Great video, I wish had found it earlier as it is so logical. I have self learnt most of these techniques over the years, but this video could have saved me months of trial and error.
What Ancestry needs: (1) a group migration tool that would show families who lived in one county at one point and another county at a later date. (2) Highlighting other people on a census page that are connected to trees where the root person in the tree is a DNA match.
One of the tools I create are cluster groups in common with 2 matches that match a kit but not necessarily match each other. These have helped identify which group is likely your central group giving you an even smaller group to concentrate on.
Thank you for this video Andrew I was feeling overwhelmed with all the work in front of me but this has at least given me a great way to start. I am really finding your content to be helpful.
Filtering out your matches can quite difficult and reveal surprises. I have one family I am related to on both sides of my family through both of my grandfathers. And then on my mom's side of the family I have a fourth grade uncle that married two different cousins. There are a lot of other families that I'm related two on both sides of my family there are some families I'm related to on both sides multiple times.
What can make things awkward is when you have tons of matches that have connections on both parents kits. Unfortunately they only appear on one side because the other side is under the cut off limit, so I have to use the shared matches to build groups of parent1, parent2, both parents. Some even match me distantly but don’t match either parent. Looking at a few of the shared matches point at parental groups again.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics maybe not. For example say they match me at 15cM. That could mean they match both my parents at 7.5cM each. Both under the match cut off of 8cM. Now, if I didn’t have known matches that share DNA with both my parents on different chromosomes I would agree with you but now I have this other possibility to consider. If I didn’t have my parents tested would I ignore a 15cM match? Granted these are low enough to not concentrate on but ignore, only if they do not match any other matches of interest on either side of the family :)
Hi , i am an orphan with no family, watching your videos gave me strenght to look for my biological parents but when i tested my dna there is no close relatives that matches, only 1st cousin twice removed -2nd cousin once removed and they all live in other continent from where i live. i think its desesperate quest. thanks for your videos
I just found my father with only 2nd cousin matches. Look up the Leeds method or look for DNA detective groups on Facebook as search angels help orphans and adoptees for free
You could have a case of small families. ua-cam.com/video/pJDjHg13QgI/v-deo.html You could also have the case that your relatives live in an area where DNA testing is restricted or prohibited. The key to solving these types of mysteries is patience.
I like to know that also! I have a half brother from my father! Are all our shared matches related to my father side and doesnt that conflict with my X dna and their Y dna? Confusing 🥴😄
@@tamaradox - The X and Y chromosomes do not affect your DNA matches and relationships. The DNA testing companies use autosomal DNA tests, not X-chromosome and Y-chromosome tests. Each female has two X chromosomes, one directly from her mother and one from her father, which he got from his mother. Each male has one X chromosome from his mother and one Y chromosome from his father. These are called the sex chromosomes, since they determine the sex of the child. The autosomal DNA test looks as all of your cells, not just the sex-determining cells. So, all of your DNA matches that you share with your paternal half brother are related to you on your father's side.
Lynn Taylor Buccafuri - Yes, if your half sister is related to you through your mother, then any shared matches that you have are also related to you through your mother's side.
@@tamaradox - That's the nice thing about UA-cam. We each discover videos when we're ready, not when they are posted. And I can listen to music from the 70's every day!
So my maternal 4th great grandfather had an article written about his life but I’ve had a hard time proving the article with documentation. So I decided to go the genetic route. I did the Leeds Method on my maternal grandfather’s ancestry dna and found 4 groupings between 90-400 cM. But only one person was in the 4th group at 101 cM. I suspect he would help unlock information about this 4th great grandfather. We don’t seem to connect according his tree I’ve built out and his matches trees I’m building. My ancestor’s surname keeps showing up but it was a common one. The closest other shared matches to him are in the 40-70 cM range. I have identified 3 common ancestor groups from his shared matches and i have made floating branches on my tree for them but I’m struggling to understand how to connect them. I keep trying to go further back to see if they eventually link up. Is that the right step? I’m struggling to wrap my head around which direction to be building the tree to look for connection. I have been watching your videos looking for the next strategy to try.
The next strategy to try is the WATO tool. If you have known matches that share a family tree, then you place yourself as the 'unknown'. Input the clustered groups into the tree on WATO and they you will have some hypothesis of how you fit in the tree. The greater the percent likelihood of a relationship, the more evidence you have to help solve your research question.
