So many colors! So many matches! I don't remember if you mentionened this in your video or not, but ThruLines is Garbage In/ Garbage Out. The data is only as accurate as the trees they are attached to. If someone has the wrong grandparents attached, then ThruLines will still use that grandparent. While you still match that person from an ancestral couple, it might not be the ancestral couple it says on ThruLines. Small point, but can be important for newbies. I have started using the In Common With method for Jewish AncestryDNA. It seems to work pretty well so far.
Yes yes yes! My ethnicity range wouldn’t necessarily indicate an issue with endogamy… ethnicity 52% English, with Wales, Scotland, most exotic is this 15% Swedish Danish completely due to the Danelaw/Danelagh English ancestry. I am from SC (majority that I know thru 7 gens are Va-Nc-SC) were both of my parents, as were many of my ggg grandparents etc., the same county, who are 1st cousins many times removed, 2nd or 3rd cousins, 4th or even 6th depending on how one looks at it. SO, loads, lots, enormous amounts of endogamy. I am now finding out that my 2 “Georgia” grandparents, supposedly unrelated, one on the maternal side, one paternal, are also related through common ancestors in Virginia. Ancestry trees, my gosh, almost everyone connected to my family tree, better said, herbaceous genealogy wisteria bush, just purloins without digging into the work. So, while Thru Lines is fun for me and may be truly helpful to folks that start without knowing much, it is a really big caveat emptor. Totally garbage in/out. Great comment, great information DS! Of course I have enrolled in your endogamy course to improve my ability to use my Cnut!
I just found your site and I am loving it! With the dot system, would it still work with endogamy? I am finding all kinds of dna matches where there should be. Thanks for all you do!
I've been puzzled with which side of the family to use to identify the dot color. Duh. I now know that I need to assign a dot to the COUPLE rather than individual surnames of the couple. Thank you!
Diahan, I was doing a refresher on the dot system using Thrulines. In the above presentation you say you're going to use your 2nd great grandparents, but then at the 3:38 mark, you use a 3rd great grandparent. I understand that you can do the dots for any "known ancestor", but that was a little confusing switch. I really like the 5 minute quick modules. Thanks.
I enjoyed the video and found the dot system easy enough to understand. I am missing one set of 3xggp on my father's side but have over 41,000 matches which makes this dot system a bit impractical.
When assigning 3rd cousins to the family groups, Should I include 4th cousins that are shared matches as well? I don’t know when to stop adding cousins to the family groups. Thank you.
I Love your You Tube! Thank you so much❤️. Can you clarify to see if I got it right? My three times great grandfather married two different women I have matches that go to both relationships. So if my match to my three times direct line would be one color, would my match to my three times and his second wife actually be to my four times great grandfather? I hope you can make sense of this. Thanks again.
You've got it! The matches to the second wife would be matches just to your 3X great grandfather's parents. So they would get the same color dot as all others who are descendants from that couple (thoguh it is very hard to sort out 4X greats, you just don't share very much DNA).
I agree. I need more colours! I have no colours for past 3 GGP but have matches for beyond that. Not sure what to do with them. Maybe I will have to assign a colour to “all other distant relations”. Can’t leave them ungrouped or I won’t know if they are new connections or not.
So every ancestral COUPLE gets a dot. So I sometimes recommend you start with your four great grandparent couples and use the system to label. Theoretically this allows you to divide your match list into four groups.
I like your system! Little confused. If I look at the shared matches of a confirmed second cousin, are all the matches out to 5th-8th cousins related through that common couple?
Theoretically, yes. Those 5th cousins are descendants of that couples' great grandparents (maybe). But you shouldn't see too many cousins at that distance in the shared matches as they have to share at least 20 cM with you in order to show up on the list.
I use the same method with respect to 3rd great grandparents, which covers 16 of the available dots, then the remaining 8 are used for the 2nd great grandparents.
At Your DNA Guide, we use the dot system to find genetic networks of our matches. You don't need to remove anyone from your tree. The dots are applied to your DNA match list, not your tree. You can read more about how to use Ancestry's dots here: www.yourdnaguide.com/ancestrydna-dot-system.
Very good video. =D I do something similar to this actually! Basically, I do the same cool and warm colors for paternal and maternal sides. However, my groups are a little different because two of my 2x great-grandparents divorced and went on to have new families after the birth of my great-grandfather. So, I had to make groups based on all 16 2x great-grandparents. I found that the closer matches tend to have more dots and by the time I get to 4th cousins, I get one dot at least. I know there's no wrong way to do this. But, it certainly helps!
@@diahansouthard197 Thanks. The Leeds method makes it even easier. I'm at the point now where if I look at the shared matches, it's pretty easy to see where some people go. Some, though, are a little tricky. Some are kind of obvious. =)
I have no idea who paternal great grandparents are & can't trust the grandfather's surname due to Y-dna. I have done doting beginning with 2nd cousins on paternal side. However, I read where you suggested to another person to start with a known 1st cousin. Do I have to start over with a known 1st cousin, or march on? I have several copies of your book and it is wonderful.
Do you have known second cousins from those unknown great grandparents? If not, then you will have to start with your first cousins, and then do what I call splitting your network using your known second cousins from the other paternal great grandparent couple. Then the people who share with your first cousins, but don't share with these other second cousins are the matches you are interested in (that I call your leftovers).
I see how you are using gt grandparents as a couple- My question is how do I find the matches who are only for one parent. ie one gt grandparent. (I am trying to find connections for my Gt Grandfather and i dont know how to seperate from cousins linked to my Gt Grandmother-his wife).?
