unlocking several brick-walled ancestors by providing testing scholarships to people who are appropriately descended from known ancestors in those lines.

Don’t leave information on the table. If I were to tell you there even MIGHT be a book available about your family, you’d overturn Heaven and Earth to find it – but you don’t need to do that. All you need to do is order DNA tests for cousins.

All cousins can provide useful autosomal DNA results, but you do need to find appropriate cousins for Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing.

I’m sharing the steps for how I accomplish this! You’ll be amazed at what’s out there – and someone may already have tested!

Take Advantage of the Holidays

I’m sharing NOW because it’s the holidays and you’re likely to gather with people you don’t see any other time – and because the best sale of the year for both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA lasts from now through the end of the year.

These two factors combined mean strike while the iron is hot.

Prices for new tests and bundles are at an all-time low.

If you or your relatives have already taken a lower-level test, now is the time to upgrade to either the Big Y-700 or the mtFull Sequence test.

Step 1 – Test Yourself and Your Known Family

If you’re a male, order both the Big Y-700 test and mitochondrial DNA tests.

Be sure to click on “See More” for more useful tools.

When you receive your results, be sure to click on all of the tabs in your results, and do the same by clicking through to Discover from your account. Discover has 13 more goodies for you to help with your genealogy.

Both your personal page and Discover are essentially chapters of your own personal book about your DNA results. 25 very interesting chapters, to be precise, that are uniquely you.

I’ve written about understanding Y-DNA results here, and mitochondrial results here. My book, Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA, covers both along with Discover.

Discover provides robust information for Y-DNA haplogroups. If you’ve taken a Big Y-700 test, you’ll want to click through from your page to receive additional, personalized and more robust information than is available through the free public Discover tool. That said, the public version of Discover is an amazing tool for everyone.

After the new Mitotree is released for mitochondrial DNA, mitochondrial haplogroups will be available in Discover too.

I can’t even begin to stress how important these tools are – in particular the Time Tree, the Group Time Tree for members of group projects, and the Match Time Tree for your own matches.

Who Can Test For What?

Once you’ve tested yourself, you will want to take a look in your pedigree chart at branches further up your tree to see who can be tested to represent specific ancestors.

Let’s begin with my father’s side.

A mother contributes her mitochondrial DNA to all of her children, so your father carries the mitochondrial DNA of his mother.

If you’re a female, and your father is available to test, you’ll want to test BOTH his mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA, because there’s no way for you to obtain that information from your own test. Females don’t have a Y chromosome, and men don’t pass on their mitochondrial DNA.

If you’re a male, you can test your own mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA, but you’ll need to test your father’s mitochondrial DNA to obtain his mother’s. You might still want to test your father’s Y-DNA, however, because you may discover a personal family haplogroup. How cool is that??!! Your own tiny branch on the tree of mankind!

Your father’s mitochondrial DNA provides you with mitochondrial matches and haplogroup information for your paternal grandmother – in this case, Ollie Bolton.

If your father and his siblings can’t test, then all of the children of your paternal aunts carry your paternal grandmother’s mitochondrial DNA.

If they have no children or they can’t test, then the children of Ollie Bolton’s mother, Margaret Claxton/Clarkson all carry her mitochondrial DNA, and the children of Ollie’s sisters continue the line of descent through all daughters to the current generation.

The male children of Joseph “Dode” Bolton and Margaret Claxton carry his Y-DNA. Fortunately, that’s not one of our missing haplogroups.

Yes, you may have to climb up your tree and climb down various branches to find a testing candidate.

One of the reasons I’m using this example is because, while I have a high-level haplogroup for my grandmother, Ollie Bolton, we need a full sequence tester – and I’m offering a mitochondrial DNA testing scholarship for anyone descending from Margaret Claxton (or her direct female ancestors) through all females to the current generation, which can be male.

Ok, now let’s switch to the maternal side of your tree.

On the other side of your tree, your maternal grandfather or your mother’s brothers will provide the Y-DNA of your mother’s father’s line. Your mother’s uncles or their sons will provide your grandfather’s Y-DNA line, too. In this case, that’s John Whitney Ferverda, who carries the Y-DNA of his father, Hiram Bauke Ferverda/Ferwerda.

Your maternal grandfather or his siblings will provide the mitochondrial DNA of their mother, Evaline Louise Miller.

If they are deceased or can’t test, for mitochondrial DNA, look to the children of Evaline Miller’s daughters or their descendants through all females to the current generation, which can be male.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, I do need Evaline Miller’s mitochondrial line too and am offering a scholarship.

You might have noticed that I’ve been inching my way up my tree. All of my immediate relatives have passed over already, so I’m now looking for testers that I don’t know but who I’m related to.

If you’re seeing family members anytime soon, figure out if their Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, or autosomal DNA would be useful for your common genealogy. Take advantage of the opportunity.

Next, you’ll want to figure out which ancestors need haplogroups and locate appropriate cousins.

Step 2 – Identify Ancestors Who Need Haplogroups

Peruse your tree to determine which of your ancestors you need haplogroup information for. To make it easy, on my computer, but never in a public tree anyplace, I store the haplogroup of my ancestor as a “middle name” so I can easily see which ones I have and which ones I need. Sometimes, I have a high-level haplogroup and either need a new tester or someone to upgrade.

Sometimes, I have one tester from a line but need a second for confirmation.

In this example, I’m not missing confirmation on any Y-DNA haplogroups (although I am further upstream on different lines,) but I do need four different mitochondrial DNA lineages.

For easy reference, make a list of all of the lines you can’t confirm with two testers from different children of the same ancestor.

You just might get lucky and discover that someone has already tested!

Step 3 – Check FamilyTreeDNA Projects

Check FamilyTreeDNA Projects to see if someone has already tested to represent those ancestors on your list.

Click here for the Group Project Search. It’s located at the very bottom of the main FamilyTreeDNA page in the footer.

I’m going to use Estes as an example since I’m the volunteer administrator of that project and am very familiar with the lineages.

I’m searching for projects that include the surname Estes.

The projects displayed on the list are projects where the volunteer administrators listed Estes as a possible surname of interest. It doesn’t mean those projects will be of interest to everyone or every line with that surname, but evaluate each project listed.

You probably want the surname project, but if there’s not a surname project for your surname, try alternate spellings or consider checking other projects.

You can see at the bottom that 384 people of both sexes by the surname of Estes have tested at FamilyTreeDNA.

Now, let’s look at the Estes project. Note that not everyone with the Estes surname has joined the Estes project.

I’ve clicked on the “Estes” link which takes me to an additional information page where I can read a description and click to view the project.

For the Estes project, you do not have to join to view the results. Nor does your surname have to be Estes. All Estes descendants of any line are welcome. Everyone can benefit from the Advanced Matching within project feature to see who else you match within the project by selecting a wide range of individual and combined filters.

Click on the Project Website link shown in the search results.

If you’re searching for a male Estes ancestor, you’ll want to review the project’s Y-DNA Results and the Group Time Tree, for sure, and possibly the Map as well.

Let’s pretend I’m trying to determine if anyone has tested who descends from my ancestor, Abraham Estes, the founding Estes ancestor in Virginia who arrived in the mid-1600s.

In the Estes project, the volunteer administrator has divided the Estes male participants by sons of Abraham, the immigrant. Only three are shown here, but there are several.

Some of the participants have completed their Earliest Known Ancestor information, in the red box. Sometimes people don’t think to update these when they make breakthroughs.

If you descend from Abraham’s son, Sylvester, three men have taken the Big Y-700. That’s the test results you need.

If you descend from Abraham’s son, Abraham, no project participants have taken the Big-Y test to represent that line, although six people have tested, so that’s great news. Maybe you can offer an upgrade scholarship to one or some of those men.

In other words, to establish the haplogroup for that lineage, at least two men need to test or upgrade to the Big Y-700, preferably through two different sons of the common ancestor. A new, more defining haplogroup is often formed every two or three generations for Y-DNA.

Your genetic pedigree chart looks a lot like your genealogy pedigree chart.

Click any image to enlarge

The project Group Time Tree shows selected groups of men who have taken Big Y tests, along with their Earliest Known Ancestor, if they’ve provided the information. This is one of the reasons why the Big Y-700 is so critically important to genealogy. The time granularity is amazing and can answer the question of whether men by the same surname descend from the same common ancestor – and when.

If you’ve taken a Family Finder autosomal test at FamilyTreeDNA, or uploaded an autosomal file from another vendor, you may match one of these men or another male that descends from the Estes line if they, too, have taken an autosomal test.

This same process applies to mitochondrial DNA, but generally surname projects aren’t (as) relevant for mitochondrial DNA since the surname changes every generation. However, sometimes other projects, such as the Acadian AmerIndian Project are quite beneficial if you have Acadian ancestry, or a geographic or regional project like the French Heritage Project, or something like the American Indian Project.

Another great way to find testers is by utilizing your Family Finder test.

Step 4 – Family Finder at FamilyTreeDNA

The next step is to see if you match anyone with the surname you’re searching for by using your autosomal test results, so select your Family Finder Matches.

At FamilyTreeDNA you’ll want to search your matches by the surname you seek. This surname search lists any tester who has that surname, or anyone who has entered that surname in their surname list. Please note that this search does NOT read ancestors in your matches’ trees. You’ll still need to view trees.

Reviewing the 32 Estes Family Finder matches reveals several men, but one man with the Estes surname has already taken a Y-DNA 25-marker test, so he would be an excellent candidate to offer a Big Y-700 upgrade scholarship. If he’s not interested or doesn’t respond, there are several more men to contact.

Click on your match’s name to display the profile card, along with the Earliest Known Ancestors, both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups if they have tested, and the assigned haplogroup based on their testing level.

Craft an email and offer a testing scholarship. This will help both of you. I’ll provide a sample email at the end of this article.

If you match a female with an Estes surname, her father, brother, uncle or cousin may either have already tested or be willing.

If you match someone who has a different surname, that means they have an Estes surname in their surname list and may know a potential tester. If your match has a tree, click to check.

I’ve found that matching through a company where you’ve both tested is the easiest way to encourage someone to take an additional test, but certainly, it’s not the only way.

Step 5 – WikiTree

WikiTree is a quick and easy way to see if anyone has taken a Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA test that should reflect a particular ancestor’s Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA.

I just googled “Moses Estes 1711-1787 WikiTree” and clicked to view.

Each ancestor includes both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA information, in addition to people who descend from that ancestor through only autosomal lines.

In this case, two men have provided their Y-DNA results that pertain to Moses Estes. They have tested at different levels, which is why they have different haplogroups. That doesn’t mean either is “wrong,” one is just more refined than the other. You can correlate their kit number with the Estes surname project. People often don’t update their haplogroup information at WikiTree when it’s updated at FamilyTreeDNA.

Please note that if the genealogy is wrong, either at WikiTree or individually, the haplogroup may not reflect the appropriate lineage for the ancestor. Check to be sure that there’s no conflict showing between two testers for the same ancestor. For example, the same ancestor clearly can’t have two different base haplogroups, like E and R. The Discover Compare tool can help you evaluate if two haplogroups are in the same part of the Y-DNA tree.

When possible, it’s always best to test a close family member to represent your lineage even if someone else has already tested.

Scan down the list of autosomal testers for that ancestor to see if there’s someone with the Estes surname.

WikiTree provides additional tools to find descendants.

Sign in to WikiTree. You’ll see the ID of the profile you’re viewing – in this case – Estes-167. Click the down arrow and select “Descendants.”

This view shows all descendants through five generations, but you can click on DNA Descendants to see only Y-DNA descendants, X-DNA, or mitochondrial DNA descendants for female ancestors.

You may find people who are living and have added themselves who you can contact to offer a DNA testing scholarship.

Step 6 – MyHeritage

At MyHeritage, you can also search your DNA matches by surname.

Click on “Review DNA Match” to view more detail, including locations. Look to see if you have a Theory of Family Relativity Match which suggests how you may be related. That’s golden!

There’s no Y-DNA information at MyHeritage, BUT, you can search by surname and view DNA matches that either carry that surname or have that surname in their tree as an ancestor.

I have a total of 75 “Estes” matches, and other than the kits that I manage, searching through my matches shows:

  • Two Estes men connected to the same small tree, but that’s OK, I’m a genealogist!

  • One Estes male match with a Theory of Family Relativity. My lucky day!

You can contact your match easily through the MyHeritage messaging system and offer a DNA testing scholarship at FamilyTreeDNA. You may also want to share your email address.

MyHeritage customers may not be familiar with Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA testing, so you might want to share this article about the 4 Kinds of DNA for Genealogy.

MyHeritage testers can also upload their DNA file to FamilyTreeDNA for free to receive autosomal matches plus a complimentary mid-range Y-DNA haplogroup. This free haplogroup is not even close to the detailed resolution of a Big Y-700 test, but it’s something, and it may well be an enticing first step for people who are only familiar with autosomal testing.

Step 7 – At Ancestry

At Ancestry, select DNA Matches and then search by surname.

You can search by the surname of the tester, which is very useful, or by people who have Estes in their trees.

I started with the surname Estes, because it’s the most straightforward and I may find a perfect male candidate for Y-DNA. If someone’s “screen name” doesn’t show as Estes, they won’t appear in the results of this search. In other words, if your Ancestry screen name is “robertaestes” you won’t show in this search, but “Roberta Estes” will.

For mitochondrial DNA, you would want to search for the surname in your matches’ trees. Unfortunately, you cannot search for the specific ancestor in someone’s tree, at least not directly.

Of my 19 Estes surname matches, ten are males, and of them:

  • Three have unlinked trees
  • Three have very small linked trees, but I can work on extending those if need be
  • Three have public linked trees AND a common ancestor, which means ThruLines

I can review which ancestor we share by clicking on my match’s name

The Estes side of this man’s tree has only one person and is marked “private,” but Ancestry has suggested common ancestors based on other people’s trees. (Yes, I know trees are dicey, but bear with me.)

It’s also worth mentioning that you can be related through multiple lines. I share surnames from Acadian lines with this man, but that really doesn’t matter here because I’m only using autosomal matching to find an Estes male.

Click on “View Relationship” to see our common Estes ancestor’s ThruLine.

The ThruLine shows how Ancestry thinks we’re related on the Estes line.

I can also click on “View ThruLines” to see all Thrulines for John R. Estes, which shows four additional males, some of which did NOT appear in the Estes surname search, and some of which don’t appear further up the tree. In other words, check all Estes ThruLine ancestor generations.

Don’t rely solely on Ancestry’s surname search.

Go directly to your ThruLines on the DNA menu.

Ancestry only reaches back seven generations, which for me is Moses Estes and Luremia Combs. Moses has 95 matches, but he has been given some incorrect children. Again, for this purpose, it doesn’t matter. Within all ThruLine matches, I found three Estes males who all descend through John R. Estes. Check every generation.

However, Luremia Combs shows promise for mitochondrial DNA descendants. Unfortunately, only two of her daughters are represented in ThruLines, and both of their descendants descend through Luremia’s grandsons. That’s too bad, because I need Luremia’s mitochondrial DNA line.

It’s easy to message your Ancestry matches. You may want to mention that they can upload their DNA file to FamilyTreeDNA for free where they will receive more matches and males will receive a complimentary mid-level Y-DNA haplogroup.

Please note that, in general, ThruLines need to be evaluated very carefully and are prone to errors, especially if you accept Ancestry’s suggestions of ancestors instead of carefully building out your own tree. Regardless, you can still find Estes cousin matches in your match list and by using ThruLines to find people that do not show up in an “Estes” match search.

Step 8 – At 23andMe

At 23andMe, you can search for anyone who either has the Estes surname or has included that surname in their “Family surnames” list. Keep in mind that your matches at 23andMe are restricted to either 1500 if you don’t have a subscripition, or about 4500 if you do have a subscription.

On my match list, I have two males with the Estes surname.

23andMe provides a mid-level Y-DNA haplogroup. You can’t use this to confirm the lineage when comparing with FamilyTreeDNA, especially given that 23andMe provides no genealogy or user-provided tree, but it is a clue.

Both Estes men at 23andMe have Y-DNA haplogroup R-CTS241. You could use this in some cases to potentially eliminate these matches at 23andMe. For example, if men in your lineage in the Estes project are in haplogroup R and your 23andMe matches are showing as haplogroup E, or any other base haplogroup, their common ancestor is tens of thousands of years ago.

Comparing the 23andMe haplogroup, which in this case is about 4500 years old, to contemporary testers who have taken the Big Y-700, which reaches within a few generations, isn’t terribly useful. These matches are extremely useful to identify individuals to reach out to for further information and potentially offer a Y-DNA testing scholarship at FamilyTreeDNA.

Remember, this also applies to females who have included Estes in their family surnames, given that they may have Estes male relatives.

By clicking to view your match, you can see if they have provided Family Background information, including a link to a family tree someplace.

Sometimes, there’s great information here, and other times, nothing.

You can’t verify this lineage without genealogy information.

I suggest leaving a genealogy-focused message, including where they can see your tree in addition to your Estes connection. Also include your e-mail.

You may want to say that if they descend appropriately, you have a Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA testing scholarship, or you may want to wait to see how they descend. You can also ask if they have already taken a Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA.

Step 9 – FamilySearch and Relatives at RootsTech

We’re getting ready for RootsTech 2025 which takes place in March. In the month or so before the last two RootsTechs, FamilySearch provided an absolutely wonderful tool called “Relatives at RootsTech.”

I’ve written about this several times, but essentially, you can see, by ancestor, other people who are registered both in-person and virtually for RootsTech, and how they descend.

Here’s an example.

In both years, I’ve found several people who descended from common ancestors AND were very willing to take the relevant DNA test. That’s a huge win-win for everyone.

The best part is that because these people have freshly registered for RootsTech, the reply rate is almost 100%.

I’ll write about this as soon as RootsTech makes it available this year. Fingers crossed that they do!

Step 10 – Social Media

Social media wouldn’t be my first choice to find DNA testers, but I have found perfectly willing cousins this way. You may be less successful on Facebook or other social media platforms, but if you’re striking out elsewhere, there’s absolutely no downside to trying.

You can enter a surname and search on Facebook, but I prefer to do a Google search like “Estes genealogy on Facebook” or even just “Estes genealogy,” which will produce far more widespread information, some of which may be irrelevant.

That Facebook Google search provided the names of two groups. People join groups because they have an interest, and I’ve had good luck in Facebook genealogy groups.

A Search of “Estes” on Facebook itself, then selecting “people” provided a list of Estes Facebook users.

I’ve had far better luck by joining a group that is focused on Estes genealogy, or even a county genealogy group that includes Estes families, than individuals. People who join any Estes group or project likely have an interest in that surname.

If you have a common surname, or there’s a park named after your surname, like Estes Park, you’ll probably want to focus by using Google searches for Estes genealogy.

The Descendants of Abraham Estes Facebook group has 222 members, of whom at least 31 are males with the Estes surname. Facebook just might be an underestimated resource.

If there isn’t a genealogy-focused group for your surname, you might want to consider starting one and encouraging people to join.

It can’t hurt, and it just might help. Before you start reaching out to random people on Facebook, please do a privacy checkup – I wrote about how, here.

Sale Prices

Remember, the sale prices at FamilyTreeDNA for new tests and upgrades last through year-end.

In my experience, it’s best to test as soon as someone agrees. You never know what will happen otherwise. I’ve had people pass away before they could swab. And yes, we’ve done funeral home swabs, too.

There’s no one-size-fits-all, but here’s a rough draft contact letter.

Potential Contact Letter

You’ll want to include several critical pieces of information.

Essentially:

  • Introduce yourself
  • Say their full name on their test AND the testing company in the title of an email. I manage many tests and if I receive an email that says, “Hi, can you tell me how we match” without telling me which person they match, I can’t even begin to answer.
  • Explain your genealogy connection
  • State your purpose in writing
  • Explain how a specific test will help them too
  • Offer to answer questions

Be sure to modify this letter to reflect your own voice and circumstances. You don’t want this to read like a form letter.

Dear cousin (insert their full name here,)

It was so nice to find our DNA match at <company name> (or we share a common ancestor, or appropriate circumstance.) (If you are managing someone else’s kit, say the name of who they match and explain that you manage their DNA kit.)

I descend from (ancestor plus birth and death date) who lived in Halifax County, Virginia and was married to (spouse.) You can view my tree at (insert link that does not require a subscription for viewing unless you match them on that platform. I use MyHeritage because everyone can view their trees)

I would very much like to confirm that our line descends from Abraham Estes (or relevant information meaning your reason for wanting them to test.)

Given that my surname is x (or I’m a female), we need to test the Y-DNA of a male who is descended from (ancestor) through all males to the current generation. (Or mitochondrial DNA descended through females to the current generation which can be male.)

FamilyTreeDNA provides this testing and shows who you match on that specific line using the Y chromosome (mitochondrial DNA).

This testing may connect us with earlier ancestors. Genetics can be used to determine when we share common Estes ancestors with others who test, where we come from overseas, and when. Even if we match ancient DNA samples that may tell us where our ancestors lived before surnames. In other words, where did we come from?

(Include a nice paragraph, but not a book about your ancestral lineage here.)

I have a DNA testing scholarship for someone from this line and you are the perfect candidate. I would like to take advantage of the current sales. If you’re interested, I only need two things from you.

First, permission so that I can order (or upgrade) and pay for the test, and second, an address where to send the test (unless it’s an upgrade). (If it’s an upgrade at FamilyTreeDNA, they can use a stored sample or will sent them a new kit if there’s not enough DNA.)

If you have any questions, please let me know. I’m very excited that we may be able to learn more about our heritage.

Please email me at xxx or call me at xxx if you have questions.

Your name

I know one person who offers to review results over Zoom. Someone else stresses that the tester’s email is attached to their test and they are always in control of their results. Another person asks them to join a project they manage to assure that they can follow their matches over time.

Customize this communication in your own voice and to fit the circumstances of each match.

It’s just me, but since I’m ordering while the tests are on sale, unless the person uploads their DNA file from another vendor, I add on a Family Finder test too and explain why. You never know if they will match you or another cousin, and they may have that match that eventually breaks down the next brick wall. Shared matches are powerful evidence and it’s a lot easier to add that test on now than try to contact them again later.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Which ancestors do you need Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA results for? Methodically check each line.

There’s so much to learn. Don’t leave information on the table by virtue of omission.

Leave no stone unturned!

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Who’s waiting out there for you?

____________________________________________________________

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If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

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I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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 Uploads

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Genealogy Books

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Announcing: The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA; Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA

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I’m so very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA.

For the first time, the publisher, Genealogical.com, is making the full-color, searchable e-book version available before the hardcopy print version, here. The e-book version can be read using your favorite e-book reader such as Kindle or iBooks.

Update: The hardcopy version was released at the end of May and is available from the publisher in the US and from Amazon internationally.

