Monday, September 18, 2017

Updating My AncestryDNA Status and Statistics

I last reported on my AncestryDNA results in Updating my AncestryDNA Status (posted 23 March 2017).  At that time, I had:

*  The same ethnicity estimates as before
*  175 Shared Ancestor Hints
*  391 4th cousins or closer
*  10 DNA Circles
*  8 New Ancestor Discoveries


Today, when I checked my AncestryDNA results, I found that I have:

*  The same ethnicity estimates as before
*  238 Shared Ancestor Hints
*  577 4th cousins or closer
*  488 pages of matches (over 24,350 matches of 6 cM or more)
*  15 DNA Circles
*  9 New Ancestor Discoveries


So I have 238 Shared Ancestors with other DNA testers, out of the 24,350+ matches on AncestryDNA.  That's slightly less than 1% of my matches have an identified Shared Ancestor with me.  With 577 4th Cousins or closer, that means that 339 more either don't have an attached tree or a tree with enough ancestors to get back to a common 3rd great-grandfather.




In the past six months, I have:

*  Made a note on each Shared Match (except for the ones with a private tree or those without a tree), and several other cousins that are not Shared Matches.  My notes are along the lines of:

"24.7 cM in 2 segments - 3rd cousin 1x removed, common ancestors are 3rd great-grandparents John Rich and Rebecca Hill"

*  Added to my spreadsheet for the Shared Matches entries including the above note information.

*  Clicked on the "Shared Matches" button on the Shared Matches screen to see which other testers match me and the person who is my Shared Match.  

The 15 DNA Circles are for:


*  John Rich (1798-1863, my third great-grandfather) - 12 members, 4 groups, I match all 11 other members
*  Rebecca Hill (1790-1862, my third great-grandmother) - 12 members, 4 groups, I match all 11 other members
*  James Richman (1821-1912, my second great-grandmother) - 10 members, 3 groups, I match all 9 other members
*  Hannah Rich (1824-1911, my second great-grandmother) - 10 members, 3 groups, I match all 9 other members
*  Zachariah Hildreth (1754-1828, my 4th great-grandfather) - 4 members, 3 groups. I match only 1 other member
*  Elizabeth Keyes (1759-1793, my 4th great-grandmother) - 4 members, 3 groups, I match only 1 other member
*  Aaron Smith (`1765-1841, my 4th great-grandfather) - 4 members, 4 groups, I match only 1  other member
*  James Abram Kemp (1831-1902, my 2nd great-grandfather) - 4 members, 3 groups, I match only 1 other member

*  Mary Jame Sovereen (1840-1874, my 2nd great-grandmother) - 4 members, 3 groups, I match only 1 other member
*  Zachariah Hildreth (1793-1857, my 3rd great-grandfather) - 6 members, 4 groups, I match only 1 other member
*  Hannah Sawtell (1768-1857, my 3rd great-grandmother) - 7 members, 4 groups, I match only 1 other member

*  Maria Magdalena Hoax (1768-1850, my 4th great-grandmother) - 5 members, 3 groups, I match all 4 other members
*  Joseph Champlin (1758-1850, my 4th great-grandfather) - 3 members, 3 groups, I match 1 other member
*  Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872, my 3rd great-grandfather) - 13 members, 4 groups, I match 10 of the other members
*  Amy Champlin (1798-1864, my 3rd great-grandmother) - 13 members, 4 groups, I match 10 of the other members

I now have nine New Ancestor Discoveries for:

*  Alonzo Howland Cook (1855-1933) of Utah, I match 6 of 18 members in his DNA Circle
*  Mary Elizabeth Thomley (1866-1910), of Alabama,  I match 3 of 9 members in her DNA Circle
*  Milton Arthur Hartley (1854-1932), of Alabama, I match 3 of 9 members in his DNA Circle
*  John Gabriel Deal (1833-1908), of Ohio, I match 4 of 14 members in his DNA Circle
*  Almeda Gregory (1833-1910), of Ohio, I match 4 of 14 members in her DNA Circle
*  Margaret Van Petten (1805-1873), of New York, I match 4 of 13 members in his DNA Circle.

*  Alfred Newton Bills (1815-1898), of West Virginia, I match 4 of 16 members in his DNA Circle
*  Margaret Tate (1825-1876) of West Virginia, I match 4 of 15 members in her DNA Circle
*  Jonathan Robbin Pettit (1799-1874) of New York, I match 4 of 13 members in his DNA Circle

However, I do not have these persons in my pedigree chart.  They may be descended from some of my known ancestors, but the connections seem to be 3 to 8 generations back from them.  These New Ancestor discoveries are not useful to me at all.


The great advantage that AncestryDNA has over the other autosomal DNA testing sites is that many of the testers have an Ancestry Member Tree with enough entries that a common ancestor can be found, and therefore a relationship can be determined.  

However, the majority of the latest new matches have not attached their DNA to an Ancestry Member Tree.  

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Randy,

I'm just getting into the DNA aspect of my research and am curious about your spreadsheet. I did a really quick search to see if you explained it earlier and didn't see anything. Please consider a post on what you put in the spreadsheet to compare potential matches. Thank you. Naomi

Barbara said...

Randy,

Another interesting stat is the number of pages of matches (4th cousin & closer). I have 443 pages. At 50 names per page, that's over 22,000 matches!

FYI.. I have
279 Shared Ancestor Hints
1,172 4th cousins or closer
40 DNA circles
11 New Ancestor Discoveries (none of whom are my ancestors - all are too recent)

One secret to having lots of matches is to have a very full tree. I have over 18,000.
The other secret is having all my ancestors in colonial America!

Barbara