Once you have your network - then you can split it into the group you want. There are a few techniques on how to split a network. We outline some in my book. Take a look at the blog post as well. www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/finding-3xgg-with-dna
Thanks so much for this concise video! I have started my dots a persons instead of "Couples", do you know of a "best way" I can go about changing them to your system. And also should I start with my grandparents/Couple? BTW your eyes are a beautiful blue.
Most people start out with using the dots on individuals. Unfortunately the best way to switch to couples is just to delete the dots you have and start over. I know it sounds scary, but you will be glad you did!
Couldn’t you just keep your existing dots, and replace each category person’s name with the last names of their parents? Then each person dot becomes a couple dot. Example: Your great-grandfather, John Smith, is a label. You change the label to Smith/Jones, who are your 2nd-great-grandparents. Because surely if they are descended from John Smith, they are also descended from his parents.
Two questions. What does it mean when you have multiple choises for some people. How do you resolve a mystery group? A mystery group are related along a given line but there is no tree or Thrulines connection.
If there are multiple ancestors suggested for one match then you may be related to them in multiple ways. You should NOT use these people to dot others as it will confuse things. As for the mystery group, I am not sure what you mean, exactly. You have a group of people you know are related to you in a certain way, but they do not show up on ThruLines? If they do not have a tree, they will not show in ThruLines.
If i do a color dot for every ancestral couple starting with great grandparents, then 2nd greats, then 3rd greats, that is a total of 28 couples. Ancestry only allows 24 custom groups. Suggestions?
They just announced that soon, with Pro Tools, you will have access to more dots. But even without that, I don't use dots to organize every match. They are not a filing system, but a filtering system to help you find the matches you need to answer your research question. So I use dots in a very targeted way, not to organize the entire list.
After watching this, I felt like it might not work for me since you said if you have unique pairs of great grandparents with individuals who have no relationship to each other. My issue is that on both my maternal and paternal side I have spouses with relationships. A paternal great grandfather and great grandmother are first cousins. She also had another sibling who married a first cousin. On my maternal side, a great grandmother's sister married the other great grandmother's brother. Do you have a video that gives suggestions for dealing with this? Thank you. I really enjoy your videos!
Yes, so as long as you are dealing with cousins more distant than second cousins. So your second cousins will be double second cousins, and that will throw off the shared matches. No video on multiple relationships yet, but good idea! I do talk about it in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/yourdnaguidethebook).
I love this system! Only problem is that of the 172K matches I only have ONE person that I have a ThruLine to. I guess I can bypass ThruLines and do this for the Shared Matches I have with confirmed DNA connections. And on my wife's side there are lots of ThruLines on her 50K matches.
I used a 3rd cousin 1x removed and marked her with the color. I went to all of our shared matches and marked all of those people with the same color. Do you then go through each of the shared matches and do the color coding as well?
I call that "expanding your group" and I only do it if necessary. First use all of the matches that you KNOW are connected to this couple. Then if you don't have the matches you need to move forward, you can do as you suggested. But there are risks anytime you use someone you don't 100% know your connection to to create a group.
I have a question regarding one of my 3rd great grandfather's. He was a polygamist with 9 wives and had kids with 8 of them. I am assuming that in order to give my matches a color dot I would need to assign a color to him and each wife. Do I just give my matches thru the wife that I descend from a color dot based or just assign him a color dot and use that color for all of his descendants?
Good question. That is the beauty of the system, you can do it however makes sense for you and your current research goal. For example, if you want to do more research on him, then you could just use a dot to represent him, and it doesn't matter who the mother was as you will be focusing on his line. But if you want to investigate a particular wife, then you would want to make sure you notate her line, but the others don't really matter. After all, you are only genetically related to one wife, so that is the only one that matters for your DNA. So after all that, what I would likely do is one dot for him, and one dot for him+the wife you are related to.
Two places: On your main match page on the right of each person it says, "add to group." Or if you click on any one person, you can see that same "add to group" about four lines under their name. Have fun grouping!
Thank you for your video. I have read your book, and made great headway in sorting my Ancestry DNA matches, using 16 colors representing my 16 3rdGG couples. What confuses me is, How do I know that all of the shared matches are definitely related to both me and the known match through a particular MRCA couple? Couldn’t some of them be related to me through one line, and coincidentally related to my known match through a different line that is not related to me?? I ask this because sometimes I have an unknown match, and many of our shared matches will be 1 color, but a few will be other colors. So when I have an unknown match with only a few shared matches, and 1 of the shared matches is one color and 1 of the shared matches is a different color, with possibly other shared matches with no color yet… I can’t assign the unknown match to any particular color group with any degree of confidence. Thank you.
It helps if you shift your thinking a bit about what these dots are doing. They are not notes about relationships so much as filters. The dots tell a story about your connection. That's why you start with a Best Known Match, and you dot EVERYONE. Then do that again. And again. Then all of your dots represent that match's relationship to the Known Matches you used. Except when they don't - as you mentioned. There are lots of reasons that people share DNA. So it is true, that you will end up with matches without dots, and some with two or three and then their shared matches lists don't seem consistent. That's why the dotting system is only part of the process.
I have thousands of shared matches with my first and second cousins, so giving them all dots manually will take too long. Is there a way to give everyone in a selected group one color?
I rarely use first cousins to dot, because there are so many. But you can do it quickly with the Chrome browser using an extension called click all checkboxes. chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/click-all-checkboxes/fhlogpdbadmjfpndmaijnibflgnbnhof?hl=en-US
Well this is good but if most of all they lines are from my father side, it would seem this system would need to know the names of the 2nd GGP to assign dots. And if you don’t know those names, how can you assign them??