This book is about more than how to use the FamilyTreeDNA products and interpreting their genealogical meaning, it’s also a primer on the four different types of DNA used for genealogy and how they work:

  • Autosomal DNA
  • Mitochondrial DNA
  • Y-DNA
  • X-DNA

There’s a LOT here, as shown by the table of contents, below

This book is chocked full of great information in one place. As an added bonus, the DNA glossary is 18 pages long.

I really hope you enjoy my new book, in whatever format you prefer.

_____________________________________________________________

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Share the Love!

You’re always welcome to forward articles or links to friends and share on social media.

If you haven’t already subscribed (it’s free,) you can receive an e-mail whenever I publish by clicking the “follow” button on the main blog page, here.

You Can Help Keep This Blog Free

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase your price but helps me 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 Uploads

Genealogy Products and Services

My Books

Genealogy Books

Genealogy Research

Why Don’t Our Y-DNA Haplogroups Match?

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I’ve been asked this question several times recently, and the answer is resoundingly, “it depends.” There are several reasons why Y-DNA haplogroups might not match and most of them aren’t “bad.”

How Haplogroups Work

Haplogroups are the 79,000+ branches of the Y-DNA phylogenetic tree which you can view here, along with countries where those haplogroups are found. You can think of haplogroups as genetic clans of either closely or distantly related men. Major haplogroup branches have unique letters assigned. Downstream or younger haplogroups are designated by a letter-number sequence that is always preceded by the main haplogroup letter.

Image courtesy FamilyTreeDNA

Major haplogroups were formed tens of thousands of years ago, with more recent haplogroups added as they’ve been discovered. Haplogroups are discovered and added every day thanks to the Big Y-700 test. You can read more about that process, here.

As you look at the pie chart above, you’ll notice that haplogroup R represents about half the men who have tested and has several major subbranches. Every haplogroup R man belongs to all of the branches above his own that lead back to the root of haplogroup R.

Using haplogroup R, which is R-M207, its identifying SNP, as an example, it immediately splits into two branches: R-M173, which has 37,000+ more branches, and R-M479, which has 313 branches. My Estes men fall into a haplogroup several steps beneath R-M173, but they are still members of haplogroups R-M173 and R-M207, even though their descendant haplogroup is R-BY490, which was formed by a mutation that occurred 20,000 years later.

Haplogroup R-M173, then, in turn, leads back to Y-Adam, the first man to have lived and has descendants today.

As we approach the question of why haplogroups of two men might differ, we will review tools to use and how to interpret your findings to reach the appropriate answer for your situation.

What is Your Goal?

You may be looking for a very specific answer, or this may be a more general question.

  • If you’re evaluating closely related men who have different haplogroup assignments, not matching can be very disconcerting. Breathe. There are several perfectly legitimate reasons why they may not match, and we have easy, free analysis tools.
  • If you’re looking at your Y-DNA match list at FamilyTreeDNA, you may or may not match other men closely, but you do “match” at some level if they are on your match list. You may see several different haplogroups in your match list. How closely you match those men is a different question.
  • If you’re looking at autosomal results at FamilyTreeDNA, you may see haplogroups listed for males. You may or may not “match” the haplogroup of men with the same surname. What does this mean, and why don’t you match? Your autosomal match may have nothing to do with your paternal line, or it may be because of your paternal line.

We will cover all of these scenarios.

Where Did You Both Test?

  • Are you comparing apples and apples?
  • Did you both test at the same company?
  • Did you both take the same type or level of test?

These factors all make a difference.

Which Test Did You Take?

There are four types of tests that will provide males with some level of Y-DNA haplogroup.

Autosomal Tests – Some companies include a few Y-DNA location probes in their autosomal test, meaning that they test a few haplogroup-specific Y-DNA locations. LivingDNA, 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder test provide a mid-level Y-DNA haplogroup to customers. The haplogroup that can be determined from these tests depends on a variety of factors, including the vendor, the probes they selected for their chip, the test version, and if that location is successfully read in the test.

Note that FamilyTreeDNA supports autosomal uploads from MyHeritage and Ancestry who do not provide Y-DNA haplogroups to customers, but who do test some Y-DNA locations. Therefore you can upload your autosomal test from those companies to FamilyTreeDNA for free and receive at least a cursory Y-DNA haplogroup.

FamilyTreeDNA is currently processing all of its Family Finder tests, followed by tests uploaded from other vendors, to provide all genetic male testers with a Y-DNA haplogroup at some level. Different vendors and test versions test different Y-DNA SNPs, so your mileage may vary. Y-DNA haplogroups are a free benefit at FamilyTreeDNA.

STR Tests – At FamilyTreeDNA, you can purchase both Y-37 and Y-111 STR (short tandem repeat) Y-DNA tests that provide matching at the number of locations you purchased, plus a predicted haplogroup based on those results. These haplogroup predictions are accurate but are often relatively far back in time.

If you match someone on STR tests, your match may be very recent or before the advent of surnames. For a more specific haplogroup, you need to purchase the Big Y-700 test, which provides at least 700 STR match locations but, more importantly, sequences the entire gold-standard region of the Y-chromosome for the most precise haplogroup and matching possible.

  • When viewing matches of two men who ONLY took STR tests, STR marker matches are more important for genealogy than haplogroups because the haplogroups were formed thousands of years ago.
  • When viewing matches on the Big Y-700 test, haplogroup matching is much more specific and reliable than STR matches because the mutations (SNPs – single nucleotide polymorphisms) that form haplogroups are much more stable than STRs which mutate unpredictably, including back mutations.

SNP Confirmation Tests – Historically, FamilyTreeDNA customers could purchase individual SNPs to confirm a haplogroup, or SNP packs or bundles to do the same for a group of SNPs. With the advent of both the Family Finder haplogroup assignments, and the Big Y-700, these individual tests are no longer necessary or advantageous and are being discontinued.

Big Y-700 Test – At FamilyTreeDNA, the Big Y-700 test provides the most granular and specific haplogroup possible, most often well within a genealogical timeframe. You may be able to tell, based on previously undiscovered mutations, that two people are brothers or father and son, or, depending on who else has tested and when mutations formed, testers may match further back in time. Here’s an example of using the results from multiple testers in the Estes DNA Surname Project.

You can also match men who took the Big Y-500 test which is less specific than the Big Y-700. In the now-obsolete Big Y-500 test, a smaller portion of the Y chromosome was sequenced and testers only received about 500 STR locations. The Big Y-700 test has been enriched to provide a wider range of more specific information. Men who originally took the Big Y-500, then upgraded to the Big Y-700, will very probably have a new haplogroup assignment based on the expanded coverage and increased resolution of the Big Y-700 test. The Big Y-700 ferrets out lineages that the Big Y-500 simply could not, and continues to provide additional value as more men test, which facilitates the formation of new haplogroups.

What Do You Mean by Match?

Matching doesn’t mean you have to have the exact same haplogroup. A perfectly valid match can have a different haplogroup because one haplogroup is more specific or refined than the other. Matching exactly as a result of a predicted STR haplogroup is much less useful than matching closely on a much more recent Big Y-700 haplogroup.

Not all haplogroups are created equal.

I know this is a bit confusing, so let’s look at real-life examples to clarify.

STR to STR or Autosomal to Autosomal Haplogroup Match

Two males might match exactly on a mid-range Family Finder autosomal haplogroup or on a STR-predicted haplogroup like R-M269, which is about 6350 years old.

This haplogroup “match,” even though it might be exact, does not confirm a close match and really only serves to eliminate some other haplogroups and confirm that a closer match is possible. For example, R-M269 men don’t match someone in haplogroup J or E. You may or may not share a surname. You may or may not still “match” if you both upgrade to the Big Y-700.

In this case, a father/son pair would match exactly, as would two men with different surnames whose common ancestor lived 6000 years ago.

Note that if you’re comparing autosomal-derived haplogroups across different vendor platforms, or even different DNA testing chip versions on the same platform, you may see two different haplogroups. Different vendors test different locations. Please note that second cousins and closer will always match on autosomal DNA, but relationships further back than that may not. Y-DNA very reliably reaches far beyond the capabilities of autosomal DNA due to the fact that it is never mixed with the DNA of the other parent – so it never divides or is watered down in time. When comparing two autosomally-generated haplogroups of men who are supposed to be closely related, always check their autosomal match results too.

Use the free Discover Tool to find various categories of information about any haplogroup, including its age. Take a look at R-M269 here.

Using Discover to Compare Haplogroups

You can always use the Discover tool to compare two haplogroups.

Go to Discover (or click through if you’re signed on to your FamilyTreeDNA Y-DNA page), then enter the first haplogroup you’d like to compare.

Click search to view information about that haplogroup.

On the menu bar, at left, click on Compare.

Add the second haplogroup.

I’m selecting E-M35, a completely different branch of the phylogenetic tree.

R-M269 was formed about 6350 years ago, while E-M35 was formed about 25,000 years ago. Their common ancestor was formed about 65,000 years ago. Clearly, these two paternal lineages are not related in anything close to a genealogical timeframe.

These two men would never match on an STR test, but could easily match on an autosomal test on any line OTHER than their direct paternal line.

Now let’s compare two haplogroups that are more closely related.

Haplogroup R-M222 is very common in Ireland, so let’s see how closely related it is to R-M269 which is very common in western Europe.

We see that R-M222 descends from R-M269, so there is no “other haplogroup” involved.

R-M222 was formed about 2100 years ago, around 4250 years after R-M269 was formed.

There are 17 steps between R-M222 and R-M269.

The bottom block shows the lineage from R-M269 back to Y-Adam.

How cool is this??!!

Big Y-700 to Autosomal or STR Haplogroup Comparison

Joe took the Big Y-700 test and discovered that he’s haplogroup R-BY177080.

Joe noticed that his son, who had initially taken an STR test, had been assigned haplogroup R-M269. Then, his son took a Family Finder test and his haplogroup changed to R-FGC8601.

Joe was confused about why he and his son’s haplogroups didn’t match.

First, let’s check Family Finder to confirm the parent/child relationship. Joe’s son is clearly his son.

So why doesn’t Joe’s son’s haplogroup match Joe’s haplogroup? And why did Joe’s son’s haplogroup change?

Joe’s son had not taken a Big Y-700 DNA test, so Joe’s son’s R-M269 haplogroup was initially predicted from his STR test.

Joe’s son’s updated haplogroup, R-FGC8601 was generated by the Family Finder test. Think of this as a bonus. If you’re a male and haven’t yet, you’ll soon receive an email telling you that you’ve received a Family Finder Y-DNA haplogroup. It’s your lucky day!

Family Finder haplogroups always replace STR predicted haplogroups since they are always more specific than predicted STR haplogroups. Big Y-700 haplogroups always replace STR-generated haplogroup predictions and Family Finder haplogroups because they are the most specific.

Let’s compare these results using Discover.

Joe’s son’s original predicted haplogroup was R-M269.

Discover Compare shows us that Joe’s Big Y-700 Haplogroup, R-BY177080, is a descendant of R-M269.

So, they actually do “match,” just several branches further up the tree

Joe’s son’s more precise Family Finder haplogroup was assigned as R-FGC8601.

Discover Compare shows us that Joe’s Big Y-700 haplogroup also descends from R-FGC8601.

You can see that the haplogroup generated by Family Finder is more precise by about 4700 years and improves that comparison.

R-M269 was formed about 6350 years ago, but R-FGC8601 was formed about 1700 years ago.

Joe’s Big Y-700 haplogroup, R-BY177080 was formed about the year 1900, improving the family haplogroup by another 1600 years or so.

Joe’s son’s Family Finder haplogroup moved down the haplotree 21 branches and 4650 years, for free! If Joe’s son were to upgrade to the Big Y-700, they might very well be assigned a new haplogroup that, for the time being, only they share.

Of course, Family Finder doesn’t provide Y-DNA matching so you still need the Y-DNA tests for that important aspect of genealogy.

Big Y to Big Y Comparison

In our next example, a group of men, including a father and son or other very close relative may take the Big Y-700 test and have different haplogroups. If you’re saying, “Whoa Nelly,” hear me out.

George took a Big Y-700 test and discovered that he is haplogroup R-FGC43597. His son and grandsons tested, and they are haplogroup R-FTC50269. What happened? Shouldn’t they all match George?

On George’s Big Y-700 block tree, you can see that a mutation, R-FTC50269, occurred between George and his son. George doesn’t have it, but his son does.

A haplogroup isn’t “named” until there are two men with the same mutation in the same lineage. Therefore, when George’s son initially tested, he would have been assigned to the same haplogroup as George, R-FGC43697, but with one extra variant, or mutation.

Of course, that extra mutation was passed from George’s son to both of his grandsons, so when the first grandson tested, the new haplogroup, R-FTC50269 was assigned as a result of that mutation. Now, George has one haplogroup and his son and grandsons have a different haplogroup, one branch downstream.

Using Discover to check the haplogroup ages and path, we find that indeed, these haplogroups are only one step apart.

Checking Family Finder results can always verify that the match is close or as close as you expected.

Haplogroup Assignments

Haplogroup assignments range from good to better to best.

Good Better Best
STR predicted Yes – but further back in time
SNP Packs (now obsolete) Between good and better
Family Finder autosomal Yes – generally midrange between STR predicted and the Big Y-700
Big Y-500 (need to upgrade) Usually between better and best
Big Y-700 The best – usually within a genealogically relevant timeframe unless your DNA is rare

Where Are You?

Older haplogroups, such as the STR-predicted haplogroups are useful for:

  • Eliminating some potential matches
  • Identifying where that haplogroup originated at that specific point in time. In other words, where your ancestor lived when that haplogroup was born.

If your Y-DNA matches another Y-DNA tester at FamilyTreeDNA, your haplogroups will fall someplace on the same haplogroup branch, although they may be thousands of years apart. STR-predicted haplogroups are “older,” meaning they range in age from about 6500 years to tens of thousands of years ago. They can tell you where the haplogroup originated at that time.

Autosomal haplogroups will be newer, or more recent, than STR-predicted haplogroups, but still (sometimes significantly) older than the Big Y-700 haplogroups..

FamilyTreeDNA provides Y-DNA haplogroups for free for every biological male who either takes the FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder test or uploads an autosomal result from either Ancestry or MyHeritage. Soon, 23andMe uploads will be resumed as well. This means that you will be able to view other men with a similar surname in your Family Finder results and:

  • Rule them out as a paternal line match.
  • Check your STR matches if they have taken a Y-DNA test
  • Check your Big Y-700 test for matches if both men have taken a Big Y test.
  • Encourage your matches to take a Big Y-700 test so you can see how closely you match on your paternal line.
  • Use the Discover Compare and other tools to reveal more information.

Family Finder haplogroups are relatively new, so currently, all new Family Finder testers are receiving haplogroups. Older Family Finder tests are being processed and will be followed by autosomal tests uploaded from other vendors. Haplogroups from autosomal tests are confirmed and will be newer, or more recent, than STR-predicted haplogroups.

The only test that can bring your haplogroup to current, meaning the most refined, recent, personal haplogroup, is the Big Y-700 test. Without taking the Big Y-700 test, you’ll forever be stuck with an older, less informative haplogroup branch. The Big Y-700 allows us to reliably sort families into lineages based on branching mutations.

The Big Y-700 haplogroup is:

  • The most detailed and granular possible.
  • Determined by sequencing the Y chromosome.
  • A test of discovery that continues to provide additional value as more men test and new haplogroups are formed.

Big Y-700 haplogroups generally fall into a genealogically useful timeframe and can be very recent.

The Discover tool and Time Tree provide a wealth of information about your ancestors, including locations, migration paths, ancient DNA, and more.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Now that you understand how to compare and interpret haplogroup matches, what additional information can you learn?

I always encourage Y-DNA matches to upgrade to the Big Y-700. Why? You don’t know what you don’t know. The article, Bennett Greenspan: Meet My Extended Family & Discover Extraordinary Deep Heritage illustrates the benefits of the Big Y-700 for all matches. Upgrading 12-marker matches is exactly how he made his big breakthrough.

The Big Y-700 test answers many questions beyond simply matching by using Discover and the Group Time Tree.

  • Where were your ancestors?
  • Who do you match, and who were their ancestors?
  • Genetically and genealogically, how do your surname matches fit together?
  • Where were your matches’ ancestors, and when?
  • Which ancient DNA results do you match, and where were they located?
  • What is the history of locations where your ancestors were found along their journey?
  • How closely or distantly are you related to other Big Y-700 matches?
  • Can your matches’ information break down your paternal line brick wall, or at least move it back a few generations?

Where are your Y-DNA results along the spectrum of useful haplogroup information? Do you or your matches need to upgrade? Click here to upgrade or order a Big Y-700 test.

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RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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I’ve got to tell you, MyHeritage has outdone themselves.

I had a hard time just keeping track of their announcements, which totaled 13 – a baker’s dozen.

You can watch the MyHeritage RootsTech keynote by Aaron Godfrey, here.

However, there are a few things not in the video, so let’s take a look at a quick summary of what’s new.

DNA Uploads with Free Advanced Tools Forever Extended Until March 10th

MyHeritage just extended their DNA upload that includes ALL ADVANCED TOOLS FOR FREE, forever, to March 10th so click here now to upload every kit you manage. This is a great deal. Hint – new ethnicity results are coming soon and you’ll be saving $29 on each kit you upload.

20+ Billion Records

MyHeritage has just passed the 20 billion record mark and is continuing to add. That’s billion, with a B. These records are available to customers with a MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try a MyHeritage Subscription with a Free Trial, here.,

Additionally, right now, subscriptions are 50% off, but I don’t know how long that price lasts.

I love my MyHeritage subscription, and if you try it and don’t like yours, you can cancel and be charged nothing during the 14-day trial period.

I particularly like that the local newspaper where my grandparents lived is available on MyHeritage, and no place else. In addition, MyHeritage has integrated with FamilySearch, which is digitizing and indexing records like wildfire. That collaboration has provided me with information from European sources, including archives.

MyHeritage Wiki

MyHeritage has been working on their new Wiki, a community encyclopedia for genealogy and DNA, for almost a year now, although it was only recently released.

Photo courtesy of MyHeritage

I’ve been honored to write several articles for the newly announced MyHeritage Wiki, including the definition of DNA itself:

Take a look at the new Wiki, here.

You can filter in a number of ways, and you can even sign up to be a contributor.

Check out their blog article, here.

AI Record Finder

The AI Record Finder is the world’s first AI chat-based search engine for historical records.

I should probably tell you that, at this point in time, I do use AI, such as ChatGPT, very cautiously, and I’m inherently suspicious because AI tools sometimes hallucinate. It’s a new technology with lots of glitches and unknowns, so let’s see how MyHeritage is using this tool. It should be much more reliable since it’s in a controlled environment. I need to be convinced. 😊

The AI Record Finder is under the Research Menu. Just type your question about your ancestor.

I’m cheating and giving MyHeritage a tough one. I typed, “Please tell me about Solomon Ferwerda, who died in 1768 in Groningen, the Netherlands.”

MyHeritage returned three possibilities in their database, including their affiliated databases. One is a MyHeritage tree and two are records from FamilySearch.

Don’t limit yourself at this point.

I happen to know “my” Solomon is the first person, but I played around a bit before selecting the “right” Solomon. Why? Because there’s a lot that I don’t know about his life. It’s possible that the second and third records are ALSO the right person, so be sure to review everything.

Clicking on the middle or right record for Solomon shows that, indeed, this record from FamilySearch comes from the Dutch Archival Indexes, so it’s not “just someone’s tree.”

We do know the Ferwerda family is from Leeuwarden, but we don’t know when Solomon was born, nor if he was married twice. I only have the name of his second wife and one child, Jan, who was born the year he died.

The two FamilySearch Dutch archive records are from Leeuwarden, so maybe, just maybe, I’ve discovered something new about Solomon. How exciting!

I need to click through and check this out further.

I didn’t expect to like this tool, but so far, I really do. But wait – there’s more.

AI Ancestor Bio

You can click to have MyHeritage generate an AI bio of an ancestor for you.

The bio takes a few minutes to generate and will be available for download in the chat and will also be emailed to you. You can easily share with others. Getting other people interested in genealogy often encourages them to take a DNA test. DNA tests are still on sale for $39, here.

Solomon Ferwerda’s AI bio was completed quickly and arrived in pdf format. We know so little about him, I knew it would be short. I must say, I really enjoyed the “Historical Context” section that discussed the surrounding events that would have affected his life. That’s incredibly important and would have or could have influenced the decisions he made. Maybe the warfare and political unrest caused him to move from Leeuwarden to Groningen for some reason, where he died the year his son was born.

Here’s Solomon’s bio.

Here’s a link to the RootsTech lecture about the MyHeritage AI tools by Ran Snir, the VP of Product.

MyHeritage blog links for AI Record finder are here and here.

You can watch Telling Your Family’s Story with MyHeritage’s AI Features by Janna Helshtein at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, here.

I can’t wait to play with the MyHeritage AI tools more.

Updated Ethnicity Coming Soon

This is going to make a lot of people happy!

MyHeritage is in the process of updating their ethnicity results, increasing their regions from 42 to 80, with significantly optimized granularity in Europe. I initially misunderstood and thought the new results were available now, but they won’t arrive until summer.

I understand from talking to a Jewish friend involved in MyHeritage’s R&D effort that their own results are substantially improved and that they have now been placed in Armenia where their ancestors are from. They are no longer generically “Jewish.”

New Profile Pages with Hints

Daniel Horowitz said that everyone calls Smart Matches and Record Matches hints, so now MyHeritage has updated profile pages and is adding them to the profile page and officially calling them Hints.

You can still find Smart Matches and Record Matches listed separately under Discoveries, but on everyone’s profile, they are called Hints.

On Solomon’s profile page, scroll down to view his journey based on the information you’ve entered or accepted into your tree.

I did not yet add Leeuwarden, because I’m yet positive those records in Leewarden are his, but if I had, Leeuwarden would also be shown on his journey map. I’ll be incorporating these into my 52 Ancestors stories. I love maps! Maybe I can find old maps to include too,

You can read more about the new profiles and hints, here.

Tree Collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA

Aaron Godfrey announced tree collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA who pre-announced this at their conference in November.

I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

FamilyTreeDNA has never been a “tree” company, so this means that users will have one less tree to maintain independently, and they can augment their research with records from MyHeritage.

I talked to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, the Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA to confirm that this is NOT a DNA transfer. FamilyTreeDNA matches still occur in the FamilyTreeDNA database, just like always, and MyHeritage matches still occur in the MyHeritage database. If you want matching in both databases, you still have to upload to or test at both. Only the trees are integrated, meaning when you click on a tree at  FamilyTreeDNA, you’ll see the tree displayed on MyHeritage.

