I now have all 4 grandparents ancestry DNA results,

Question

Hi,

I have now managed to get all 4 of my grandparents to take the ancestry DNA test..it took a couple of years to get them all..! They were all born early 1930's so in their late 80's now and I felt it was important to get.

I wasn't expecting any shocking results as I have built my family tree quite far back late 1700's and most people have lived in London or Hampshire/Witshire. Their results were much the same as mine, being around 80% southern English, a few percent Irish and some other areas in Europe.

I have uploaded their DNA to gedmatch.

I was wondering what other tools I could use for further research? Are there any ways I should be comparing my results to theirs for give me any more information? I'm still vquite new to the DNA side of things,

Thanks!

Comments

How lucky you are to be able to test grandparents. Many of us started this too late to even have parents to test.

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I couldn't agree more, Lynda!  Like many, I don't have parents to test, let alone grands.  

What a blessing to have all 4 grands test!

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I advise all young people who are considering doing their family tree 'when they retire' to sit down with the older generation now and record their life stories before they pass on. Family lore is your heritage but is rarely written down unless the person is famous.

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If you had 23 and Me, or Ancestry test your DNA it is autosomal, ie it has a bit of both of your parents DNA.

Download your raw data to a folder on your desk top. from there it can be uploaded to Wikitree, Geni and FTDNA free of charge. Be aware FTDNA charge a small fee to reveal your matches.

If you have a tree on line somewhere you can download it to a folder then upload it to the above web sites which link the Gedcom data and the DNA raw data together which is likely to result in more matches for you.

Answer 1

Well Done! I only have my mum's but it certainly helps to get the eldest generation.

I'm just starting to play around with DNA painter...that may be of interest to you if you want to start mapping your chromosomes.

Comments

I've been working on the DNA side for a couple of years (and I'm also in the UK, so know that the number of matches is lower here). If you tested with Ancestry, then my tip would be to look at matches who haven't got a tree attached and look to see if they have an unattached tree. Look at matches with a very small tree and build their tree back. I make a "copy" and extend a matches tree back as far as possible (there are often mistakes in match's trees) and look to see where their tree overlaps your....eventually you will start to see shared ancestors.

Answer 2

It will be nice for you having all those results. For matches you find on GEDMatch, you will be able to easily determine which branch of your tree they belong to. When you have one like that, set up a multi-kit match, enter your kit and those of your 4 grandparents, then the newly found matches (from one-to-many or wherever). These new ones are most likely going to match you and just one of your grandparents.

Answer 3

You don't need to compare your results to theirs to get additional information, as you can't have any DNA they don't have (unless, of course, there was a NPE [non paternal event]).  Do you share the expected amount of DNA with each of your grandparents?  If so, then you will want to work off of each of their tests to continue your research.

As to what to do next, you can look at the shared matches they each have on ancestryDNA and start seeing if you can further your tree by locating the common ancestors.

On Gedmatch, you can start looking at the matches that share the largest amount of DNA with each grandparent.  It is easier to find the common ancestor with those, as they will be closer in time.  I would start with those that share 20+ cM.  If you don't have those, drop it down to 15 cM.  You will want to write a standard email that you can send to matches to try and locate common ancestors.

How extensive is your family tree?  You will want to get it back several generations in order to have a good chance at locating common ancestors.  You need not only the names of parents of everyone, but also the names of all of the children and their spouses within each generation.  It takes a long time to develop a good tree, but this is essential for success in using DNA to locate and/or prove ancestry.

You may want to use GenomeMatePro (free software) to help track your research:  https://www.getgmp.com/

Answer 4

Well done on having all those. I presume you have your own results on gedmatch too.

One of the most underused tools on gedmatch is to phase your results. Normally you would do this through your parents, but no reason why you cannot do it through your grandparents instead.

You will need a "dummy" second set of results for yourself to fully use grandparents for phasing and then you'll end up with four sets of phased results, one for each grandparental line.

The big benefit of using phased data is that it will throw out about half of the matches which are experimental artefacts. It will also tell you on which line the remaining matches lie.