Ah, that's the power of this system! YOU are in charge. You use the system to name and dot all the ancestors you know, and then those matches that are LEFTOVER are the matches that connect to your unknown lines. I go over the complete system in my book (www.yourDNAGuide.com/thebook) and in my DNA Skills Course (www.yourDNAguide.com/theacademy).
How do I track children when someone from my dad’s side married someone on my mom’s side? I have quadruple checked it and I have some matches that are matched to both sides. I have been doing colors for each side but then I get confused with the shared matches. Should their shared matches coded the to both sides? Makes my head spin. Do you do private help? Thanks Kelly
It IS confusing when you are trying to use Shared Matches when there are multiple relationships. There is an easy answer: don't do it!! ;) Seriously. I don't use Shared Matches on matches with whom I have multiple relationships if I can help it. It just defeats the purpose of the system as it doesn't actually separate your matches into groups.
@@YourDNAGuide Ok so only do the 1st person that I know is connected to both sides? I guess that does make more sense. I am way over analyzing this ;0) Thanks!
I was all ready to learn your system and change my dotting so I could find my Great-grandfather. Then I realized Dang that's what I already did. I really just need to take the next step If I can figure out what that is.
I have been able to assign dots for my G Grandparents lines but with the two Irish sets I know nothing except their names. I have several match groups with a lot of matches where I have no idea how they match to me. I have resorted to naming them "Unknown Match Group A" etc. How do I deal with these? They could be my Irish lines or they could be unknown parentage. The biggest unknown groups have a colour but there were too many groups to give each a colour
Nan, it sounds like you are on the right track. Have you been creating your groups by using Shared Matches on your Known Matches? That is the key. They you know exactly who is in each group. So, your known matches for your first set of Irish greats should get one color, and the known matches for your other set should get a different color. Then you should have two Irish groups. Now, you won't gather everyone with the shared matches tool every time, so you may have some matches who do belong in one of those groups who do not have a dot. Sometimes you can click on a match without a dot and look at their shared matches and see that they are consistently one color. Then you know that person is likely that group as well.
I am confused! Sorry! I started with my Dad's side - I gave his parents a dot, then my grandads parents a dot, then my great great grandparents then my great great great grandparents. So I had for colours for the four couples. When I looked a thru lies, I didnt have any matches with my Dad's parents, with my great I had two, then with my great great and great great great I had three ( same two from my greats with another match) So what confuses me, when I assign a colour to the shared match person, if they are with three sets, which one do I give them? Great, great great , or great great great. HELP! Please!
I usually only start dotting with great grandparent couples. So you would find a Best Known Match - a second cousin who is a descendant of your great grandparents. Use the Shared Matches tool on that person and give EVERYONE on that shared matches list a dot to represent that couple.
why are putting the dots on 2x great grandparents and then selecting the third cousin under the 3rd great grandparents. I thought you were using the grandparents that you put the dots on.
I have done a lot of genealogy to confirm the people identified in Thrulines. If I could not confirm it with genealogy, I didn’t use them. I still have a lot I can use. I am older, and very few of my generation have tested or even can be tested. All of my known matches are of a different generation, e.g., 2C2R. Would I still count them as a 2nd cousin?
I try to stick to this though on my dad’s side there is endogamy, for example one set of first cousins on his mum’s side are also his 2nd cousins 1 removed on his dad’s side which makes it a little bit more colourful for his side than my mum’s. Doing the colour coding and shared matches (endogamy aside) has helped determine the family that my dad’s paternal grandfather is from since they don’t match my dad’s mom’s brother, 1st cousins (including the endogamous ones), or his half sister but do match me and my sister. I am fairly confident in which of the 8 brothers is the father but unfortunately I doubt I can ever know 100% since my dad was an only child and he died before commercial DNA testing was a thing.
Sounds like you have done good work! If you had descendants of that man you think is the father tested, and the descendants of another of the brothers tested, you might be able to tell the difference. Though it may still be tricky, since we are talking the difference between a half third cousin and a fourth cousin (if I am understanding your question correctly).
I've batched mine into 4 groups (no idea how to do 8 or more) but I'm left with some low cM people who don't seem to match anyone except each other. Any idea what I can do to work out whose side they are on? The highest is 39cM.
At Ancestry when you use the shared matches tool, it can only gather people who share 20 cM or more with BOTH you and the person you are using to find the shared matches. So it is possible that these matches just don't meet that criteria for BOTH of you. It is also possible that they are matching not because you share a common ancestor, but because you share a common population.
@@diahansouthard197 I see, thank you. Interesting. Also do you know how I can divide the 4 groups into 8? I would love to identify great grandparent groups but I think 4 is the limit that the system has found!
@@lemonbade Dividing your match list is all about using KNOWN matches. People you already know your relationship to. So if you have 4 second cousins (one from each of your great grandparent couples) you can divide your list into four groups using the Shared Matches tool. So you would need 8 3rd cousins to divide your match list into 8 groups. That is the most reliable way. Of course, you can always do it genetically as well, but that is a bit more complicated. Of course.
I would really like to use this system, but I have no idea who my paternal great parents are, and I can’t use my grandfathers surname as a guide because I don’t know if it to be his true name, Any suggestions on how I should tackle this problem
This is exactly the kind of problem DNA is meant to help you investigate. I go over exactly how to do it in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook) but in general, you need to start by creating groups of people. So, start with your first cousin on your paternal side and mark all of those matches (let's say blue). Then use a second cousin who is related to your paternal grandmother's parents and mark all of those shared matches (let's say green). What you will have are what I call Leftovers: those who are related to your first cousin (have blue dots) but not to your second cousin (don't have green dots). So you investigate all of the blue dot people for a connection to each other. Their connection to each other will help you fill the hole in your family tree.
