This Filter Makes DNA Matches Easier to Place

September is half over, and it's time I tackled this month's task from my 2026 Genealogy Calendar. It's a simple goal: Solve more DNA matches.

I manage 4 AncestryDNA tests for my parents, my husband, and myself. Looking at Ancestry, I realized there's a DNA match filter I haven't been using. I can filter the list of matches for any of these tests to include only those with a common ancestor.

The common ancestor label means the match and the test-taker share the same ancestor. That's such a time-saver!

Filter Your List

To start, I went to my mom's list of DNA matches and filtered it to show only those with a common ancestor. As I scrolled through the list of nearly 100 people, I could see I've figured out many of them. I always add a note to a DNA match when I've solve their identity, and those notes are visible in this list.

The first match I see without a note is a potential half 3rd cousin or a 3rd cousin twice removed. The common ancestors are Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. They are my 5th great grandparents (mom's 6th).

It's interesting that Emanuele and Giovanna aren't in this match's family tree. Ancestry must be figuring out the connection using other means. On her Italian side, this DNA match's tree ends at her grandfather. And his last name is not in my family tree.

Looking at this one type of DNA match led to a huge branch of my family tree.

Look for a Connection

Using this DNA match's family tree as a launch pad, I searched for records for this man with the Italian last name. (Note: My ancestors are 100% Italian, so I need to follow an Italian branch.)

I found his 1917 New York City marriage certificate. I'm so grateful for the online records of the New York City Municipal Archives. And guess what? His mother Carolina, whose last name is familiar, is in my family tree! Thanks to her son's marriage record, I now know who Carolina married. And this document tells me she gave birth to a son in Orange, New Jersey.

I checked my tree to see that Carolina's great grandparents are—can you guess?—Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Then I turned to my handy relationship calculator spreadsheet. To find my relationship to Carolina, I went to column "I" (my 5th great grandparents) row 8 (Carolina's great grandparents). She is my 2nd cousin 4 times removed. This DNA match is 3 generations down from Carolina, so I went down 3 rows in the relationship calculator. That shows this DNA match is my 5th cousin once removed, and my mom's 5th cousin.

Here's what's curious. AncestryDNA says this match and mom share 33 cMs. It predicts the relationship is in the 3rd cousin range. But I went to the Shared cM Project Tool found on the DNA Painter website. I entered 33 as the total number of cMs shared. The result? This tool found a 53% chance mom and her match were no closer than 5th cousins.

In this case, it pays to use all the tools available to you.

I added a note to this DNA match. I marked her as mom's 5C through Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Now I've got more research to do! I learned who my cousin Carolina married, but he isn't from her town in Italy. I discovered their 1881 marriage record in Italy and found birth records for four of their children. One of those children appears to be the groom from the NYC marriage certificate. The NYC certificate says he was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1893, but I have his 1893 birth record from Santa Paolina, Italy. I'll keep searching, but so far the 1910 census confirms that the groom was born in Italy.

I'm so lucky to have a ton of Italian vital records available online through the Antenati portal. Without them, my family tree would end at the great grandparent level. How disappointing that would be! Still, the Italian records create many dead ends. Using DNA matches, I can discover who came emigrated and continue documenting branches.

Try Another Avenue

I'll bet some of you are saying, "Why not use Ancestry's ThruLines® to find this relationship?" That did occur to me, and this solved DNA match is there. But the amount of digging it took to find her was ridiculous. I had to keep consulting my family tree. First I worked my way up to Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Then I had to look at my tree to see that I want the descendants of their son Samuele. And then I want the descendants of his daughter Anna. Once I followed those branches, I did find this DNA match as well as her brother. I didn't even know her brother was in my or mom's DNA match list.

Now that I have drilled down to this level in ThruLines, I see many more DNA matches I need to explore. I should have started doing this earlier in the month!

Have you tried Ancestry's common ancestor filter before? I'm always happy to see "common ancestor" in the match list, but somehow I never realized it was a filter until today.

How to Find Your Ancestor's Place of Origin

"How can I build my family tree when I don't know where my ancestor came from?" It's a common problem for many people when they become interested in genealogy.

My roots in America aren't that deep, so my ancestors told us where they came from. That made it easy for me to dive into vital record collections from their hometowns in Italy. But for those of you with deep roots, your immigrant ancestor's origin may be lost.

In 2021 I offered to research my daughter-in-law's family tree. She had no idea where her last name came from. Was it Italian? It ends in an o. I discovered that her roots in Pennsylvania—where she still lives—go back 12 generations. Because the family was so well established in the area, I found plenty of documentation on them.

As it turns out, she has ancestors from France, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. She has a direct connection to William Rittenhouse—a famous name in Philadelphia. Rittenhouse Square is a public park on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

But what if no one has documented your deep-rooted family? How can you find their place of origin?

Discovering your ancestor's town of origin opens up endless family tree research possibilities.

Trace One Line

Start your search by choosing one last name from your ancestry. It may be your last name or any one ancestor's last name.

Trace that family line as far back as the records in your home country allow. Follow the family through census records and other documents. See if the spelling of the name ever changed. Look for documents that say where a person or their parents were born. A census record might tell you where your ancestor and their parents were born.

When you reach a generation born in another country, try a more specific search. Look for immigration or naturalization records. A World War I draft registration card gave me the birth place of my grandmother's uncle. (No one else in the family was born in his town, but it was a critical clue.)