The great news is that FamilyTreeDNA features such as Family Matching (bucketing) where you link your DNA matches at FamilyTreeDNA to their profile cards so that maternal/paternal bucketing occurs will still work the same way. The only difference will be that your tree will actually reside at MyHeritage and not at FamilyTreeDNA.

You’ll be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We will know more in a few months, and I’ll provide more details when I have them.

Invite Another MyHeritage User to View Your DNA Results

Aaron Godfrey said in the keynote that 2FA (two-factor authentication) at MyHeritage will become mandatory later this month, and with it, MyHeritage is adding the feature of being able to invite another MyHeritage user to view your DNA results. This allows people to collaborate more easily, especially if a different person is managing someone else’s DNA test.

Reimagine Multi-Photo Scanner App

This photo-scanning innovation is for your phone and allows you to scan photos and entire photo album pages – automatically separating and improving the photos. Then, of course, you just tag them to the proper person in your tree like any other photo.

Oh, and did I mention that Reimagine is free? I expected to have to pay when I downloaded the app, but I didn’t, probably because I have a full subscription.

Based on this article, Reimagine is not meant for other types of images, like pages of text or albums of clipped newspaper articles. But guess what? I downloaded the app, and it works just fine for those items! Hallelujah. How I wish I had this last week at the FamilySearch Library when I was finding pages in books I wanted to associate with a specific ancestor.

If you have album pages of photos to scan, this is golden and integrates with the profiles of people into your MyHeritage tree.

I really, really like the idea of having the ability to scan in the palm of my hand. That way if someone has a photo, you don’t have to try to take a photo of it. Gone are the days of literally dragging a laptop and scanner around with me when I’m traveling – just in case. Yes, I actually did and now I don’t have to anymore.

I cringe to think how many opportunities were lost to me before the days of laptops – but not now.

Thank you – THANK YOU, MyHeritage. What a great gift!

You can find the QR code to download the app, here.

OldNews is New News

MyHeritage has introduced a new website for old newspapers called OldNews which you can find here.

This addition doubles the number of newspapers previously available on MyHeritage.

Users can also subscribe separately to Old News for about $99/year.

MyHeritage customers use their normal credentials to sign in to either site, but accessing newspapers not previously integrated into MyHeritage will require an OldNews subscription too.

I had to try it. I entered my mother’s name.

Look, my Mom had a tonsillectomy. I never knew that. It was just a couple of months after she graduated from high school.

I didn’t know Mom spent the summer in Philadelphia, either. She was 19 at that time, and I had heard rumblings that she studied with a “prima ballerina” at the School of American Ballet. Guess where that is? Yep, Philly.

My Mom was a professional tap and ballet dancer before she became my Mom.

Understanding that Mom spent the summer of 1942 on the east coast sheds new light on this and a few other photos in Mom’s photo album, which I can now scan.

Ok, I can’t help myself. I have to enhance this photo at MyHeritage.

Much better. Another tiny piece of Mom’s life brought into focus.

I wonder what else is in OldNews that I don’t know about. Hmmmm…

You can read about OldNews here.

New All-Inclusive Omni Subscription

MyHeritage is launching a new Omni all-inclusive subscription plan that includes most of the MyHeritage products and tools, except for Filae, unless I’m missing something. Omni reportedly costs less than half the price if you were to subscribe to all of these individually. I’ve asked for a comparison chart which I don’t have yet, but I’m told will be coming soon.

Here’s what’s included:

Additionally, I asked MyHeritage about whether or not the advanced DNA tools are included with Omni, and they are. So, add advanced DNA tools to that list.

The following information about the Omni Plan is a screenshot from the MyHeritage blog article, here.

I have not been able to determine the price of an Omni subscription. At RootsTech, you were interested in the Omni plan, you submitted a Google form and a day or so later, you received this email.

I suspect MyHeritage needs to talk to you because how much it costs initially depends on your existing subscriptions, and how much time is left on those.

I reached out to MyHeritage and asked when Omni will be available to purchase, and the answer is “soon.” You can’t sign up just yet.

I have never subscribed to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, even though I’m a webinar presenter and have several webinars available there. My gift to myself is going to be Omni when it’s available because I want Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and I’d love a subscription to OldNews. I already have a full subscription to MyHeritage, and I’d probably use Geni more than I do as a casual user if I had the Omni subscription.

Artifact Testing – Maybe

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend CEO Gilad Japhet’s RootsTech session because his session and mine were at exactly the same time.

However, I asked Aaron Godfrey after Gilad’s session what I had missed that was not in Aaron’s keynote, other than Gilad’s wonderful stories.

Aaron and others told me that Gilad stated that he was personally submitting personal artifacts, such as stamps, to a third-party lab once again, to test the waters to see if DNA can now be extracted from artifacts successfully.

MyHeritage tried this a few years ago, ultimately unsuccessfully. Perhaps this time will be different, but I would not hold my breath, truthfully. Degraded DNA has quality issues, not to mention that the DNA extracted might not be the DNA of the person expected.

I would personally love this, but I am also skeptical at this point. Kudos to Gilad for trying again with his own personal items.

MyHeritage Online RootsTech Booth

MyHeritage has provided several educational videos in their online RootsTech booth, at this link. Be sure to take advantage of this free resource.

Whew, I’m finally done! I told you that MyHeritage had been very, very busy, and I wasn’t kidding. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

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MyHeritage: Upload DNA Through March 4 & Receive All DNA Features Free – Forever

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MyHeritage is offering a free DNA upload and is including access to all DNA tools and features – forever.

This is a limited time offer though, so if you have tested elsewhere, and you have not yet uploaded to MyHeritage, click here to upload now.

I’ve found some of my best matches at MyHeritage. Who is waiting there for you to match?

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FamilyTreeDNA Provides Y DNA Haplogroups from Family Finder Autosomal Tests

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Big News! FamilyTreeDNA is delivering holiday gifts early!

Y DNA haplogroups are beginning to be delivered as a free benefit to men who took the Family Finder test at FamilyTreeDNA. This is the first wave of a staggered rollout. Haplogroup results will be delivered to several thousand people at a time, in batches, beginning today.

This is no trivial gift and includes LOTS of information that can be used in various ways for your genealogy. Please feel free to share this article. The new Family Finder haplogroups are another reason to take a Family Finder test and to encourage other family members to do so as well.

How is this Even Possible?

Clearly, Y DNA is not autosomal DNA, so how is it possible to obtain a Y DNA or mitochondrial DNA haplogroup from an autosomal test? Great question!

Many autosomal DNA processing chips include a limited number of targeted Y and mitochondrial DNA SNP locations. Generally, those locations are haplogroup predictive, which is how haplogroup information can be obtained from an autosomal DNA test.

Compared to the actual Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests, only a small fraction of the information is available through autosomal tests. Only the full sequence mitochondrial DNA test or the Big Y-700 test will provide you with the full story, including your most refined haplogroup, additional information, and matching with other customers.

Having said that, haplogroups obtained from Family Finder provide important clues and genealogical information that will hopefully whet recipients’ appetites for learning even more.

Delivery Schedule

This first group of men to receive haplogroup results consists of testers who have purchased the Family Finder test since March 2019 when the most recent chip was put into production.

FamilyTreeDNA will be rolling haplogroups out in batches of a few thousand each day until everyone’s is complete, in the following order:

  • Family Finder tests purchased since March 2019 (their V3 chip)
  • Family Finder tests purchased between the fall of 2015 to March 2019 (their V2 chip)
  • Family Finder tests purchased from 2010 to the fall of 2015 (their V1 chip)
  • Autosomal uploads from other vendors for customers who have unlocked the advanced Family Finder features for $19

Uploaded DNA Files from Other Vendors

After the results are available for all males who have tested at FamilyTreeDNA, haplogroups will begin to be rolled out to customers who uploaded autosomal DNA files from other companies, meaning MyHeritage, Vitagene, 23andMe, and Ancestry.

To receive haplogroups for files uploaded from other vendors, the Family Finder advanced tool unlock must have been (or can be) purchased for $19. In addition to haplogroups, the unlock also provides access to the chromosome browser, myOrigins (ethnicity), Chromosome painting for myOrigins ethnicity, and ancient Origins.

Both MyHeritage and Vitagene tests are performed in the Gene by Gene lab. Those “uploads” are actually a secure business-to-business transaction, so the file integrity is assured.

Ancestry and 23andMe DNA files are downloaded from those companies, then uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA. Some people build “composite” files in the format of these companies, so FamilyTreeDNA has no way to assure that the original DNA upload file hasn’t been modified and it is a legitimate, unmodified, file from either 23andMe or Ancestry. Hence, in some situations, they are treated differently.

Both Ancestry and 23andMe utilize different chips than FamilyTreeDNA, covering different SNPs. Those results may vary slightly from results available from native FamilyTreeDNA tests, and will also vary from each other. In other words, there’s no consistency, and therefore haplogroup accuracy cannot be confirmed.

Haplogroups resulting from tests performed in the FamilyTreeDNA lab will be visible to matches and on the SNP pages within projects. They will also be used in both Discover and the haplotree statistics. This includes Family Finder plus MyHeritage and Vitagene DNA file uploads.

Tests performed elsewhere will receive haplogroups that will only be visible to the user, or a group administrator viewing a kit within a project. They will not be visible to matches, used in trees or for statistics.

At their recent conference, FamilyTreeDNA provided this slide during an update about what to expect from Family Finder haplogroups.

Today, only Y DNA haplogroups are being provided, but after the new mitochondrial tree is available, customer haplogroups are updated, and MitoDiscover (my name, not theirs) is released, FamilyTreeDNA is planning to provide mitochondrial DNA haplogroups for Family Finder customers as well. The current haplogroup estimate is late 2024 or even into 2025.

Unfortunately, some of Ancestry’s DNA files don’t include mitochondrial DNA SNPs, so some customers who’ve uploaded Ancestry files won’t receive mitochondrial haplogroups.

STR Haplogroups to be Updated

All FamilyTreeDNA customers who have taken Y DNA STR tests, meaning 12, 25, 37, 67, or 111 markers, receive predicted haplogroups. Often, the Family Finder extracted results can provide a more refined haplogroup.

When that is possible, STR test predicted haplogroup results will be updated to the more refined Family Finder haplogroup.

Furthermore, while STR results are quite reliably predicted, Family Finder results are SNP-confirmed.

Notification

When your Family Finder test has received a haplogroup or your STR-derived haplogroup has been updated, you’ll receive an email notification with a link to a short, less than 2-minute video explaining what you’re receiving.

You can also expect emails in the following days with links to additional short videos. If you’d like to watch the videos now, click here.

You can also check your results, of course. If you should have received an email and didn’t, check your spam folder, and if it’s not there, notify FamilyTreeDNA in case your email has managed to get on the bounce list.

Group project administrators will receive notifications when a haplogroup is updated for a member in a project that they manage. This doesn’t just apply to Family Finder haplogroup updates for STR results – notifications will arrive when Big Y haplogroups are updated, too.

Emails about haplogroup updates will include both the old and the updated haplogroup.

Haplogroups may change as other testers receive results, forming a new haplogroup. The Big Y-700 test is evergreen, meaning as the Y tree grows, testers’ results are updated on an ongoing basis.

New View

Let’s take a look at what customers will receive.

In one of my surname projects, one male has taken a Family Finder test, but not the Y DNA test.

Several other men in that same paternal line, who are clearly related (including his brother), have taken Y DNA tests – both STR and the Big Y-700.

We have men who have taken the Big Y-700 test, STR tests only (no Big Y), and one with only a Family Finder test, so let’s compare all three, beginning with the man who has taken a Family Finder test but no Y DNA tests.

He has now been assigned to haplogroup I-BY1031, thanks to his Family Finder test.

Before today, because he has not taken a Y DNA test, he had no haplogroup or Y DNA Results section on his personal page.

Today, he does. Of course, he doesn’t have STR results or matches, but he DOES have confirmed SNP results, at least part way down the tree.

He can view these results on the Haplotree & SNPs tab or in Discover. Let’s look at both.

Haplotree & SNPs

By clicking on the Haplotree & SNPs link, you can view the results by variants (mutations,) as shown below, or by countries, surnames, or recommended projects for each haplogroup.

Of course, as more Family Finder results are rolled out, the more names and countries will appear on the Haplotree.

Recommended Projects

It’s easy to determine which haplogroup projects would be a good fit for people with these new haplogroups to join.

Just view by Recommended Projects, then scan up that column above the selected haplogroup. You can even just click right there to join. It’s that easy!

Results still won’t show on the public project page, because these testers don’t have STR results to display. Perhaps this will encourage additional testing in order to match with other men.

Download SNP Results

If you’re interested, you can download your SNP results in spreadsheet format.

I’m only showing four of my cousin’s positive SNPs, but FamilyTreeDNA was able to extract 358 positive SNPs to assign him to haplogroup I-BY1031.

Are Family Finder Haplogroups Better Than STR Test Predicted Haplogroups?

How do Family Finder haplogroups stack up against STR-predicted haplogroups?

Viewing the Y DNA results of related cousins who have taken STR tests, but not the Big Y-700, we see that their Y DNA haplogroup was predicted as I-M253.

We also know that the haplogroup determined by the Big Y-700 for this line is I-BY73911.

How can we use this information beneficially, and what does it mean?

Discover

Family Finder haplogroups can access Discover, which I wrote about, here.

Clicking on the Discover link takes you to your haplogroup story.

Let’s look at the new Family Finder Haplogroup Story for this tester.

Haplogroup I-BY1031 is about 3100 years old and is found in England, Sweden, the US, and 14 other countries. Of course, as more Family Finder haplogroups are provided to customers, this information will change for many haplogroups, so check back often.

Of course, you’ll want to review every single tab, which are chapters in your ancestral story! The Time Tree shows your haplogroup age in perspective to other haplogroups and their formation, and Ancient Connections anchors haplogroups through archaeology.

You can share any Discover page in several ways. This is a good opportunity to excite other family members about the discoveries revealed through DNA testing and genealogy. Prices are reduced right now with the Holiday Sale, too, so it’s a great time to gift someone else or yourself.

Compare – How Good is Good?

Ok, so how much better is the Family Finder haplogroup than the STR-predicted haplogroup, and how much better is the Big Y-700 haplogroup than the other two?

I’ll use the Discover “Compare” feature to answer these questions.

First, let’s compare the STR-predicted haplogroup of I-M253 to the Family Finder haplogroup of I-BY1031.

I clicked on Compare and entered the haplogroup I wish to compare to I-BY1031.

I-M253 I-BY1031 I-BY73199
Haplogroup Source STR Predicted Family Finder Big Y-700
Formation Year 2600 BCE 1100 BCE 1750 CE
Age – Years ago 4600 3100 270
Era Stone Age, Metal Age Metal Age Modern
Ancestral Locations England, Sweden, Germany, UK, +100 Sweden, England, US, +14 Netherlands
Tested Descendants 26,572 121 2
Branches 6779 69 0 – this is the pot-of-gold end leaf on the branch today

I created this chart to compare the major features of all three haplogroups.

The STR-predicted haplogroup, I-M253, takes you to about 2,600 BCE, or about 4,600 years ago. The Family Finder haplogroup shifts that significantly to about 1100 BCE, or 3100 years ago, so it’s about 1500 years more recent. However, the Big Y haplogroup takes you home – from 3100 years ago to about 270 years ago.

Notice that there’s a LOT of room for refinement under haplogroup I-M253. A Big Y tester might wind up on any of those 6779 branches, and might well be assigned to a newly formed branch with his test. The Family Finder haplogroup, I-BY1031, which was, by the way, discovered through Big Y testing, moved the autosomal test taker forward 1500 years where there are 121 descendants in 69 branches. The Big Y-700 test is the most refined possible, moving you directly into a genealogically relevant timeframe with a very specific location.

I-M253 is found in over 100 countries, I-BY1031 in 17 and I-BY73199 is found only in one – the Netherlands.

Based on confirmed genealogy, the common ancestor of the two men who have Big Y-700 haplogroup I-BY73199 was a man named Hendrik Jans Ferwerda, born in 1806 in the Netherlands, so 217 years ago. Of course, that haplogroup itself could have been born a generation or two before Hendrik. We simply won’t know for sure until more men test. More testers refine the haplotree, haplogroup ages, and refine our genealogy as well.

Haplogroup Comparison and Analysis

Let’s look at the Discover “Compare” feature of the three haplogroups from my family line from the Netherlands. Please note that your results will differ because every haplogroup is different, but this is a good way to compare the three types of haplogroup results and an excellent avenue to illustrate why testing and upgrades are so important.

The haplogroup ages are according to the Discover Time Tree.

Y-Adam to Haplogroup I1 I-M253 STR Haplogroup  to I-BY1031 Family Finder Haplogroup I-BY1031 Family Finder Haplogroup to BY73199 Big Y Haplogroup
Y-Adam (haplogroup A-PR2921) lived about 234,000 years ago
A0-T
A1
A1b
CT
CF
F
GHIJK
HIJK
IJK
IJ
I
M170
Z2699
L840
I1 I1
I-M253 lived about 4600 years ago
DF29
Z58
Z2041
Z2040
Z382
Y3643
Y2170
FT92441
FT45372
PH1178
BY1031 I-BY1031 lived about 3100 years ago
FT230048
BY65928
BY61100
I-BY73199 lived about 270 years ago

 All of the base haplogroups in the first column leading to Haplogroup I span the longest elapsed time, about 230,000 years, from Y-Adam to I-M253, the STR-predicted haplogroup, but are the least relevant to contemporary genealogy. They do tell us where we came from more distantly.

The second column moves you about 1500 years forward in time to the Family Finder confirmed haplogroup, reducing the location from pretty much everyplace in Europe (plus a few more locations) with more than 6700 branches, to 69 branches in only 17 countries.

With the fewest haplogroups, the third column spans the most recent 2800 years, bringing you unquestionably into the genealogically relevant timeframe, 270 years ago, in only one country where surnames apply.

If we had more testers from the Netherlands or nearby regions, there would probably be more branches on the tree between BY1031 and BY73199, the Big Y-700 haplogroup.

The second column is clearly an improvement over the first column which gets us to I-M253. The Family Finder upgrade from I-M253 to BY1031 provides information about our ancestors 3000-4500 years ago, where they lived and culturally, what they were doing. Ancient Connections enhance that understanding.

But the third column moves into the modern area where surnames are relevant and is the holy grail of genealogy. It’s a journey to get from Adam to the Netherlands in one family 270 years ago, but we can do it successfully between Family Finder and the Big Y-700.

Family Finder Matching

Given that these new haplogroups result from Family Finder, how do these results show in Family Finder matching? How do we know if someone with a haplogroup has taken a Y DNA test or if their haplogroup is from their Family Finder test?

  • All Family Finder haplogroups will show in the results for people who tested at FamilyTreeDNA as soon as they are all rolled out
  • All MyHeritage and Vitagene uploads, because they are processed by the Gene by Gene lab, will be shown IF they have purchased the unlock.
  • No Ancestry or 23andMe haplogroups will be shown to Family Finder matches

To determine whether or not your matches’ haplogroups result from a Y DNA test or a Family Finder haplogroup, on your Family Finder match page, look just beneath the name of your matches.

The first man above received the Family Finder haplogroup. You can see he has no other tests listed. The second man has taken the Big Y-700 test. You can see that he has a different haplogroup, and if you look beneath his name, you’ll see that he took the Big Y-700 test.

For other men, you may see the 67 or 111 marker tests, for example, so you’ll know that they are available for Y-DNA matching. That may be important information because you can then visit the appropriate surname project to see if they happen to be listed with an earliest known ancestor.

After the rollout is complete, If you have a male Family Finder match with no haplogroup shown, you know that:

  • They did not test at FamilyTree DNA
  • If they uploaded from MyHeritage or Vitagene, they did not unlock the advanced Family Finder features
  • Or, they tested at either 23andMe or Ancestry, and uploaded their results

You can always reach out to your match and ask.

How to Use This Information

There are several great ways to utilize this new information.

I have a roadblock with my Moore line. Moore is a common surname with many, many origins, so I have autosomal matches to several Moore individuals who may or may not be from my Moore line.

I do know the base haplogroup of my Moore men, but I do not have a Big Y, unfortunately, and can’t upgrade because the tester is deceased. (I wish I had ordered the Big Y out the gate, but too late now.)

As soon as the results are complete for all of the testers, I’ll be able, by process of elimination to some extent, focus ONLY on the testers who fall into Family Finder haplogroup of my Moore cousins, or at least haplogroup close for Ancestry or 23andMe upload customers. In other words, I can eliminate the rest.

I can then ask the men with a similar haplogroup to my proven Moore cousins for more information, including whether they would be willing to take a Y DNA test.

  • Second, as soon as the Family Finder processing is complete, I will know that all male Family Finder matches and uploads from MyHeritage and Vitagene that have paid for the unlock will have haplogroups displayed on the Family Finder Match page. Therefore, if there’s a male Moore with no haplogroup, I can reach out to see where they tested and if a haplogroup has been assigned, even if it’s from Ancestry or 23andMe and isn’t displayed in Family Finder.

If so, and they share the haplogroup with me, I’ll be able to include or exclude them. If included, I can then ask if they would consider taking a Y DNA test.

  • Third, for lines I don’t yet have Y DNA testers for, I can now peruse my matches, and my cousins’ matches for that line. See items one and two, above. Even if they don’t reply or agree to Y DNA testing, at least now I have SOME haplogroup for that missing line.

Discover will help me flesh out the information I have, narrow regions, find projects, look at ancient DNA for hints, and more.

  • Fourth, the haplogroups themselves. I don’t know how many million tests FamilyTreeDNA has in their database, but if we assume that half of those are male, some percentage won’t have taken a Y DNA test at all. We’ll be able to obtain Y-DNA information for lines where there may be no other living descendant. I have at least one like that. He was the end of the surname line and is deceased, with no sons.

I’m literally ecstatic that I’ll be able to obtain at least something for that line. If it’s anything like my example Netherlands lineage, the Family Finder haplogroup may be able to point me to an important region of Europe – or maybe someplace else very unexpected.

The Bottom Line

Here’s the bottom line. You don’t know what you don’t know – and our ancestors are FULL of surprises.

I can’t even begin to tell you how MUCH I’m looking forward to this haplogroup rollout.

To prepare, I’m making a list of my genealogical lines:

  • If the paternal line, meaning surname line, is represented by any match in any database
  • If that line is represented by a known person in the FamilyTreeDNA database and by whom
  • If they or someone from that line has joined a surname or other FamilyTreeDNA project, and if so, which one
  • If they’ve taken a Y DNA test, and what kind – watch STR results for an updated haplogroup
  • If they’ve taken a Family Finder test – my cousin is a good example of a known individual whose kit I can watch for a new haplogroup
  • Old and new haplogroup, if applicable

If my only relative from that line is in another vendor’s database, I’ll ask if they will upload their file to FamilyTreeDNA – and explain why by sharing this article. (Feel free to do the same.) A Y DNA haplogroup is a good incentive, and I would be glad to pay for the unlock at FamilyTreeDNA for cousins who represent Y and mitochondrial DNA lines I don’t already have.