Ok, we've got phased matches and leeds charts and I dont know what all else I've heard you mention, how about doing a 5 or 10 steps list that picks up after you have up loaded your gedcom file. What do we do first? Second? Third? And btw thanks for your videos. I'm sure they are going to be very helpful.
I have an underwhelming amount of matches to sort through. I do have a question about total matching DNA. I see a few matches that have a lot of matching tiny pieces of DNA and then others that have none. Does this mean that maybe the matches with a lot of tiny matching pieces might be a closer match? Or is it more like DNA noise and meaningless?
Just watched aConstance Knox video that mentioned the tiny pieces; her guest speaker said that they can be a sign of endogamy, or perhaps the fact that the two matches both come from a small town or isolated area... ua-cam.com/video/Ilgl5707iP4/v-deo.html
Devon has an underwhelming amount of DNA matches to sort through as well. Of those with the small segments, she has to rely on shared trees to determine how people are related and most DNA matches that far removed don't know their family lines or won't share their family trees. Small segments under 7 cm is typically noise, with a few exceptions. Small segments under 40 cm are hard to determine how and where people's lines crossed.
I'm trying to figure out why 1st cousins would be useful. They would be the children of your father's or your mother's brothers and sisters and you probably know them anyway, so how is that helpful? The only way I can see that that might be helpful is if you don't know your family. For most people, though, the relationships would already be known.
Building a family tree with genetic matches requires you to match your DNA to that of both known and unknown matches. When you have access to the DNA of known 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. You can then triangulate your matches with them. If an unknown match matches you and your 1st cousin on your mother's side but doesn't match you and your 1st cousin on your father's side, then it's likely this match shares common ancestors from your mother's side.
I have discovered who my Great Grandfather was by separating the matches by paternal/maternal line and then doing it again for all eight lines. This was a break through because her birth record says she was adopted and it had the fathers name but it is totally incorrect. In order to confirm this do I need to find a descendent from his line and have them take a DNA test?
That would be helpful. You may already have a match in the database that fits this criteria, you just need to do some family tree research on their lines.
Test as many people as you can on your father's side. Then, you can use that to sort your mother's side out from your fathers. That is unless your father and mother are closely related. But, start there and see what happens.
Sadly I only have two close relatives on ancestry. A brother and a cousin. I have a small and disconnected family. So using these easier tips won’t work for me. Also you say to filter by different segments or maternal and paternal but you don’t say “how”. I have a ton of fourth cousins and that’s what I have to work with. So where do I start when I have so little to work with?
In my case, I was able to filter by maternal/paternal because my parents have tested. For my wife, we have have cousins on both sides of her family tree that help us filter the results. Those lines do not cross so anyone who matches her paternal cousin would be her father's line and vice versa. Many of the tips will help you as you being to see who matches whom, even with the few close relatives that you have. You will likely need to do some genealogical research to find out who you would like to invite to test. If you're searching for biological parents when you're adopted, that's another series on this channel.
I have three dna cousins: a mother and her daughter and son. They are related on my paternal grandfather's line. I only know my grandfather's name and where he was born. He changed his full name when my father was a baby. Ancestry has all three DNA cousins as 4th-6th cousins and 23andMe has all three as 3rd cousins. Ancestry- Mom: 85cM /5 segments, 23andMe- 112 cM / 3 segments; son: Ancestry- 54 cM/ 3 segments, 23andMe- 72 cM/ 2 segments; daughter: Ancestry- 65 cM/ 2 segments, 23andMe- 92 cM/ 3 segments. Do you have suggestions on how to work on this?
Since it is a mother and her children, you really only have 1 DNA cousin to worry about, the mother. Until you get some more (that aren't descended from the mother), you are in a waiting game.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I match the mother and daughter on the X chromosome. So I was trying to figure out if this is a clue to which line to follow. I figure now that it may be my paternal grandmother's line. Do you think knowing that the X chromosome is there for the mother and daughter is helpful? Both the mother and daughter discovered they were raised by fathers who were not their biological dads. Thank you for being so kind to answer my questions. I wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year! 🎄🥂
Love your family videos... I always learn something. Mom had her DNA done (Ancestry) as did I (waiting for results). I was looking over Mom's results and noticed most of her cousins are listed as R R managed by Someone. I lnow we are related but how can I figure out who these people are?
