A Face Breaks a Brick Wall

 

You've put your profile photo on Facebook and other social media, but what about the genealogy sites that you use? Genealogy is often a collaborative effort -- another form of social media. Have you uploaded your profile photo to sites like Ancestry and MyHeritage? If so, do you use the same photo on all those sites?

I haven't done as well as I could, but was recently reminded of just how important that consistent profile photo can be. Thanks to a DNA match who uploaded the same photo to Ancestry and MyHeritage, one of my most challenging brick walls was demolished. It was that profile photo which grabbed my attention.

When you look at your DNA matches, which ones intrigue you? The matches with photos always lure me first, while the others are all just a forgettable blur. 

I was specifically looking for matches related to the surname Vosseler. One of my family testers (with a photo) has a MyHeritage match to a gentleman of that name who lives in Germany (with no photo). 

Looking at seven shared matches, there are five matches with triangulated segments (example boxed in red), which is an important clue. Two of the seven matches have profile photos.

 

 

 

 

The gentleman near the top looked familiar and the segment was triangulated with Mr. Vosseler. I had seen that photo on Ancestry DNA. Why had I seen it? This was an important match.

 

Going to the same family tester on Ancestry, I was able to find the man in the match list. He had the same photo, though the two sites show it a bit differently. The face was the same and there were far more shared matches on Ancestry, some with a much higher shared cM level.

 

Using the shared matches from Ancestry, I was able to identify a surname of interest, build a tree, and demolish the 20-year-old Vosseler brick wall.

 

Looking at these nine matches to the highest match, there are only two photos, the first being the face that broke the wall. 

 

 

Sadly, with both Ancestry and MyHeritage, there are very few profile photos in this entirely random look. 

The moral of the story? Upload a profile photo. Be a welcoming and consistent face to your matches and collaborators. 

There is a lot of advice online about good profile photos. I'll be updating mine soon. Will you join me?

 

The Case of the Missing DNA

A recent inquiry from a DNA match sent me into the mysteries of AncestryDNA matching. I was appalled at what I learned.

In the field of data science, we use the term "single source of truth." You would expect that DNA matching would be consistent across all the different testing companies, so any and all of them would be a valid source of truth. Not so. If you skip the story, please take a moment to look below at the explanatory graphic.

It started with a routine email from a gentleman I'll call Lou. He found our match on Family Tree DNA and asked if it was possible we were related through a particular surname. He closed by telling me he was of African-American descent.

Knowing the challenges faced by African-Americans who are researching their roots, I gave the email far more attention than I would have if it had been from a Caucasian match.

Lou and I had no shared matches on FTDNA, so  I turned to Ancestry, where I have identified many cousins from that branch of my family. But there was a problem. Our match on Ancestry was only 8 cM (1 segment), where on FTDNA it was 27 cM (3 segments). How is that even possible?

Our FTDNA match includes a couple of short segments. Eliminating them leaves our FTDNA match at 19.9 cM (1 segment), still more than double what AncestryDNA showed. We exchanged some emails to discuss the source of the data.

• Lou had uploaded his AncestryDNA results to FTDNA, MyHeritage and GedMatch. 
• Lou had tested with 23AndMe and uploaded that result to GedMatch.
• I had directly tested with FTDNA and MyHeritage, in addition to AncestryDNA. 
• I had uploaded my AncestryDNA result to GedMatch. 

All match combinations except AncestryDNA are in the range 17.8-19.9 cM, with one segment in the same approximate range in chromosome 12. Of course we can't see what AncestryDNA is suggesting.

Choose Your Source of Truth

My brother's match to Lou is also in a similar range to these numbers. At Ancestry DNA, Lou's brothers and daughter have a stronger match to me than Lou does. However, none of them have uploaded to GedMatch, so we can't see the science behind the numbers. This particular chromosome range does appear to fall in or near an ISOGG-documented slight pile-up area.

So this leaves the possibility that AncestryDNA has chosen to ignore some of the match due to pile-up. Wouldn't it be nice to be told that?

Does Ancestry have a computational error on my match with Lou, since Lou's daughter matches me more strongly than Lou matches me? Or does she match me in an entirely different way via her mother's lines?

What is the best source of truth? If you are using only AncestryDNA for your DNA matching, you are not seeing the whole truth. GedMatch is free. FTDNA is inexpensive. MyHeritage has some great tools. You can choose your source of truth.

Fishing for DNA

Power BI Aquarium visualization by Enlighten

 
Have you thoroughly fished your family DNA pool? The experts of DNA repeatedly remind us to test the oldest generation and to test everyone we can. My latest fishing trip proved that theory in a very dramatic way. Rather than bore you with numbers, let me introduce the fish in this little DNA pool.

My cousin Connie, the woman who had the miracle Civil War era letter, had done an autosomal DNA test at MyHeritage, as had I. A comparison of Connie's match to my Dad (salmon), my uncle (purple) and me (blue) turned up small, but respectable matches.

Connie had not tested her older generation. She and I discussed testing options for her elderly family members and she decided to test them at MyHeritage, also.

Connie's Dad showed a stronger match to all of my tests, as we would expect. My Dad's fish is yellow, while my uncle's is gray and mine is blue.

Taking the extra step and paying the extra cost to test more relatives paid off dramatically. Her uncle had the strongest match to every member of my family. My uncle had the strongest match (turquoise), while my Dad and I had a smaller, but identical, match. The uncle to uncle match actually provided the most information.

Connie's uncle is missing one segment on chromosome 11 that all the rest of us inherited. He provides several other matching segments, on five different chromosomes, to help us with identifying more cousin matches in our Taylor line.

Of course, for those of you who want to see the centimorgan (cM) numbers, here they are.

If you haven't fished your DNA pool yet, the holiday specials should be starting in a few weeks. It's time to go fishing!