One way I sweeten the pie is to offer testing scholarships to select lines where I need either the Y DNA or mitochondrial DNA of relevant ancestors. It’s a good thing these haplogroups are being rolled out a few thousand at a time! I need to budget for all the scholarships I’ll want to offer.

I feel like I won the lottery, and FamilyTreeDNA is giving me a free haplogroup encyclopedia of information about my ancestors through my cousins – even those who haven’t taken Y DNA tests. I can’t even express how happy this makes me.

What lines do you want to discover more about, and what is your plan? Tests are on sale now if you need them!

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Which DNA Test Should I Buy? And Why?

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Which DNA test should I buy, and why?

I receive questions like this often. As a reminder, I don’t take private clients anymore, which means I don’t provide this type of individual consulting or advice. However, I’m doing the next best thing! In this article, I’m sharing the step-by-step process that I utilize to evaluate these questions so you can use the process too.

It’s important to know what questions to ask and how to evaluate each situation to arrive at the best answer for each person.

Here’s the question I received from someone I’ll call John. I’ve modified the wording slightly and changed the names for privacy.

I’m a male, and my mother was born in Charleston, SC. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Jones and a paternal surname was Davis. The family was supposed to have been Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Scots-Irish…only once was I told I was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.

Do I have enough reasonable information to buy a test, and which one?

Please note that it’s common for questions to arrive without all the information you need to provide a sound answer – so it’s up to you to ask those questions and obtain clarification.

Multiple Questions

There are actually multiple questions here, so let me parse this a bit.

  1. John never mentioned what his testing goal was.
  2. He also never exactly said how the paternal line of Davis was connected, so I’ve made an assumption. For educational purposes, it doesn’t matter because we’re going to walk through the evaluation process, which is the same regardless.
  3. John did not include a tree or a link to a tree, so I created a rudimentary tree to sort through this. I need the visuals and normally just sketch it out on paper quickly.
  4. Does John have enough information to purchase a test?
  5. If so, which test?

There is no “one size fits all” answer, so let’s discuss these one by one.

Easy Answers First

The answer to #4 is easy.

Anyone with any amount of information can purchase a DNA test. Adoptees do it all the time, and they have no prior information.

So, yes, John can purchase a test.

The more difficult question is which test, because that answer depends on John’s goals and whether he’s just looking for some quick information or really wants to delve into genealogy and learn. Neither approach is wrong.

Many people think they want a quick answer –  and then quickly figure out that they really want to know much more about their ancestors.

I wrote an article titled DNA Results – First Glances at Ethnicity and Matching for new testers, here.

Goals

Based on what John said, I’m going to presume his goals are probably:

  • To prove or disprove the family oral history of Black, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (which is actually German,) Scots-Irish, and potentially Native American.
  • John didn’t mention actual genealogy, which would include DNA matches and trees, so we will count that as something John is interested in secondarily. However, he may need genealogy records to reach his primary goal.

If you’re thinking, “The process of answering this seemingly easy question is more complex than I thought,” you’d be right.

Ethnicity in General

It sounds like John is interested in ethnicity testing. Lots of people think that “the answer” will be found there – and sometimes they are right. Often not so much. It depends.

The great news is that John really doesn’t need any information at all to take an autosomal DNA test, and it doesn’t matter if the test-taker is male or female.

To calculate each tester’s ethnicity, every testing company compiles their own reference populations, and John will receive different results at each of the major companies. Each company updates their ethnicity results from time to time as well, and they will change.

Additionally, each company provides different tools for their customers.

The ethnicity results at different companies generally won’t match each other exactly, and sometimes the populations look quite different.

Normally, DNA from a specific ancestor can be found for at least 5 or 6 generations. Of course, that means their DNA, along with the DNA from all of your other ancestors is essentially combined in a communal genetic “pot” of your chromosomes, and the DNA testing company needs to sort it out and analyze your DNA for ethnicity.

DNA descended from ancestors, and their populations, further back in people’s trees may not be discerned at all using autosomal DNA tests.

A much more specific “ethnicity” can be obtained for both the Y-DNA line, which is a direct patrilineal line for men (blue arrow,) and the mitochondrial DNA line (pink arrows,) which is a direct matrilineal line for everyone, using those specific tests.

We will discuss both of those tests after we talk about the autosomal tests available from the four major genealogy DNA testing companies. All of these tools can and should be used together.

Let’s Start with Native American

Let’s evaluate the information that John provided.

John was told that he “was 3/16 Indian, with Davis being 3/4 and Jones being full Indian.”

We need to evaluate this part of his question slightly differently.

I discussed this in the article, Ancestral DNA Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?

First, we need to convert generations to 16ths.

You have two ancestors in your parent’s generation, four in your grandparents, and so forth. You have 16 great-great-grandparents. So, if John was 3/16th Native, then three of his great-great-grandparents would have been fully Native, or an equivalent percentage. In other words, six ancestors in that generation could have been half-Native. Based on what John said, they would have come from his mother’s side of the tree. John is fortunate to have that much information to work with.

He told us enough about his tree that we can evaluate the statement that he might be 3/16ths Native.

Here’s the tree I quickly assembled in a spreadsheet based on John’s information.

His father, at left, is not part of the equation based on the information John provided.

On his mother’s side, John said that Grandfather Davis is supposed to be three-quarters Native, which translates to 12/16ths. Please note that it would be extremely beneficial to find a Y-DNA tester from his Davis line, like one of his mother’s brothers, for example.

John said that his Grandmother Jones is supposed to be 100% Native, so 16/16ths.

Added together, those sum to 28/32, which reduces down to 14/16th or 7/8th for John’s mother.

John would have received half of his autosomal DNA from his mother and half from his non-Native father. That means that if John’s father is 100% non-Native, John would be half of 14/16ths or 7/16ths, so just shy of half Native.

Of course, we know that we don’t always receive exactly 50% of each of our ancestors’ DNA (except for our parents,) but we would expect to see something in the ballpark of 40-45% Native for John if his grandmother was 100% Native and his grandfather was 75%.

Using simple logic here, for John’s grandmother to be 100% Native, she would almost assuredly have been a registered tribal member, and the same if his grandfather was 75% Native. I would think that information would be readily available and well-known to the family – so I doubt that this percentage is accurate. It would be easy to check, though, on various census records during their lifetimes where they would likely have been recorded as “Indian.” They might have been in the special “Indian Census” taken and might be living on a reservation.

It should also be relatively easy to find their parents since all family members were listed every ten years in the US beginning with the 1850 census.

The simple answer is that if John’s grandparents had as much Native as reported, he would be more than 3/16th – so both of these factoids cannot simultaneously be accurate. But that does NOT mean neither is accurate.

John could be 7/8th or 40ish%, 3/16th or 18ish%, or some other percentage. Sometimes, where there is smoke, there is fire. And that seems to be the quandary John is seeking to resolve.

Would  Ethnicity/Population Tests Show This Much Native?

Any of the four major testing companies would show Native for someone whose percentage would be in the 40% or 18% ballpark.

The easiest ethnicities to tell apart from one another are continental-level populations. John also stated that he thinks he may also have Black ancestry, plus Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Scots-Irish. It’s certainly possible to verify that using genealogy, but what can DNA testing alone tell us?

How far back can we expect to find ethnicities descending from particular ancestors?

In this table, you can see at each generation how many ancestors you have in that generation, plus the percentage of DNA, on average, you would inherit from each ancestor.

All of the major DNA testing companies can potentially pick up small trace percentages, but they don’t always. Sometimes one company does, and another doesn’t. So, if John has one sixth-generation Native American ancestor, he would carry about 1.56% Native DNA, if any.

  • Sometimes a specific ethnicity is not found because, thanks to random recombination, you didn’t inherit any of that DNA from those ancestors. This is why testing your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings can be very important. They share your same ancestors and may have inherited DNA that you didn’t that’s very relevant to your search.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because the reference populations and algorithms at that testing company aren’t able to detect that population or identify it accurately, especially at trace levels. Every DNA testing company establishes their own reference populations and writes internal, proprietary ethnicity analysis algorithms.
  • Sometimes it’s not found because your ancestor wasn’t Native or from that specific population.
  • Sometimes it’s there, but your population is called something you don’t expect.

For example, you may find Scandinavian when your ancestor was from England or Ireland. The Vikings raided the British Isles, so while some small amount of Scandinavian is not what you expect, that doesn’t mean it‘s wrong. However, if all of your family is from England, it’s not reasonable to have entirely Scandinavian ethnicity results.

It’s also less likely as each generation passes by that the information about their origins gets handed down accurately to following generations. Most non-genealogists don’t know the names of their great-grandparents, let alone where their ancestors were from.

Using a 25-year average generation length, by the 4th generation, shown in the chart above, you have 16 ancestors who lived approximately 100 years before your parents were born, so someplace in the mid-1800s. It’s unlikely for oral history from that time to survive intact. It’s even less likely from a century years earlier, where in the 7th generation, you have 128 total ancestors.

The best way to validate the accuracy of your ethnicity estimates is by researching your genealogy. Of course, you need to take an ethnicity test, or two, in order to have results to validate.

Ethnicity has a lot more to offer than just percentages.

Best Autosomal Tests for Native Ethnicity

Based on my experience with people who have confirmed Native ancestry, the two best tests to detect Native American ethnicity, especially in smaller percentages, are both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.

Click images to enlarge

In addition to percentages, both 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA provide chromosome painting for ethnicity, along with segment information in download files. In other words, they literally paint your ethnicity results on your chromosomes.

They then provide you with a file with the “addresses” of those ethnicities on your chromosomes, which means you can figure out which ancestors contributed those ethnicity segments.

The person in the example above, a tester at FamilyTreeDNA, is highly admixed with ancestors from European regions, African regions and Native people from South America.

Trace amounts of Native American with a majority of European heritage would appear more like this.

You can use this information to paint your chromosome segments at DNAPainter, along with your matching segments to other testers where you can identify your common ancestors. This is why providing trees is critically important – DNA plus ancestor identification with our matches is how we confirm our ancestry.

This combination allows you to identify which Native (or another ethnicity) segments descended from which ancestors. I was able to determine which ancestor provided that pink Native American segment on chromosome 1 on my mother’s side.

I’ve provided instructions for painting ethnicity segments to identify their origins in specific ancestors, here.

Autosomal and Genealogy

You may have noticed that we’ve now drifted into the genealogy realm of autosomal DNA testing. Ethnicity is nice, but if you want to know who those segments came from, you’ll need:

  • Autosomal test matching to other people
  • To identify your common ancestor with as many matches as you can
  • To match at a company who provides you with segment information for each match
  • To work with DNAPainter, which is very easy

The great news is that you can do all of that using the autosomal tests you took for ethnicity, except at Ancestry who does not provide segment information.

Best Autosomal Test for Matching Other Testers

The best autosomal test for matching may be different for everyone. Let’s look at some of the differentiators and considerations.

If you’re basing a testing recommendation solely on database size, which will probably correlate to more matches, then the DNA testing vendors fall into this order:

If you’re basing that recommendation on the BEST, generally meaning the closest matches for you, there’s no way of knowing ahead of time. At each of the four DNA testing companies, I have very good matches who have not tested elsewhere. If I weren’t in all four databases, I would have missed many valuable matches.

If you’re basing that recommendation on which vendor began testing earliest, meaning they have many tests from people who are now deceased, so you won’t find their autosomal tests in other databases that don’t accept uploads, the recommended testing company order would be:

If you’re basing that recommendation on matches to people who live in other countries, the order would be:

Ancestry and 23andMe are very distant third/fourth because they did not sell widely outside the US initially and still don’t sell in as many countries as the others, meaning their testers’ geography is more limited. However, Ancestry is also prevalent in the UK.

If you’re basing that recommendation on segment information and advanced tools that allow you to triangulate and confirm your genetic link to specific ancestors, the order would be:

Ancestry does NOT provide any segment information.

If you’re basing that recommendation on unique tools provided by each vendor, every vendor has something very beneficial that the others don’t.

In other words, there’s really no clear-cut answer for which single autosomal DNA test to order. The real answer is to be sure you’re fishing in all the ponds. The fish are not the same. Unique people test at each of those companies daily who will never be found in the other databases.

Test at or upload your DNA to all four DNA testing companies, plus GEDmatch. Step-by-step instructions for downloading your raw data file and uploading it to the DNA testing companies who accept uploads can be found, here.

Test or Upload

Not all testing companies accept uploads of raw autosomal DNA data files from other companies. The good news is that some do, and it’s free to upload and receive matches.

Two major DNA testing companies DO NOT accept uploads from other companies. In other words, you have to test at that company:

Two testing companies DO accept uploads from the other three companies. Uploads and matching are free, and advanced features can be unlocked very cost effectively.

  • FamilyTreeDNA – free matching and $19 unlock for advanced features
  • MyHeritage – free matching and $29 unlock.for advanced features

I recommend testing at both 23andMe and Ancestry and uploading one of those files to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage, then purchasing the respective unlocks.

GEDmatch

GEDmatch is a third-party matching site, not a DNA testing company. Consider uploading to GEDmatch because you may find matches from Ancestry who have uploaded to GEDmatch, giving you access to matching segment information.

Other Types of DNA

John provided additional information that may prove to be VERY useful. Both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can be tested as well and may prove to be more useful than autosomal to positively identify the origins of those two specific lines.

Let’s assume that John takes an autosomal test and discovers that indeed, the 3/16th Native estimate was close. 3/16th equates to about 18% Native which would mean that three of his 16 great-great-grandparents were Native.

John told us that his Grandmother Jones was supposed to be 100% Native.

At the great-great-grandparent level, John has 16 ancestors, so eight on his mother’s side, four from maternal grandmother Jones and four from his maternal grandfather Davis.

John carries the mitochondrial DNA of his mother (red boxes and arrows,) and her mother, through a direct line of females back in time. John also carries the Y-DNA of his father (dark blue box, at left above, and blue arrows below.)

Unlike autosomal DNA which is admixed in every generation, mitochondrial DNA (red arrows) is inherited from that direct matrilineal line ONLY and never combines with the DNA of the father. Mothers give their mitochondrial DNA to both sexes of their children, but men never contribute their mitochondrial DNA to offspring. Everyone has their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Because it never recombines with DNA from the father, so is never “watered down,” we can “see” much further back in time, even though we can’t yet identify those ancestors.

However, more importantly, in this situation, John can test his own mitochondrial DNA that he inherited from his mother, who inherited it from her mother, to view her direct matrilineal line.

John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup that will be assigned during testing tells us unquestionably whether or not his direct matrilineal ancestor was Native on her mother’s line, or not. If not, it may well tell us where that specific line originated.

You can view the countries around the world where Y-DNA haplogroups are found, here, and mitochondrial haplogroups, here.

If John’s mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is Native, that confirms that one specific line is Native. If he can find other testers in his various lines to test either their Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA, John can determine if other ancestors were Native too. If not, those tests will reveal the origins of that line, separate from the rest of his genealogical lines.

Although John didn’t mention his father’s line, if he takes a Y-DNA test, especially at the Big Y-700 level, that will also reveal the origins of his direct paternal line. Y-DNA doesn’t combine with the other parent’s DNA either, so it reaches far back in time too.

Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests are laser-focused on one line each, and only one line. You don’t have to try to sort it out of the ethnicity “pot,” wondering which ancestor was or was not Native.

My Recommendation

When putting together a testing strategy, I recommend taking advantage of free uploads and inexpensive unlocks when possible.

  • To confirm Native American ancestry via ethnicity testing, I recommend testing at 23andMe and uploading to FamilyTreeDNA, then purchasing the $19 unlock. The free upload and $19 unlock are less expensive than testing there directly.
  • For matching, I recommend testing at Ancestry and uploading to MyHeritage, then unlocking the MyHeritage advanced features for $29, which is less expensive than retesting. Ancestry does not provide segment information, but MyHeritage (and the others) do.

At this point, John will have taken two DNA tests, but is now in all four databases, plus GEDmatch if he uploads there.

  • For genealogy research on John’s lines to determine whether or not his mother’s lines were Native, I recommend an Ancestry and a MyHeritage records subscription, plus using WikiTree, which is free.
  • To determine if John’s mother’s direct matrilineal female line was Native, I recommend that John order the mitochondrial DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA.
  • When ordering multiple tests, or uploading at FamilyTreeDNA, be sure to upload/order all of one person’s tests on the same DNA kit so that those results can be used in combination with each other.

Both males and females can take autosomal and mitochondrial DNA tests.

  • To discover what he doesn’t know about his direct paternal, meaning John’s surname line – I recommend the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA.

Only males can take a Y-DNA test, so women would need to ask their father, brother, or paternal uncle, for example, to test their direct paternal line.

  • If John can find a male Davis from his mother’s line, I recommend that he purchase the Big Y-700 test at FamilyTreeDNA for that person, or check to see if someone from his Davis line may have already tested by viewing the Davis DNA Project. Like with mitochondrial DNA, the Y-DNA haplogroup will tell John the origins of his direct Davis male ancestor – plus matching of course. He will be able to determine if they were Native, and if not, discover the origins of the Davis line.
  • For assigning segments to ancestors and triangulating to confirm descent from a common ancestor, I recommend 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, paired with DNAPainter as a tool.

Shopping and Research List

Here are the tests and links recommended above:

More Than He Asked

I realize this answer is way more than John expected or even knew to ask. That’s because there is often no “one” or “one best” answer. There are many ways to approach the question after the goal is defined, and the first “answer” received may be a bit out of context.

For example, let’s say John has 2% Native ancestry and took a test at a vendor who didn’t detect it. John would believe he had none. But a different vendor might find that 2%. If it’s on his mother’s direct matrilineal line, mitochondrial DNA testing will confirm, or refute Native, beyond any doubt, regardless of autosomal ethnicity results – but only for that specific ancestral line.

Autosomal DNA can suggest Native across all your DNA, but Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA confirm it for each individual ancestor.

Even when autosomal testing does NOT show Native American, or African, for example, it’s certainly possible that it’s just too far back in time or has not been passed down during random recombination, but either Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will unquestionably confirm (or refute) the ancestry in question if the right person is tested.

This is exactly why I attempt to find a cousin who descends appropriately from every ancestor and provide testing scholarships. It’s important to obtain Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA information for each ancestor.

Which Test Should I Order?

What steps will help you decide which test or tests to take?

  1. Define your testing goal.
  2. Determine if your Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA will help answer the question.
  3. Determine if you need to find ancestors another generation or two back in time to get the most benefit from DNA testing. In our example, if John discovered that both of his grandparents were enrolled tribal members, that’s huge, and the tribe might have additional information about his family.
  4. Subscribe to Ancestry and MyHeritage records collections as appropriate to perform genealogical research. Additional information not only provides context for your family, it also provides you with the ability to confirm or better understand your ethnicity results.
  5. Extend your tree so that you can obtain the best results from the three vendors who support trees; Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage. All three use trees combined with DNA tests to provide you with additional information.
  6. Order 23andMe and Ancestry autosomal DNA tests.
  7. Either test at or upload one of those tests to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, and GEDmatch.
  8. If a male, order the Big Y-700 DNA test. Or, find a male from your ancestral line who has taken or will take that test. I always offer a testing scholarship and, of course, share the exciting results!
  9. Order a mitochondrial DNA test for yourself and for appropriately descended family members to represent other ancestors. Remember that your father (and his siblings) all carry your paternal grandmother’s mitochondrial DNA. That’s often a good place to start after testing your own DNA.
  10. If your parents or grandparents are alive, or aunts and uncles, test their autosomal DNA too. They are (at least) one generation closer to your ancestors than you are and will carry more of your ancestors’ DNA.
  11. Your siblings will carry some of your ancestors’ DNA that you do not, so test them too if both of your parents aren’t available for testing.

Enjoy!!!

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Comparing DNA Results – Different Tests at the Same Testing Company

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Several people have asked about different tests at the same DNA testing company. They wondered if matching is affected, meaning whether your matches are different if you have two different tests at the same company. Specifically, they asked if you are better off purchasing a test AT a DNA testing vendor that allows uploads, rather than uploading a test from a different vendor. Does it make a difference to the tester or their matches? Do they have the same matches?

These are great questions, and the answer isn’t conclusive. It varies based on several factors.

Having multiple tests at the same DNA testing company can occur in three ways:

  • The same person tests twice at the same DNA testing company.
  • The same person tests once at the DNA testing company and uploads a test from a different testing company. Only two of the primary four DNA testing companies accept uploads from other vendors – FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.
  • The same person uploads two different files from other DNA testing companies to the DNA testing company in question. For example, the DNA company could be FamilyTreeDNA and the two uploaded DNA files could be from either MyHeritage, 23andMe or Ancestry.

All DNA testing companies allow users to download their raw DNA data files. This enables the tester to upload their DNA file to the vendors who accept uploaded files. Both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage provide matching for free, but advanced tools require a small unlock fee of $19 and $29, respectively.

Testing Company Accepts Uploads from Other Companies Download Upload Instructions
23andMe No Instructions here
Ancestry No Instructions here
FamilyTreeDNA Yes, some Instructions here
MyHeritage Yes, some Instructions here

I wrote about developing a DNA testing and transfer/upload strategy, here, and about which companies accept which tests, here.

Not all DNA files are created equal. Therefore, not all files from vendors are compatible with other vendors for various reasons.

Multiple Tests at the Same DNA Testing Company

I have at least two tests at each of the four major vendors. I did this for research purposes, meaning to write articles to share with you.

If you actually test twice at a vendor, meaning purchase two separate tests and take them yourself, you will have two test results at that testing company. At some companies, specifically 23andMe, if you purchase a new test through their “upgrade” procedure, you won’t have two tests, just the newer one.

However, if you’re testing at the DNA testing company, and also uploading, I generally don’t recommend more than one test at each vendor. All it really does is clog up people’s match lists with no or little additional benefit. At 23andMe, with their restrictions on the size of your match list, if everyone had two tests, the effective match limit would be half of their stated limit of about 1500 matches for earlier testers and about 5000 for current testers with subscriptions.

So, in essence, I’m telling you to “do as I say, not as I do.” We all have better things to do with our money rather pay for the same test twice. If you haven’t tested your Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA, that’s much more beneficial than two autosomal tests at one vendor.

Chips and Chip Evolution

Before we begin the side-by-side comparison, let’s briefly discuss DNA testing chips and how they work.