Not quite. You should get two kits which each have half of the information of the child kit. One kit will be what the child got from the father (or 50% of the father's DNA) and one kit will be what the child got from the mother (or 50% of the mother's DNA).
It's the locations, locations that is the problem. None of the sites out there seem very useful in identifying locations. Gedmatch used to, alas no longer. FamilyTreeDNA also did so as well, but, again alas. It is very hard digging in order to identify common location origins. Surnames change or become lost in time, but that geographical stuff just keeps on rolling along.
The problem is that the locations aren't ingrained into your DNA any more than a surname is. There in lies the problem with DNA research. It has to be combined with paper trail research and that's not always an option.
When you key in that cM into the website tool dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 You'll see that 464 cM has a number of options: Great-Great-Aunt / Uncle Half Great-Aunt / Uncle Half 1C 1C1R Half Great-Niece / Nephew Great-Great-Niece / Nephew
Hi there. I was recently contacted because my husband shows as a cousin with that person (99cm) on one website and doesn't show up at all on another, even though that "cousin" was tested by both sites. My husband was only tested by the non-matched site, the data was shared with the other site. Why might this happen?
I would suspect that perhaps the settings are off on one of the websites. Either your husband or the cousin has one of their company's privacy settings set to private.
Grouping by color has helped me in Ancestry. However, I didn't realize that grouping maternal and paternal families in a shared color groups and now my reds/pinks/purples are throughout both sides. Is there an easy way to change this? I'd hate to have to start over from scratch.
I need some help if you have a video for it that would be awesome! My question is I have found the common ancestor amongst a group of matches. Now how do you narrow down to my ancestor? Hope this makes sense if you could lead me in a general direction for help with this I would appreciate it!
you need to build your tree from your own research (sorry if you already have) then build their trees and link them into yours though research and info - ancestry is pretty useful for that. You should then be able to link them together. If you have thrulines on ancestry that should also show you.
Cario is correct. You need to begin testing hypotheses. In traditional genealogy, we would have potential ancestors and we would look for records for each set of common ancestral couples. We would keep researching them until we had enough records to resolve the question of who is related to whom. Now, with genetic genealogy, if we still can't figure it out, we find as many descendants as possible for each couple and see how we fit into the clusters of descendants. We can often eliminate possibilities quickly in this fashion by using DNA triangulation and the WATO tool. ua-cam.com/video/d6LxMH0zS54/v-deo.html
I have a match with someone who shares 273 cm over 14 segments (2nd-3rd cousin) with me. However, there are no shared ancestors. I am at a loss? I have heard that my father has his step father's name and we do not know who his real father is. My father passed away 3 years ago so I am unable to retrieve DNA from him. Neither of his siblings have the same father so I cannot research through them. His mother took the secret of his real father to her grave. I have found a name and it happens to be the same name as the person I matched. I have no idea how to proceed. I have tried to make contact with the match but I am sure they wouldnt know if an ancestor of theirs fathered an illegitimate child? Please help!!!!
There is a group called DNAadoption.org that has classes. They may also connect you with an Adoption Search Angel, for free. When you contact them, it's good to state your research question, such as I want to learn who my father's biological father is.
I've used #1 - 3 and had great luck. using these 3 I have been able to figure out how I'm related to 90% of people I share 100cm and more.
Awesome
Great video, I wish had found it earlier as it is so logical. I have self learnt most of these techniques over the years, but this video could have saved me months of trial and error.
Glad to hear it.
What Ancestry needs: (1) a group migration tool that would show families who lived in one county at one point and another county at a later date. (2) Highlighting other people on a census page that are connected to trees where the root person in the tree is a DNA match.
Devon really likes the second option.
One of the tools I create are cluster groups in common with 2 matches that match a kit but not necessarily match each other. These have helped identify which group is likely your central group giving you an even smaller group to concentrate on.
Thanks :) Very helpful video.
You're welcome
Thank you for this video Andrew I was feeling overwhelmed with all the work in front of me but this has at least given me a great way to start. I am really finding your content to be helpful.
Glad it helped!
This info is great Andrew
Glad you enjoyed it.
Filtering out your matches can quite difficult and reveal surprises. I have one family I am related to on both sides of my family through both of my grandfathers. And then on my mom's side of the family I have a fourth grade uncle that married two different cousins. There are a lot of other families that I'm related two on both sides of my family there are some families I'm related to on both sides multiple times.