@@janscott6099 you can for sure us a first cousin on both sides to start with. Then a second cousin on your paternal side that you know to split that paternal group and leave you those leftovers that you want.
I had a problem with this method. I chose my third great grandfather ( fathers fathers side) from ThruLines and then followed it down to my sister who also had a Dna test done. I clicked on her icon and gave her a color dot for that set of third great grandparents, then I clicked on her shared matches and was going to run through the match list color coding them all with that color for the third great grandparents set but noticed that one of her 2nd cousin matches is related through my fathers mothers side. I think my problem is that my sister and I share matches through all of my grandparents. This must mean that I have to limit the people I am looking at to be at least my third cousin because anyone closer would have other matches that may or may not be from the third great grandparents set I chose in ThruLines. I’m not saying your method is wrong, I’m just saying I didn’t realize I had to limit which DNA matches I could actually look at because if they’re too close to me then we likely share a closer grandparent which will skew the results.
The dot system works best when you use a cousin whose Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) is the ancestor for whom you created the color. So, in your example, you would need to use the shared matches tool on a 4th cousin who is also a descendant of your third great grandfather (but through one of his other children). When you used your sister, your MRCA is your parents, so you aren't getting any separation of groups, since, as you said, you and your sister share all of your ancestors.
Your full sister should have all 16 dots - because she is also descended from all 16 of your couples. A 1st cousin would have 8 dots. A 2nd cousin would have 4 dots. A 3rd cousin would have 2 dots. It’s not until you get to 4th cousins that each has only 1 color dot, representing a 3rd-great-grandparent couple (presuming that they are not related to you through more than one of your 3rdGG couples). So even a shared match with a 3rd cousin (2 dots, A&B) could be related through dot A only, dot B only, or dots A & B.
Very good information, however, I have tons of DNA matches that apparently descend from a great grandmother and a gentleman who was not her husband. I came to this conclusion after ruling out the connections with any known matches. How do I handle that? and is there any way to prove this pairing? I have no DNA matches with the gentleman she was married to, yikes. Thanks
"Prove" as in find a document - probably not. But you can check your genetic relationship vs the genealogy relationship. By that I mean you can look at these descendants of this guy who have tested, determine your genealogical relationship if this guy is in fact your ancestor, and check that genealogical relationship against the genetic relationship. If you have several matches and they are all lining up, and you have negative evidence (you know people who have tested who are descendants of the guy who on paper should be your ancestor that you don't DNA match) then that is as far as the DNA can take you. It is up to you if you want to put this other guy in your tree.
The problem that I ran into is that some people had errors in their trees. They included my ancestors in their tree but some of the connections are incorrect. Then others copied the incorrect information. The ThruLines that Ancestry has created thus gives the wrong info. Frustrating.
Kind-of. Usually if you know at least one of your parents you can identify if a match does or does not belong to the known side of your family. But if you don't know either parent, then the goal is to choose your highest match, use the Shared Matches tool on that person, give the shared matches a dot, and then work with that group of matches to try to figure out how they are related to each other. Then do the same thing with the next closest match who is not in that first group. I hope that makes sense. There are better instructions in my book www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook.
How do you use this system with half cousins? My second great grandmother was never married but had three children, very spread apart, so there may have been three fathers.
Oh half cousins are THE BEST. Using shared matches with descendants of these three half cousins, if they didn't share a father, will give you only DNA matches that are related to your 2X great grandmother, making it easier to research her.
@@YourDNAGuide I know a lot about my 2x great grandmother and her family; it's her mystery man #3 that is my 2nd great grandfather that I am trying to discover. He is the only 2nd great grandparent that I do not know. It's driving me crazy!
@@Susie82059 Ah, I see. So you need to employ my Leftovers strategy, that I talk about in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook). Tricky to explain in a sentence or two, but essentially you need to use the Shared Matches and dotting first with 2nd cousins, who are descendants of your great grandparents. Mark them with a yellow dot. Then use Shared Matches with some of these half 3rd cousins from your 2X great grandmother, and mark them with pink. Find a 3C who is a descendant of your great grandparent's spouse, and mark them in green. Then the Leftovers are those with only Yellow dots. They should be the matches that below to your missing ancestor.
@@YourDNAGuide Thanks so much for your suggestion! I have your book and was trying to figure out which strategy to use. I will go right to that chapter!
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Please do a follow up one where you then are looking at shared matches and determining what where a given person lands. Love your work!
So many colors! So many matches! I don't remember if you mentionened this in your video or not, but ThruLines is Garbage In/ Garbage Out. The data is only as accurate as the trees they are attached to. If someone has the wrong grandparents attached, then ThruLines will still use that grandparent. While you still match that person from an ancestral couple, it might not be the ancestral couple it says on ThruLines. Small point, but can be important for newbies.
I have started using the In Common With method for Jewish AncestryDNA. It seems to work pretty well so far.
Absolutely! Good point.
Yes yes yes! My ethnicity range wouldn’t necessarily indicate an issue with endogamy… ethnicity 52% English, with Wales, Scotland, most exotic is this 15% Swedish Danish completely due to the Danelaw/Danelagh English ancestry. I am from SC (majority that I know thru 7 gens are Va-Nc-SC) were both of my parents, as were many of my ggg grandparents etc., the same county, who are 1st cousins many times removed, 2nd or 3rd cousins, 4th or even 6th depending on how one looks at it. SO, loads, lots, enormous amounts of endogamy. I am now finding out that my 2 “Georgia” grandparents, supposedly unrelated, one on the maternal side, one paternal, are also related through common ancestors in Virginia. Ancestry trees, my gosh, almost everyone connected to my family tree, better said, herbaceous genealogy wisteria bush, just purloins without digging into the work. So, while Thru Lines is fun for me and may be truly helpful to folks that start without knowing much, it is a really big caveat emptor. Totally garbage in/out. Great comment, great information DS! Of course I have enrolled in your endogamy course to improve my ability to use my Cnut!