Each DNA testing company purchases DNA processing equipment. Illumina is the big dog in this arena. Illumina defines the capacity and structure of each chip. In part, how the testing companies use that capacity, or space on each chip, is up to each company. This means that the different testing companies test many of the same autosomal DNA SNP locations, but not all of the same locations.

Furthermore, the individual testing companies can specify a number of “other” locations to be included on their chip, up to the chip maximum size limit. The testing companies who offer Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA haplogroups from autosomal tests use part of their chip array space for selected known haplogroup-defining SNP locations. This does NOT mean that Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA is autosomal, just that the testing company used part of their chip array space to target these SNPs in your genome. Of course, for your most refined haplogroup and Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA matching, you have to take those specific tests at FamilyTreeDNA .

This means that each testing company includes and reports many of the same, but also some different SNP locations when they scan your DNA.

In the lab, after your DNA is extracted from either your saliva or the cheek swab, it’s placed on this array chip which is then placed in the processing equipment.

There are several steps in processing your DNA. Each DNA location specified on the chip is scanned and read multiple times, and the results are recorded. The final output is the raw DNA results file that you see if/when you download your raw DNA file.

Here’s an example from my file. The RSID is the reference SNP cluster ID which is the naming convention used for specific SNPs. It’s not relevant to you, but it is to the lab, along with the chromosome number and position, which is in essence the address on the chromosome.

In the Result column, your file reports one nucleotide (T, A, C or G) that you inherited from each parent at each tested position. They are not listed in “parent order” because your DNA is not organized in that fashion. There’s no way for the lab to know which nucleotide came from which parent, unless they are the same, of course. You can read about nucleotides, here.

When you upload your raw DNA file to a different DNA testing company (vendor), they have to work with a file that isn’t entirely compatible with the files they generate, or the other files uploaded from other DNA testing companies.

In addition to dealing with different file formats and contents from multiple DNA vendors, companies change their own chips and file structure from time to time. In some cases, it’s a forced change by the chip manufacturer. Other times, the vendors want to include different locations or make improvements. For example, with 23andMe’s focus on health, they probably add new medically related SNP locations regularly. Regardless of why, some DNA files include locations not included in other files and are not 100% compatible.

Looking at the first few entries in my example file above, let’s say that the testing vendor included the first ten positions, but an uploaded file from another company did not. Or perhaps the chip changed, and a different version of the company’s own file contains different positions.

DNA testing companies have to “fill in the blanks” for compatibility, and they do this using a technique called imputation. Illumina forced their customers to adopt imputation in 2017 when they dropped the capacity of their chip. I was initially quite skeptical, but imputation has worked surprisingly well. Some of the matching differences you will see when comparing the results of two different DNA files is a result of imputation.

I wrote about imputation in an early article here. Please note the companies have fixed many issues with imputation and improved matching greatly, but the concepts and imputation processes still apply. The downloaded raw data files are your results BEFORE imputation, meaning that it’s up to any company where you upload to process your raw file in the same way they would process a file that they generated. A lot goes on behind the scenes when you upload a file to a DNA testing company.

At both 23andMe and Ancestry, you know that all of your matches tested there, meaning they did not upload a file from another testing company. You don’t know and can’t tell what chip was utilized when your matches tested. The only way to determine a chip testing version, aside from knowing the date or remembering the chip version from when you tested, is to look at the beginning of the raw data download file, although not all files contain that information.

Ok, now that you understand the landscape, let’s look at my results at each company.

23andMe

I tested twice at 23andMe on two different chip versions, V3 and V4, which tested some different locations of my DNA. Neither of these chips is the current version. I originally tested twice to evaluate the differences between the two test versions which you can read about, here.

23andMe named their ethnicity results Ancestry Composition.

They last updated my V3 test’s Ancestry Composition results on July 28, 2021.

The percentages are shown at left, and the country locations are highlighted at right for my 23andMe V3 test.

Click to enlarge any graphic

The 23andMe V4 test was also updated for the last time on July 28, 2021.

The ethnicity results differ substantially between the two chip versions, even though they were both updated on the same date.

In October of 2020, in an effort to “encourage” their customers to pay for a new test on their V5 chip, 23andMe announced that there would be no ethnicity updates on older tests. So, I really don’t know for sure when my tests were actually updated. Just note how different the results are. It’s also worth mentioning that 23andMe does not show trace amounts on their map, so even though my Indigenous American results were found, they aren’t displayed on the map.

Indigenous is, however, shown in yellow on their DNA Chromosome Painting.

No other testing company restricts updates, penalizing their customers who purchased earlier versions of tests.

Matches at 23andMe

23andMe limits your matches to about 1500 unless you have purchased the current test, including health AND pay for an annual $69 subscription which buys you about 5000 matches. I have not purchased this test.

Your number of actual matches displayed/retained is also affected by how many people you have communicated with, or at least initiated communications with. 23andMe does not roll those people off of your match list.

I have 1803 matches on both of my tests, meaning I’ve reached out to about 300 people who would have otherwise been removed from my match list. 23andMe retains your highest matches, deleting lower matches after you reach the maximum match threshold.

I’ve randomly evaluated several of the same matches at each vendor, at least five maternal and five paternal, separated by a blank row. I wanted to determine whether they match me on the same number of centimorgans, meaning the same amount of DNA, on both tests, and the same number of segments.

Match 23and Me V3 23and Me V4
Patricia 292 cM – 12 segments Same as V3
Joe 148 cM, 8 segments Same
Emily 73 cM, 4 segs 72 cM, 4 seg
Roland 27 cM, 1 seg Same
Ian 62 cM, 4 seg Same
Stacy 469 cM, 16 segments 482 cM, 16 segments
Harold 134 cM, 6 segments Same
Dean 69 cM, 3 seg Same
Carl 95 cM, 4 seg Same
Debbie 83 cM, 4 seg 84 cM, 4 seg

As you can see, the matches are either exact or xclose.

Please note that bolded matches are also found at another company. I will include a summary table at the end comparing the same match across multiple vendors.

23and Me Summary

The 23andMe V3 and V4 match results are very close. Since the match limit is the same, and the results are so close between tests, they are essentially identical in terms of matching.

The ethnicity results are similar, but the V4 test reflects a broader region. Italian baffles me in both versions.

Ethnicity should never be taken at face value at any DNA testing company, especially with smaller percentages which could be noise or a combination of other regions which just happens to resemble Italy, in my case.

I don’t know what type of comparison the current chip would yield since I suspect it has more medical and less genealogical SNPs on board.

Reprocessing Tests

This is probably a good place to note that it’s very expensive for any company to update their customer’s ethnicity results because every single customer’s DNA results file must be completely rerun. Note that this does not mean their DNA itself is retested. The output raw data file is reprocessed using a new algorithm.

Rerunning means reprocessing that specific portion of every test, meaning the vendors must rent “time in the cloud.” We are talking millions of dollars for each run. I don’t know how much it costs per test, but think about the expense if it takes $1 to rerun each test in the vendor’s database. Ancestry has more than 20 million tests.

While we, as consumers, are always chomping at the bit for new and better ethnicity results – the testing companies need to be sure it really is “better,” not just different before they invest the money to reprocess and update results.

This is probably why 23andMe decided to cease updating older kits. The newer tests require a subscription which is recurring revenue.

The same is true when DNA testing companies need to rematch their entire user base. This happens when the criteria for matching changes. For example, Ancestry purged a large number of matches for all of their customers back in 2020. While match algorithm changes necessitate rematching, with associated costs, this change also provided Ancestry with the huge benefit of eliminating approximately half of their customer’s matches. This freed up storage space, either physically in their data center or space rented in the cloud, representing substantial cost-savings.

How long can a DNA testing company reasonably be expected to continue investing in a product which never generates additional revenue but for which the maintenance and reinvestment costs never end?

Ancestry and MyHeritage both hope to offset the expenses of maintaining their customer’s DNA tests and providing free updates by selling subscriptions to their record services. 23andMe wants you to purchase a new test and a yearly subscription. FamilyTreeDNA wants you to purchase a Big Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA test.

OK, now let’s look at my matches at Ancestry.

Ancestry

I’ve taken two Ancestry tests, V1 and V2. There were some differences, which I wrote about here and here. V2 is no longer the current chip.

Except for 23andMe who wants their customers to purchase their most current test, the other companies no longer routinely announce new chip versions. They just go about their business. The only way you know that a vendor actually changed something is when the other companies who accept uploads suddenly encounter an issue with file formats. It always takes a few weeks to sort that out.

My Ancestry V1 test’s ethnicity results don’t show my Native American ethnicity.

Ancestry results were updated in June 2022

However, my V2 results do include Native American ethnicity.

Matches at Ancestry

I have many more matches on my V1 test at Ancestry because I took steps to preserve my smaller matches when Ancestry initiated its massive purge in 2020. I wrote about that here and here.

Ancestry’s SideView breaks matches down into maternal, paternal, and unassigned based on your side selection. You tell Ancestry which side is which. You may be able to determine which “side” is maternal or paternal either by your ethnicity or shared matches. While SideView is not always accurate, it’s a good place to begin.

Match Category Ancestry V1 Test Ancestry V2 Test
Maternal 15,587 15,116
Paternal 42,247 41,870
Both 2 2
Unassigned 48,999 4,127
Total 106,835 61,115

Ancestry either displays all your matches or your matches by side, which I used to compile the table above. I suspect that Ancestry is not assigning any of the smaller preserved matches to “sides” based on the numbers above.

Ancestry implemented a process called Timber that removes DNA that they feel is “too matchy,” meaning you match enough people in this region that they think it’s a pileup region for you personally, and therefore not useful. In some cases, enough DNA is removed causing that person to no longer be considered a match because they fall beneath the match threshold. I am not a fan of Timber.

Your match amount shown is AFTER Timber has removed those segments. Unweighted shared DNA is your pre-Timber match amount.

You can view the Unweighted shared DNA by clicking on the amount of shared DNA on your match list.

You can read Ancestry’s Matching White Paper, here.

Let’s take a look at my matches. I’ve listed both weighted and unweighted where they are different.

Match Ancestry V1 Ancestry V2
Michael 755 cM, 35 seg 737 cM, 33 seg
Edward 66 cM, 4 seg (unweighted 86 cM) 65 cM, 4 seg (unweighted 86 cM)
Tom 59 cM, 3 seg (unweighted 63) Same
Jonathon 43 cM, 4 seg, (unweighted 52 cM) Same
Matthew 20 cM, 2 seg (unweighted 35 cM) Same
Harold 132 cM, 7 seg 135 cM, 6 seg
Dean 67 cM, 4 seg (unweighted 78 cM) 66 cM, 4 seg (unweighted 78 cM)
Debbie 93 cM, 5 seg Same
Valli 142 cM, 3 seg Same
Jared 20 cM, 1 seg (unweighted 22 cM) Same

Timber only removes DNA when the match is under 90 cM. Almost every match under 90 cM has some DNA removed.

Ancestry Summary

The results of the two Ancestry tests are very close.

In some circumstances, no DNA is removed by Timber, so the unweighted is the same as the weighted. However, in other cases, a significant amount is removed. 15 cM of Matthew’s 35 cM was removed by Timber, reducing his total to 20 cM.

Remember that Ancestry does not show shared matches unless they are greater than 20 cM, which is different than any other DNA testing company.

At one point, Ancestry was selling a health test that was also a genealogy test. That test utilized a different chip that is not accepted for uploads by other vendors. The results of that test might well be different that the “normal” Ancestry tests focused on genealogy. The Ancestry health test is no longer offered.

Companies that Accept Uploads

DNA testing companies that accept uploaded DNA files from other DNA testing companies need to process the uploaded file, just like a file that is generated in their own lab. Of course, they must deal with the differences between uploaded files and their own file format. The processing includes imputation and formulates the uploaded file so that it works with the tools that they provide for their customers, including ethnicity (by whatever name they use) matching, family matching (bucketing), advanced matching, the match matrix, triangulation, AutoClusters, Theories of Family Relativity, and other advanced tools.

Of course, the testing company accepting uploads can only work with the DNA locations provided by the original DNA testing company in the uploaded file.

Matching and some additional tools are free to uploaders, but advanced tools require an inexpensive unlock.

FamilyTreeDNA

I took a test at FamilyTreeDNA, plus uploaded a copy of both of my Ancestry DNA files.

FamilyTreeDNA named their population (ethnicity) test myOrigins and the current version is V3. I wrote about the rollout and comparison in September of 2020, here.

My DNA test taken at FamilyTreeDNA, above, reveals Native American segments that match reference populations found both in North and South America and the Caribbean Islands.

At FamilyTreeDNA, my Ancestry V1 uploaded file results show Native American population matches only in North America.

Interestingly, my Ancestry V1 file processed AT Ancestry did not reveal Native American ancestry, but the same file uploaded to and processed at FamilyTreeDNA did show Native American results, reflecting the difference between the vendors’ internal algorithms and reference populations utilized.

My myOrigins results from my Ancestry V2 uploaded file at FamilyTreeDNA also include my North American Native American segments. The V2 test also showed Native American ethnicity at Ancestry, so clearly something changed in Ancestry’s algorithm, locations tested, and/or reference populations between V1 and V2.

Fortunately, FamilyTreeDNA provides both chromosome painting and a population download file so I can match those Native segments with my autosomal matches to identify which of my ancestors contributed those specific segments.

One of my Native segments is shown in pink on Chromosome1. My mother has a Native segment in exactly the same location, so I know that this segment originated with my mother’s ancestors.

I downloaded the myOrigins population segment file and painted my results at DNAPainter, along with the matches where I can identify our common ancestor. This allowed me to pinpoint the ancestral line that contributed this Native segment in my maternal line. You can read about using DNAPainter, here.

FamilyTreeDNA Matches

I have significantly more matches at FamilyTreeDNA on their test than on either of my Ancestry tests that I uploaded. However, nearly the same number are maternally or paternally assigned through Family Matching, with the remainder unassigned. You can read about Family Matching here.

Match Category FamilyTreeDNA Test Ancestry V1 at FamilyTreeDNA Ancestry V2 at FamilyTreeDNA
Paternal 3,479 3,572 3,422
Maternal 1,549 1,536 1,477
Both 3 3 3
All 8,154 6,397 6,579

Family matching, aka bucketing, automatically assigns my matches as maternal and paternal by linking known relatives to their place in my tree.

I completed the following match chart using my original test taken at FamilyTreeDNA, plus the same match at FamilyTreeDNA for both of my Ancestry tests.

In other words, Cheryl matched me at 467 cM on 21 segments on the original test taken at FamilyTreeDNA. She matched me on 473 cM and 21 segments on my Ancestry V1 test uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA and on 483 cM and 22 segments on the Ancestry V2 test uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA.

Match FamilyTreeDNA Ancestry V1 at FTDNA Ancestry V2 at FTDNA
Cheryl 467 cM, 21 seg 473 cM, 21 seg 483 cM, 22 seg
Patricia 195 cM, 11 seg 189 cM, 11 seg 188 cM, 11 seg
Tom 77 cM, 4 seg 71 cM, 4 seg 76 cM, 4 seg
Thomas 72 cM, 3 seg 71 cM, 3 seg 74 cM, 3 seg
Roland 29 cM, 1 seg 35 cM, 2 seg 35 cM, 2 seg
Rex 62 cM, 4 seg 55 cM, 3 seg 57 cM, 3 seg
Don 395 cM, 18 seg 362 cM, 15 seg 398 cM, 18 seg
Ian 64 cM, 4 seg 56 cM, 4 seg 64 cM, 4 seg
Stacy 490 cM, 18 seg 494 cM, 15 seg 489 cM, 14 seg
Harold 127 cM, 5 cM 133 cM, 6 seg 143 cM, 6 seg
Dean 81 cM, 4 seg 75 cM, 3 seg 83 cM, 4 seg
Carl 103 cM, 4 seg 101 cM, 4 seg 102 cM, 4 seg
Debbie 99 cM, 5 seg 97 cM, 5 seg 99 cM, 5 seg
David 373 cM, 16 seg 435 cM, 19 seg 417 cM, 18 seg
Amos 176 cM, 7 seg 177 cM. 8 seg 177 cM, 7 seg
Buster 387 cM, 15 seg 396 cM, 16 seg 402 cM, 17 seg
Charlene 461 cM, 21 seg 450 cM, 21 seg 448 cM, 20 seg
Carol 65 cM, 6 seg 64 cM, 6 seg 65 cM, 6 seg

I have tested many of my cousins at FamilyTreeDNA and encouraged others to test or upload. I’ve attempted to include enough people so that I can have common matches at least at one other DNA testing company for comparison.

FamilyTreeDNA Summary

The matches are relatively close, with a few being exact.

Interestingly, some of the segment counts are different. In most cases, this results from one segment being broken into multiple segments by one or more of the tests, but not always. In the couple that I checked, the entire segment seems to descend from the same ancestral couple, so the break is likely a result of not all of the same DNA locations being tested, plus the limits of imputation.

MyHeritage

I have two tests at MyHeritage. One taken at MyHeritage, and an uploaded file from FamilyTreeDNA.

MyHeritage displays both ethnicity results and Genetic Groups which maps groups of people that you match. I left the Genetic Groups setting at the highest confidence level. Shifting it to lower displays additional Genetic Groups, some of which overlap with or are within ethnicity regions.

My test taken at MyHeritage, above, shows several ethnicities and Genetic Groups, but no Native American.

My FamilyTreeDNA kit processed at MyHeritage shows the same ethnicity regions, one additional Genetic Group, plus Native American heritage in the Amazon which is rather surprising given that I don’t show Native in North American regions where I’m positive my Native ancestors lived.

MyHeritage Matching

At MyHeritage, I compared the results of the test I took with MyHeritage, and a test I uploaded from FamilyTreeDNA. Fewer than half of my matches can be assigned to a parent via shared matching.

Matches MyHeritage Test FamilyTreeDNA at MyHeritage
Paternal 4,422 6,501
Maternal 2,660 3,655
Total 13,233 16,147

I have rounded my matches at MyHeritage to the closest cM.

Match MyHeritage Test FamilyTreeDNA at MyHeritage
Michael 801 cM, 32 seg 823 cM, 31 segments
Cheryl 467 cM, 23 seg 477 cM, 23 seg
Roland No match 28 cM, 1 seg
Patty 156 cM, 9 seg 151 cM, 9 seg
Rex 43 cM, 4 seg 53 cM, 3 seg
Don 369 cM, 16 seg 382 cM, 17 seg
 
David 449 cM, 17 seg 460 cM, 17 seg
Charlene 454 cM, 23 seg 477 cM, 24 seg
Buster 408 cM, 15 seg 410 cM, 16 seg
Amos 183 cM, 8 seg Same
Carol 78 cM, 6 seg 87 cM, 7 seg

MyHeritage Summary

I was surprised to discover that Roland had no match with the MyHeritage test, but did with the FamilyTreeDNA test. I wonder if this is a searching or matching glitch, especially since both companies use the same chip. 28 cM in one segment is a reasonably large match, and even if it was divided in two, it would still be over the matching threshold. I know this is a valid match because Roland triangulates with me and several cousins, I’m positive of our common ancestor, and he also matches me at both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.

Other than that, the matches are reasonably close, with one being exact.

Your Matches Aren’t Everyplace

I unsuccessfully searched for someone who was a match to me in all four databases. Ancestry does not permit match downloads, so I had to search manually. People don’t always use the same names in different databases.

Surprisingly, I was unable to find one match who is in all of the databases. Many people only suggest testing at Ancestry because they have the largest database, but if you look at the following comparison chart that I’ve created, you’ll see that 16 of 26 people, or 62% were not at Ancestry. Conversely, many people were at Ancestry and not elsewhere. I could not find five maternal and five paternal matches at Ancestry that I could identify as matches in another database. 40% were not elsewhere.

If you think for one minute that it doesn’t matter for genealogy if you’re in all four major databases, please reconsider. It surely does matter.

Every single vendor has matches that the others don’t. Substantial, important matches. I have found first and second-cousin matches in every database that weren’t elsewhere.

Many of the original testers have passed away and can’t test again. My mother can never test at either 23andMe or Ancestry, but she is at both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage because I could upgrade her kit at FamilyTreeDNA after she died. I uploaded her to MyHeritage. Of course, because she is a generation closer to our ancestors, she has many valuable matches that I don’t.

Each vendor provides either an email address or a messaging platform for you to contact your matches. Don’t be discouraged if they don’t answer. Just today, I received a reply that was years in the making.

Genealogists hope for immediate gratification, but we are actually in this for the long game. Play it with every tool at your disposal.

The Answer

Does it matter if you test at a DNA testing company, or upload a file?

I know this was a very long answer to what my readers hoped was a simple yes or no question.

There is no consistent answer at either FamilyTreeDNA or MyHeritage, the two DNA testing companies that accept uploads. Be sure you’re in both databases. My closest two matches that I did not test were found at MyHeritage. Here’s a direct link to upload at MyHeritage.

Of the vendors, those two should be the closest to each other because they are both processed in the GenebyGene lab, but again, the actual chip version, when the test was originally taken, and each vendor’s internal processing will result in differences. Neither the original test at the DNA testing company nor the uploaded files have consistently higher or lower matches. Neither type of test or upload appears to be universally more or less accurate. Differences in either direction seem to occur on a match-by-match basis. Many are so close as to be virtually equivalent, with a few seemingly random exceptions. Of course, we always have to consider Timber.

If you upload, unlock the advanced features at both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

If you upload to a DNA testing company, you may discover in the future that some features and functions will only be available to original testers.

Personally, if I had the option, I would test at the company directly simply because it eliminates or at least reduces the possibility of future incompatibilities – with the exception of 23andMe which has chosen to not provide consistent updates to older tests. I’m incredibly grateful I didn’t test my mother or now deceased family members at 23andMe, and only there. I would be heartsick, heartbroken, and furious.

Our DNA is an extremely valuable resource for our genealogy. It’s the gift that truly keeps on giving, day after day, even when other records don’t exist. Be sure you and your family members are in each database one way or another, and test your Y-DNA (for males) and mitochondrial DNA (for everyone) to have a complete arsenal at your disposal.

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DNA: In Search Of…Your Grandparents

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15

Are you searching for an unknown relative or trying to unravel and understand unexpected results? Maybe you discovered that one or both of your parents is not your biological parent. Maybe one of your siblings might be a half-sibling instead. Or maybe you suddenly have an unexpected match that looks to be an unknown close relative, possibly a half-sibling. Perhaps there’s a close match you can’t place.

Or, are you searching for the identity of your grandparent or grandparents? If you’re searching for your parent or parents, often identifying your grandparents is a necessary step to narrow the parent-candidates.

I’ve written an entire series of “In Search of Unknown Family” articles, permanently listed together, here. They will step you through the search process and help you understand how to unravel your results. If you’re new, reading these, in order, before proceeding, would be a good idea.

