DNA genealogy problems and methods

You might find a protractor to measure the angles and the percentages of the whole circle. 360 degrees is 100% of the DNA. So a section that is 36 degrees would be 10%

Most of the time these “pie charts” are supposed to be label with the percentage. Forcing poor humans like us to mentally map the degrees in an image back to the original percentage is just a pain. Those color are hard for me to match up. I see most of those segments that all look “orange to me” A good pie chart would have something like ABCDEFGHI clearly labeled because not everyone can see all colors.

Sounds like that company is not trying as hard as is possible. Nicole Gallant Nunes summarized pretty well.

I did try most of the original half dozen companies that were large. I helped about 120 people by building their tree from their DNA and matches. There were a few from 23andMe where I got some useful hints or very specific clues. But Ancestry still has the largest number of tests,, so the highest probability of finding closer DNA matches.

What I would do, is if someone was adopted, or their tree did not match their DNA, or donor conceived, or a missing father, or a missing mother – and they had taken one of the other test than Ancestry, I would buy them a test, wait and use the Ancestry. It is about 10 times easier to build a complete pedigree from Ancestry. My time was valuable even if I never charged for helping people. But spending 400 hours on a case trying to use 23andMe or one of these other test (to save a few dollars) wasted my time big time.

I mostly have not been solving these cases the last couple of years. I am 75 now and the last couple of years have been exhausting. I think my last full case was at least 400 hours, and it wore me out. Ancestry changed owners and methods and purpose too. I think some times that the hundreds of full pedigrees and the branches down to matches is a huge waste and unfair to me, the families, and the future. But greedy companies are the norm, not the exception.

I apologize. I am tired.

I will say that after 20 “missing parent” cases I could see that helping one person find the names and details of their parents had significant positive impact on the community of their DNA matches. Filling in the part of the human family tree for one person, fills in the ancestors of hundreds or tens of thousands of others. It is a matter of efficiency. If an ancestor has 500,000 descendants (my Mayflower ancestors has more) then all of them now are spend huge effort and resources to fill in their branch. Let me not get distracted. Edward Doty’s parents are “missing”.

Now somewhere about 60 cases, I had streamlined and practices a simple but effective method. “Fill in the full pedigree of all the close matches. Find their common ancestors, connect their common ancestors to the root person by placeholder people with 25 years between generations, then use the Ancestry DNA common ancestor hints and Thrulines hints to fill in and strengthen that part of the tree. It works, it is tedious, it a huge amount of clicking.

Some cases took a few hours or a few days. But I would fill in the whole tree back to 5th great grandparents. I think there are not a lot of people like me, so I tried to leave a tree for the root person, but by extended branches down to living DNA test takers, and filling that in with clues and records and connected tree any new test takers on that branch will have a path to follow back that is secure and efficient. The “trail blazers” are the ones exploring, mapping, and “blazing” the way for others who come later.

A few of my earliest cases ended up taking a long time. Two of them took me, and I am fairly efficient, 1000 hours spread over 5 years. They both got solved, each, because of 1 new DNA test that made sense of the whole. The average was about 30 hours. But remember that is 30 hours to build the whole tree, not just to find the parents names and details. I would build the whole pedigree of a missing parent, then verify that the ancestors matched the ancstors of hte DNA matches. Some of the people, their parents might be adopted. It is hard because Ancestry’s goal is NOT to make it fast, effective, correct, collaborative.  It is to make the most money from the least effort on their part. Is that cynical? Yes because I know they can do things to improve the whole community efforts of tens of millions of people.

Here are some quick suggestions from my experience:

1. Do NOT waste any time on people who make large trees and lock them, make them private.  Every experience I had was a disaster and I am very solicitous of others. But unless someone does not know they are beggaring every one of their DNA matches for their personal gut feelings, you can use your scarce time and that will all be locked in someone tree never to be available to anyone. Not ever matches who desperately (sometimes) want to find critical information. Are many people still over concerned with labels?

