You can see that I have a total of 45 close matches, although some of those matches are duplicates of each other. The chart below shows my matches as of June 2019. You share grandparents with your first cousin, and since you only have 4 grandparents, it’s not terribly difficult to figure out which set of grandparents you connect to through that first cousin – especially given the size of the databases and the number of matches that people have today. My closest relative that has tested that I didn’t know was testing is my half-sister’s daughter. As more people test, the better the odds of actually having a parent or sibling match, or perhaps a close relative like an aunt, uncle or first cousin. While I’m looking for distant ancestors, adoptees and others seeking the identities of contemporary people are not looking back generations, but seek to identify contemporary generations, meaning people who are alive or lived very recently, typically within a generation.Įnter the world of genetics and DNA matching.īefore the days of DNA testing, adoptees could only hope that someone knew the identify of their biological parents, or that their biological parents registered with a reunion site, or that their court records could be opened.ĭNA testing changed all of that, because people can now DNA test and find their close relatives. Genealogical pedigree charts are typically represented with the “home person,” me, in this case at the base with my ancestors branching out behind them like a lovely peacock’s tail. In reality, because I’ve been a genealogist for decades, I’ve identified many more of my ancestors which are reflected in my tree on my computer and in my trees at both Ancestry and MyHeritage where I benefit from hints and DNA matches. In my tree, shown in the format of a pedigree chart, above, you can see that I’ve identified all 16 of my great-great-grandparents. While tree-building is the goal of genealogists, the trees they build are important tools for people seeking to identify unknown individuals. This facilitates the continued growth of their tree by adding ancestors and extending the tree back generations. Additionally, they can access the trees of other genealogists who are researching the same ancestors. They then either synchronize or duplicate their tree on the public sites mentioned above which provide functionality such as “hints” that point to documents relevant to the ancestors in their tree.
#WHY ARE ALL MY DNA MATCHES FROM FATHERS SIDE SOFTWARE#
Genealogists utilize software to create trees of their ancestors, either on their own computers with software such as Family Tree Maker, Legacy, RootsMagic or the free tree building software from MyHeritage. Then, to gather additional information, genealogists turn to publicly available sources such as: Genealogists interview family members and access family sources, such as photos, Bibles, boxes of memorabilia and often extend their family another generation or two using these resources. Not very many people can tell you the names of their great-grandparents off the top of their head – not unless they ARE genealogists? Generally, genealogists know who their parents are and most of the time, their grandparents as well. Genealogists are interested in discovering their ancestors.
How is Identifying Unknown Individuals Different from Genealogy? What is the methodology that genealogists use to identify unknown parents? It’s exactly the same process used to identify unknown Does, meaning unidentified bodies as well as violent criminals who have left DNA, such as blood or semen, at a crime scene. In this article, I’m addressing only this topic and in more detail. I covered this technique in concept recently at a conference as part of an overview presentation. There have been a lot of questions recently about the methodology used by people searching for unknown parents and other unidentified individuals.