Identifying a Grandparent

I saved this “grandparents” article for later in the series because you will need the tools and techniques I’ve introduced in the earlier articles. Identifying grandparents is often the most challenging of any of the relationships we’ve covered so far. In part because each of those four individuals occupies a different place in your tree, meaning their X, Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA is carried by different, and not all, descendants. This means we sometimes have to utilize different tools and techniques.

If you’re trying to identify any of your four grandparents, females are sometimes more challenging than males.

Why?

Women don’t have a Y chromosome to test. This can be a double handicap. Female testers can’t test a Y chromosome, and maternal ancestors don’t have a Y chromosome to match.

Of course, every circumstance differs. You may not have a male to test for paternal lines either.

The maternal grandfather can be uniquely challenging, because two types of DNA, Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA matching are immediately eliminated for all testers.

While I’ve focused on the maternal grandfather in this example, these techniques can be utilized for all four grandparents as well as for parents. At the end, I’ll review other grandparent relationships and additional tools you might be able to utilize for each one.

In addition to autosomal DNA, we can also utilize mitochondrial DNA, Y-DNA and sometimes X DNA in certain situations.

Testing, Tests and Vendors

As you recall, only men have a Y chromosome (blue arrow), so only genetic males can take a Y-DNA test. Men pass their Y chromosome from father to son in each generation. Daughters don’t receive a Y chromosome.

Everyone has their mother’s mitochondrial DNA (pink arrow.) Women pass their mitochondrial DNA to both sexes of their children, but only females pass it on. In the current generation, represented by the son and daughter, above, the mother’s yellow heart-shaped mitochondrial DNA is inherited by both sexes of her children. In the current generation, males and females can both test for their mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Of course, everyone has autosomal DNA, inherited from all of their ancestral lines through at least the 5th or 6th generation, and often further back in time. Autosomal DNA is divided in half in each generation, as children inherit half of each parents’ autosomal DNA (with the exception of the X chromosome, which males only inherit from their mother.)

The four major vendors, Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage sell autosomal DNA tests, but only FamilyTreeDNA sells Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests.

Only 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA report X matching.

All vendors except Ancestry provide segment location information along with a chromosome browser.

You can read about the vendor’s strengths and weaknesses in the third article, here.

Ordering Y and Mitochondrial DNA Tests

If you’re seeking the identities of grandparents, the children and parents, above, can test for the following types of DNA in addition to autosomal:

Person in Pedigree Y-DNA Mitochondrial
Son His father’s blue star His mother’s pink heart
Daughter None Her mother’s pink heart
Father His father’s blue star His mother’s gold heart
Mother None Her mother’s pink heart

Note that none of the people shown above in the direct pedigree line carry the Y-DNA of the green maternal grandfather. However, if the mother has a full sibling, the green “Male Child,” he will carry the Y-DNA of the maternal grandfather. Just be sure the mother and her brother are full siblings, because otherwise, the brother’s Y-DNA may not have been inherited from your mother’s father. I wrote about full vs half sibling determination, here.

Let’s view this from a slightly different perspective. For each grandparent in the tree, which of the two testers, son or daughter, if either, carry that ancestor’s DNA of the types listed in the columns.

Ancestor in Tree Y-DNA Mitochondrial DNA Autosomal DNA X DNA
Paternal Grandfather Son Neither Son, daughter Neither
Paternal Grandmother Has no Y chromosome None (father has it, doesn’t pass it on to son or daughter) Son, daughter Daughter (son does not receive father’s X chromosome)
Maternal Grandfather Neither Neither Son, daughter Son, daughter (potentially)
Maternal Grandmother Has no Y chromosome Son, daughter Son, daughter Son, daughter (potentially)

Obtaining the Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA of those grandparents from their descendants will provide hints and may be instrumental in identifying the grandparent.

FamilyTreeDNA

You’ll need to order Y-DNA (males only) and mitochondrial DNA tests separately from autosomal DNA tests. They are three completely different tests.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the autosomal DNA test is called Family Finder to differentiate it from their Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests.

Their autosomal test is called Family Finder whether you order a test from FamilyTreeDNA, or upload your results to their site from another vendor (instructions here.)

I recommend ordering the Big Y-700 Y-DNA test if possible, and if not, the highest resolution Y-DNA test you can afford. The Big Y-700 is the most refined Y-DNA test available, includes multiple tools and places Big Y-700 testers on the Time Tree through the Discover tool, providing relatively precise estimates of when those men shared a common ancestor. If you’ve already purchased a lower-precision Y-DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA, you can easily upgrade.

I wrote about using the Discover tool here. The recently added Group Time Tree draws a genetic Y-DNA tree of Big-Y testers in common projects, showing earliest known ancestors and the date of the most recent common ancestor.

You need to make sure your Family Finder, mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA (if you’re a male) tests are ordered from the same account at FamilyTreeDNA.

You want all 3 of your tests on the same account (called a kit number) so that you can use the advanced search features that display people who match you on combinations of multiple kinds of tests. For example, if you’re a male, do your Y-DNA matches also match you on the autosomal Family Finder test, and if so, how closely? Advanced matching also provides X matching tools.

X DNA is included in autosomal tests. X DNA has a distinct matching pattern for males and females which makes it uniquely useful for genealogy. I wrote about X DNA matching here.

If you upload your autosomal results to FamilyTreeDNA from another company, you’re only uploading a raw DNA file, not the DNA itself, so FamilyTreeDNA will need to send you a swab kit to test your Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA. If you upload your autosomal DNA, simply sign in to your kit, purchase the Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA tests and they will send you a swab kit.

If you test directly at FamilyTreeDNA, you can add any test easily by simply signing in and placing an order. They will use your archived DNA from your swab sample, as long as there’s enough left and it’s of sufficient quality.

Fish In All Ponds

The first important thing to do in your grandparent search is to be sure you’re fishing in all ponds. In other words, be sure you’ve tested at all 4 vendors, or uploaded files to FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

When you upload files to those vendors, be sure to purchase the unlock for their advanced tools, because you’re going to utilize everything possible.

If you have relatively close matches at other vendors, ask if they will upload their files too. The upload is free. Not only will they receive additional matches, and another set of ethnicity results, their results will help you by associating your matches with specific sides of your family.

Why Order Multiple Tests Now Instead of Waiting?

I encourage testers to order their tests at the beginning of their journey, not one at a time. Each new test from a vendor takes about 6-8 weeks from the time you initially order – they send the test, you swab or spit, return it, and they process your DNA. Of course, uploading takes far less time.

If you’re adding elapsed time, two autosomal tests (Ancestry and 23andMe), two uploads (FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage,) a Y-DNA and a mitochondrial DNA test, if all purchased serially, one after the other, means you’ll be waiting about 6-8 months.

Do you want to wait 6-8 months? Can you afford to?

Part of that answer has to do with what, exactly, you’re seeking.

A Name or Information?

Are you seeking the name of a person, or are you seeking information about that person? With grandparents, you may be hoping to meet them, and time may be of the essence. Time delayed may not be able to be recovered or regained.

Most people don’t just want to put a name to the person they are seeking – they want to learn about them. You will have different matches at each company. Even after you identify the person you seek, the people you match at each company may have information about them, their photos, know about their life, family, and their ancestors. They may be able and willing to facilitate an introduction if that’s what you seek.

One cousin that I assisted discovered that his father had died just 6 weeks before he made the connection. He was heartsick.

Having data from all vendors simultaneously will allow you to compile that data and work with it together as well as separately. Using your “best” matches at each company, augmented by both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can make MUCH shorter work of this search.

Your Y-DNA, if you’re a male will give you insights into your surname line, and the Big-Y test now comes with estimates of how far in the past you share a common ancestor with other men that have taken the Big-Y test. This can be a HUGE boon to a male trying to figure out his surname line.

Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, respectively, will eliminate many people from being your mother or father, or your direct paternal or direct maternal line ancestor. Both provide insights into which population and where that population originated as well. In other words, it provides you lineage-specific information not available elsewhere.

Your Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA can also provide critically important information about whether that direct line ancestor belonged to an endogamous population, and where they came from.

Strategies

You may be tempted to think that you only need to test at one vendor, or at the vendor with the largest database, but that’s not necessarily true.

Here’s a table of my closest matches at the 4 vendors.

Vendor Closest Maternal Closest Paternal Comments
Ancestry 1C, 1C1R Half 1C, 2C I recognized both of the maternal and neither of the paternal.
23andMe 2C, 2C 1C1R, half-gr-niece Recognized both maternal, one paternal
MyHeritage Mother uploaded, 1C Half-niece, half 1C Recognized both maternal, one paternal
FamilyTreeDNA Mother tested, 1C1R Parent/child, half-gr-niece Recognized all 4

To be clear, I tested my mother at FamilyTreeDNA before she passed away, but if I was an adoptee searching for my mother, that’s the first database she would be in. As her family, we were able to order the Family Finder test from her archived DNA after she had passed away. I then uploaded her DNA file to MyHeritage, but she’ll never be at either 23andMe or Ancestry because they don’t accept uploads and she clearly can’t test.

Additionally, being able to identify maternal matches by viewing shared matches with my mother separates out close matches from my paternal side.

Let’s put this another way, I stand a MUCH BETTER chance of unraveling this mystery with the combined closest matches of all 4 databases instead of the top ones from just one database.

I’m providing analysis methodologies for working with results from all of the vendors together, in case your answer is not immediately obvious. Taking multiple tests facilitates using all of these tools immediately, not months later. Solving the puzzle sooner means you may not miss valuable connection opportunities.

You may also discover that the door slams shut with some people, but another match may be unbelievably helpful. Don’t unnecessarily limit your possibilities.

Here’s the testing and upload strategy I recommend.

What When Ancestry 23andMe MyHeritage FamilyTreeDNA GEDmatch
Order autosomal test Initially Yes Yes Upload Upload Upload
Order Big-Y DNA test if male Initially Yes
Order mitochondrial DNA test Initially Yes
Upload free autosomal file From Ancestry or 23andMe Yes Yes Yes
Unlock Advanced Tools When upload file $29 $19 $9.95 month
Includes X Matching No Yes No Yes Yes
Chromosome Browser, segment location information No Yes Yes Yes Yes

When you upload a DNA file to a vendor site, only upload one file per site, per tester. Otherwise, multiple tests simply glom up everyone’s match list with multiple matches to the same person and can be very confusing.

  • One person took an autosomal test at a company that accepts uploads, forgot about it, uploaded a file from another vendor later, and immediately thought she had found her parent. She had not. She “found” herself.
  • Another person though she had found two sisters, but one person had uploaded their own file from two different vendors.

Multiple vendor sites reveal multiple close matches to different people which increase your opportunity to discover INFORMATION about your family, not just the identity of the person.

Match Ranges

Given that we are searching for an unknown maternal grandfather, your mother may not have had any (known) full siblings. The “best” match would be to a full or half siblings to your parents, or their descendants, depending on how old your grandparents would be.

Let’s take the “worst case” scenario, meaning there are no full siblings AND there are many possible generations between you and the people you may match.

Now, let’s look at DNAPainter’s Shared cM tool.

You’re going to be looking for someone who is either your mother’s half sibling on her father’s side, or who is a full sibling.

If your mother is adopted, it’s possible that she has or had full siblings. If your mother was born circa 1920, it’s likely that you will be matching the next generation, or two, or three.

However, if your mother was born later, you could be matching her siblings directly.

I’m going to assume half siblings for this example, because they are more difficult than full siblings.

Full sibling relationships for your mother’s siblings are listed at right. Your full aunt or uncle at top, then their descendant generations below.

At left, in red, are the half-sibling relationships and the matching amounts.

You can see that if you’re dealing with half 1C3R (half first cousin three times removed,) you may not match.

Therefore, in order to isolate matches, it’s imperative to test every relevant relative possible.

Who’s Relevant for DNA Testing?

Who is relevant to test If you’re attempting to identify your maternal grandfather?

The goal is to be able to assign matches to the most refined ancestor possible. In other words, if you can assign someone to either your grandmother’s line, or your grandfather’s line, that’s better than assigning the person to your grandparents jointly.

Always utilize the tests of the people furthest up the tree, meaning the oldest generations. Their DNA is less-diluted, meaning it has been divided fewer times. Think about who is living and might be willing to test.

You need to be able to divide your matches between your parents, and then between your grandparents on your mother’s side.

  • Test your parents, of course, and any of their known siblings, half or full.
  • If those siblings have passed away, test as many of their children as you can.
  • If any of your grandparents are living, test them
  • If BOTH of your grandparents on the same side aren’t available to test, test any, preferably all, living aunts or uncles.
  • If your maternal grandmother had siblings, test them or their descendants if they are deceased.
  • If your parents are deceased, test your aunts, uncles, full siblings and half-siblings on your mother’s side. (Personally, I’d test all half-siblings, not just maternal.)
  • Half-siblings are particularly valuable because there is no question which “side” your shared DNA came from. They will match people you don’t because they received part of your parent’s DNA that you did not.

Furthermore, shared matches to half-siblings unquestionably identify which parent those matches are through.

Essentially, you’re trying to account for all matches that can be assigned to your grandparents whose identities you know – leaving only people who descend from your unknown maternal grandfather.

Testing your own descendants will not aid your quest. There is no need to test them for this purpose, given that they received half of your DNA.

I wrote about why testing close relatives is important in the article Superpower: Your Aunts’ and Uncles’ DNA is Your DNA Too – Maximize Those Matches!

Create or Upload a Tree

Three of the four major vendors, plus GEDMatch, support and utilize family trees.

You’ll want to either upload or create a tree at each of the vendor sites.

You can either upload a GEDCOM file from your home computer genealogy software, or you can create a tree at one of the vendors, download it, and upload to the others. I described that process at Ancestry, here.

Goal

Your goal is to work with your highest matches first to determine how they are related to you, thereby eliminating matches to known lineages.

Assuming you’re only searching for the identity of one grandparent, it’s beneficial to have done enough of your genealogy on your three known grandparents to be able to assign matches from those lines to those sides.

Step 1 is to check each vendor for close matches that might fall into that category.

The Top 15 at Each Vendor

Your closest several autosomal matches are the most important and insightful. I begin with the top 15 autosomal results at each vendor, initially, which provides me with the best chance of meaningful close relationship discoveries.

Create a Spreadsheet or Chart

I hate to use that S word (spreadsheet), because I don’t want non-technical people to be discouraged. So, I’m going to show you how I set up a spreadsheet and you can simply create a chart or even draw this out on paper if you wish.

I’ve color-coded columns for each of my 4 grandparents. The green column is the target Maternal Grandfather whose identity I’m seeking.

I match our first example; Erik, at 417 cM. Based on various pieces of information, taken together, I’ve determined that I’m Erik’s half 1C1R. His 8 great-grandparent surnames, or the ones he has provided, indicate that I’m related to Eric on my paternal grandfather’s line.

You’ll want to record your closest matches in this fashion.

Let’s look at how to find this information and work with the tools at the individual vendors.

23andMe

Let’s start at 23andMe, because they create a potential genetic tree for you, which may or may not be accurate.

I have two separate tests at 23andMe. One is a V3 and one is a V4 test. I keep one in its pristine state, and I work with the second one. You’ll see two of “me” in the tree, and that’s why.

23andMe makes it easy to see estimated relationships, although they are not always correct. Generally, they are close, and they can be quite valuable.

Click on any image to enlarge

The maternal and paternal “sides” may not be positioned where genealogists are used to seeing them. Remember, 23andMe has no genealogy trees, so they are attempting to construct a genetic tree based on how people are related to you and to each other, with no prior knowledge. They do sometimes have issues with half-relationships, so I’d encourage you to use this tree to isolate people to the three grandparents you know.

In my case, I was able to determine the maternal and paternal sides easily based on known cousins. This is the perfect example of why it’s important to test known relatives from both sides of your family.

My paternal side, at right, in blue, was easy because I recognized my half-sister’s family, and because of known cousins who I recognized from having tested elsewhere. I’ve worked with them for years. The blue stars show people I could identify, mostly second cousins.

My maternal side is at left, in red. Normally, for genealogists, the maternal side is at right, and the paternal at left, so don’t make assumptions, and don’t let this positioning throw you.

I’m pretending I don’t know who my maternal grandfather is. I was able to identify my maternal grandmother’s side based on a known second cousin.

That leaves my target – my maternal grandfather’s line.

All of the matches to the left of the red circle would, by process of elimination, be on my maternal grandfather’s side.

The next step would be to figure out how the 5 people descending from my maternal grandfather’s line are related to each other – through which of their ancestors.

On the DNA Relatives match list, here’s what needs to be checked:

  • Do your matches share surnames with you or your ancestors?
  • Do they show surnames in common with each other?
  • Is there a common location?
  • Birth year which helps you understand their potential generation.
  • Did they list their grandparents’ birthplaces?
  • Did they provide a family tree link?
  • Do they also match each other using the Relatives in Common feature?
  • Do they triangulate, indicated by “DNA Overlap” in Relatives in Common?
  • Who else is on the Relatives in Common list, and what do they have in common with each other?
  • Looking at your Ancestry Composition compared with theirs, what are your shared populations, and are they relevant? If you are both 100% European, then shared populations aren’t useful, but if both people share the same minority ancestry, especially on the same segments, it may indeed be relevant – especially if it can’t be accounted for on the known sides of the family.

Reach out to these people and see what they know about their genealogy, if they have tested elsewhere, and if they have a genealogy tree someplace that you can view.

If they can tell you their grandparents’ names, birth and death dates and locations, you can check public sources like WikiTree, FamilySearch and Geni, or build trees for them. You can also use Newspaper resources, like Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive and the newspapers at MyHeritage.

I added the top 15 23andMe matches into the spreadsheet I created.

You’ll notice that not many people at 23andMe enter surnames. However, if you can identify individuals from your 3 known lines, you can piggyback the rest by using Relatives in Common in conjunction with the genetic tree placement.

Be sure to check all the people that are connected to the target line in your genetic tree.

You’ll want to harvest your DNA segments to paint at DNAPainter if you don’t solve this mystery with initial reviews at each vendor.

Ancestry

Let’s move to Ancestry next.

At Ancestry, you’ll want to start with your closest matches on your match list.

Ancestry classifies “Close Matches” as anyone 200 cM or greater, which probably won’t reach as far down as the matches we’ll want to include.

Some of the categories in the Shared cM Chart from DNAPainter, above, don’t work based on ages, so I’ve eliminated those. I also know, for example, that someone who could fall in the grandparent/grandchild category (blue star,) in my case, does not, so must be a different relationship.

Second cousins, who share great-grandparents, can be expected to share about 229 cM of DNA on average, or between 41 and 592 cM. First cousins share 866 cM, and half first cousins share 449 cM on average.

I have 13 close matches (over 200 cM), but I’m including my top 15 at each vendor, so I added two more. You can always go back and add more matches if necessary. Just keep in mind that the smaller the match, the greater the probability that it came from increasingly distant generations before your grandparents. Your sweet spot to identify grandparents is between 1C and 2C.

I need to divide my close matches into 4 groups, each one equating to a grandparent. Record this on your spreadsheet.

You can group your matches at Ancestry using colored dots, which means you can sort by those groups.

You can also select a “side” for a match by clicking on “Yes” under the question, “Do you recognize them?”

Initially, you want to determine if this person is related to you on your mother’s or father side, and hopefully, through which grandparent.

Recently, Ancestry added a feature called SideView which allows testers to indicate, based on ethnicity, which side is “parent 1” and which side is “parent 2.” I wrote about that, here.

Make your selection, assuming you can tell which “side” of you descends from which parent based on ethnicity and/or shared matches. How you label “parent 1,” meaning either maternal or paternal, determines how Ancestry assigns your matches, when possible.

Using these tools, which may not be completely accurate, plus shared matches with people you can identify, divide your matches among your three known grandparents, meaning that the people you cannot assign will be placed in the fourth “unknown” column.

On my spreadsheet, I assign all of my closest matches to one of my grandparents. Michael is my first cousin (1C) and we share both maternal grandparents, so he’s not helpful in the division because he can’t be assigned to only one grandparent.

The green maternal grandfather is who I’m attempting to identify.

There are 4 people, highlighted in yellow, who don’t fall into the other three grandparent lines, so they get added to the green column and will be my focus.

I would be inclined to continue adding matches using a process known as the Leeds Method, until I had several people in each category. Looking back at the DNAPainter cM chart, at this point, we don’t have anyone below 200 cM and the matches we need might be below that threshold. The more matches you have to work with, the better.

At Ancestry, you cannot download your matches into a spreadsheet, nor can you work with other clustering tools such as Genetic Affairs, so you’ll have to build out your spreadsheet manually.

Check for the same types of information that I reviewed at 23andMe:

  • Review trees, if your matches have them, minimally recording the surnames of their 8 great-grandparents.
  • Review shared matches, looking for common names in the trees in recent generations.
  • View shared matches with people with whom you have a “Common Ancestor” indication, which means a ThruLine. You won’t have Thrulines with your target grandparent, of course, but Thrulines will allow you to place the match in one of the other columns. I wrote about ThruLines here, here and here.
  • ThruLines sometimes suggests ancestors based on other people’s trees, so be EXCEEDINGLY careful with potential ancestor suggestions. That’s not to say you should discount those suggestions. Just treat them as tree hints that may have been copy/pasted hundreds of times, because that’s what they are.

I make notes on each match so I can easily see the connection by scanning without opening the match.

Now, I have a total of 30 entries on my spreadsheet, 15 from 23and Me and 15 from Ancestry.

Why Not Use Autosclusters?

Even with vendors who allow or provide cluster tools, I don’t use an automated autocluster tool at this point. Autocluster tools often omit your closest matches because your closest matches would be in nearly half of all your clusters, which isn’t exactly informative. However, for this purpose, those are the very matches we need to evaluate.

After identifying groups of people that represent the missing grandparent, using our spreadsheet methodology, autoclusters could be useful to identify common surnames and even to compare the trees of our matches using AutoTree, AutoPedigree and AutoKinship. AutoClusters cannot be utilized at Ancestry, but is available through MyHeritage and at GEDmatch, or through Genetic Affairs for 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA.

Next, let’s move to FamilyTreeDNA.

FamilyTreeDNA

FamilyTreeDNA is the only vendor that provides Family Matching, also known as “bucketing.” FamilyTreeDNA assigns your matches to either a paternal or maternal bucket, or both, based on triangulated matches with someone you’ve linked to a profile in your tree.

The key to Family Matching is to link known Family Finder matches to their profile cards in your tree.

Clicking on the Family Tree link at the top of your personal page allows you to link your matches to the profile cards of your matches.

FamilyTreeDNA utilizes these linked matches to assign those people, and matches who match you and those people, both, on at least one common segment, to the maternal or paternal tabs on your match list.