After about 20 cases helping others, I got about a dozens second cousin matches one spring. I could not find them on any branch. I had to tell myself, stop trying to use “ordinary tree thinking” and told myself, “look at is as a “missing parent problem”.  It became easy then and in a week or so, I saw that my paternal grandfather was illegitimate. I hated abandoning 40 years of research on the Collins family. And I was angry. But now I have met and befriended cousins on my Fathers side and extended that Saunders branch back to when they came from England and before. I emphasize that assuming the tree is correct blocks you from looking at the DNA and records objectively. I could not find where those new people came from. But as soon as I simply added their full pedigrees to my tree, found their common ancestors, added placeholder to me so Ancestry could search for matches more effectively, that system clicks in and it works.

2.  Build the trees of all your DNA matches where they have no tree. It is not hard. But it takes time.

3. Extend your tree from your ancestors siblings down to the DNA matches and connect their DNA page to them in your tree. Ancestry can easily handle trees with hundreds of thousands of people. My own tree after many years and LOTS of DNA tests attached and many hundreds of DNA matches identified, is about 40,000 people and about that many records.

4. When you search and find a record that applies, “process the record” in a consistent way. Makes sure to link every person in the record to the corresponding person in your tree, and add them to the tree in another tab if they are not there. The reason is because Ancestry mostly does not generate the most relevant record hint or family tree hints, until you add a record to a person. If you are going back to 1950 and there are a few people in the census record while you have the record open do all the family members. Then in a minute or two, Ancestry will generate hints which are the records that others have used for people in other trees where they linked them to that record you just added. In the 1900 census back to 1850, those families can be large. But in every census, link each person to the census, Ancsetry can look for solid hints.

Now I made about 700 or 800 screen videos to help people. I found APowerSoft Screen Recorder Pro that will record the screen as you work, and record your voice. I made as least 100 “first review of DNA and tree” videos for people who just got their DNA and did not know what to do. And many where people figured things out on their own and then got stuck. I asked each person to invite me as a DNA Collaborator and a Tree Editor. Nothing else works.  When I got the two invitations, I would go to the DNA matches, and show where things are, explain about the matches and some of the tools.  If they never added any DNA matches, I would add a convenient DNA match to their tree (“Tree Editor” permission required). And then build the DNA match tree.  A 90 minute screen video I would l show all the basics.

The reason I made many hundreds of hour or 90 minute videos, is because as a case would evolve I would do the work and record and explain it. I think there might be 20 or 30 people that I helped who were good or promising DNA genealogies who went on to help others. I know some who exceeded me, and some who are way better than me with their human insights and hunches. Me, I tend to just slog through, build the trees of all the matches. I  make the branches down to help more of their matches in the future. I organize and combine and standardize the records where many people are each only doing their own things. But, the tree is the human tree. And it is a whole, not many fragments.

I am tired now, and in quite a bit of pain from writing intently.  I have tried to put down some of these things. They are said in videos but every one of those videos is private. My rule has been that I never never never share a video I make for someone with others. But they cna share with others.

I just cannot go on.  I do not get sad because we all die, we all live lives trying to do our best. I somewhat hate that I have worked most every day for the last 55 years on very hard and complex things, but I cannot take it with me, I cannot easily share it without still more effort.

A person who knows their parents and does not have a tree is more sad to me, than a person seeking closure using DNA to try to find parents but has not found them. Where the “parent seeker ” knows a lot about their deep ancestors, and their “dna match without a tree” doesn’t even have the basics of their close family genealogy. There are exceptions when people have their tree but do not put it online to help their cousins out to about 7th or 8th cousins.

I apologize for writing so much. If I were talking to you, these are the kinds of things I would repeat again and again for different situations.

I have used computers and built information systems that affect millions or billions of humans since about 1970, I started with artificial intelligence and neural network and optimizing large information systems in high school in 1966, and was at graduate level AI in my sophomore year in college. I have been using Ancestry for more than 20 years and deeply. I see how they could fairly easily make Ancestry and dna genealogy on the Internet much more fair, much more open, much more collaborative. But as many times as I offered suggestion and improvement they do not listen to anyone, not even God.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation