query about ancestrey dna results

Question

hello folks,i recently got my dna results..The main reason i went for it was firstly to see if  my asian ancestors would pop up in my matches,,as my grt/grn was born in ceylon,,and married my grt/grndad,who was born in somerset.  After,,painstakinly searching,my 31 close matches,,not one had my important surname paice in it,,also every tree that was open to the public to view, i don/t recognise one name,,but then i thought,oh well i wouldn/t because its different generations than this 78yr old. i am disappointed ,,that i don/t see any of my direct links on my tree..like, paice/fox/mackay/campbell/  there was only one who had the campbell surname i recognised  then one who had fox surname,but neither had the actual family,, it was very brief to say the least.   its like everyone of these matches are all detectives..and trying to see where we fit in ,on each others trees ,, its bamboozling,,very confusing,,and a lot of work. good luck to those who think the same as i do.  h fox

Comments

Hi there!  One thing about DNA matches - as a hobby, genealogy, and especially doing DNA testing, is much more popular in some parts of the world than others!  It might take a while before a tester pops up that is connected to your Asian lines, and even then, it might not be a close match.   Close matches would be descended from your more recent ancestors, so you probably know who most of them are anyway.  DNA testing can help you locate the 4th and 5th cousins etc, which is where you are going to get new clues and learn new things.  And 80% of them won't have a surname you recognize at this point!

If you did the test at Ancestry or MyHeritage, i think you can filter for that particular ethnic group and see who turns up in that bucket!  

Speaking of buckets, that has been my best strategy - to lump together the ones who are shared matches of each other, and eventually by figuring out how they connect with each other, it narrows down how they connect with me.

Anyway, you and i have communicated before - please feel free to send me a message on the side!

Cheers

Shirlea

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I've got one group of 60 matches - all matching each other 20-30cM - but no common ancestor in our trees. But very few have started a tree. Sometimes progress can be made by doing their trees for them, if they've provided a sufficient starting point.

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yes, i almost always make trees for them.  I used to keep a separate tree for each bucket, but now i try to do all that in my main tree.  If they are a DNA match, chances are they will connect somehow someday!  Of course, at first, i'm not at all clear which lines are going to be productive (although sometimes geography makes some lines unlikely) so i do all their lines.  As a result, i often get requests from completely unrelated people asking about why i have their ancestors in my Ancestry sandbox tree, but usually i can help them with something...and gradually a picture starts to build for me too.

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I have a few rogues and #MeToo perps in my lines, and they had opportunities to travel the world with the British military in the late 1700s and 1800s, so possibly they have left a trail of DNA from England and Ireland to Australia including the USA and Canada, so i may never find them in their descendants' trees, but I'm hoping someday to map the known chromosomes and see what is left over, and see if it could possibly be these guys.

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h Fox - fwiw - I've 20x more European matches on MyHeritage than on Ancestry.  May be worthwhile to try them as well.

Shirlea - I also build trees in anticipation of finding common ancestors and consequently get PMs asking for corrections and also how we are related, etc. Lots of confusion on ancestry.com

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Mike - that is a good tip for H Fox about MyHeritage.  It seems to be more popular with Brits - and lots of Aussies - than Ancestry is.  It was possible to upload my Ancestry test results to MyHeritage without paying to do another test.  It is probably a good idea to get our DNA test results onto as many platforms as possible - Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch as well. A bit of a drag to have to learn how to use so many sites, but you never know where your relative tested who will have the family history that will finally break open a mystery!

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Ms Fox, one useful thing about Ancestry results is the hints in their ThruLines functionality.  It is really hard to manually go thru matches' trees to spot likely links, but that is something a computer can do quite easily!  

To make it work, you need to take your own tree back at least 5 or 6 generations - 7 if you can, which for me is the middle of the 1700s.  

Then you have to be careful not to swallow the results whole - they are best taken as hints, since they will be affected by errors in other people's trees.

But they are at least as useful as interviewing your shared matches to see what they 'know'!

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Hi Mike - i see we are connected by the second marriages of my ancestor Marguerite Castonguay with your 7xgg uncle (or something like that) Jacques Dubois in 1767 - small world!  

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Shirlea - we're 13th cousins, 2x removed through ene of our common ancestors, Martin Prévost (abt. 1535 - aft. 1610) 

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hi shirlea,thanks so much,cheers for now,,h fox

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hello shirlea,yesterday,i put all i know ,about charles-paice/hannah -margueritte-hopwood,,includes their children,all birth dates,and mostly all marriages /occupations.where they lived,,,the one main thing for me is to find out,what did happen to charles/s children,when he and wife died within 3weeks of each other,as they were all of school-age,,who took them in? perhaps a relative in england?or ceylon?  or even been fostered?,,i hope they were able to keep in touch ,,better still be together from word go,,its really very sad thinking about their situation. regards hfox.