-->

Tuesday 25 February 2020

Ancestry close matches

I was beginning to think that my comment on the 12th January - that everyone was just waiting for Christmas to buy DNA tests - was clearly not justified, since there was then a lack of any new close matches for almost another fortnight, during which time 23andMe announced they were laying off staff.  When Ancestry also then reported lay offs, on the 5th February, it just emphasised how much of a downturn there has been in the DNA testing market.

However, it hasn't been all "doom and gloom" since - I've received seven new "4c and closer" matches since my comment ( 24/1, 1/2, 11/2, 13/2, 19/2, 21/2, and 23/2) bringing me up to a total of 190. 

Out of these new matches, one was someone who has also tested at 23andMe - which is useful, since I have identified the potential shared ancestor with this match, and that helps to confirm some of the shared lines at Ancestry, which were suggested through match clustering.

Another match was a predicted 3rd cousin - by the time I'd explained how our shared matches enabled me to identify approximately where in my pedigree they fitted, ie a shared match who is a first cousin of mine meant my paternal side, sharing with certain second cousins of mine narrowed it down to my paternal grandmother's ancestral lines, and a shared third cousin meant the connection was most probably through my great grandmother HAYNES' ancestry somewhere, they'd discovered just how closely they were related to that third cousin, and it was clear exactly where they fitted into the family! 

The other matches haven't been quite so easy to place, varying from no pedigree information and no shared matches, to both good pedigrees and at least one shared match, with a possible suggestion of which of my ancestral lines they will connect to, based on the shared clustering.  

So, still a bit of research to be done for most of the new matches, but with a possibility of success for at least some of those.  

Which makes for steady progress towards my goal of identifying all of my '4c and closer', as well as giving me some more examples to use in a presentation that I am currently working on, on how helpful shared match clustering can be.





23andMe Lay-offs: https://blog.eogn.com/2020/01/23/23andme-lays-off-100-employees/
Ancestry Lay-offs: https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2020/02/05/our-path-forward/

No comments:

Post a Comment