Are Ancestry Pro Tools Worth the Money?

Here's how the new features of Ancestry Pro Tools stack up. Are they worth the price?

When I heard you can sign up for Ancestry Pro Tools for one month and then quit, I knew I had to try out their new features. My main interest is to see how my DNA matches match to one another. This can help you understand which of matches share a common ancestor with each other. That can help you see where they fit in your family tree.

The other Pro Tools give you desktop-like tools for your online-only family tree.

What's Included in Pro Tools?

• Charts & Reports. Family Tree Maker (FTM) provides the same reports as Pro Tools. I'm sure other family tree software programs do, too. A computer-based family tree program is better than building your tree online in so many ways.
• Tree Mapper. This feature has a cool visual representation and several types of filters. But I can do this in the Places tab of FTM. Or you can get really fancy and use this free program.
• Smart Filters. If you use MyTreeTags™ on Ancestry, this is a nice way to see everyone with a particular tag. But I don't use the tags. I didn't see any filters that offer me something I'd like to do but can't do in FTM.
• Tree Checker. This tool's main finding about my tree is that tons of people have no documentation. Yeah, tell me about it! I've been creating source citations for weeks. It also thinks I have 7,040 possible duplicates. I don't. We've all seen towns where everyone has the same name. As I scroll through this list of people, it's plain to see they all have different birth dates. This feature isn't helping me. It can also find many types of errors, and that may seem like a big help. But we already have Family Tree Analyzer to do that for us.
• Tree Insights. These factoids are not something I can generate within FTM, but I've used Family Tree Analyzer to do so. I can't say it's useful. This tool is showing me:
  • the top 5 surnames in my tree
  • the 5 longest-living people in my tree (they're only that old because I can't find out when they died)
  • the 5 couples with the most children
  • the 5 youngest brides or grooms
• Fan Chart Settings. I like the look of the Fan Chart in Ancestry much more than the one in FTM. But the Pro Tools add-ons to the existing Ancestry Fan Chart don't do anything very useful:
  • You can choose the number of generations to display (4, 5, 6, or 7). I have more generations than that.
  • You can show Family Lines, which gives a different color to each of your 4 grandparents' ancestors. I think the non-Pro version does that.
  • If you choose the Hints setting, it uses varying shades of green to show you who has a lot of hints and who has few or none. The Photos setting and Sources setting does the same thing. A range of colors show you the haves and have-nots.
  But check out the more-detailed fan chart I created a long time ago using Charting Companion software.

For me, none of those tools are worth a recurring cost. That brings me back to the reason I jumped on a $7 sale for one month of Ancestry Pro Tools: Enhanced Shared Matches.

For years I've wanted to know why my parents share some DNA with one another. I had to see what Enhanced Shared Matches could do for me. (Note: Each of my parents took an AncestryDNA test, and I manage their kits.)

After a long and frustrating day of comparing Mom and Dad's DNA matches, I came up empty. My problem is the family's IBS segments—that's Identical By State. All my ancestors came from the same small geographical area. These small bits of shared DNA are more from the land itself than blood relationships.

My parents' shared DNA matches need to be my focus. As I worked through them, I hit so many with dead ends in their tree that I couldn't resolve. Do those dead ends hold the magic key?

I don't want to lose the extra insights from Enhanced Shared Matches, but I don't want to pay for it again. What to do? Make a new spreadsheet, of course!

Step 1. Document their Shared Matches

Looking at Dad's shared matches with Mom, I find a list of 21 people, but I'll exclude myself and make it 20 people.

I'll start a new spreadsheet with Dad in column A and Mom in column C. In column B, I'll enter the name of each shared match. I can also add what I know about them, if I've figured out their relationship to me.

Capture and analyze the insights of Enhanced Shared Matches in a spreadsheet while you can.

In each cell of the spreadsheet:

• I'll list the number of shared cMs and Ancestry's predicted relationship.
• I'll note which side of Dad and Mom's families they're on: Maternal, Paternal, Both Sides, or Unassigned. I have to view Mom and Dad's match lists separately for this.

The first big surprise is that I see a lot more shared matches when I view Mom's DNA test. What the heck? I started with Dad's match list because he has more matches than Mom or me. Nine shared matches from Dad's list are not in Mom's list at all.

It makes sense that this is a built-in 20 cM cut off. The 9 people in Dad's list only have fewer than 20 cMs shared with him. The 30 or so people in Mom's list only have fewer than 20 cMs shared with her. I should concentrate on the 11 shared matches with whom both Mom and Dad share 20 or more cMs. The low-cM shared matches must be Identical By State.

These people with the smaller amounts of shared DNA escaped me in the past. I don't know if the Enhanced Shared Matches Pro Tool is the reason I'm seeing them now.

Step 2. Document Highest Shared Matches of the Top 11 People

In the same Excel workbook, I'll document the shared matches of my parents' top 11 shared matches. I'll view Dad and Mom's tests one at a time and note who each person shares with them. I'll add the number of cMs, predicted relationships, and side of family as before. To increase my chances of success, I'll add only the strongest shared matches of the 11 people. They have to share 139 cMs or more. (I chose that number after consulting the Shared centiMorgan Project.) That way, these matches should be no more distant to my subject people than 4th cousins. Plus, I'll skip any matches if they share less than 20 cM with my parents.

