Last month, I was introduced to DNA Painter thru a DNA study group sponsored by the Topeka Genealogical Society. Although I haven’t done a lot of ‘painting’, I think this tool may help me figure out relationships to mysterious matches.
Before I can use DNA Painter with unknown matches, I need to ‘paint’ more known matches. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my identified cousin matches are on Ancestry which doesn’t provide a chromosome map. Thus, I’m hoping some of these cousins will help me ‘paint’ more DNA connections by transferring their DNA to GedMatch or vendors accepting DNA transfer for free.
The transfer process is fairly simple — but time consuming.
- Download DNA results from Ancestry (the data will come down as a ZIP file — do NOT unzip or open the ZIP file)
- Create a free account on www.gedmatch.com (or another vendor’s site such as MyHeritage)
- Upload the zip file to GedMatch — This is the time consuming part — just leave the screen alone until the upload finishes.
- Be sure to write down your GedMatch number
By transferring your data to one of these sites, I can do a one-to-one match comparison to get the segment data needed for painting. Watch for updates as I get more cousin data to work with!