Yep. Welcome to pedigree collapse. ua-cam.com/video/Wlq_a-gdf9k/v-deo.html
I love your techniques.
Thank you so much!
What can make things awkward is when you have tons of matches that have connections on both parents kits. Unfortunately they only appear on one side because the other side is under the cut off limit, so I have to use the shared matches to build groups of parent1, parent2, both parents. Some even match me distantly but don’t match either parent. Looking at a few of the shared matches point at parental groups again.
If they match you but they don't match either one of your parents, you can probably ignore them as being a false match.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics maybe not. For example say they match me at 15cM. That could mean they match both my parents at 7.5cM each. Both under the match cut off of 8cM. Now, if I didn’t have known matches that share DNA with both my parents on different chromosomes I would agree with you but now I have this other possibility to consider. If I didn’t have my parents tested would I ignore a 15cM match? Granted these are low enough to not concentrate on but ignore, only if they do not match any other matches of interest on either side of the family :)
Thank you, good, clear explanations!
You are welcome!
Hi , i am an orphan with no family, watching your videos gave me strenght to look for my biological parents but when i tested my dna there is no close relatives that matches, only 1st cousin twice removed -2nd cousin once removed and they all live in other continent from where i live. i think its desesperate quest. thanks for your videos
I just found my father with only 2nd cousin matches. Look up the Leeds method or look for DNA detective groups on Facebook as search angels help orphans and adoptees for free
I don’t remember commenting this..
This sounds like a tough case but don't you have access to see those people's trees?
You could have a case of small families. ua-cam.com/video/pJDjHg13QgI/v-deo.html
You could also have the case that your relatives live in an area where DNA testing is restricted or prohibited. The key to solving these types of mysteries is patience.
Very informative. Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure!
So my half sister, everyone that is a shared match with us is only through her grandparents (my mother’s side)?
I like to know that also! I have a half brother from my father! Are all our shared matches related to my father side and doesnt that conflict with my X dna and their Y dna? Confusing 🥴😄
@@tamaradox - The X and Y chromosomes do not affect your DNA matches and relationships. The DNA testing companies use autosomal DNA tests, not X-chromosome and Y-chromosome tests. Each female has two X chromosomes, one directly from her mother and one from her father, which he got from his mother. Each male has one X chromosome from his mother and one Y chromosome from his father. These are called the sex chromosomes, since they determine the sex of the child. The autosomal DNA test looks as all of your cells, not just the sex-determining cells. So, all of your DNA matches that you share with your paternal half brother are related to you on your father's side.
Lynn Taylor Buccafuri - Yes, if your half sister is related to you through your mother, then any shared matches that you have are also related to you through your mother's side.
Retta Whinnery Wow, this makes sense to me, thank you! Didn’t expect to get an answer on my question after 3 months!! Superrrr 😄
@@tamaradox - That's the nice thing about UA-cam. We each discover videos when we're ready, not when they are posted. And I can listen to music from the 70's every day!
Great list of 5 ideas.
Thanks
shared matches and sorting into groups greatly reduces the places you need to look.
Possibly.
So my maternal 4th great grandfather had an article written about his life but I’ve had a hard time proving the article with documentation. So I decided to go the genetic route. I did the Leeds Method on my maternal grandfather’s ancestry dna and found 4 groupings between 90-400 cM. But only one person was in the 4th group at 101 cM. I suspect he would help unlock information about this 4th great grandfather. We don’t seem to connect according his tree I’ve built out and his matches trees I’m building. My ancestor’s surname keeps showing up but it was a common one. The closest other shared matches to him are in the 40-70 cM range. I have identified 3 common ancestor groups from his shared matches and i have made floating branches on my tree for them but I’m struggling to understand how to connect them. I keep trying to go further back to see if they eventually link up. Is that the right step? I’m struggling to wrap my head around which direction to be building the tree to look for connection.
I have been watching your videos looking for the next strategy to try.
The next strategy to try is the WATO tool. If you have known matches that share a family tree, then you place yourself as the 'unknown'. Input the clustered groups into the tree on WATO and they you will have some hypothesis of how you fit in the tree. The greater the percent likelihood of a relationship, the more evidence you have to help solve your research question.
Ok, we've got phased matches and leeds charts and I dont know what all else I've heard you mention, how about doing a 5 or 10 steps list that picks up after you have up loaded your gedcom file. What do we do first? Second? Third? And btw thanks for your videos. I'm sure they are going to be very helpful.
