Okay! My Heritage DNA Test Results Arrived :)

Question

So I finally got notification that results have been finished. So I was looking over the ethnicity estimate of which I was shocked but not completely. Appears no very close relatives just a-lot somewhat distant 1st cousin - 2 times removed etc. So I had issues downloading my rawdna file so I got on the horn (phone) with myheritage and after some major irritation from them telling me it could be a few days until one of there tech support people could reach me on email. I walked away for the computer and you know the famous Stop, Drop and Roll and came back to the computer and after a few more tries the download worked so I uploaded to gedmatch and now the fun (process) begins. If you could give me pointers or help or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated about what I could all do next with this information. I feel lost and more anxious which isn't helping

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So many Great Answers. I choose them all as best

Answer 1

After you have got the download to work then in addition to uploading to gedmatch you should also consider uploading to FTDNA. Don't get too stressed about MyHeritage ethnicity results or about the match lists. They have improved quite a lot over the past year and are still improving. However, if you are seriously wanting a match list that you can work with take a test with AncestryDNA.

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Yeah I reckon that is in the works.

Answer 2

The upload to Gedmatch may take as much as 24 hours so don't sit there and watch it, like I did. LOL

Just because the DNA match says 1st cousin 2 times removed, that does not mean it is correct. They are more likely to be a second or possibly a 3rd cousin but you will need to get in contact and ask what surnames you have in common before you can start making your tree connection.

Check out all the matches on My Heritage first before you look into gedmatch.

How many matches do you have on My heritage, if I can ask? I had over 4500 - but really, I am only looking at those names with total DNA shared as above 20 cM. That is about 50 names for me. A much more manageable number.

Good luck with your DNA matches.

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I reckon I a bit chicken. I wanted to know so bad but now hesitant another load of anxiety arrived. 7,257 DNA Matches with the largest being 51.3 cM so far which I have no idea what that means. It's greek. I speak Americanized English

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Oh believe me I gonna watch it. I got the coffee going. It's like the last couple days for my results. HELL

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@ Steve: 51.3 cm means probably 4th cousin or higher according to Ancestry. I would send a message to whoever that is. Sure it's in Greek, but still.  Google Translate is a thing.

@ Robynne: You do have a point. Though, why am I picturing you watching with your arms cross and burning a hole in the monitor?

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51.3 would be the largest segment for cM however the highest cM for dna is 137.1

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Steve, Plug the number of cM into the shared cM tool at DNA painter and it will give you the possible relationships with their probabilities. https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

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When I uploaded to GEDmatch back in November, it took about 6 hours of sitting in the queue until the processing started, and the processing itself took a little over 9 hours.

137cM is either a weak 2nd cousin match of a strong 2nd cousin, once removed match (or other relations that share the same amount of DNA as these - for example a 1st cousin once removed will share the same amount of DNA with you as a 2nd cousin). At east that's what I've seen on AncestryDNA (where the numbers are a little bit smaller). Some have reported a 3rd cousin match that big, but of the 39 I've identified in my own matches, 127 is the biggest.

Enjoy!

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ftdna gave a few different results however nothing close. Hurry up Gedmatch I can't sleep till done.

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Not to be a "wet blanket", but my own experience on GEDmatch is that my first 4 matches are (1) the aforementioned bio-2nd cousin, once removed (2C1R), (2) a 3C, (3) another 2C1R, and (4) a 4C. Then there's a whole bunch of people who must be really distantly related, with the occasional 3C showing up in the mix.

Very few people have actual trees, and you just have to email them and ask. But in your case, you don't have your own tree to compare with them.

Really, what Lynda said is the way to go - you will probably get a lot of matches on AncestryDNA - maybe even some fairly close relations - and more people with trees. Then you need to learn about Shared Matches, centimorgans, and about how sometimes people HAVE trees, but just haven't bothered to connect them to their DNA results.

But don't take the ethnic mix they give you too seriously - it'll put you on the right continent, but the numbers are scandalously inaccurate. It's "for entertainment only".

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Well I don't believe you are being a wet blanket perhaps a realist while I'm endeavouring to be optimistic.

Answer 3

Steve, here's a new (almost) hot-off-the-press blog post by Kitty Cooper that's a great intro to GEDmatch. Another to read is this one from last September by Jim Bartlett.

Other than the fact that GEDmatch times-out your log-in faster than I'd like, it's a pretty great service. I gather that neither of your parents have tested; if one chooses to, the one-parent phasing utility at GEDmatch is a must-use. Meanwhile, once your uploaded data is fully "tokenized" (takes a few hours) you can dive in and do a "One-to-many" comparison to start seeing what you can see. (And I also recommend always starting with a quick "Are your parents related?" run; sounds strange, I know; it's a little technical, but if you want I can explain why it's a good place to begin.)

BTW, I've found the GEDmatch help pages and wiki to be helpful at times, but I think you'll find better how-to advice and instruction from good ol' Google. Explore the options at GEDmatch, and just Google anything that looks weird or that you don't understand right away.

Welcome to wacky world of genetic genealogy, and and have fun!  

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Parents Related.  Never I have a pretty good idea of who my mother is (Still Living) no clue on father accept a First name. And they where not married

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I did the Parents things. Appears no shared segments not sure how they'd know but I reckon there something in the genes that would give some idea

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I did say it'd sound a bit strange.    But that simple tool at GEDmatch has no settings to adjust granularity (you can look at David Pike's free utilities if you want a deeper dive), and all it checks for are significant stretches along a chromosome where all the DNA "letters" (A, C, G, T) are identical (e.g., A-A, C-C; technically, runs of homozygosity). It's an indicator of pedigree collapse in relatively recent generations...your parents don't have to be 1st cousins. For example, it could arise at, say, the generation of your g-grandparents if two brothers married two sisters: there could be zero cousin intermarriage, but your parents could still descend from a set of 2g-grandparents. It can change the expected amount of autosomal DNA sharing on those branches, and even significantly affect how you go about triangulating for more distant cousins on those lines.