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My goal is to find the best common connections. After documenting the first person's shared matches, I found something interesting. He's a close match to another one of the 11 top matches. Now I have 2 people from the same family who match both my parents. Is this the break I needed?

In the end, I'm left with 5 people who share DNA with both my parents and have close matches in the original list. I've already fit 2 of them into my family tree, and I find no connection to Mom's family. Plus, the one who shares 116 cM with Dad is actually more distant than expected. He's Dad's 4th cousin on one side and 5th cousin on the other.

While my parents' shared matches are tantalizing, every clue is pointing toward their being Identical By State. The most amazing thing is how their IBS families came together in a one-block stretch of Morris Avenue in the Bronx, New York.

Before I finish this month of Ancestry Pro Tools, I'm going to keep going through my DNA matches to learn what I can using the enhanced tools. It's a huge help when you can see that this match is the mother of that match. But I don't plan to renew my Pro Tools subscription.

Which Numbers Help Solve a DNA Match?

Trying to solve a mystery DNA match? An extensive family tree is more important than the centiMorgans (cMs) you share. Often it's only when you place a match in your family tree that you see your true relationship.

When you look at the different values assigned to your DNA matches, which number matters most? My answer isn't what you'd expect.

When I want to figure out a new DNA match, I consult the Shared cM Project tool created by Blaine T. Bettinger. You can find it on the DNA Painter website. The tool can suggest your likely relationship to a DNA match based on the number of cMs you share. The chart itself tells you:

• the average number of cMs you might share with a type of relative
• a likely range of cMs you can expect to see for each type of relative.

My family tree has tons of cousins with more than one relationship to me. Our roots are so deep in one little town that we're related to everyone who lived there. I want to see how all the intermarriage in my little towns might affect my DNA numbers.

Seeing How Your DNA Matches Score

For this exercise, I copied Bettinger's Shared cM chart into a spreadsheet so I can add cM values for my DNA matches. (This copy is available for you to download.) For each match that I added to the chart (in red ink), I included the hometown(s) of our shared ancestors. The town name showed that I have a higher number of shared cMs with cousins connected to Pastene, Italy.

One reason for this higher amount of DNA may be the small size of this hamlet. It's basically one street! Families were intermarrying there for hundreds of years. My great grandparents Giovanni and Maria Rosa came from Pastene. Some of their descendants and their siblings' descendants have tested with AncestryDNA.

I must say I expected to see lots of DNA matches with cMs that went far above the range in the Shared cM Project tool. Since I have multiple relationships with so many people, I thought the cMs would stack up higher. In reality, I found only one match who went above the cM range—a 6th cousin twice removed.

This DNA match (A.S.) shares 58 cM with me when the average for our relationship is 13 cM and the range is 0 to 45 cM. Here's why our shared cMs are high. A.S. and I share:

• my 5th great grandparents Innocenzo and Anna (that's the 6C2R relationship)
• my double 6th great grandparents Giuseppe and Maria (that makes A.S. my 7C1R)
• my 7th great grandparents Pasquale and Maria (that makes A.S. my 8C1R)
• my 7th great grandfather Giancamillo (that makes A.S. my 8C2R)

It seems shared cMs alone can't predict complex relationships every time.

This chart shows a higher concentration of shared DNA coming from one of my ancestral hometowns. What will yours show?

Exploring Another Variable

"Unweighted shared DNA" is a factor when you have deep roots in the same place or ethnicity.

If you have an AncestryDNA account, you can view this value for any DNA match in your list. Click the blue, linked description beneath their relationship label. For instance, for my 3rd cousin, I see "82 cM | 1% shared DNA."

Looking at my DNA match A.S., I see that we:

• share 58 cM across 3 segments
• have a longest segment of 30 cM
• have 60 cM of unweighted shared DNA—2 cM more than the 58 cM of shared DNA.

You may be as curious about the unweighted shared DNA as I am. Here's AncestryDNA's definition:

Unweighted shared DNA is the total amount of identical DNA two people share, including DNA that is shared for reasons other than a recent common ancestor, such as being from the same ethnicity or community. Because of that, unweighted shared DNA will almost always be larger than shared DNA for distant relationships that share 90 cM or less.

So that's why so many DNA matches appear to be closer than they are. I knew there was some extra DNA just from having deep roots in the same soil, but this puts a value on it.

To test this out, I looked at the DNA breakdown for lots of my identified DNA matches. In general, the unweighted shared DNA for my 3rd cousins or closer was exactly the same as their shared DNA. Many of my more-distant cousins had from 1 to 5 cM more unweighted shared DNA than shared DNA. But some of the distant cousins didn't have any extra unweighted shared DNA at all.

Searching for the Magic Number

Unweighted shared DNA isn't enough to help us understand our relationship to a DNA match. So I looked at the third value: longest segment length. DNA experts say you should be able to identify a match with a longest segment of 50 cM or more. But I have only 40 matches with numbers that high.

Here's a small sampling of the under-50 shared cM DNA matches I've identified and placed in my family tree. These are not people I know or grew up with. Most have a very small family tree online. But thanks to my family tree, I found their grandparents or great grandparents.