I just found your site and I am loving it! With the dot system, would it still work with endogamy? I am finding all kinds of dna matches where there should be. Thanks for all you do!
I've been puzzled with which side of the family to use to identify the dot color. Duh. I now know that I need to assign a dot to the COUPLE rather than individual surnames of the couple. Thank you!
Glad I could help!
Diahan, I was doing a refresher on the dot system using Thrulines. In the above presentation you say you're going to use your 2nd great grandparents, but then at the 3:38 mark, you use a 3rd great grandparent. I understand that you can do the dots for any "known ancestor", but that was a little confusing switch. I really like the 5 minute quick modules. Thanks.
Debbie, thanks for pointing that out - you are right!
Great Tips! I've started organizing my matches this way and feel more focused.
Glad to hear it!
I enjoyed the video and found the dot system easy enough to understand. I am missing one set of 3xggp on my father's side but have over 41,000 matches which makes this dot system a bit impractical.
Actually, that makes this system essential, to sort them.
When assigning 3rd cousins to the family groups, Should I include 4th cousins that are shared matches as well? I don’t know when to stop adding cousins to the family groups. Thank you.
I Love your You Tube! Thank you so much❤️. Can you clarify to see if I got it right? My three times great grandfather married two different women I have matches that go to both relationships. So if my match to my three times direct line would be one color, would my match to my three times and his second wife actually be to my four times great grandfather? I hope you can make sense of this. Thanks again.
You've got it! The matches to the second wife would be matches just to your 3X great grandfather's parents. So they would get the same color dot as all others who are descendants from that couple (thoguh it is very hard to sort out 4X greats, you just don't share very much DNA).
The system is great, but would be better if there were more colors available. Many of my matches are beyond my 3rd great grandparents.
I totally agree! Just four more colors would be amazing.
I agree. I need more colours! I have no colours for past 3 GGP but have matches for beyond that. Not sure what to do with them. Maybe I will have to assign a colour to “all other distant relations”. Can’t leave them ungrouped or I won’t know if they are new connections or not.
Thank you so much for simplifying and explaining in detail how to use that feature.
You are very welcome!
Please explain the colored dots for 2X GGP and different colored dots for GGP, and new color dots for GP ?
Thanks. Love your classes & videos!
So every ancestral COUPLE gets a dot. So I sometimes recommend you start with your four great grandparent couples and use the system to label. Theoretically this allows you to divide your match list into four groups.
I like your system! Little confused. If I look at the shared matches of a confirmed second cousin, are all the matches out to 5th-8th cousins related through that common couple?
Theoretically, yes. Those 5th cousins are descendants of that couples' great grandparents (maybe). But you shouldn't see too many cousins at that distance in the shared matches as they have to share at least 20 cM with you in order to show up on the list.
I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to answer. 😊
I use the same method with respect to 3rd great grandparents, which covers 16 of the available dots, then the remaining 8 are used for the 2nd great grandparents.
Glad to hear it is working for someone else!
It's not enough dots with a family tree of maybe 3000 people.
My main tree includes myself and my husband. To effectively use this tool should I break them apart?
At Your DNA Guide, we use the dot system to find genetic networks of our matches. You don't need to remove anyone from your tree. The dots are applied to your DNA match list, not your tree. You can read more about how to use Ancestry's dots here: www.yourdnaguide.com/ancestrydna-dot-system.
Very good video. =D I do something similar to this actually! Basically, I do the same cool and warm colors for paternal and maternal sides. However, my groups are a little different because two of my 2x great-grandparents divorced and went on to have new families after the birth of my great-grandfather. So, I had to make groups based on all 16 2x great-grandparents. I found that the closer matches tend to have more dots and by the time I get to 4th cousins, I get one dot at least. I know there's no wrong way to do this. But, it certainly helps!
Thanks for sharing your experience! Sounds like you have found a great plan that works for you! That is absolutely the goal!
@@diahansouthard197 Thanks. The Leeds method makes it even easier. I'm at the point now where if I look at the shared matches, it's pretty easy to see where some people go. Some, though, are a little tricky. Some are kind of obvious. =)
Thank you! I finally have a reasonable way to use the dots. I was close, but shotgun close...
So glad to hear that!
I think I have to wait to get my DNA results before I can edit and add dot and name the group that it is associated with?
Yes!
I have no idea who paternal great grandparents are & can't trust the grandfather's surname due to Y-dna. I have done doting beginning with 2nd cousins on paternal side. However, I read where you suggested to another person to start with a known 1st cousin. Do I have to start over with a known 1st cousin, or march on? I have several copies of your book and it is wonderful.
Do you have known second cousins from those unknown great grandparents? If not, then you will have to start with your first cousins, and then do what I call splitting your network using your known second cousins from the other paternal great grandparent couple. Then the people who share with your first cousins, but don't share with these other second cousins are the matches you are interested in (that I call your leftovers).
I see how you are using gt grandparents as a couple- My question is how do I find the matches who are only for one parent. ie one gt grandparent. (I am trying to find connections for my Gt Grandfather and i dont know how to seperate from cousins linked to my Gt Grandmother-his wife).?
Once you have your network - then you can split it into the group you want. There are a few techniques on how to split a network. We outline some in my book. Take a look at the blog post as well. www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/finding-3xgg-with-dna
Thanks so much for this concise video! I have started my dots a persons instead of "Couples", do you know of a "best way" I can go about changing them to your system. And also should I start with my grandparents/Couple? BTW your eyes are a beautiful blue.