Always link as many known people as possible (red stars) which will result in more matches being bucketed and assigned to parents’ sides for you, even if neither parent is available to test.

I wrote about Triangulation in Action at FamilyTreeDNA, here.

You can see at the top of my match list that I have a total of 8000 matches of which 3422 are paternal, 1517 are maternal and 3 match on both sides. Full siblings, their (and my) children and their descendants will always match on both sides. People with endogamy across both parents may have several matches on both sides.

If your relevant parent has tested, always work from their test.

Because we are searching for the maternal grandfather, in this case, we can ignore all tests that are bucketed as paternal matches.

Given that we are searching for my maternal grandfather, I probably have not been able to link as many maternal matches, other than possibly ones from my maternal grandmother. This means that the maternal grandfather’s matches are not bucketed because there are no identified matches to link on that side of my tree.

If you sort by maternal and paternal tabs, you’ll miss people who aren’t bucketed, meaning they have no maternal or paternal icon, so I recommend simply scanning down the list and processing maternal matches and non-bucketed matches.

By being able to confidently ignore paternally bucketed matches and only processing maternal and non-assigned matches, this is equivalent to processing the first 48 total matches. If I were to only look at the first 15 matches, 12 were paternal and only 3 are maternal.

Using bucketing at FamilyTreeDNA is very efficient and saves a lot of work.

Omitting paternal matches also means we are including smaller matches which could potentially be from common ancestors further back in the tree. Or, they could be younger testers. Or simply smaller by the randomness of recombination.

FamilyTreeDNA is a goldmine, with 16 of 20 maternal matches being from the unknown maternal grandfather.

Next, let’s see what’s waiting at MyHeritage.

MyHeritage

MyHeritage is particularly useful if your lineage happens to be from Europe. Of course, if you’re searching for an unknown person, you probably have no idea where they or their ancestors are from. Two of my best matches first appeared at MyHeritage.

Of course, your matches with people who descend from your unknown maternal grandfather won’t have any Theories of Family Relativity, as that tool is based on BOTH a DNA match plus a tree or document match. However, Theories is wonderful to group your matches to your other three grandparents.

MyHeritage provides a great deal of information for each match, including common surnames with your tree. If you recognize the surnames (and shared matches) as paternal or maternal, then you can assign the match. However, the matches you’re most interested in are the highest matches without any surnames in common with you – which likely point to the missing maternal grandfather.

However, those people may, and probably do, have surnames in common with each other.

Of the matches who aren’t attributed to the other three grandparents, the name Ferverda arises again and again. So does Miller, which suggests the grandparent or great-grandparent couple may well be Ferverda/Miller.

Let’s continue working through the process with our spreadsheet and see what we can discover about those surnames.

Our 60 Results

Of the 60 total results, 15 from each vendor, a total of 24 cannot be assigned to other columns through bucketing or shared matches, so are associated with the maternal grandfather. Of course, Michael who descends from both of my maternal grandparents won’t be helpful initially.

Cheryl, Donald and Michael are duplicates at different vendors, but the rest are not.

Of the relevant matches, the majority, 12 are from FamilyTreeDNA, four each are from Ancestry and MyHeritage, and three are from 23andMe.

Of the names provided in the surname fields of matches, in matches’ trees in the first few generations, and the testers’ surnames, Ferverda is repeated 12 times, for 50% of the time. Miller is repeated 9 times, so it’s likely that either of those are the missing grandfather’s surname. Of course, if we had Y-DNA, we’d know the answer to that immediately.

Comparing trees of my matches, we find John Ferverda as the common ancestor between two different matches. John is the son of Hiram Ferverda and Eva Miller who are found in several trees.

That’s a great hint. But is this the breakthrough I need?

What’s Next?

The next step is to look for connections between the maternal grandmother, Edith Lore, who is known in our example, and a Ferverda male. He is probably one of the sons of Hiram Ferverda and Eva Miller. Do they lived in the same area? In close proximity? Do they attend the same church or school? Are they neighbors or live close to the family or some of their relatives? Does she have connections with Ferverda family members? We are narrowing in.

Some of Hiram and Eva’s sons might be able to be eliminated based on age or other factors, or at least be less likely candidates. Any of their children who had moved out of state when the child was conceived would be less likely candidates. Age would be a factor, as would opportunity.

Target testing of the Ferverda sons’ children, or the descendants of their children would (probably) be able to pinpoint which of their sons is more closely related to me (or my mother) than the rest.

In our case, indeed, John Ferverda is the son we are searching for and his descendant, Michael is the highest match on the list. Cheryl and Donald descend from John’s brother, which eliminates him as a candidate. Another tester descends from a third Ferverda son, which eliminates that son as well.

Michael, my actual first cousin with a 755 cM match at one vendor, and 822 cM at a second vendor, is shown by the MyHeritage cM Explainer with an 88% probability that he is my first cousin.

However, when I’m trying to identify the maternal grandfather, which is half of that couple, I need to focus one generation further back in time to eliminate other candidates.

The second and third closest matches are both Donald at 395 cM and Cheryl at 467 cM who also share the same Ferverda/Miller lineage and are the children of my maternal grandfather’s brother.

On the spreadsheet, I need to look at the trees of people who have both Ferverda and Miller, which brought me to both Cheryl and Donald, then Michael, which allowed me to identify John Ferverda, unquestionably, as my grandfather based on the cM match amounts.

Cheryl and Donald, who are confirmed full siblings, and my mother either have to be first cousins, or half siblings. Their match with mother is NOT in the half-sibling range for one sibling, and on the lower edge with the other. Mother also matches Michael as a nephew, not more distantly as she would if he were a first cousin once removed (1C1R) instead of a nephew.

Evaluating these matches combined confirms that my maternal grandfather is indeed John Ferverda.

What About X DNA?

The X chromosome has a unique inheritance path which is sometimes helpful in this circumstance, especially to males.

Women inherit an X chromosome from both parents, but males inherit an X chromosome from ONLY their mother. A male inherits a Y chromosome from his father which is what makes him male. Women inherit two X chromosomes, one from each parent, and no Y, which is what makes them female.

Therefore, if you are a male and are struggling with which side of your tree matches are associated with, the X chromosome may be of help.

Your mother passed her X chromosome to you, which could be:

  • Her entire maternal X, meaning your maternal grandmother’s X chromosome
  • Her entire paternal X, meaning your maternal grandfather’s X chromosome (which descends from his mother)
  • Some combination of your maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather’s chromosomes

One thing we know positively is that a male’s X matches are ALWAYS from their maternal side only, so that should help when dividing a male’s matches maternally or paternally. Note – be aware of potential pedigree collapse, endogamy and identical-by-chance matches if it looks like a male has a X match on his father’s side.

Unfortunately, the X chromosome cannot assist females in the same way, because females inherit an X from both parents. Therefore, they can match people in the same was as a male, but also in additional ways.

  • Females will match their paternal grandmother on her entire X chromosome, and will match one or both of their maternal grandparents on the X chromosome.
  • Females will NEVER match their paternal grandfather’s X chromosome because their father did not inherit an X chromosome from his father.
  • Males will match one or both of their maternal grandparents on their X chromosome.
  • Males will NEVER match their paternal grandparents, because males do not receive an X chromosome from their father.

The usefulness of X DNA matching depends on the inheritance path of both the tester AND their match.

When Can Y-DNA or Mitochondrial DNA Help with Grandparent Identification?

If you recall, I selected the maternal grandfather as the person to seek because no tester carries either the Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA of their maternal grandfather. In other words, this was the most difficult identification, meaning that any of the other three grandparents would be, or at least could be, easier with the benefit of Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA testing.

In addition to matching, both Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA will provide testers with location origins, both continental and often much more specific locations based on where other testers and matches are from.

Y-DNA often provides a surname.

Let’s see how these tests, matches and results can assist us.

  • Paternal grandfather – If I was a male descended from John Ferverda paternally, I could have tested both my autosomal DNA PLUS my Y-DNA, which would have immediately revealed the Ferverda surname via Y-DNA. Two Ferverda men are shown in the Ferverda surname DNA project, above.

That revelation would have confirmed the Ferverda surname when combined with the high frequency of Ferverda found among autosomal matches on the spreadsheet.

  • Maternal grandmother – If we were searching for a maternal grandmother, both the male and female sibling testers (as shown in the pedigree chart) would have her mitochondrial DNA which could provide matches to relevant descendants. Mitochondrial DNA at both FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe could also eliminate anyone who does not match on a common haplogroup, when comparing 23andMe results to 23andMe results, and FamilyTreeDNA to FamilyTreeDNA results at the same level.

At 23andMe, only base level haplogroups are provided, but they are enough to rule out a direct matrilineal line ancestor.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the earlier HVR1 and HVR2 tests provide base level haplogroups, while full sequence testing provides granular, specific haplogroups. Full sequence is the recommended testing level.

  • Paternal grandmother – If we were searching for a paternal grandmother, testers would, of course, need either their father to test his mitochondrial DNA, or for one of his siblings to test which could be used in the same way as described for maternal grandmother matching.

Summary

Successfully identifying a grandparent is dependent on many factors. Before you make that identification, it’s very difficult to know which are more or less important.

For example, if the grandparent is from a part of the world with few testers, you will have far fewer matches, potentially, than other lines from more highly tested regions. In my case, two of my four grandparents’ families, including Ferverda, immigrated in the 1850s, so they had fewer matches than families that have been producing large families in the US for generations.

Endogamy may be a factor.

Family size in past and current generations may be a factor.

Simple luck may be a factor.

Therefore, it’s always wise to test your DNA, and that of your parents and close relatives if possible, and upload to all of the autosomal databases. Then construct an analysis plan based on:

  • How you descend from the grandparent in question, meaning do you carry their X DNA, Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA.
  • Who else is available to test their autosomal DNA to assist with shared matches and the process of elimination.
  • Who else is available to test for Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA of the ancestor in question.

If you don’t find the answer initially, schedule a revisit of your matches periodically and update your spreadsheet. Sometimes DNA and genealogy is a waiting same.

Just remember, luck always favors the prepared!

Resources

You may find the following resource articles beneficial in addition to the links provided throughout this article.

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DNA: In Search of…Full and Half-Siblings

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This is the fifth article in our series of articles about searching for unknown close family members, specifically; parents, grandparents, or siblings. However, these same techniques can be applied by genealogists to identify ancestors further back in time as well.

Please note that if a family member has tested and you do NOT see their results, ask them to verify that they have chosen to allow matching and for other people to view them in their match list. That process varies at different vendors.

You can also ask if they can see you in their results.

All Parties Need to Test

Searching for unknown siblings isn’t exactly searching, because to find them, they, themselves, or their descendant(s) must have taken a DNA test at the same vendor where you tested or uploaded a DNA file.

You may know through any variety of methods that they exist, or might exist, but if they don’t take a DNA test, you can’t find them using DNA. This might sound obvious, but I see people commenting and not realizing that the other sibling(s) must test too – and they may not have.

My first questions when someone comments in this vein are:

  1. Whether or not they are positive their sibling actually tested, meaning actually sent the test in to the vendor, and it was received by the testing company. You’d be surprised how many tests are living in permanent residence on someone’s countertop until it gets pushed into the drawer and forgotten about.
  2. If the person has confirmed that their sibling has results posted. They may have returned their test, but the results aren’t ready yet or there was a problem.
  3. AND that both people have authorized matching and sharing of results. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your vendor’s customer care if you need help with this.

Sibling Scenarios

The most common sibling scenarios are when one of two things happens:

  • A known sibling tests, only to discover that they don’t match you in the full sibling range, or not at all, when you expected they would
  • You discover a surprise match in the full or half-sibling range

Let’s talk about these scenarios and how to determine:

  • If someone is a sibling
  • If they are a full or half-sibling
  • If a half-sibling, if they descend from your mother or father

As with everything else genetic, we’ll be gathering and analyzing different pieces of evidence along the way.

Full and Half-Siblings

Just to make sure we are all on the same page:

  • A full sibling is someone who shares both parents with you.
  • A half-sibling is someone who shares one parent with you, but not the other parent.
  • A step-sibling is someone who shares no biological parents with you. This situation occurs when your parent marries their parent, after you are both born, and their parent becomes your step-parent. You share neither of your biological parents with a step-sibling, so you share no DNA and will not show up on each other’s match lists.
  • A three-quarters sibling is someone with whom you share one parent, but two siblings are the other parent. For example, you share the same mother, but one brother fathered you, and your father’s brother fathered your sibling. Yes, this can get very messy and is almost impossible for a non-professional to sort through, if even then. (This is not a solicitation. I do not take private clients.) We will not be addressing this situation specifically.

Caution

With any search for unknown relatives, you have no way of knowing what you will find.

In one’s mind, there are happy reunions, but you may experience something entirely different. Humans are human. Their stories are not always happy or rosy. They may have made mistakes they regret. Or they may have no regrets about anything.

Your sibling may not know about you or the situation under which you, or they, were born. Some women were victims of assault and violence, which is both humiliating and embarrassing. I wrote about difficult situations, here.

Your sibling or close family member may not be receptive to either you, your message, or even your existence. Just be prepared, because the seeking journey may not be pain-free for you or others, and may not culminate with or include happy reunions.

On the other hand, it may.

Please step back and ponder a bit about the journey you are about to undertake and the possible people that may be affected, and how. This box, once opened, cannot be closed again. Be sure you are prepared.

On the other hand, sometimes that box lid pops off, and the information simply falls in your lap one day when you open your match list, and you find yourself sitting there, in shock, staring at a match, trying to figure out what it all means.

Congratulations, You Have a Sibling!

This might not be exactly what runs through your mind when you see that you have a very close match that you weren’t expecting.

The first two things I recommend when making this sort of discovery, after a few deep breaths, a walk, and a cup of tea, are:

  • Viewing what the vendor says
  • Using the DNAPainter Shared cM Relationship Chart

Let’s start with DNAPainter.

DNAPainter

DNAPainter provides a relationship chart, here, based on the values from the Shared cM Project.

You can either enter a cM amount or a percentage of shared DNA. I prefer the cM amount, but it doesn’t really matter.

I’ll enter 2241 cM from a known half-sibling match. To enter a percent, click on the green “enter %.”

As you can see, statistically speaking, this person is slightly more likely to be a half-sibling than they are to be a full sibling. In reality, they could be either.

Looking at the chart below, DNAPainter highlights the possible relationships from the perspective of “Self.”

The average of all the self-reported relationships is shown, on top, so 2613 for a full sibling. The range is shown below, so 1613-3488 for a full sibling.

In this case, there are several possibilities for two people who share 2241 cM of DNA.

I happen to know that these two people are half-siblings, but if I didn’t, it would be impossible to tell from this information alone.

The cM range for full siblings is 1613-3488, and the cM range for half-siblings is 1160-2436.

  • The lower part of the matching range, from 1160-1613 cM is only found in half-siblings.
  • The portion of the range from 1613-2436 cM can be either half or full siblings.
  • The upper part of the range, from 2436-3488 cM is only found in full siblings.

If your results fall into the center portion of the range, you’re going to need to utilize other tools. Fortunately, we have several.

If you’ve discovered something unexpected, you’ll want to verify using these tools, regardless. Use every tool available. Ranges are not foolproof, and the upper and lower 10% of the responses were removed as outliers. You can read more about the shared cM Project, here and here.

Furthermore, people may be reporting some half-sibling relationships as full sibling relationships, because they don’t expect to be half-siblings, so the ranges may be somewhat “off.”

Relationship Probability Calculator

Third-party matching database, GEDmatch, provides a Relationship Probability Calculator tool that is based on statistical probability methods without compiled user input. Both tools are free, and while I haven’t compared every value, both seem to be reasonably accurate, although they do vary somewhat, especially at the outer ends of the ranges.

When dealing with sibling matches, if you are in all four databases, GEDmatch is a secondary resource, but I will include GEDmatch when they have a unique tool as well as in the summary table. Some of your matches may be willing to upload to GEDmatch if the vendor where you match doesn’t provide everything you need and GEDmatch has a supplemental offering.

Next, let’s look at what the vendors say about sibling matches.

Vendors

Each of the major vendors reports sibling relationships in a slightly different way.

Sibling Matches at Ancestry

Ancestry reports sibling relationships as Sister or Brother, but they don’t say half or full.

If you click on the cM portion of the link, you’ll see additional detail, below

Ancestry tells you that the possible relationships are 100% “Sibling.” The only way to discern the difference between full and half is by what’s next.

If the ONLY relationship shown is Sibling at 100%, that can be interpreted to mean this person is a full sibling, and that a half-sibling or other relationship is NOT a possibility.

Ancestry never stipulates full or half.

The following relationship is a half-sibling at Ancestry.

Ancestry identifies that possible range of relationships as “Close Family to First Cousin” because of the overlaps we saw in the DNAPainter chart.

Clicking through shows that there is a range of possible relationships, and Ancestry is 100% sure the relationship is one of those.

DNAPainter agrees with Ancestry except includes the full-sibling relationship as a possibility for 1826 cM.

Sibling Matches at 23andMe

23andMe does identify full versus half-siblings.

DNAPainter disagrees with 23andMe and claims that anyone who shares 46.2% of their DNA is a parent/child.

However, look at the fine print. 23andMe counts differently than any of the other vendors, and DNAPainter relies on the Shared cM Project, which relies on testers entering known relationship matching information. Therefore, at any other vendor, DNAPainter is probably exactly right.

Before we understand how 23andMe counts, we need to understand about half versus fully identical segments.

To determine half or full siblings, 23andMe compares two things:

  1. The amount of shared matching DNA between two people
  2. Fully Identical Regions (FIR) of DNA compared to Half Identical Regions (HIR) of DNA to determine if any of your DNA is fully identical, meaning some pieces of you and your sibling’s DNA is exactly the same on both your maternal and paternal chromosomes.

Here’s an example on any chromosome – I’ve randomly selected chromosome 12. Which chromosome doesn’t matter, except for the X, which is different.

Your match isn’t broken out by maternal and paternal sides. You would simply see, on the chromosome browser, that you and your sibling match at these locations, above.

In reality, though, you have two copies of each chromosome, one from Mom and one from Dad, and so does your sibling.

In this example, Mom’s chromosome is visualized on top, and Dad’s is on the bottom, below, but as a tester, you don’t know that. All you know is that you match your sibling on all of those blue areas, above.

However, what’s actually happening in this example is that you are matching your sibling on parts of your mother’s chromosome and parts of your father’s chromosome, shown above as green areas

23andMe looks at both copies of your chromosome, the one you inherited from Mom, on top, and Dad, on the bottom, to see if you match your sibling on BOTH your mother’s and your father’s chromosomes in that location.

I’ve boxed the green matching areas in purple where you match your sibling fully, on both parents’ chromosomes.

If you and your sibling share both parents, you will share significant amounts of the same DNA on both copies of the same chromosomes, meaning maternal and paternal. In other words, full siblings share some purple fully identical regions (FIR) of DNA with each other, while half-siblings do not (unless they are also otherwise related) because half-siblings only share one parent with each other. Their DNA can’t be fully identical because they have a different parent that contributed the other copy of their chromosome.

Total Shared DNA Fully Identical DNA from Both Parents
Full Siblings ~50% ~25%
Half Siblings ~25% 0
  • Full siblings are expected to share about 50% of the same DNA. In other words, their DNA will match at that location. That’s all the green boxed locations, above.
  • Full siblings are expected to share about 25% of the same DNA from BOTH parents at the same location on BOTH copies of their chromosomes. These are fully identical regions and are boxed in purple, above.

You’ll find fully identical segments about 25% of the time in full siblings, but you won’t find fully identical segments in half-siblings. Please note that there are exceptions for ¾ siblings and endogamous populations.

You can view each match at 23andMe to see if you have any completely identical regions, shown in dark purple in the top comparison of full siblings. Half siblings are shown in the second example, with less total matching DNA and no FIR or completely identical regions.

Please note that your matching amount of DNA will probably be higher at 23andMe than at other companies because:

  • 23andMe includes the X chromosome in the match totals
  • 23andMe counts fully identical matching regions twice. For full siblings, that’s an additional 25%

Therefore, a full sibling with an X match will have a higher total cM at 23andMe than the same siblings elsewhere because not only is the X added into the total, the FIR match region is added a second time too.

Fully Identical Regions (FIR) and Half Identical Regions (HIR) at GEDmatch

At GEDMatch, you can compare two people to each other, with an option to display the matching information and a painted graphic for each chromosome that includes FIR and HIR.

If you need to know if you and a match share fully identical regions and you haven’t tested at 23andMe, you can both upload your DNA data file to GEDmatch and use their One to One Autosomal DNA Comparison.

On the following page, simply enter both kit numbers and accept the defaults, making sure you have selected one of the graphics options.

While GEDmatch doesn’t specifically tell you whether someone is a full or half sibling, you can garner additional information about the relationship based on the graphic at GEDmatch.

GEDMatch shows both half and fully identical regions.

The above match is between two full siblings using a 7 cM threshold. The blue on the bottom bar indicates a match of 7 cM or larger. Black means no match.

The green regions in the top bar indicate places where these two people carry the same DNA on both copies of their chromosome 1. This means that both people inherited the same DNA from BOTH parents on the green segments.

In the yellow regions, the siblings inherited the same DNA from ONE parent, but different DNA in that region from the other parent. They do match each other, just on one of their chromosomes, not both.

Without a tool like this to differentiate between HIR and FIR, you can’t tell if you’re matching someone on one copy of your chromosome, or on both copies.

In the areas marked with red on top, which corresponds to the black on the bottom band, these two siblings don’t match each other because they inherited different DNA from both parents in that region. The yellow in that region is too scattered to be significant.

Full siblings generally share a significant amount of FIR, or fully identical regions of DNA – about 25%.

Half siblings will share NO significant amount of FIR, although some will be FIR on very small, scattered green segments simply by chance, as you can see in the example, below.

This half-sibling match shares no segments large enough to be a match (7 cM) in the black section. In the blue matching section, only a few small green fragments of DNA match fully, which, based on the rest of that matching segment, must be identical by chance or misreads. There are no significant contiguous segments of fully identical DNA.

When dealing with full or half-siblings, you’re not interested in small, scattered segments of fully identical regions, like those green snippets on chromosome 6, but in large contiguous sections of matching DNA like the chromosome 1 example.

GEDmatch can help when you match when a vendor does not provide FIR/HIR information, and you need additional assistance.

Next, let’s look at full and half-siblings at FamilyTreeDNA

Sibling Matches at FamilyTreeDNA

FamilyTreeDNA does identify full siblings.

Relationships other than full siblings are indicated by a range. The two individuals below are both half-sibling matches to the tester.

The full range when mousing over the relationship ranges is shown below.