• 5C1R, 48 cM, longest segment 10 cM
• 9C, 27 cM, longest segment 12 cM
• 5C2R, 41 cM, longest segment 13 cM
• 7C, 30 cM, longest segment 14 cM
• 6C, 26 cM, longest segment 15 cM
• 3C1R, 39 cM, longest segment 16 cM
• 5C1R, 24 cM, longest segment 18 cM
• 5C, 26 cM, longest segment 20 cM

Notice we share from 24–48 cM, and our longest shared segments range from 10–20 cM. AncestryDNA categorizes these matches as 4th–6th cousins or 5th–8th cousins. I was able to get so much more specific despite those short longest segments.

Well would you look at that? Here I am, yet again, hyping the value of a gigantic family tree. I like to crack new DNA matches to see what happened after the Italian vital records end. Who came to America? Who went to Canada, England, or Australia? Do people with roots in my Italian towns live near me today?

In the end, the best way to crack DNA matches is with your extensive, full-blown family tree.

And speaking of cracking DNA matches:

• Genealogy Skills Make You a Keen Detective
• 4 Best Ways to Learn from Your DNA Matches
• 4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match
• Follow Up on Genealogy Clues and Leads

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4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match

It's important to have a handful of DNA tools available so can you choose the best one for each situation. Here are 4 methods for identifying a DNA match that you may not have tried yet. I recommend you consider each one and put them to good use.

1. DNA Painter

You can "paint" your DNA matches onto your chromosome map to see how they may relate to one another. To do this, you can use a free DNA Painter account, but you must also have an account with one of the following:

• GEDmatch
• ftDNA
• 23andme
• MyHeritage

I used DNA Painter's chromosome map to visualize the fact that my parents share some DNA. I discovered that another match overlaps my Mom's position on Dad's 9th chromosome. That makes the other match worth investigating, and I learned that only because of this tool.

Learn how to use the chromosome map painter in your DNA research: "How to Find Your Strongest DNA Matches."

Use 1 or more of these 4 genealogy methods to crack your DNA matches and fit them into your family tree.

2. Use a Spreadsheet to Identify the Right Branch

This spreadsheet is perfect if your family tree has pedigree collapse or endogamy. I have pedigree collapse because my paternal grandparents were 3rd cousins. My 4th great grandparents are direct ancestors of both Grandpa and Grandma. It's pedigree collapse because you could say I'm missing a pair of 4th great grandparents.

I also have endogamy in my family tree. My ancestors all came from small, somewhat isolated neighboring towns. Almost everyone married a neighbor, generation after generation. (See "The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About.") As a result, I'm related to people in my tree in many ways.

This spreadsheet helps root out DNA matches who match me only because we have roots in the same town. We're not related. The idea for this spreadsheet comes from DNA expert Kelli Bergheimer.

Be sure to see the section titled Are Your Matches Really in Your Family Tree? when you read "This Spreadsheet Sorts DNA Matches By Branch."

3. The Leeds Method

I discovered back in 2018 that my parents share a little DNA. All these years later, it seems they must be no closer than 5th to 7th cousins. There are no vital records that can take my family tree back that far. If the right towns' church records ever become available, I may be able to make progress. But chances are, I'll never find my parents' common ancestor.

But that's my story, not yours. For you, Dana Leeds' "Leeds Method" may be exactly what you need to see where each DNA match belongs in your family tree. That is, which of your 4 grandparents is your connection to a DNA match. I recommend you give it a try. To find out how, read "The Leeds Method May Have Solved a Big Family Puzzle."

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4. Good Old-Fashioned Family Tree Building

Last weekend I decided to do some genealogy research to fit a celebrity into my family tree. When Tony Danza was on an episode of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "Finding Your Roots," I was watching closely. When I found out he was the guest, I wondered if his name was originally Iadanza. That's a name I have in my family tree.

It turns out Iadanza is his ancestors' name and they came from a town I know. Pietrelcina (hometown of the famed Padre Pio) borders my 2nd great grandmother's hometown. Many people from Pietrelcina married people from a few of my ancestral hometowns.

A TV screenshot helped me find the birth records of Tony Danza's grandparents. I worked my way through the Pietrelcina vital records to build out their family tree. After a while, I saw that the parents of Danza's 4th great grandfather were already in my family tree!

So is Tony Danza my cousin? Nah. He and I have 18 different relationships at this point, but each one is by marriage.

I had fun with this exercise and it illustrates an important point. Digging through records and doing the research, you can place that DNA match in your family tree. See how in "Don't Rely on Your DNA Match to Do the Work" and "Don't Give Up When Your DNA Match Has a Puny Little Family Tree."

Piecing together families through vital records is what I live for! It's fun, challenging, and leads to tangible results in my family tree. Don't expect quick answers because you bought a DNA test. Your DNA matches are another tool to use in building your family tree. See if these 4 DNA methods can help you crack more of your DNA matches.

This Number is Crucial to Your DNA Match Research

Another day, another look at my mom's DNA match list. This time I wanted to find the first still-unknown person in her list worth researching. A video by DNA expert Diahan Southard encouraged me to research a match who shared a long segment of DNA with Mom. That means looking past the total number of shared cM to see the longest "segment" of shared cM.

You can find the longest segment length by clicking the amount of shared cM to see more details. This is true on most if not all DNA websites.

Increase Your Odds of Success

I began this exercise by looking only at matches who showed a family tree. A quick look at a few trees told me who they were. "Oh, that's my 3rd cousin through Immacolata Leone. Noted."

The match I chose to research has my great grandmother's maiden name in her family tree. Saviano. I'm always interested in finding another Saviano. And they've been hard to find.

This match shares with Mom a longest segment of 27 cM. Diahan Southard didn't specify a longest-segment range worth researching, but her example showed 32 cM. So 27 cM is pretty close.

Do the Research Yourself

First I had to figure out my connection to her ancestor, Giuseppe Saviano. This match supplied an exact birth and death date for him in her family tree, but no locations. I knew the dates would be a big help.

A search on Ancestry told me Giuseppe came to America and lived in Cleveland, Ohio. I know lots of relatives who wound up in Cleveland, including my father. I found Giuseppe in someone else's Ancestry tree. He had the right dates, Cleveland as his place of death, and San Nicola, Salerno, Italy, as his place of birth.

My absolute first thought was, "I wonder if he was really born in San Nicola Manfredi." (That's in Benevento, not Salerno.) Why would I think that? Because that town borders the town where my Saviano ancestors were born. I know there was a decent cross-over between the two towns. And I have all the San Nicola Manfredi vital records at my disposal. I've found many familiar last names in the San Nicola Manfredi vital records.

So, was Giuseppe Saviano actually born in San Nicola Manfredi on 1 Jan 1889? Check the documents—yes! Here he is. And Giuseppe's U.S. World War II draft registration card confirms he was born in San Nicola Manfredi on 1 Jan 1889.

Researching a DNA match led me to 5 more children of my 3rd great uncle. They were born in another town.

But the true brick-wall busting moment came from the other facts on that birth record. Giuseppe's parents were Giovanni Saviano and Giuseppa Sarracino. I know that couple! They're in my family tree!

In my tree I saw Giovanni was my 3rd great uncle. He's one of only two siblings I've found for my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. They come from a hamlet called Pastene in a town called Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. The town was part of the Papal States, so they didn't keep civil records before 1861. Don't get me started on that. I could cry at the dead ends that causes me.

I'd already found 6 children for Giovanni and Giuseppa. They were all born in Pastene or in greater Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. One of their daughters came to America in 1898 with my 2GG Antonio Saviano and his family. She died in 1901. But I don't know anything else about the other children.

Expand Your Search Area

Thanks to this DNA match and a hunch, I now know Giovanni Saviano and Giuseppa Sarracino moved to neighboring San Nicola Manfredi. Or maybe the borderline moved and they stayed put. Either way, they had 2 more sons in San Nicola Manfredi in 1889 and 1890. I went through the birth records year-by-year looking for more. What I found tells me that Giuseppa died and Giovanni remarried and had 3 more children.

I wish the last 3 were born at the same address as the previous 2, but they weren't. I do know this Giovanni Saviano is the only one around who's having children during these years. And, like his brother (my 2GG), his occupation changes all the time:

• 1875–1880: farmer
• 1882–1885: merchant
• 1889: shopkeeper
• 1890–1896: industrialist
• 1898: farmer again
• 1901: shopkeeper again

The best thing about this discovery is that I've found Saviano cousins with roots in Ohio.

Lessons Learned

What lessons have I learned from this research?

1. Don't frustrate yourself with DNA matches who show no family tree. Unless their shared matches have a story to tell, you may get nowhere.
2. You may not find your connection to a DNA match with a short "longest segment." I don't know where the cutoff is, but you've got a better chance of success if their longest segment is about 30 cM or more.
3. When your DNA match's family tree has sparse details, research their ancestor yourself. You may be more interested in genealogy research than they are. Or they may prefer to limit how much information they put out there.
4. Spend time with online maps. Know the names of the towns surrounding your ancestor's town. Take a peek at records for neighboring towns to see if any last names are familiar to you.

I'm thrilled to make some kind of progress on my mother's dead-end branch. While I can't see vital records from their town before 1861, I may find traces of my family in neighboring towns.

Digging Into a DNA Match's Family Tree

A while ago I uploaded my AncestryDNA test results to Geneanet.org for free. I like their website because I can upload a complete replacement tree after I do a lot of work on it on my computer. (See "A Major Family Tree Change to Fix an Ongoing Problem .")

The good thing about having my DNA test on that site is access to European DNA matches I may not find on Ancestry. I don't have any close matches yet, but one match, Giovanni, has a family tree that reeled me in right away. I recognized the last names as coming from Circello, Italy. That's the hometown of my 3rd great grandfather Francesco.

I've been spending time making a searchable database of Circello vital records. They records are all available on the Antenati website. (See "How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.") On Saturday I randomly noticed a man in my tree from my paternal grandfather's hometown. I saw that he married a Circello girl named Pasquala Gigante in the 1890s, so I decided to build her family. And I got very far. I added all 8 of her great grandparents and 6 of her 2nd great grandparents.

Finally I had a strong reason to use my vital records database for the town of Circello.

Pasquala has no blood relationship to me yet. And her husband is the cousin of the husband of a cousin. I would love to find a true connection between Pasquala's Circello family and my own.

Find Your Entry Point

When I saw Giovanni's family tree on Geneanet, filled with Circello names, I had to investigate. Could I find a way for his tree to connect to mine? As I clicked around his tree, expanding different family units, my mouth fell open. There was the very same family I'd built into my tree earlier that day! The woman whose family I added to my tree, Pasquala Gigante, is my DNA match's great grandaunt.

Giovanni's family tree is very impressive. It goes back so far that I can tell he knows how to get the most out of Italian vital records. (See "The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: 'Wedding Packets'.") I can use his tree as a guide while I view the town's vital records to confirm names and dates. I'll start by adding Pasquala Gigante's siblings. I'll find spouses and children, and put lots of families together using the vital records.

After hours of piecing together Circello families, I still don't know why Giovanni is my DNA match. This is common with people whose ancestors spent several hundred years in a small town. Once again, I believe our shared DNA comes from the soil itself, and not a specific shared ancestor. (See "What Good Are Distant DNA Matches?")

With 3 key points, you can expand your family tree and tie into that of your DNA match.

How to Get Started

Even though I haven't solved this ancestor jigsaw puzzle, I enjoy the daylights out of this type of project. And you can, too. Here are the basics for diving into your DNA match's family tree:

1. Concentrate on DNA matches with a multi-generation family tree. There's no use wasting time on someone with a 1-person family tree. And they're out there.
2. Search every branch for familiar last names and places. If their hometown is one of your ancestral hometowns, you need to explore some vital records.
3. Find a solid starting point. I was lucky to spot someone I'd added to my own tree hours earlier. Be sure to choose a person with lots of data points: a birth date, spouse's name, parents' names, children's names. Those extra facts will help you make a positive ID.

You may find, as I did, that your DNA match has connections to your family tree even if there's no direct relation to you.

What Good Are Distant DNA Matches?

I've recently added more than a thousand people to my family tree from one town—Pesco Sannita, Italy. And I've barely begun to harvest the vital records. I'm eager to use the new families in my tree to connect to my unsolved DNA matches.

That's the exercise for today. I went to my DNA match list on Ancestry and searched for people with the name Pennucci in their trees. I chose that name because it's common in the town and my 3rd great grandmother was a Pennucci. I selected the first match who wasn't my father or someone from his 1st cousin's family.

I've looked at this match's tree before. It's a good one—46,234 people. But checking how his ethnicity compares to mine, I see that he's only a quarter Italian. That means a big chunk of his family tree has no connection to me.

My jumping-in point in his family tree is his great grandmother Immacolata. I recognize my match's last name (it's also his great grandfather's name), but it doesn't come from my target town. His grandmother falls into the sweet spot. Her 1902 Pesco Sannita birth record is available on the Italian ancestry website, Antenati. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.")

I pulled up Immacolata's birth record and discovered she's in my tree already. She and I don't have a blood relationship. Immacolata (who's mother was a Pennucci) is the 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. I've already built Immacolata's family tree back 5 or 6 generations. What more can I do to establish a true relationship to this DNA match?

I realized Immacolata is in my tree because of a previous attempt to connect to this DNA match. Now I need to search the vital records for her siblings, aunts, and uncles to see where it takes me.

I get the impression some people think the only way to use the Antenati website is to search for a name. Not true. Not every record is searchable. You need to navigate to your town and to each year's index pages to scour them for the name you want.

But I'm the lunatic who downloaded entire towns when it was possible. Then I renamed each document image on my computer to make them truly searchable. For me, it's easy to search the vital records for someone's siblings, and their parents' siblings.

Swimming in the Same Gene Pool

I built out several families related directly to Immacolata with no breakthrough. Then I looked at our original relationship: 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. Immacolata's 2nd great aunt Agnese married my 4th great uncle Giuseppe. That's something like "crossing the streams" in the Ghostbuster movies. Their marriage created people who carry DNA like mine and like my match's.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that this DNA match, the great grandson of Immacolata, is in my 5th–8th cousin range. We share only one segment of 17 cM. Our shared roots are in a remote town where families intermarried for centuries. There's a very good chance that instead of a pair of shared ancestors, we have DNA from the same community pool.

I've been thinking about this notion for a long time. I haven't put it out there because it seems evasive and hard to put into words. It started taking shape when tests showed that my parents share DNA—37 cM across 4 segments. They could be 3rd to 5th cousins. But they aren't. I can name their ancestors and they're all different. (See "When DNA Says You're Related, You Determine How.")

Here's what I think. My documented ancestors, going back to the late 1600s, lived in neighboring towns, laid out like links in a chain. Each town is small, and even with modern roads, it can be hard to get from one to the next. (I know from personal experience.) That led to centuries of intermarriage within the towns or between close towns.

Doesn't it make sense that deep roots in a small geographical area result in shared DNA?

All those neighboring towns produced generation after generation of people with shared DNA. You know how the big DNA companies compare your DNA sample to a reference panel? The panel consists of DNA from people with roots in one place for several hundred years. Well, that's me! Until my recent ancestors came to America, my people were tied to one spot for centuries.

Studies show that the characteristics of a place exist in its people's teeth and bones. Is that why you can "feel it in your bones" when you arrive at the place your ancestors came from? I believe my parents and I, and many of our distant DNA matches, share the characteristics of the place we come from. That's why we carry some identical DNA.

We've been simmering in the same pot for centuries!

My DNA match, great grandson of Immacolata, has DNA from a mixture of Pesco Sannita and a town 9 miles away—Molinara. I get all my DNA from a mixture of at least 7 towns in the same area. We have the very soil in common.

Adding Up Your Ancestral Roots

I took a tally of the birth places of my 1st through 3rd great grandparents—all 42 of them. Here's my percentage of roots in each town. (The 7th town, Circello, doesn't appear until a pair of my 4th great grandparents.)

• Colle Sannita 40.48%
• Baselice 23.81%
• Pastene 21.43%
• Pesco Sannita 7.14%
• Santa Paolina 4.76%
• Apice 2.38%

Seeing this list in order justifies the extensive research I've done. I've completely harvested the vital records of Colle Sannita and Baselice. I've worked everyone possible into my family tree. I've harvested Pastene's limited records, too. Now I'm working my way through Pesco Sannita. Obviously Santa Paolina and Apice will be next, then Circello.

This type of relationship to my distant DNA matches changes how I view them. I don't expect to find a common ancestor with most of them. But I do search their family trees for marriages without documentation. Immacolata and her family are in my tree, but there's no documentation of her marriage to a man from Molinara. It's my match's tree that holds that detail.

If your family tree has no non-parental events and few missing ancestors, you may ignore your DNA matches. I encourage you to review matches with decent-sized family trees. What are they good for? They may contain the marriage that brought your great aunt to a new country. They may help explain a great uncle who seemed to disappear from his hometown. They can extend your tree's dead ends.

Do Your DNA Ethnicity Results Make No Sense?

Two people contacted me lately about an odd ethnicity in their DNA results. The three of us share ancestry in my grandfather's hometown, so they wondered if I'm seeing what they're seeing. I'm not, but I have a few curious results, too.

That's why I was excited to join another Diahan Southard webinar titled "DNA Ethnicity Estimates: How to Actually Use Them!" One of the most important things I learned was, basically:

If your results show less than 5% of an unexpected ethnicity, it's probably not reliable.

Here's how to get a better idea of its reliability. I'll use AncestryDNA as an example, but most DNA websites have similar tools.

• Click on the unexpected ethnicity in your results. I chose my mother's unexpected 2% Portugal.
• This opens a panel that tells you a bit more, such as "Primarily located in Portugal; Also found in Spain." Their map tells me this ethnicity may cover Spain's whole west side.
• Now look at your percentage. In this case, it says 2% Portugal, but beneath that it says it "can range from 0% to 5%." That's right. It's as low as 0%.

I've documented my mother's ancestors in a small area of Southern Italy going back to the very early 1700s. Could someone have come from Spain or Portugal before that? Sure. And since FamilytreeDNA tells me I have 6% Iberian Peninsula, there probably is some ancient connection.

But that doesn't matter to my family tree, does it? I'll never make a documented connection to a centuries-old ancestor from Spain or Portugal.

My father's results have a laughable result of less than 1% Norway. Less than 1%! When I click it I see that his estimate is 0%, but it can range from 0% to 1%. That sounds like we can disregard it, don't you think? He has no Norway on MyHeritage.

In fact, all Mom and Dad's ethnicities but Southern Italy and Northern Italy could be as low as 0%. The same is true for me, with one exception. Even my Northern Italy could be as low as 0%.

Dig deeper into tiny, unexpected ethnicity results.

AncestryDNA says the DNA samples they test you against "divide the world into 84 overlapping regions and groups." I can see that what they're calling Southern Italy and Northern Italy overlap close to the area we come from. Taken together, this makes me confident we are Southern Italy, going back at least as far as the paper records go.

But, if you *don't* know where all your people came from for the last 300+ years, pay attention to your unexpected results. They may be the clue you need.

A Range of Ethnicity Results

Why would AncestryDNA tell me my Northern Italy is 8% but it may range from 0 to 39%? This is from their website:

"We compare your DNA to a reference panel made up of DNA from groups of people who have deep roots in one region. We look at 1,001 sections of your DNA and assign each section to the ethnicity region it looks most like."

They look at 1,001 different sections of your DNA! Your DNA isn't one homogeneous strand. Each section can show a different percentage of an ethnicity. That means that my 1,001 test results for Northern Italian DNA ranged from none to a high of 39%. The average of all the tests was 8%.

Where the Action Is

For a long time my AncestryDNA results didn't show any of what they call Communities. Now I have three that either touch or overlap one another. And they are 100% true to my documented, massive family tree.

From Mom's side:

• Avellino & Southwest Foggia Provinces
• South Benevento & North Avellino Provinces

From Dad's side:

• Campobasso & East Isernia Provinces

I can prove that our documented ancestors are from the Benevento & Avellino Provinces. AncestryDNA bases these communities on the family trees of DNA matches. And they're very accurate, according to DNA expert Diahan Southard.

My husband's AncestryDNA test has a disappointingly low number of DNA matches. But I love his community! It fits everything we know about his ancestors: "Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, Olta & Kumamoto." Here's what Ancestry says about how they determined this as his community:

"You, and all the members of this community, are linked through shared ancestors. You probably have family who lived in this area for years—and maybe still do."

I'll leave you with another great tip from Southard. Say you're trying to trace a close ancestor—a 2nd great grandparent or closer. And you have no idea where on earth they came from.

Do you have a DNA ethnicity that doesn't match what you know about your ancestry? Check your mystery DNA matches' ethnicities. (On AncestryDNA, Ethnicity is a tab, like Shared Matches.) Do any of these matches have a decent amount of that one unexpected ethnicity? Check their family tree and Shared Matches to see if their information that can help you.

Also, take a look at which ethnicities you actually share with your decent DNA matches. If they don't have small amounts of something you have, then that ethnicity has no bearing on your connection.

What's the bottom line with all these ethnicities?

• Be sure to check out the range of percentages. If it says it's as low as zero, it's may be too little to matter.
• If the average is below 5%, don't expect to find a documented ancestor from that part of the world.
• Check to see how your DNA matches' ethnic percentages compare to yours.

If some of your DNA ethnicity results simply don't make sense, give them a closer look. If you can see they're not worth pursuing, don't worry about them.

Here's a good way to look at it in mathematical terms:

• Each of your parents gave you 50% of your DNA.
• Each of your grandparents gave you 25% of your DNA.
• Each of your great grandparents gave you 12½% of your DNA.
• Each of your 2nd great grandparents gave you 6¼% of your DNA.

A tiny percentage is either a statistical error or a very distant ancestor.

I know exactly where all my 3rd great grandparents came from, as well as 55 of my 64 4th great grandparents. It's crazy to imagine that one of my nine missing 4th great grandparents walked to Southern Italy from Norway or Portugal! That gives me the confidence to ignore those trace ethnicities.

How about you?

Don't lose any sleep over tiny, unexpected DNA ethnicities.

And speaking of DNA:

• Making Sense of Your DNA Results
• Delving Deep into Your Genealogy with DNA
• The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About

These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions

Ten years ago I asked my parents to take a DNA test. I told them it would help me see whether my matches were on mom's side or dad's side. I even uploaded our 3 DNA tests (plus my husband's) to other DNA websites.

I must admit I've spent very little time looking at their DNA matches. Instead, I've analyzed the daylights out of my matches. I've categorized them, added notes, and grouped them with colorful dots.

Then on Friday, DNA expert Diahan Southard gave another insightful webinar. She recommended two things I've overlooked:

1. My parents are one generation closer to their ancestors than I am. So they will have some matches I don't have.
2. AncestryDNA has the most tests by far, but they ship to a limited number of countries. (See the full list.) Other websites, like MyHeritage, have a more global collection of DNA testers.

After hearing that second point, I was eager to see our matches on MyHeritage. Sure enough, I'm seeing matches that aren't on AncestryDNA. They're from:

• Italy
• Brazil
• Australia
• United Kingdom
• Venezuela
• Slovakia
• New Zealand
• plus the USA and Canada

I didn't realize how AncestryDNA limits my international pool of matches.

You can do this for free, same as I did. Create a free account on www.myheritage.com, go to the DNA menu, and choose Upload DNA data. (See your testing site for instructions on how to download your DNA data file.)

I'll bet you'll have much better matches than I do. For some reason, my number of matches is very low compared to other people. On AncestryDNA, I have 5,554 matches. I've seen other people with 50,000 matches. What the heck? On MyHeritage, I have 554 matches—but 90% of them are people not on AncestryDNA.

I spent a whole day looking at the family trees of DNA matches for my parents and myself on MyHeritage. The most exciting result is that many of them are from my mother's ancestral hometowns in Italy. Those towns have almost no matches on AncestryDNA!

Don't overlook the free resource that offers you a host of new international DNA matches.

I recognize most of the last names in these matches' family trees. I dug through my downloaded collection of vital records from the towns. I built out families and placed my new DNA matches in my family tree. Sometimes our connection was an in-law connection, not a cousin connection. That means I need to piece together more ancestors.

While my number of international DNA matches is low, they give me a lot more families to explore. I'm excited to have a new project on my list. Yes, I'm still winding up a cleanup project to add source citations to some document images in my family tree. But I can wrap that up in three solid days. And I'm still working through my maternal grandfather's hometown, adding people to my tree. And I'm even still renaming lots of my downloaded vital records to make them searchable.

But that doesn't mean I'm not excited by the next big project! Thanks to my international DNA matches, I can expand my reach into my "underserved" towns:

• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo
• Apice
• Pescolamazza
• Santa Paolina
• Tufo

I'm also revisiting the DNA kit I uploaded to familytreedna.com. That match list (only 321 people) has even more names I haven't seen on AncestryDNA. Very few of them have uploaded a tree, so I may not get very much out of this list. But again, I'll bet you will.

I'm eager to add as many people from my underserved towns as possible. My family tree is full to the brim with ancestors from my grandfathers' hometowns. But my grandmothers' lines need work. Now I can expand their families further!

If your family hasn't been in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand for several hundred years, don't ignore the power of MyHeritage. And if you're managing DNA kits for your close relatives, explore their unique matches. Go ahead. Dip your toes in the international gene pool.

This Spreadsheet Sorts DNA Matches By Branch

If it's at all possible, get your close relatives to take a DNA test that you will manage. Choose someone from your maternal and paternal sides. If you can't test your parents, how about a half-sibling or a 1st cousin? Once they've tested, get ready to see all your DNA matches in a new light.

I'm so glad my parents agreed to take a DNA test. At first I asked them to test so I could more easily see which one of them was related to my DNA matches. Now AncestryDNA is doing that for us with their SideView™ feature. I figured I didn't need this feature. But I was wrong.

While watching videos from RootsTech 2023, one big thing dawned on me. You see, my parents are on each other's match lists. After so much digging, I'm sure they don't have a common ancestor who lived before the late 1700s. But I never thought to look at my parents' SideViews.

Looking at SideView from My Parents' Perspective

The result was pretty exciting. When I looked at Dad in Mom's match list, I saw:

• their relationship falls in the 4th–6th cousin range
• they share 37 cMs
• their longest segment of shared DNA is 14 cMs
• Dad is on Mom's paternal side of the family

That last item is great news because Mom's maternal side of the family dead ends too early. That ancestral hometown was a Papal State in Italy, so it didn't keep civil records before 1861.

When I looked at Mom in Dad's DNA match list, they still shared 37 cMs with the longest segment measuring 14 cMs. But, unfortunately, SideView shows Mom as Unassigned. Ancestry says this could mean there isn't enough information to assign Mom to one of Dad's parents. Your Unassigned matches may get updated in the future, so keep checking.

Analyzing DNA Matches in a New Light

It was Kelli Bergheimer's RootsTech presentation "DNA Misconceptions" that inspired today's project. I created a spreadsheet to compare my DNA matches' relationship to each of my parents and me.

I started by adding the names of my DNA matches in column A of a spreadsheet. I went from the top of the list down to my 44 cM matches. After 44 cMs my matches fell into the Distant Family category. I noted:

• how many cMs we shared
• whether a match is on my maternal side, paternal side, both sides, or unassigned

Then I went through each of my parents' match lists. I captured their matches down to a 44 cM match. If their match wasn't already in my list, I added a new line to the spreadsheet. I checked each of our lists for everyone in column A, noting shared cMs and which side of the family.

When all your maternal DNA matches are on Mom's list, and all your paternals are on Dad's list, you know you've found a cousin.

Next I used colors to show where Mom and I shared a match, where Dad and I shared a match, and where all 3 of us shared a match. In those cases, I added the length of our longest segment of shared DNA with the match in cMs. (If you use AncestryDNA, click your match's number of shared cMs to see what is the longest length.)

I found 10 matches that only Dad has, and 7 matches that only Mom has. All 17 had a strong number of shared cMs. It's possible I share an amount of DNA with them that's too small to make my list. There were no matches in my column that didn't match either Mom or Dad. That qualifies them as true matches and not false positives.

Are Your Matches Really in Your Family Tree?

Kelli Bergheimer speaks about IBD (Identical By Descent) vs. IBS (Identical By State) matches. IBS is also called IBC (Identical By Chance). An IBD match is definitely family—a true cousin. This is someone who fits in your family tree. An IBS/IBC match may or may not be a true cousin. They may share DNA with you because their ancestors' roots are planted so close to yours. And that's one way this spreadsheet helps you understand your matches.

If my parent(s) and I share a match with a good number of cMs, I can be confident that person is a true cousin. I did a bit of research on this concept, and the following numbers vary a bit from place to place. But here's the basic idea.

If the *longest segment* you share with a DNA match is:

• 12 cM or more, you're almost surely true cousins
• about 10 to 12 cM, there's a 90% chance you're true cousins
• between 8 and 10 cM, there's a 50-50 chance you're true cousins
• between 6 and 8 cM, there's less than a 50% chance you're true cousins
• smaller than 6 cM, there's about a 10% chance you're true cousins

Even if you are true cousins, your most recent common ancestor (MRCA) may be too far up your tree to identify. Your odds of finding that MRCA get better and better when you and your match share a segment of 30 cMs or more. If you share a segment of about 16 to 30 cMs, you've got about a 50% chance of finding that MRCA. Any lower and the odds are slim to none. (My parents' longest segment is 14 cMs.)

The message is clear. Don't beat yourself up if you can't identify a match who shares a longest segment of less than 16 cMs with you.

Practical Ways to Use This Spreadsheet

I love this spreadsheet because it can tell me which of my 4 grandparents' lines connect me to a DNA match. I added a column next to the matches' names showing which grandparent(s) is the connection:

• Adamo for Mom's paternal matches
• Mary for Mom's maternal matches
• Pietro for Dad's paternal matches
• Lucy for Dad's maternal matches
• various combinations to cover double matches and unassigned matches

Use your parents' AncestryDNA SideView™ to assign a match to one or more grandparents' branches of the family tree.

This creates a sort of cluster when you sort your spreadsheet by the grandparent column. In my case, if Grandma Mary is their only connection to me, and they aren't a very strong match, I may not find our MRCA. (Again, that's because Mary's line dead ends too early.) If Grandpa Adamo is their only connection, I know they have roots in his hometown of Baselice, Italy. And sometimes a match's last name reassures me that my spreadsheet is correct.

What About Your Closest Tested Relatives?

Getting back to my parents matching each other—I went to DNA Painter to use the Shared cM Project 4.0 tool. I entered the total number of cMs my parents share: 37. The tool says that pedigree collapse or endogamy can affect the results. There's a good chance I have one or both of those things in my family tree. All my ancestors came from a small string of neighboring Italian towns.

Putting pedigree collapse or endogamy aside, my parents have:

• a 50% chance of being 5th, 6th, or 7th cousins, along with several other relationships in that range
• a 19% chance of being half 3rd cousins or 3rd cousins once removed
• an 18% chance of being 4th cousins or half 3rd cousins once removed
• a 10% chance of being half 2nd cousins or 2nd cousins once removed

Based on my extensive family tree, I'm confident my parents are 5th, 6th, or 7th cousins. All I can do hope that their towns' church records go public some day so I can dig into the early 1700s.

If you have very close relatives who've DNA tested, try this type of DNA analysis for yourself. I'm excited to be able to figure out my lower matches who have a stronger connection to one of my parents than to me.

And speaking of DNA matches:

• How to Crunch Your DNA Numbers
• Why Care About Your DNA Matches?
• How to Use the Power of Shared DNA Matches

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