But never mind.   You ran it, and now you know your DNA sharing amounts will be normalish...as normalish as anyone's.

Different matter. You didn't say if understanding your birth father's line is a priority, but if it is, and if your mother is willing to take a test, I mentioned the GEDmatch phasing utility. Uber-easy to use: requires your kit number and your mother's kit number; that's it. It creates a "pseudo-genome" for the other parent, basically by looking at your mother's results and assuming what you didn't get expressly from her came from your dad. Once that kit is created, no one else can see it running comparisons, but you can use it just like any other kit on GEDmatch. In other words, if someone matches the "pseudo-genome" you'll know they're coming to you courtesy of your dad's side of the family. Really helps with chromosome painting and categorizing where your DNA cousins fit in your tree.

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I've made no contact to her as of yet. Not sure when I will. Perhaps when I feel like I can call her and not sound like possible relative creep. And yes knowing my father's line is priority. Which means a Y-DNA test is somewhere in the works at some point

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Very cool!

The main feature I use is the 'One to many' matches. That's in the "Analyze your data" section, and at the top of the "DNA Raw Data" sub-section. It's basically exactly like the list of matches that AncestryDNA gives me.

The first person on MY list happens to be someone who was adopted. I spotted her on my AncestryDNA list, and was able to help her figure out who both her birth parents were. It's really helpful, I imagine, if some biological relative who's good at this spots you, and helps out, because they already can tell what family you belong to, at least on one side. In my case, I happened to have interviewed her biological grandmother for genealogy, so I had some "inside info" about who all the living relatives were, and their ages, and that narrowed her bio-dad down to ONE guy. It sounds like that kind of resource is rare, though.

I didn't get onto GEDmatch until a few months later, but when I did hers was the first name I saw!

Best of luck, sir!

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Thanks much Frank

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Steve, If you are looking for an unknown father then the best strategy would be to fish in as many pools as possible. You never know which company one of your biological relatives may have chosen to test with. From MyHeritage you can upload to both gedmatch, LivingDNA (who will be offering matching later this year) and FTDNA. You would need to do separate tests to get into the databases at AncestryDNA and 23andme. Good luck with your search.

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If you're looking for an unknown father, then you definitely need to have your mother test to sort out which matches are on her side and which are on the paternal side.  I would suggest doing that before doing a y-dna test.  Fewer people have done a y-dna test, and unless you are incredibly lucky, that test might not lead you to a close relative and may even turn up several surnames, not just one. An autosomal test for your mother would be much cheaper. If you go ahead and have her test with ancestry you will have all of her matches which will also be your matches.  Then you can upload to FTDNA and GEDmatch and have all those also, and you can sort out which matches are to your father's side.

Answer 4

Never heard of Okay DNA. I tested with the big companies. This is a new one.  I got shocking cousin results and odd admixtures at Myheritage, 23andme and FTDNA. I would wait and see what gedmatch says. You may hear a microwave go "DING!" in the next few days.

Might also be a good idea to upload it to other sites and see what you get. I wonder if you can upload to Ancestry. Good luck!

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Okay was just a word I used it was through my Heritage. I'm gonna rephrase the question.

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To what I understand ancestry does not take uploads from other companies.

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Correct, Ancestry does not take uploads. Well worth investing in a test with them though.

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The absolute best way to test all the major companies is to buy a DNA kit from ancestry and 23 & me, and do those 2 tests and wait for results. Then upload the results from one of those tests to My Heritage and FT DNA.

Living DNA in the UK will also require a new test - of you want the details of any english ancestry.

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I found a way to transfer a copy of my Myheritage results to FtDNA will see what happens.

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Now there probably *IS* a company called "Okay DNA". =) Now that things are clearer, I can offer my two cents. Myheritage is okay as far as DNA goes. I tested with Ancestry and uploaded to Myheritage later. The admixtures were very different. For whatever reason they split Italian and southern european (Italian) and West Europe, France and Iberian penninsula. I added up the percentages and they then came close to what Ancestry gave me.

Who is more accurate? I don't know. Ancestry is good for people who have Italian ancestry like I've said many, many times.  Robynne actually has the best way to go about it and that's exactly what I did. I still haven't paid the 19 bucks to see the results on FTDNA. Dunno if I need to. I mean I can see the axmixtures everywhere else.

What's funny about FTDNA is that I put my Dad's in and we match 12 people out of 300. So by process of elimination I guess I have 300 matches on my mom's side? Just a hunch.

As far as myheritage goes, I don't know.  I tried contacting people there and no one has replied. I have better luck on Ancestry for whatever reason. Good luck, Steve!

Answer 5

Hi Steve,  Glad your results came in!

The first thing I do in GedMatch is go down the column that lists GED and WIKI because those have trees attached.  Take a look at the expected generation and look at the tree in reference to that distance.  While it may not be exact it is a starting point that you can adjust as better info becomes available.

Then take the top matches and one by one run them in the People who Match 1 or 2 kits... Why?  because you see all the matches who match that person and you.   I generally copy all this to an Excel spreadsheet so I can make notes.  

Feel free to send me an email or private message and I can send you some examples I have done for myself.

Comments

This strategy works. Laura is awesome at helping figure that site out. Not that I'm biased or anything. *grins*

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Oh and since you are male you can only get and X from your mom's so any of the matches with an X of 7cm or more is coming from your mom's side.

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Thanks Chris.  I like you too!