Tuesday, January 10, 2012

My Family Finder Autosomal Test Results - Post 2

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In My Family Finder Autosomal Test Results - Post 1, I described finding my autosomal DNA results on the Family Tree DNA website, adding my GEDCOM file and what my "Population Finder" results were.

In this post, I want to describe the Matches page and some of the autosomal DNA results on my chromosomes. 

1)  From the MyFTDNA page, I clicked on the "Family Finder" button and selected the "Matches" link.  This opened my "Family Finder - Matches" page, and listed all of my "Show All Matches."  There were 82 of them, and they were ordered by the "Longest Block" of tested markers that I matched with the persons on the Match list:


There are six columns on this list for each matched person:

*  The name of the match person, the names of the tests they have on the Family Tree DNA site, and a link to their GEDCOM (if it was provided).

*  Match Date - date that the matches were listed. In my case, they were all on 28 November when my DNA data was added to the database.

*  Relationship Range - the approximate relationship indicated by the DNA matching

*  Suggested Relationship - the most likely relationship indicated by the match between myself and the matched person

*  Shared cM - the amount of shared DNA (in centiMorgans) shared between myself and the matched person.

*  Longest Block - the longest continuous block of shared DNA (in centiMorgans) shared between myself and the matched person.

*  Known Relationship - if myself and the matched person determine the relationship, we can add it here.

*  Ancestral Surnames - the surnames provided by the matched person - some did not provide any, some provided 3 to 6 generations of surnames.

The top match on my Match list shares 78.89 cM with me, with the longest block being 53.47 cM.  The suggested relationship is 3rd Cousin with a range of 2nd to 4th cousin. The matched person provided a list of surnames and locations, including: 

Leahy (Ireland), Kerslake (England), Doyle (Ireland), Flexton (England), Kelly (Ireland), Collins (Ireland), Brown (England), Harris (England), Noad (England), Allen (England), Edgerley (England), King (England), Spencer (England), Fell (England), Daniels (England), Burder (England), Flaxon (England), Hill (England), Withy (England), Hunt (England), Fox (England)

As you can see, all of the surnames are from England and Ireland.  The matched person did not provide a GEDCOM file to peruse.

2)  I wanted to see which chromosomes that this matched person and others match with my DNA.  I clicked on the "Chromosome Browser" link on the FTDNA "Family Finder" menu bar and was able to select up to five persons from the list of the matched persons to see the chromosome segments that matched.  I picked the top five on my list of "Shared cM" matches and saw:


The chart above shows that I share segments of 5 cM or more on these chromosomes:

*  Chromosome 10 - 8 segments with the first person listed

*  Chromosome 15 - 11 segments with the second person, 13 segments with the fourth person and 12 segments with the fifth person listed

*  Chromosome 17 - 16 segments with the third person listed.

It's interesting to see that the Chromosome 15 matches are in essentially the same location - are these three matched persons related?

For the chart above, the system default was to only show segments of 5 cM or more.

3)  I wondered if I shared more segments with these matched persons, so I changed the box for "Compare Genes" to "+ 1 cM" (the choices were 1, 3, 5 or 10 cM) and saw:



I match these five persons on several more chromosomes, and figured out that the "Shared Segments" shown on the person list refers to the number of shared segments over 1 cM long.  I need to look at the other matched persons also.

4)  The next step in this process is to look at the surname lists and/or GEDCOM files for these five matched persons (and others) to see if there are common surnames in common locations.  Then contact them via email to see if we can share information.

There is a FAQ page for the Family Finder autosomal DNA test at http://www.familytreedna.com/faq/answers.aspx?id=17 that explains quite a bit about the Family Tree DNA test process and test results.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/01/my-family-finder-autosomal-test-results_10.html

Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2012

2 comments:

Mike Maglio said...

Great post. I hope this will encourage more people to get tested. DNA is an integral part of our toolkit.

Dona said...

Interesting stuff you've found. I look forward to finding out what your further research and contacts with these individuals reveals for your family history.