If you can't get a solid lead on a town of origin, here's a good trick to try. Go to your favorite family tree website, such as Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, etc. Do a search for the last name you're tracing. Keep the details minimal. If you've discovered the country of origin, include that in your search. If your people arrived in a particular decade, look for others coming at about the same time.

Go through your search results to see if any town names come up again and again. This is a hot lead for you to pursue. This is exactly how I discovered the hometown of my great grandmother. She spoke of her town, but her accent made it hard to understand. When I saw other people with her last name coming from a town that sounded like what she said, I had my breakthrough.

Check Your DNA

Take a DNA test to see which countries are in your makeup. If a good amount of your DNA is from an unexpected area, that may be your first clue. Take a look at your matches for people who share similar origins. One of your matches may have the clues you need.

Lots More Places to Look

Finding that hometown is so crucial to your research that I've written about it many times. Here are 5 articles you should scan for more research tips:

• "Where Did Grandpa Come From?" cites examples from my research. I found town names on ship manifests, naturalization papers, passport applications, draft cards, and more.
• "4 Key Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Hometown" shows how I used a minimal search to find my great grandmother's hometown.
• "6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth" adds birth, baptism, marriage, and military records to the list of places to look.
• "6 Ways to Find Your Ancestor's Hometown" goes into the value of tracing an ancestor's siblings. If you can't find your ancestor's records, their siblings' records may have the details you need.
• "This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name" covers the female problem. What was her maiden name? This name can get lost over time, and it's your key to finding her ancestors' place of origin. See how I used one resource to discover my 2nd great grandmother's maiden name and trace her ancestry.

I know it can be difficult to break through this particular brick wall. But don't give up until you've tried all these research tips. The answer may be waiting for you to take a look!

How to Handle Inexplicable Genealogy Documents

I'm still spending hours a day creating the missing source citations for my huge family tree. I use efficiency techniques, such as working through one ancestral hometown at a time.

That's why I noticed a repeating error in one of my hometowns in Italy that is inexplicable. How can this keep happening again and again?

Here's what's happening—and how I'm handling it in my family tree. One of the greatest things about Italian vital records is the "matrimoni processetti". (That translates to pre-marriage inquiries, according to Google Translate.) These are the documents required before a man and woman can marry. All in one place, you can find the evidence to take a family back three generations! These documents include:

• the groom's birth record
• the groom's father's death record, if he's dead
• the groom's father's father's death record, if he's dead (which can include the groom's great grandparents' names)
• the groom's mother's death record, if she's dead
• the groom's previous wife's death record, if there was a previous wife
• the bride's birth record
• the bride's father's death record, if he's dead
• the bride's father's father's death record, if he's dead (which can include the bride's great grandparents' names)
• the bride's mother's death record, if she's dead
• the bride's previous husband's death record, if there was a previous husband

Jackpot, right? Civil record-keeping began around 1809 in Italy, so these documents are priceless.

Where Did This Come From?

As I work on the town of Circello, Italy, I'm finding handwritten copies of vital records that do not exist!

His marriage documents include a handwritten copy of his birth record. Only problem? It does not exist!

Here's an example. A document says Domenico Cerrone was born on 25 Mar 1812 to Giovanni Cerrone and Arcangela diTello, and it's record #45. But when I go to the town's 1812 birth records, record #45 has the same date, but all different people. It's the birth record of Domenico Fiscarelli, born on 25 Mar 1812 to Pietro Fiscarelli and Carmina Iacobacci. Now, I'm the lunatic who indexed every available vital record for this town. So I know there is no civil birth record for Domenico Cerrone, son of Giovanni and Arcangela.

So far this has happened 12 times, all in Circello. In a couple of cases, the copy in the matrimoni processetti contradicts the civil record. Everything's right but the date. What document was the clerk looking at when they made this copy? What do I do with this?

Cite the Source and Acknowledge the Problem

In each case, I created a source citation that points to this inexplicable document. But I went a step further. In "Leave Breadcrumbs for Future Genealogy Research", I explain how to use stock phrases in a fact's description field. For example, it used to be common to reuse a name if a baby died. The next baby of the same sex gets that same name, so you know the first baby had to have died. If there's no death record available, I note that the first baby died before the second baby's date of birth and write: "His brother [Her sister] of the same name was born on this date." Without an approximate date of death and that note, it would look like I made a careless mistake in my family tree again and again.

Stock phrases are the solution to the inexplicable documents problem, too. Each time the marriage papers include a copy that's not in the civil records, I add a phrase to the description field. "This record is not found in the [year] civil records; only in the [year] marriage documents."

When the copy shows a different date than the original civil record, I use the date from the original record. Then I add a note about it in the description field. "The copy of the birth record in the [year] marriage records has a different date of [date]." And I add a source citation for both versions of the birth record.

Why Cite an Error?

If you're wondering why create a source citation for two versions of the same fact, here are two good reasons:

• Citing both documents shows you've done your research.
• You may find another document that proves the inexplicable record was correct.

These stock phrases serve me well. See if the software or website you use for your family tree has predictive typing. It should. With predictive typing, I type "This record is not", and the software shows me the matching phrases I've typed before. I can choose one and change the years as needed. Each time I need to use "His brother of the same name was born on this date.", all I type is "his bro" and choose the correct phrase.

What types of inexplicable documents have you found in your genealogy research? How do you handle them?