Most people start out with using the dots on individuals. Unfortunately the best way to switch to couples is just to delete the dots you have and start over. I know it sounds scary, but you will be glad you did!
@@YourDNAGuide thank you so much for the reply!
Couldn’t you just keep your existing dots, and replace each category person’s name with the last names of their parents? Then each person dot becomes a couple dot. Example: Your great-grandfather, John Smith, is a label. You change the label to Smith/Jones, who are your 2nd-great-grandparents. Because surely if they are descended from John Smith, they are also descended from his parents.
Two questions. What does it mean when you have multiple choises for some people. How do you resolve a mystery group? A mystery group are related along a given line but there is no tree or Thrulines connection.
If there are multiple ancestors suggested for one match then you may be related to them in multiple ways. You should NOT use these people to dot others as it will confuse things.
As for the mystery group, I am not sure what you mean, exactly. You have a group of people you know are related to you in a certain way, but they do not show up on ThruLines? If they do not have a tree, they will not show in ThruLines.
If i do a color dot for every ancestral couple starting with great grandparents, then 2nd greats, then 3rd greats, that is a total of 28 couples. Ancestry only allows 24 custom groups. Suggestions?
They just announced that soon, with Pro Tools, you will have access to more dots. But even without that, I don't use dots to organize every match. They are not a filing system, but a filtering system to help you find the matches you need to answer your research question. So I use dots in a very targeted way, not to organize the entire list.
After watching this, I felt like it might not work for me since you said if you have unique pairs of great grandparents with individuals who have no relationship to each other. My issue is that on both my maternal and paternal side I have spouses with relationships. A paternal great grandfather and great grandmother are first cousins. She also had another sibling who married a first cousin. On my maternal side, a great grandmother's sister married the other great grandmother's brother. Do you have a video that gives suggestions for dealing with this? Thank you. I really enjoy your videos!
Yes, so as long as you are dealing with cousins more distant than second cousins. So your second cousins will be double second cousins, and that will throw off the shared matches. No video on multiple relationships yet, but good idea! I do talk about it in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/yourdnaguidethebook).
Diahan should I add dots of all the couples that a my matches match? Or just the closest or the farthest?
The rule with dots is that when you use shared matches, EVERYONE on the shared matches list gets the dot. No exceptions.
I love this system! Only problem is that of the 172K matches I only have ONE person that I have a ThruLine to. I guess I can bypass ThruLines and do this for the Shared Matches I have with confirmed DNA connections. And on my wife's side there are lots of ThruLines on her 50K matches.
Sounds like a good plan!
I used a 3rd cousin 1x removed and marked her with the color. I went to all of our shared matches and marked all of those people with the same color. Do you then go through each of the shared matches and do the color coding as well?
I call that "expanding your group" and I only do it if necessary. First use all of the matches that you KNOW are connected to this couple. Then if you don't have the matches you need to move forward, you can do as you suggested. But there are risks anytime you use someone you don't 100% know your connection to to create a group.
I have a question regarding one of my 3rd great grandfather's. He was a polygamist with 9 wives and had kids with 8 of them. I am assuming that in order to give my matches a color dot I would need to assign a color to him and each wife. Do I just give my matches thru the wife that I descend from a color dot based or just assign him a color dot and use that color for all of his descendants?
Good question. That is the beauty of the system, you can do it however makes sense for you and your current research goal. For example, if you want to do more research on him, then you could just use a dot to represent him, and it doesn't matter who the mother was as you will be focusing on his line. But if you want to investigate a particular wife, then you would want to make sure you notate her line, but the others don't really matter. After all, you are only genetically related to one wife, so that is the only one that matters for your DNA. So after all that, what I would likely do is one dot for him, and one dot for him+the wife you are related to.
maybe I'm missing it, but where is the dot system located so I can start applying the color groupings?? thanks!
Two places: On your main match page on the right of each person it says, "add to group." Or if you click on any one person, you can see that same "add to group" about four lines under their name. Have fun grouping!
Thank you for your video. I have read your book, and made great headway in sorting my Ancestry DNA matches, using 16 colors representing my 16 3rdGG couples. What confuses me is, How do I know that all of the shared matches are definitely related to both me and the known match through a particular MRCA couple? Couldn’t some of them be related to me through one line, and coincidentally related to my known match through a different line that is not related to me??
I ask this because sometimes I have an unknown match, and many of our shared matches will be 1 color, but a few will be other colors. So when I have an unknown match with only a few shared matches, and 1 of the shared matches is one color and 1 of the shared matches is a different color, with possibly other shared matches with no color yet… I can’t assign the unknown match to any particular color group with any degree of confidence.
Thank you.
It helps if you shift your thinking a bit about what these dots are doing. They are not notes about relationships so much as filters. The dots tell a story about your connection. That's why you start with a Best Known Match, and you dot EVERYONE. Then do that again. And again. Then all of your dots represent that match's relationship to the Known Matches you used. Except when they don't - as you mentioned. There are lots of reasons that people share DNA. So it is true, that you will end up with matches without dots, and some with two or three and then their shared matches lists don't seem consistent. That's why the dotting system is only part of the process.
@@YourDNAGuide Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
@@sonlighter01
I have thousands of shared matches with my first and second cousins, so giving them all dots manually will take too long. Is there a way to give everyone in a selected group one color?
