Have you spit in a test tube to have your DNA analyzed? Have you transferred those results to GedMatch to take advantage of the DNA analysis tools they offer? If so, have you checked out their ‘Ancestor Projects’?
As a Germanna Descendant, I joined their recently created project. Running a search of my DNA against other members of a project simply requires the selection of a project to be used and the entering of a kit number.
Once the submit button is pressed, it is just a matter of waiting for the DNA to be analyzed. It appears that switching away from the browser tab stops this process. To get around this, I simply opened GedMatch in its own Window and did not minimize the window. Once finished, a table appears.
When it comes to ‘brick walls’, I have several SMITH lines where I’m lacking information. Thus, I joined the ‘A Your Ancestors were Smith and Jones or Brown …’. When I ran a segment analysis for this project, many lines of the report were for shared chromosome segments with my brothers and a parent. To make it easier to work with this data, I downloaded the CSV file and then opened it in Excel. Once open in Excel, I was able to pull out my family data so that the only remaining data was to other Smith, Jones or Brown matches. I then sorted by chromosome. Now, I have a list of matches and need to figure out which branch of my tree they match.
The downloaded data does not contain the ‘tree’ column or the email address. Thus, I will have to refer back to GedMatch to evaluate these relationships so I can then use the given email address to contact the matches.
I also joined the ‘Colonial American Dutch’ project. I recently extended a branch of my tree that led back to several of these Colonial American Dutch families. Since I need more paper documentation to verify this line, I was curious as to whether my DNA results would support this possible lineage. Running a ‘Segment Analysis’ for this project produced over 100 results.
Fortunately, many of these matches have a tree associated with their GedMatch data. This will help to figure out our relationship. At this point, I don’t have ‘proof’ of a Colonial American Dutch lineage. However, I have ‘supporting evidence’ that may help me locate additional records to verify this lineage.
Like the ‘Colonial American Dutch’ project, many of the other projects I’ve joined are ‘regional’ projects to help verify that I have ancestry in those early areas of Colonial United States.
Unfortunately, the ‘Smith and Jones or Brown’ project was the only project with my surnames that I found on the list. The administrator of the Crawford yDNA project has attempted to form a Crawford GedMatch project, but hasn’t been able to get the required number of participating kits to create a project.
With the help of these projects, it allows me to view my ‘one to many’ results in smaller, focused batches. Thus, I may be able to figure out one of my SMITH lines or verify Colonial American Dutch ancestry or early colonial ancestry in one or more areas.
If you are like me and would appreciate the ability to see how you match against other GedMatch users with a similar surname, please either become a project administrator or agree to participate when surname project administrators suggest creating a project.
Hmm. I hadn’t heard of these producers before. I do have my DNA test results (four autosomal) on the site, but haven’t looked it it in quite some time. I have almost no brick walls in the timeframe that autosomal would be helpful for. However, I did find GedMatch helpful and fun for using DNAPainter.
“Projects”
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