Tip; Finding 'hidden' Ancestry shared matches

[Glen TK]

You might already know this but if not it may be helpful

When checking shared matches from a good quality match the cut off point for shared matches displayed is around 20cM.

I've got thousands of matches below 20cM many of which are assigned to a parent but they seem pretty useless and I didn't bother to view them.
I've just spent an hour going through some of them and when I click 'shared matches' have found many of them do have shared matches, in some cases dozens of shared matches come up.

If like me you are a bit short of really good matches and have lots of lower quality matches it might be worth checking. I've found a clutch that link to two big mystery groups of maternal matches.

[Glen TK]

I have a 22cM unassigned match, 85% Irish and no shared matches

I clicked an 18cM maternal match, 82% Irish and the 22cM is a shared match

I then clicked an 18cM paternal match, 95% Irish and the 22cM is again a shared match


None of them have big trees but who knows how many more I might find that link to them and what their trees may reveal. Maybe I'll discover that they (or others) have ancestors in broadly the same area at around the same time and unravel the mystery if my Irish ethnicity that I never knew existed.


Now I just need to work out how to best record it all and find a way to try and compare the results to the 16k matches I have on myheritage. It seems impossible that I can have over 30k matches on bot sites and only have four duplicate test donors.

[kiterunner]

You can add them all to a particular colour group on Ancestry so that you can easily find them all at once. And the same on My Heritage. There will be quite a few people who are on both sites.

[Glen TK]

You can add them all to a particular colour group on Ancestry so that you can easily find them all at once. And the same on My Heritage. There will be quite a few people who are on both sites.

Making better use of groups on Ancestry is something I should do. I must be missing a lot of clues at the moment and organise things better.

I splashed out on DNA tools on myheritage so I can autocluster matches on there.

[Glen TK]

I'm still working through them but there are some interesting observations, several batches of <20cM who each have only one match each but it's the same match in each case.

Two 21cM maternal side matches to me are known to be 2nd cousins to each other and whilst they only have 5matches above 20cM they have many more below that amount.

Also a small but growing number of <20cM matches that ancestry has assigned to a parent who match with someone assigned to the other parent. These all seem to have 80% plus Irish ethnicity, whilst the trees may not go back far enough to be much use it does seem that there is a reasonable chance my paternal and maternal Irish ethnicity comes from the same area. If these low cM matches are genuine matches and not false results I could be my own 8th cousin or something crazy.

Talking of crazy, there are a couple of USA matches that both have trees with 1000's of names back to pre 1100 and seem to claim links to nobility. I have my doubts about them but a staggering amount of Shropshire events in them so maybe that noble blood was diluted by the invasion of the Irish :)

[kiterunner]

You might find this interesting, Glen:

https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2023/03/16/the-growing-phenomenon-of-the-unlinked-family-cluster/

[Glen TK]

I'm around half way through it and it's as if someone was watching over my shoulder last night and taking notes :)

Completely by accident I found an easy way to view shared matches on MyHeritage earlier today, there are a couple of the Wesseldine lot on there but I have lousy matches, the auto cluster thing puts them in a cluster of just 4 and then picks up they should also be in another group so I'm trying a recluster on another site. It's been 45 minutes and still not finished but I have 15k matches on MH, only one above 100cM!! If nothing else my dna is quantity not quality that's for sure.

[kiterunner]

I have got nearly 19,000 matches on My Heritage, Glen, but many of them are Jewish and presumably just share very common Jewish DNA with me which would be filtered out on Ancestry. Autoclustering on My Heritage was useless for me for this reason.

[Glen TK]

About 16k matches on there but only 115 (30cM) make it into the clustering, the reclustering just moved the clusters around but the names in each remained the same. A few that should be in multiple groups but no trees so no progress.
I'll finish that article you linked as the laptop decided to freeze up, I have a theory about what happened back in the 1880's and just wish a cousin would stop blethering on about an old family tree and Laird Hay from centuries ago and dribble in a tube, three tests from different lines from my grandfather would answer a few questions and give me some direction to follow.

[Glen TK]

Looks like a few pile up matches thanks to the close knit Irish stuff that looks more likely by the day but I've sorted out one of the maternal matches Ancestry suggested as 4th to 6th cousin, she's a 3rd cousin and I've got the direct ancestors in my tree. It's not as wheway :) back as it might have been

I had to skip through several conflicting Ancestry trees and dance around convict reports as there's a bigamous marriage in there too!