I rarely use first cousins to dot, because there are so many. But you can do it quickly with the Chrome browser using an extension called click all checkboxes. chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/click-all-checkboxes/fhlogpdbadmjfpndmaijnibflgnbnhof?hl=en-US
Well this is good but if most of all they lines are from my father side, it would seem this system would need to know the names of the 2nd GGP to assign dots. And if you don’t know those names, how can you assign them??
Ah, that's the power of this system! YOU are in charge. You use the system to name and dot all the ancestors you know, and then those matches that are LEFTOVER are the matches that connect to your unknown lines. I go over the complete system in my book (www.yourDNAGuide.com/thebook) and in my DNA Skills Course (www.yourDNAguide.com/theacademy).
How do I track children when someone from my dad’s side married someone on my mom’s side? I have quadruple checked it and I have some matches that are matched to both sides. I have been doing colors for each side but then I get confused with the shared matches. Should their shared matches coded the to both sides? Makes my head spin. Do you do private help?
Thanks
Kelly
It IS confusing when you are trying to use Shared Matches when there are multiple relationships. There is an easy answer: don't do it!! ;) Seriously. I don't use Shared Matches on matches with whom I have multiple relationships if I can help it. It just defeats the purpose of the system as it doesn't actually separate your matches into groups.
@@YourDNAGuide Ok so only do the 1st person that I know is connected to both sides? I guess that does make more sense. I am way over analyzing this ;0) Thanks!
@@kellyv3448 I wouldn't do either person that is connected to both sides and just stick with people who are only related in one way.
I was all ready to learn your system and change my dotting so I could find my Great-grandfather. Then I realized Dang that's what I already did. I really just need to take the next step If I can figure out what that is.
Great Mel! Keep going!
I have been able to assign dots for my G Grandparents lines but with the two Irish sets I know nothing except their names. I have several match groups with a lot of matches where I have no idea how they match to me. I have resorted to naming them "Unknown Match Group A" etc. How do I deal with these? They could be my Irish lines or they could be unknown parentage. The biggest unknown groups have a colour but there were too many groups to give each a colour
Nan, it sounds like you are on the right track. Have you been creating your groups by using Shared Matches on your Known Matches? That is the key. They you know exactly who is in each group. So, your known matches for your first set of Irish greats should get one color, and the known matches for your other set should get a different color. Then you should have two Irish groups. Now, you won't gather everyone with the shared matches tool every time, so you may have some matches who do belong in one of those groups who do not have a dot. Sometimes you can click on a match without a dot and look at their shared matches and see that they are consistently one color. Then you know that person is likely that group as well.
I am confused! Sorry! I started with my Dad's side - I gave his parents a dot, then my grandads parents a dot, then my great great grandparents then my great great great grandparents. So I had for colours for the four couples. When I looked a thru lies, I didnt have any matches with my Dad's parents, with my great I had two, then with my great great and great great great I had three ( same two from my greats with another match) So what confuses me, when I assign a colour to the shared match person, if they are with three sets, which one do I give them? Great, great great , or great great great. HELP! Please!
I usually only start dotting with great grandparent couples. So you would find a Best Known Match - a second cousin who is a descendant of your great grandparents. Use the Shared Matches tool on that person and give EVERYONE on that shared matches list a dot to represent that couple.
why are putting the dots on 2x great grandparents and then selecting the third cousin under the 3rd great grandparents. I thought you were using the grandparents that you put the dots on.
I have done a lot of genealogy to confirm the people identified in Thrulines. If I could not confirm it with genealogy, I didn’t use them. I still have a lot I can use. I am older, and very few of my generation have tested or even can be tested. All of my known matches are of a different generation, e.g., 2C2R. Would I still count them as a 2nd cousin?
Yes, you still count them as second cousins for the purpose of your dots as the ancestral couple you share with them is still your great grandparents.
@@YourDNAGuide thank you for the quick response!
I try to stick to this though on my dad’s side there is endogamy, for example one set of first cousins on his mum’s side are also his 2nd cousins 1 removed on his dad’s side which makes it a little bit more colourful for his side than my mum’s.
Doing the colour coding and shared matches (endogamy aside) has helped determine the family that my dad’s paternal grandfather is from since they don’t match my dad’s mom’s brother, 1st cousins (including the endogamous ones), or his half sister but do match me and my sister. I am fairly confident in which of the 8 brothers is the father but unfortunately I doubt I can ever know 100% since my dad was an only child and he died before commercial DNA testing was a thing.
Sounds like you have done good work! If you had descendants of that man you think is the father tested, and the descendants of another of the brothers tested, you might be able to tell the difference. Though it may still be tricky, since we are talking the difference between a half third cousin and a fourth cousin (if I am understanding your question correctly).
How do you get the dots on your tree view
Ah! That is a bit misleading. I created that image myself. There isn't a way to do that at Ancestry.
I've batched mine into 4 groups (no idea how to do 8 or more) but I'm left with some low cM people who don't seem to match anyone except each other. Any idea what I can do to work out whose side they are on? The highest is 39cM.
At Ancestry when you use the shared matches tool, it can only gather people who share 20 cM or more with BOTH you and the person you are using to find the shared matches. So it is possible that these matches just don't meet that criteria for BOTH of you. It is also possible that they are matching not because you share a common ancestor, but because you share a common population.
@@diahansouthard197 I see, thank you. Interesting. Also do you know how I can divide the 4 groups into 8? I would love to identify great grandparent groups but I think 4 is the limit that the system has found!
@@lemonbade Dividing your match list is all about using KNOWN matches. People you already know your relationship to. So if you have 4 second cousins (one from each of your great grandparent couples) you can divide your list into four groups using the Shared Matches tool. So you would need 8 3rd cousins to divide your match list into 8 groups. That is the most reliable way. Of course, you can always do it genetically as well, but that is a bit more complicated. Of course.
