DNA Analysis

It’s difficult to tell. I'd suggest that ‘early adapters’ of DNA tests were the more serious genealogical researchers willing to work at getting results. They were the people who had trees (often private) but ‘open’ for matching purposes. The next wave of testers was composed of those who were more interested in ‘origin’, (which is mostly useless), had no idea about using DNA results and didn’t bother to proceed when they found it was not as easy as they initially thought.

I have tests with Ancestry, FTDNA and MyHeritage.  I’ve noticed that I don’t get notified of ‘new’ matches on Ancestry (did I get them before???); there has been a drop-off in MyHeritage and FTDNA. Curiously, the latter sent me a Black Friday ‘early offer’ that soon was followed by a spate of matches. It made me wonder if FTDNA was holding them back for marketing purposes.

It's possible that we are seeing a bell curve effect and while the test/match numbers will be down, the quality of the tested (interest/knowledge) will increase. Hopefully!!

Just had a look on Ancestry DNA to see if any new matches appeared .

One new suggested 4th/6th cousin with whom I share 31cM across one segment .It tells me that we have 36cM unweighted shared DNA .

No idea who they are which isn't unusual plus of course the obligitary " no tree " .

The part I found puzzling is that we have 65 shared matches ,ranging from 46cM to 20cM .Is this normal for anyone on here who has tested with Ancestry ? .Apart from this group of matches my normal shared match is c.10

Apart from a parent I have 22 ,15 and 13 shared matches with my 3 closest DNA relatives on Ancestry (3rd cousin ,2nd cousin once removed ,2nd cousin once removed ).

I know that any US based connection can skew things as DNA testing seems a lot more popular there plus the bigger population etc .

Really just curious as to how so many shared matches are possible .Most of the 65 I would have 25/30 shared matches with ,again all in the 30cM to 40cM range .

Very interesting article in the New Yorker. It's a bit overwritten but worthile spending the time to read through to the end.. It covers Forensic DNA use and and has an interesting piece of back-story on the FBI/Gedmatch issue. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/22/how-your-family-tree-could-catch-a-killer

I understand that part ie any US based match will likely have many more shared matches due to the fact that DNA testing for genealogy seems to be much more popular there (going by Ancestry anyways ) than in Ireland or the UK .

My question is more why I seem to get such a large amount of shared matches will one particular group than any other .If I click on say a 20cM match then any other group /line will usually throw up perhaps 2 or 3 shared ones whilst with this group its normally 20 plus .

Its more has this any significance in genealogical terms that I seem to show such a strong match to one particular (totally unknown ) group of people .Have yet to make even a tentative connection or link to any of them .

Could I ask how it fits in general with what you already know--DNA and records?

Very helpful, thank you.

Ancestry has again updated their Ethnicity section as many of you have likely noticed.

Nothing major in it from the ethnicity estimates themselves, but they have added the feature of splitting what ethnicity you get from parent 1 v parent 2.

Again, ethnicity is not an exact science and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

The new figures for me didn't change things too much. Still mostly Irish but what was interesting was the 7% Scottish all came from one parent which was my mom and the 3% Norwegian all came from the other parent which I know was my dad with the other 90% being Irish specially mostly southeast Leinster which fits with where my parents and family are from. Thought that was interesting how the 10% non Irish all came in 2 ethnicities separately from each parent.