DNAPainter agrees except also gives full siblings as an option for the two half-siblings.

FamilyTreeDNA also tells you if you have an X match and the size of your X match.

We will talk about X matching in a minute, which, when dealing with sibling identification, can turn out to be very important.

Sibling Matches at MyHeritage

MyHeritage indicates brother or sister for full siblings

MyHeritage provides other “Estimated relationships” for matches too small to be full siblings.

DNAPainter’s chart agrees with this classification, except adds additional relationship possibilities.

Be sure to review all of the information provided by each vendor for close relationships.

View Close Known Relationships

The next easiest step to take is to compare your full or half-sibling match to known close family members from your maternal and paternal sides, respectively. The closer the family members, the better.

It’s often not possible to determine if someone is a half sibling or a full sibling by centiMorgans (cMs) alone, especially if you’re searching for unknown family members.

Let’s start with the simplest situation first.

Let’s say both of your parents have tested, and of course, you match both of them as parents.

Your new “very close match” is in the sibling range.

The first thing to do at each vendor is to utilize that vendor’s shared matches tool and see whether your new match matches one parent, or both.

Here’s an example.

Close Relationships at FamilyTreeDNA

This person has a full sibling match, but let’s say they don’t know who this is and wants to see if their new sibling matches one or both of their parents.

Select the match by checking the box to the left of the match name, then click on the little two-person icon at far right, which shows “In Common” matches

You can see on the resulting shared match list that both of the tester’s parents are shown on the shared match list.

Now let’s make this a little more difficult.

No Parents, No Problem

Let’s say neither of your parents has tested.

If you know who your family is and can identify your matches, you can see if the sibling you match matches other close relatives on both or either side of your family.

You’ll want to view shared matches with your closest known match on both sides of your tree, beginning with the closest first. Aunts, uncles, first cousins, etc.

You will match all of your family members through second cousins, and 90% of your third cousins. You can view additional relationship percentages in the article, How Much of Them is in You?.

I recommend, for this matching purpose, to utilize 2nd cousins and closer. That way you know for sure if you don’t share them as a match with your sibling, it’s because the sibling is not related on that side of the family, not because they simply don’t share any DNA due to their distance.

In this example, you have three sibling matches. Based on your and their matches to the same known first and second cousins, you can see that:

  • Sibling 1 is your full sibling, because you both match the same maternal and paternal first and second cousins
  • Sibling 2 is your paternal half-sibling because you both match paternal second cousins and closer, but not maternal cousins.
  • Sibling 3 is your maternal half-sibling because you both match maternal second cousins and closer, but not paternal cousins.

Close Relationships at Ancestry

Neither of my parents have tested, but my first cousin on my mother’s side has. Let’s say I have a suspected sibling or half-sibling match, so I click on the match’s name, then on Shared Matches.

Sure enough, my new match also matches my first cousin that I’ve labeled as “on my mother’s side.”

If my new match in the sibling range also matches my second cousins or closer on my father’s side, the new match is a full sibling, not a half-sibling.

Close Relationships at MyHeritage

Comparing my closest match provided a real surprise. I wonder if I’ve found a half-sibling to my mother.

Now, THIS is interesting.

Hmmm. More research is needed, beginning with the age of my match. MyHeritage provides ages if the MyHeritage member authorizes that information to be shared.

Close Relationships at 23andMe

Under DNA Relatives, click on your suspected sibling match, then scroll down and select “Find Relatives in Common.”

The Relatives in Common list shows people that match both of you.

The first common match is very close and a similar relationship to my closest match on my father’s side. This would be expected of a sibling. I have no common matches with this match to anyone on my mother’s side, so they are only related on my father’s side. Therefore they are a paternal half-sibling, not a full sibling.

More Tools Are Available

Hopefully, by now, you’ve been able to determine if your mystery match is a sibling, and if so, if they are a half or full sibling, and through which parent.

We have some additional tools that are relevant and can be very informative in some circumstances. I suggest utilizing these tools, even if you think you know the answer.

In this type of situation, there’s no such thing as too much information.

X Matching

X matching, or lack thereof, may help you determine how you are related to someone.

There are two types of autosomal DNA. The X chromosome versus chromosomes 1-22. The X chromosome (number 23) has a unique inheritance path that distinguishes it from your other chromosomes.

The X chromosome inheritance path also differs between men and women.

Here’s my pedigree chart in fan form, highlighting the ancestors who may have contributed a portion of their X chromosome to me. In the closest generation, this shows that I inherited an X chromosome from both of my parents, and who in each of their lines could have contributed an X to them.

The white or uncolored positions, meaning ancestors, cannot contribute any portion of an X chromosome to me based on how the X chromosome is inherited.

You’ll notice that my father inherited none of his X chromosome from any of his paternal ancestors, so of course, I can’t inherit what he didn’t inherit. There are a very limited number of ancestors on my father’s side whom I can inherit any portion of an X chromosome from.

Men receive their Y chromosome from their fathers, so men ONLY receive an X chromosome from their mother.

Therefore, men MUST pass their mother’s X chromosome on to their female offspring because they don’t have any other copy of the X chromosome to pass on.

Men pass no X chromosome to sons.

We don’t need to worry about a full fan chart when dealing with siblings and half-siblings.

We only need to be concerned with the testers plus one generation (parents) when utilizing the X chromosome in sibling situations.

These two female Disney Princesses, above, are full siblings, and both inherited an X chromosome from BOTH their mother and father. However, their father only has one X (red) chromosome to give them, so the two females MUST match on the entire red X chromosome from their father.

Their mother has two X chromosomes, green and black, to contribute – one from each of her parents.

The full siblings, Melody, and Cinderella:

  • May have inherited some portion of the same green and black X chromosomes from their mother, so they are partial matches on their mother’s X chromosome.
  • May have inherited the exact same full X chromosome from their mother (both inherited the entire green or both inherited the entire black), so they match fully on their mother’s X chromosome.
  • May have inherited the opposite X from different maternal grandparents. One inherited the entire green X and one inherited the entire black X, so they don’t match on their mother’s X chromosome.

Now, let’s look at Cinderella, who matches Henry.

This female and male full sibling match can’t share an X chromosome on the father’s side, because the male’s father doesn’t contribute an X chromosome to him. The son, Henry, inherited a Y chromosome instead from his father, which is what made them males.

Therefore, if a male and female match on the X chromosome, it MUST be through HIS mother, but could be through either of her parents. In a sibling situation, an X match between a male and female always indicates the mother.

In the example above, the two people share both of their mother’s X chromosomes, so are definitely (at least) maternally related. They could be full siblings, but we can’t determine that by the X chromosome in this situation, with males.

However, if the male matches the female on HER father’s X chromosome, there a different message, example below.

You can see that the male is related to the female on her father’s side, where she inherited the entire magenta X chromosome. The male inherited a portion of the magenta X chromosome from his mother, so these two people do have an X match. However, he matches on his mother’s side, and she matches on her father’s side, so that’s clearly not the same parent.

  • These people CAN NOT be full siblings because they don’t match on HER mother’s side too, which would also be his mother’s side if they were full siblings.
  • They cannot be maternal half-siblings because their X DNA only matches on her father’s side, but they wouldn’t know that unless she knew which side was which based on share matches.
  • They cannot be paternal half-siblings because he does not have an X chromosome from his father.

They could, however, be uncle/aunt-niece/nephew or first cousins on his mother’s side and her father’s side. (Yes, you’re definitely going to have to read this again if you ever need male-female X matching.)

Now, let’s look at X chromosome matching between two males. It’s a lot less complicated and much more succinct.

Neither male has inherited an X chromosome from their father, so if two males DO match on the X, it MUST be through their mother. In terms of siblings, this would mean they share the same mother.

However, there is one slight twist. In the above example, you can see that the men inherited a different proportion of the green and black X chromosomes from their common mother. However, it is possible that the mother could contribute her entire green X chromosome to one son, Justin in this example, and her entire black X chromosome to Henry.

Therefore, even though Henry and Justin DO share a mother, their X chromosome would NOT match in this scenario. This is rare but does occasionally happen.

Based on the above examples, the X chromosome may be relevant in the identification of full or half siblings based on the sexes of the two people who otherwise match at a level indicating a full or half-sibling relationship.

Here’s a summary chart for sibling X matching.

X Match Female Male
Female Will match on shared father’s full X chromosome, mother’s X is the same rules as chromosomes 1-22 Match through male’s mother, but either of female’s parents. If the X match is not through the female’s mother, they are not full siblings nor maternal half-siblings. They cannot have an X match through the male’s father. They are either full or half-siblings through their mother if they match on both of their mother’s side. If they match on his mother’s side, and her father’s side, they are not siblings but could be otherwise closely related.
Male Match through male’s mother, but either of female’s parents. If the X match is not through the female’s mother, they are not full siblings nor maternal half-siblings. They cannot have an X match through the male’s father. They are either full or half-siblings through their mother if they match on both or their mother’s side. If they match on his mother’s side, and her father’s side, they are not siblings but could be otherwise closely related. Both males are related on their mother’s side – either full or half-siblings.

Here’s the information presented in a different way.

DOES match X summary:

  • If a male DOES match a female on the X, he IS related to her through HIS mother’s side, but could match her on her mother or father’s side. If their match is not through her mother, then they are not full siblings nor maternal half-siblings. They cannot match through his father, so they cannot be paternal half-siblings.
  • If a female DOES match a female on the X, they could be related on either side and could be full or half-siblings.
  • If a male DOES match a male on the X, they ARE both related through their mother. They may also be related on their father’s side, but the X does not inform us of that.

Does NOT match X summary:

  • If a male does NOT match a female on the X, they are NOT related through HIS mother and are neither full siblings nor maternal half-siblings. Since a male does not have an X chromosome from his father, they cannot be paternal half-siblings based on an X match.
  • If a male does NOT match a male, they do NOT share a mother.
  • If a female does NOT match another female on the X, they are NOT full siblings and are NOT half-siblings on their paternal side. Their father only has one X chromosome, and he would have given the same X to both daughters.

Of the four autosomal vendors, only 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA report X chromosome results and matching, although the other two vendors, MyHeritage and Ancestry, include the X in their DNA download file so you can find X matches with those files at either FamilyTreeDNA or GEDMatch if your match has or will upload their file to either of those vendors. I wrote step-by-step detailed download/upload instructions, here.

X Matching at FamilyTreeDNA

In this example from FamilyTreeDNA, the female tester has discovered two half-sibling matches, both through her father. In the first scenario, she matches a female on the full X chromosome (181 cM). She and her half-sibling MUST share their father’s entire X chromosome because he only had one X, from his mother, to contribute to both of his daughters.

In the second match to a male half-sibling, our female tester shares NO X match because her father did not contribute an X chromosome to his son.

If we didn’t know which parents these half-sibling matches were through, we can infer from the X matching alone that the male is probably NOT through the mother.

Then by comparing shared matches with each sibling, Advanced Matches, or viewing the match Matrix, we can determine if the siblings match each other and are from the same or different sides of the family.

Under Additional Tests and Tools, Advanced Matching, FamilyTreeDNA provides an additional tool that can show only X matches combined with relationships.

Of course, you’ll need to view shared matches to see which people match the mother and/or match the father.

To see who matches each other, you’ll need to use the Matrix tool.

At FamilyTreeDNA, the Matrix, located under Autosomal DNA Results and Tools, allows you to select your matches to see if they also match each other. If you have known half-siblings, or close relatives, this is another way to view relationships.

Here’s an example using my father and two paternal half-siblings. We can see that the half-siblings also match each other, so they are (at least) half-siblings on the paternal side too.

If they also matched my mother, we would be full siblings, of course.

Next, let’s use Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA.

Y DNA and Mitochondrial DNA

In addition to autosomal DNA, we can utilize Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in some cases to identify siblings or to narrow or eliminate relationship possibilities.

Given that Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA both have distinctive inheritance paths, full and half-siblings will, or will not, match under various circumstances.

Y DNA

Y DNA is passed intact from father to son, meaning it’s not admixed with any of the mother’s DNA. Daughters do not inherit Y DNA from their father, so Y DNA is only useful for male-to-male comparisons.

Two types of Y DNA are used for genealogy, STR markers for matching, and haplogroups, and both are equally powerful in slightly different ways.

Y DNA at FamilyTreeDNA

Men can order either 37 or 111 STR marker tests, or the BIg Y which provides more than 700 markers and more. FamilyTreeDNA is the only one of the vendors to offer Y DNA testing that includes STR markers and matching between men.

Men who order these tests will be compared for matching on either 37, 111 or 700 STR markers in addition to SNP markers used for haplogroup identification and assignment.

Fathers will certainly match their sons, and paternal line brothers will match each other, but they will also match people more distantly related.

However, if two men are NOT either full or half siblings on the paternal side, they won’t match at 111 markers.

If two men DON’T match, especially at high marker levels, they likely aren’t siblings. The word “likely” is in there because, very occasionally, a large deletion occurs that prevents STR matching, especially at lower levels.

Additionally, men who take the 37 or 111 marker test also receive an estimated haplogroup at a high level for free, without any additional testing.

However, if men take the Big Y-700 test, they not only will (or won’t) match on up to 700 STR markers, they will also receive a VERY refined haplogroup via SNP marker testing that is often even more sensitive in terms of matching than STR markers. Between these two types of markers, Y DNA testing can place men very granularly in relation to other men.

Men can match in two ways on Y DNA, and the results are very enlightening.

If two men match on BOTH their most refined haplogroup (Big Y test) AND STR markers, they could certainly be siblings or father/son. They could also be related on the same line for another reason, such as known or unknown cousins or closer relationships like uncle/nephew. Of course, Y DNA, in addition to autosomal matching, is a powerful combination.

Conversely, if two men don’t have a similar or close haplogroup, they are not a father and son or paternal line siblings.

FamilyTreeDNA offers both inexpensive entry-level testing (37 and 111 markers) and highly refined advanced testing of most of the Y chromosome (Big Y-700), so haplogroup assignments can vary widely based on the test you take. This makes haplogroup matching and interpretation a bit more complex.

For example, haplogroups R-M269 and I-BY14000 are not related in thousands of years. One is haplogroup R, and one is haplogroup I – completely different branches of the Y DNA tree. These two men won’t match on STR markers or their haplogroup.

However, because FamilyTreeDNA provides over 50,000 different haplogroups, or tree branches, for Big Y testers, and they provide VERY granular matching, two father/son or sibling males who have BOTH tested at the Big Y-700 level will have either the exact same haplogroup, or at most, one branch difference on the tree if a mutation occurred between father and son.

If both men have NOT tested at the Big Y-700 level, their haplogroups will be on the same branch. For example, a man who has only taken a 37/111 marker STR test may be estimated at R-M269, which is certainly accurate as far as it goes.

His sibling who has taken a Big Y test will be many branches further downstream on the tree – but on the same large haplogroup R-M269 branch. It’s essential to pay attention to which tests a Y DNA match has taken when analyzing the match.

The beauty of the two kinds of tests is that even if one haplogroup is very general due to no Big Y test, their STR markers should still match. It’s just that sometimes this means that one hand is tied behind your back.

Y DNA matching alone can eliminate the possibility of a direct paternal line connection, but it cannot prove siblingship or paternity alone – not without additional information.

The Advanced Matching tool will provide a list of matches in all categories selected – in this case, both the 111 markers and the Family Finder test. You can see that one of these men is the father of the tester, and one is the full sibling.

You can view haplogroup assignments on the public Y DNA tree, here. I wrote about using the public tree, here.

In addition, recently, FamilyTreeDNA launched the new Y DNA Discover tool, which explains more about haplogroups, including their ages and other fun facts like migration paths along with notable and ancient connections. I wrote about using the Discover tool, here.

Y DNA at 23andMe

Testers receive a base haplogroup with their autosomal test. 23andMe tests a limited number of Y DNA SNP locations, but they don’t test many, and they don’t test STR markers, so there is no Y DNA matching and no refined haplogroups.

You can view the haplogroups of your matches. If your male sibling match does NOT share the same haplogroup, the two men are not paternal line siblings. If two men DO share the same haplogroup, they MIGHT be paternal siblings. They also might not.

Again, autosomal close matching plus haplogroup comparisons include or exclude paternal side siblings for males.

Paternal side siblings at 23andMe share the same haplogroup, but so do many other people. These two men could be siblings. The haplogroups don’t exclude that possibility. If the haplogroups were different, that would exclude being either full or paternal half-siblings.

Men can also compare their mitochondrial DNA to eliminate a maternal relationship.

These men are not full siblings or maternal half-siblings. We know, unquestionably, because their mitochondrial haplogroups don’t match.

23andMe also constructs a genetic tree, but often struggles with close relative placement, especially when half-relationships are involved. I do not recommend relying on the genetic tree in this circumstance.

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mothers to all of their children, but only females pass it on. If two people, males or females, don’t match on their mitochondrial DNA test, with a couple of possible exceptions, they are NOT full siblings, and they are NOT maternal half-siblings.

Mitochondrial DNA at 23andMe

23andMe provides limited, base mitochondrial haplogroups, but no matching. If two people don’t have the same haplogroup at 23andMe, they aren’t full or maternal siblings, as illustrated above.

Mitochondrial DNA at FamilyTreeDNA

FamilyTreeDNA provides both mitochondrial matching AND a much more refined haplogroup. The full sequence test (mtFull), the only version sold today, is essential for reliable comparisons.

Full siblings or maternal half-siblings will always share the same haplogroup, regardless of their sex.

Generally, a full sibling or maternal half-sibling match will match exactly at the full mitochondrial sequence (FMS) level with a genetic distance of zero, meaning fully matching and no mismatching mutations.

There are rare instances where maternal siblings or even mothers and children do not match exactly, meaning they have a genetic distance of greater than 0, because of a mutation called a heteroplasmy.

I wrote about heteroplasmies, here.

Like Y DNA, mitochondrial DNA cannot identify a sibling or parental relationship without additional evidence, but it can exclude one, and it can also provide much-needed evidence in conjunction with autosomal matching. The great news is that unlike Y DNA, everyone has mitochondrial DNA and it comes directly from their mother.

Once again, FamilyTreeDNA’s Advanced Matching tool provides a list of people who match you on both your mitochondrial DNA test and the Family Finder autosomal test, including transfers/uploads, and provides a relationship.

You can see that our tester matches both a full sibling and their mother. Of course, a parent/child match could mean that our tester is a female and one of her children, of either sex, has tested.

Below is an example of a parent-child match that has experienced a heteroplasmy.

Based on the comparison of both the mitochondrial DNA test, plus the autosomal Family Finder test, you can verify that this is a close family relationship.

You can also eliminate potential relationships based on the mitochondrial DNA inheritance path. The mitochondrial DNA of full siblings and maternal half-siblings will always match at the full sequence and haplogroup level, and paternal half-siblings will never match. If paternal half-siblings do match, it’s happenstance or because of a different reason.

Sibling Summary and Checklist

I’ve created a quick reference checklist for you to use when attempting to determine whether or not a match is a sibling, and, if so, whether they are half or full siblings. Of course, these tools are in addition to the DNAPainter Shared cM Tool and GEDmatch’s Relationship Predictor Calculator.

FamilyTreeDNA Ancestry 23andMe MyHeritage GEDmatch
Matching Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Shared Matches Yes – In Common With Yes – Shared Matches Yes – Relatives in Common Yes – Review DNA Match Yes – People who match both or 1 of 2 kits
Relationship Between Shared Matches No No No Yes, under shared match No
Matches Match Each Other* Yes, Matrix No Yes, under “View DNA details,” then, “compare with more relatives” Partly, through triangulation Yes, can match any kits
Full Siblings Yes Sibling, implies full Yes Brother, Sister, means full No
Half Siblings Sibling, Uncle/Aunt-Niece/Nephew, Grandparent-Grandchild Close Family – 1C Yes Half sibling, aunt/uncle-niece-nephew No
Fully Identical Regions (FIR) No No Yes No Yes
Half Identical Regions (HIR) No No Yes No Yes
X matching Yes No Yes No Yes
Unusual Reporting or Anomalies No No, Timber is not used on close relationships X match added into total, FIR added twice No Matching amount can vary from vendors
Y DNA Yes, STRs, refined haplogroups, matching No High-level haplogroup only, no matching No No, only if tester enters haplogroup manually
Mitochondrial DNA Yes, full sequence, matching, refined haplogroup No High-level haplogroup only, no matching No No, only if tester enters haplogroup manually
Combined Tools (Autosomal, X, Y, mtDNA) Yes No No No No

*Autoclusters through Genetic Affairs show cluster relationships of matches to the tester and to each other, but not all matches are included, including close matches. While this is a great tool, it’s not relevant for determining close and sibling relationships. See the article, AutoClustering by Genetic Affairs, here.

Additional Resources

Some of you may be wondering how endogamy affects sibling numbers.

Endogamy makes almost everything a little more complex. I wrote about endogamy and various ways to determine if you have an endogamous heritage, here.

Please note that half-siblings with high cM matches also fall into the range of full siblings (1613-3488), with or without endogamy. This may be, but is not always, especially pronounced in endogamous groups.

As another resource, I wrote an earlier article, Full or Half Siblings, here, that includes some different examples.

Strategy

You have a lot of quills in your quiver now, and I wish you the best if you’re trying to unravel a siblingship mystery.

You may not know who your biological family is, or maybe your sibling doesn’t know who their family is, but perhaps your close relatives know who their family is and can help. Remember, the situation that has revealed itself may be a shock to everyone involved.

Above all, be kind and take things slow. If your unexpected sibling match becomes frightened or overwhelmed, they may simply check out and either delete their DNA results altogether or block you. They may have that reaction before you have a chance to do anything.

Because of that possibility, I recommend performing your analysis quickly, along with taking relevant screenshots before reaching out so you will at least have that much information to work with, just in case things go belly up.

When you’re ready to make contact, I suggest beginning by sending a friendly, short, message saying that you’ve noticed that you have a close match (don’t say sibling) and asking what they know about their family genealogy – maybe ask who their grandparents are or if they have family living in the area where you live. I recommend including a little bit of information about yourself, such as where you were born and are from.

I also refrain from using the word adoption (or similar) in the beginning or giving too much detailed information, because it sometimes frightens people, especially if they know or discover that there’s a painful or embarrassing family situation.

And, please, never, ever assume the worst of anyone or their motives. They may be sitting at their keyboard with the same shocked look on their face as you – especially if they have, or had, no idea. They may need space and time to reach a place of acceptance. There’s just nothing more emotionally boat-capsizing in your life than discovering intimate and personal details about your parents, one or both, especially if that discovery is disappointing and image-altering.

Or, conversely, your sibling may have been hoping and waiting just for you!

Take a deep breath and let me know how it goes!

Please feel free to share this article with anyone who could benefit.

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