I would really like to use this system, but I have no idea who my paternal great parents are, and I can’t use my grandfathers surname as a guide because I don’t know if it to be his true name, Any suggestions on how I should tackle this problem
This is exactly the kind of problem DNA is meant to help you investigate. I go over exactly how to do it in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook) but in general, you need to start by creating groups of people. So, start with your first cousin on your paternal side and mark all of those matches (let's say blue). Then use a second cousin who is related to your paternal grandmother's parents and mark all of those shared matches (let's say green). What you will have are what I call Leftovers: those who are related to your first cousin (have blue dots) but not to your second cousin (don't have green dots). So you investigate all of the blue dot people for a connection to each other. Their connection to each other will help you fill the hole in your family tree.
Thank you, do you mean use a first cousin on both sides or a first cousin on my paternal and a second cousin on my maternal?
I will give it a go
Jan
@@janscott6099 you can for sure us a first cousin on both sides to start with. Then a second cousin on your paternal side that you know to split that paternal group and leave you those leftovers that you want.
I had a problem with this method. I chose my third great grandfather ( fathers fathers side) from ThruLines and then followed it down to my sister who also had a Dna test done. I clicked on her icon and gave her a color dot for that set of third great grandparents, then I clicked on her shared matches and was going to run through the match list color coding them all with that color for the third great grandparents set but noticed that one of her 2nd cousin matches is related through my fathers mothers side. I think my problem is that my sister and I share matches through all of my grandparents. This must mean that I have to limit the people I am looking at to be at least my third cousin because anyone closer would have other matches that may or may not be from the third great grandparents set I chose in ThruLines. I’m not saying your method is wrong, I’m just saying I didn’t realize I had to limit which DNA matches I could actually look at because if they’re too close to me then we likely share a closer grandparent which will skew the results.
The dot system works best when you use a cousin whose Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) is the ancestor for whom you created the color. So, in your example, you would need to use the shared matches tool on a 4th cousin who is also a descendant of your third great grandfather (but through one of his other children). When you used your sister, your MRCA is your parents, so you aren't getting any separation of groups, since, as you said, you and your sister share all of your ancestors.
I also had issues with this. Matching with matches has its issues. I had matches of matches matching with both my maternal and paternal lines.
Your full sister should have all 16 dots - because she is also descended from all 16 of your couples.
A 1st cousin would have 8 dots.
A 2nd cousin would have 4 dots.
A 3rd cousin would have 2 dots.
It’s not until you get to 4th cousins that each has only 1 color dot, representing a 3rd-great-grandparent couple (presuming that they are not related to you through more than one of your 3rdGG couples).
So even a shared match with a 3rd cousin (2 dots, A&B) could be related through dot A only, dot B only, or dots A & B.
Very good information, however, I have tons of DNA matches that apparently descend from a great grandmother and a gentleman who was not her husband. I came to this conclusion after ruling out the connections with any known matches. How do I handle that? and is there any way to prove this pairing? I have no DNA matches with the gentleman she was married to, yikes. Thanks
"Prove" as in find a document - probably not. But you can check your genetic relationship vs the genealogy relationship. By that I mean you can look at these descendants of this guy who have tested, determine your genealogical relationship if this guy is in fact your ancestor, and check that genealogical relationship against the genetic relationship. If you have several matches and they are all lining up, and you have negative evidence (you know people who have tested who are descendants of the guy who on paper should be your ancestor that you don't DNA match) then that is as far as the DNA can take you. It is up to you if you want to put this other guy in your tree.
@@YourDNAGuide Thank you so much.
The problem that I ran into is that some people had errors in their trees. They included my ancestors in their tree but some of the connections are incorrect. Then others copied the incorrect information. The ThruLines that Ancestry has created thus gives the wrong info. Frustrating.
So true. That is why I call this a cheating tool!
Can you place a match not knowing anyone?
Kind-of. Usually if you know at least one of your parents you can identify if a match does or does not belong to the known side of your family. But if you don't know either parent, then the goal is to choose your highest match, use the Shared Matches tool on that person, give the shared matches a dot, and then work with that group of matches to try to figure out how they are related to each other. Then do the same thing with the next closest match who is not in that first group. I hope that makes sense. There are better instructions in my book www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook.
How do you use this system with half cousins? My second great grandmother was never married but had three children, very spread apart, so there may have been three fathers.
Oh half cousins are THE BEST. Using shared matches with descendants of these three half cousins, if they didn't share a father, will give you only DNA matches that are related to your 2X great grandmother, making it easier to research her.
@@YourDNAGuide I know a lot about my 2x great grandmother and her family; it's her mystery man #3 that is my 2nd great grandfather that I am trying to discover. He is the only 2nd great grandparent that I do not know. It's driving me crazy!
@@Susie82059 Ah, I see. So you need to employ my Leftovers strategy, that I talk about in my book (www.yourDNAguide.com/thebook). Tricky to explain in a sentence or two, but essentially you need to use the Shared Matches and dotting first with 2nd cousins, who are descendants of your great grandparents. Mark them with a yellow dot. Then use Shared Matches with some of these half 3rd cousins from your 2X great grandmother, and mark them with pink. Find a 3C who is a descendant of your great grandparent's spouse, and mark them in green. Then the Leftovers are those with only Yellow dots. They should be the matches that below to your missing ancestor.
@@YourDNAGuide Thanks so much for your suggestion! I have your book and was trying to figure out which strategy to use. I will go right to that chapter!
What if one of your matches is related to you in multiple ways?
Great question! Then that means you probably shouldn't use them to label your matches, as it becomes confusing.
Help!
Do you need more information on how to use the dot system?