Common ancestors

[Kit]

When you select your matches you can filter them by groups, new matches or one that says "Common Ancestors". Just had a look at one and went to the tree to see who the common ancestor was but it is a tree of 6 people and none of the names sound familiar.

How do they determine you have a common ancestor? Don't all DNA matches have to have a common ancestor somewhere?

I use ancestry btw.

[kiterunner]

It's "Common Ancestor hints", Toni, and the hints aren't necessarily correct.

There should be a green leaf to click on to see the details, and it will then show you which trees it has taken its guesses from.

[Kit]

ok, that makes sense. I didn't click on the green leaf.

All the others I've looked at so far had trees that easily showed the relationship and/or I had had contact with them previously so I knew the branch they came from.

This is the first one that has no information and is unknown.

[Kit]

Thank you so much.

Clicking that leaf shows way too much information considering people can't be seen on a tree except as "Living" but I can see the connection and someone I thought was an only child is actually one of 8. DNA is great but birth and marriage certs really help to sort it out. :)

[marquette]

When you click on Common Ancestor, then on one of the common ancestors, you get the family tree showing links - if you click on "show thru lines" it shows all the different branches linked by family trees and DNA. You may notice that some names have "Susan's Tree" or "David's tree" underneath them. This means the person/branch has been picked up from another ancestry tree (public or private). If the match is through a private tree, no other information will be shared, even for non-living people.

I have two Common Ancestor hints which I think are wrong - one is a man of the same name as my ancestor, but 10 years older. There is DNA shared with the other man's descendant, there must be a family link, but I have not sorted that out yet (in the late 1700s). The other one shows a shared DNA match, but I cannot work it out, the common ancestor seems completely wrong place - am I investigating.