Good thoughts. My wife and I are in the process of writing a book that would go through what to do.
I have an underwhelming amount of matches to sort through. I do have a question about total matching DNA. I see a few matches that have a lot of matching tiny pieces of DNA and then others that have none. Does this mean that maybe the matches with a lot of tiny matching pieces might be a closer match? Or is it more like DNA noise and meaningless?
Just watched aConstance Knox video that mentioned the tiny pieces; her guest speaker said that they can be a sign of endogamy, or perhaps the fact that the two matches both come from a small town or isolated area...
ua-cam.com/video/Ilgl5707iP4/v-deo.html
@@loraleewellington9064 Aomori Japan was somewhat remote farther back in time.
Devon has an underwhelming amount of DNA matches to sort through as well. Of those with the small segments, she has to rely on shared trees to determine how people are related and most DNA matches that far removed don't know their family lines or won't share their family trees.
Small segments under 7 cm is typically noise, with a few exceptions. Small segments under 40 cm are hard to determine how and where people's lines crossed.
I'm trying to figure out why 1st cousins would be useful. They would be the children of your father's or your mother's brothers and sisters and you probably know them anyway, so how is that helpful? The only way I can see that that might be helpful is if you don't know your family. For most people, though, the relationships would already be known.
Building a family tree with genetic matches requires you to match your DNA to that of both known and unknown matches. When you have access to the DNA of known 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. You can then triangulate your matches with them. If an unknown match matches you and your 1st cousin on your mother's side but doesn't match you and your 1st cousin on your father's side, then it's likely this match shares common ancestors from your mother's side.
I have discovered who my Great Grandfather was by separating the matches by paternal/maternal line and then doing it again for all eight lines. This was a break through because her birth record says she was adopted and it had the fathers name but it is totally incorrect. In order to confirm this do I need to find a descendent from his line and have them take a DNA test?
That would be helpful. You may already have a match in the database that fits this criteria, you just need to do some family tree research on their lines.
My mom was adopted. She had on a piece of paper her legal name Fitzsimmons. I have NO dna from her or my sister. Both have passed. Any suggestions?
Test as many people as you can on your father's side. Then, you can use that to sort your mother's side out from your fathers. That is unless your father and mother are closely related. But, start there and see what happens.
Sadly I only have two close relatives on ancestry. A brother and a cousin. I have a small and disconnected family. So using these easier tips won’t work for me. Also you say to filter by different segments or maternal and paternal but you don’t say “how”. I have a ton of fourth cousins and that’s what I have to work with. So where do I start when I have so little to work with?
In my case, I was able to filter by maternal/paternal because my parents have tested. For my wife, we have have cousins on both sides of her family tree that help us filter the results. Those lines do not cross so anyone who matches her paternal cousin would be her father's line and vice versa.
Many of the tips will help you as you being to see who matches whom, even with the few close relatives that you have. You will likely need to do some genealogical research to find out who you would like to invite to test. If you're searching for biological parents when you're adopted, that's another series on this channel.
I have three dna cousins: a mother and her daughter and son. They are related on my paternal grandfather's line. I only know my grandfather's name and where he was born. He changed his full name when my father was a baby. Ancestry has all three DNA cousins as 4th-6th cousins and 23andMe has all three as 3rd cousins. Ancestry- Mom: 85cM /5 segments, 23andMe- 112 cM / 3 segments; son: Ancestry- 54 cM/ 3 segments, 23andMe- 72 cM/ 2 segments; daughter: Ancestry- 65 cM/ 2 segments, 23andMe- 92 cM/ 3 segments. Do you have suggestions on how to work on this?
Since it is a mother and her children, you really only have 1 DNA cousin to worry about, the mother. Until you get some more (that aren't descended from the mother), you are in a waiting game.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I match the mother and daughter on the X chromosome. So I was trying to figure out if this is a clue to which line to follow. I figure now that it may be my paternal grandmother's line. Do you think knowing that the X chromosome is there for the mother and daughter is helpful? Both the mother and daughter discovered they were raised by fathers who were not their biological dads. Thank you for being so kind to answer my questions. I wish you and your family a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year! 🎄🥂
Love your family videos... I always learn something. Mom had her DNA done (Ancestry) as did I (waiting for results). I was looking over Mom's results and noticed most of her cousins are listed as R R managed by Someone. I lnow we are related but how can I figure out who these people are?
Contact the manager of the test kits. That's all you can do. Wish I had a better answer.
So when you create a phased kit on Gedmatch, is the new Kit# the DNA from the missing parent?
Not quite. You should get two kits which each have half of the information of the child kit. One kit will be what the child got from the father (or 50% of the father's DNA) and one kit will be what the child got from the mother (or 50% of the mother's DNA).
It's the locations, locations that is the problem. None of the sites out there seem very useful in identifying locations. Gedmatch used to, alas no longer. FamilyTreeDNA also did so as well, but, again alas. It is very hard digging in order to identify common location origins. Surnames change or become lost in time, but that geographical stuff just keeps on rolling along.
The problem is that the locations aren't ingrained into your DNA any more than a surname is. There in lies the problem with DNA research. It has to be combined with paper trail research and that's not always an option.
What if the person I matched highest with share 464,8 cM?
Did you mean 464cM? That sounds like that person is related from your grandparent. Maybe a 2nd cousin?
When you key in that cM into the website tool dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
You'll see that 464 cM has a number of options: Great-Great-Aunt / Uncle Half Great-Aunt / Uncle Half 1C 1C1R Half Great-Niece / Nephew Great-Great-Niece / Nephew
Hi there. I was recently contacted because my husband shows as a cousin with that person (99cm) on one website and doesn't show up at all on another, even though that "cousin" was tested by both sites. My husband was only tested by the non-matched site, the data was shared with the other site. Why might this happen?
I would suspect that perhaps the settings are off on one of the websites. Either your husband or the cousin has one of their company's privacy settings set to private.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics thank you for responding. Do you have a video that addresses how to fix this? If not it’s okay. I’ll figure it out.
Grouping by color has helped me in Ancestry. However, I didn't realize that grouping maternal and paternal families in a shared color groups and now my reds/pinks/purples are throughout both sides. Is there an easy way to change this? I'd hate to have to start over from scratch.
On Ancestry, you can change the group color if you have unused colors to temporarily set your group to until you rearrange them how you'd like.
@Family History Fanatics great. Have used all colors, but can clear one that goes to a tiny group, and start from there. Thanks!
I need some help if you have a video for it that would be awesome! My question is I have found the common ancestor amongst a group of matches. Now how do you narrow down to my ancestor? Hope this makes sense if you could lead me in a general direction for help with this I would appreciate it!
you need to build your tree from your own research (sorry if you already have) then build their trees and link them into yours though research and info - ancestry is pretty useful for that. You should then be able to link them together. If you have thrulines on ancestry that should also show you.
Cario is correct.
You need to begin testing hypotheses. In traditional genealogy, we would have potential ancestors and we would look for records for each set of common ancestral couples. We would keep researching them until we had enough records to resolve the question of who is related to whom. Now, with genetic genealogy, if we still can't figure it out, we find as many descendants as possible for each couple and see how we fit into the clusters of descendants. We can often eliminate possibilities quickly in this fashion by using DNA triangulation and the WATO tool. ua-cam.com/video/d6LxMH0zS54/v-deo.html
Hi, what match is this? Mine grandfather and is great great granfather are brohters.
The plot of a time travel show i'd say
Is it normal to get 100% in one region because as far i get I’m 100% middle east also i know my lineage from at least 1500 years
that's pretty cool you can trace your lineage that far back.
At the continental level, sure. But which specific countries in the Middle East? That will be confusing.
@@FamilyHistoryFanatics my tribe have a history of where our ancestors stayed mostly najed in saudi arabia to settle in kuwait by 1400
I have a match with someone who shares 273 cm over 14 segments (2nd-3rd cousin) with me. However, there are no shared ancestors. I am at a loss? I have heard that my father has his step father's name and we do not know who his real father is. My father passed away 3 years ago so I am unable to retrieve DNA from him. Neither of his siblings have the same father so I cannot research through them. His mother took the secret of his real father to her grave. I have found a name and it happens to be the same name as the person I matched. I have no idea how to proceed. I have tried to make contact with the match but I am sure they wouldnt know if an ancestor of theirs fathered an illegitimate child? Please help!!!!
For this and other matches that don't fit into your known genealogy, I would see if you can identify common ancestors of them.
There is a group called DNAadoption.org that has classes. They may also connect you with an Adoption Search Angel, for free. When you contact them, it's good to state your research question, such as I want to learn who my father's biological father is.