This DNA Reference Site Solved a Mystery

Watch me solve a DNA mystery right before your eyes. I'm still in shock!

Is your DNA match list driving you crazy? I have so many matches I haven't figured out yet. It's time to look for help.

Here's my recommendation: Bookmark the Wiki of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG). There's so much to learn…so much you don't even know you don't know.

Autosomal DNA

I see people tossing around genetic terms all the time, and I don't know what they all mean. Take "haplogroup". I don't know which haplogroup I belong to. With a little bit of searching on Ancestry, I found that my Ancestry DNA test does not include my haplogroup. Whew! At least there's a good reason why I don't know my haplogroup.

Ancestry DNA looks at your autosomal DNA because everyone has that. It isn't restricted to only male ancestry or only female ancestry. That means you can potentially connect to more relatives with an autosomal DNA test.

Go to the Autosomal DNA page on the ISOGG Wiki and you'll see that several other well-known companies also offer an autosomal DNA test. You'll find a video on that page that gives you a quick background on how to make sense of your list of DNA matches.

The video includes a breakdown of how much DNA you should share with a parent, sibling, 1st cousin, 1st cousin once removed, etc. There are several charts available to help you make sense of the number of centiMorgans you share with your DNA matches. Here's a good one from Family Tree UK.

CentiMorgans

Let's talk about centiMorgans. That's the "cMs" your DNA site says you share with your DNA matches. Here's a simple—and wildly handy—way to see the percentage of DNA you share with someone. On the ISOGG Wiki page for centiMorgans it says to take the number of cMs you share and divide it by 68. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? 68?

I went to my DNA match list and picked my father. We share 3,441 cMs. Guess what that is when you divide it by 68? It's 50.6%. Bingo, he's my dad-o. My mom and I share 3,482 cMs. That works out to 51.2%. No wonder I look more like her.

I have a 1st cousin who has DNA-tested. As 1st cousins, we should share about 12.5% DNA. Using the "divide by 68" rule, he and I share 11.66% of our DNA. Definitely a 1st cousin.

This is how Ancestry DNA and other sites determine your approximate relationship to someone. Applying that rule, let's look at 2 of my most intriguing DNA match mysteries.

Mom's DNA Match

Mary is a match to my mom and me. She has no family tree online, so I wrote to her. Mary and mom's shared cMs work out to about 3.6%. Consulting the Family Tree UK chart, they could be:

• 1st cousins twice removed, or
• 2nd cousins

That's pretty close. After writing to Mary, I learned her DNA test gave her the news that her father wasn't her father. She told me the last name of her birth father, and I recognized it right away. That name comes from my maternal grandmother's parents' hometown in Italy. It's a small town, so I'm familiar with most of the names there.

My mission now is to help Mary by finding her connection to my great grandparents. Then, at least, I can give her a family. There aren't a lot of records available from that Italian town, but if I start pulling out everyone with her father's last name, I should be able to build something.

Dad's DNA Match

Linda is a DNA match to my dad and me and shares our last name. I wrote to her and her information was confusing. She said her grandmother was Rosaria Iamarino, but that must be her married name. She said her family has some roots in Argentina. Ancestry DNA estimates that my dad and Linda are 1st or 2nd cousins.

How can we not know our relationship?

In some DNA cases, you may simply need to look at your tree in a logical way.

Turning back to the "divide by 68" rule, Linda and my dad share 5.47% of their DNA. That's an in-between percentage that doesn't fall nicely onto the Family Tree UK chart. But there's a good chance Linda is my dad's 2nd cousin twice removed or so.

Looking at the shared last name of Iamarino, my grandpa had no brothers. And even though my grandmother was also an Iamarino, her brothers are legally named Marino. (Some crazy clerical error.) That means Linda's Iamarino grandfather may be the child or grandchild of one of my father's great uncles—one of the brothers of 1 of his 2 Iamarino grandfathers.

And now my brain hurts.

Maybe a visual aid will help. I'll look at dad's 2 grandfathers in my family tree: Francesco and Pasquale Iamarino.

Pasquale Iamarino had only one brother, and he died as a toddler. That rules out my dad's mother's side of the family.

Francesco Iamarino had 2 brothers. Giuseppe emigrated to the Bronx and stayed there for the rest of his life. My dad remembers him. Teofilo seems to have stayed in Italy. But something strikes me. I know Teofilo's son Gennaro moved to Argentina. And, oh boy, his son has a wife named Rosaria!

When I saw this couple's photo, I remembered something crucial. Argentina!

I learned this in January because Rosaria's daughter, my 3rd cousin Maria, contacted me from Argentina. As I look through our online conversation from January, Maria did say her brother lives in America.

Wow, the visual aid really helped. Linda's father should be my 3rd cousin. And now my Argentinian 3rd cousin Maria has confirmed it!

The Ancestry DNA estimate was only a bit off. Linda (my 3rd cousin once removed) is my dad's 2nd cousin twice removed. (OMG! That was my guess above.) She and her father are going into my family tree right now. I've just figured out this mystery, right before your eyes!

It's entirely possible Linda has some extra cMs in common with me because of my convoluted, complex relationship to her grandmother Rosaria's family.

Learn from this wild experience. An expert resource or two, and some logical, brain-numbing thinking, can solve your longstanding DNA mysteries too.

And speaking of DNA:

• Gearing Up for All Your New DNA Matches
• Don't Give Up When Your DNA Match Has a Puny Little Family Tree
• Use Cousin Baiting to Expand Your Family Tree

Step Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone

Getting pretty good at genealogy? Try working with a new set of records.

I tend to write this blog about what I'm doing in genealogy at the moment. It's a great system, actually. I have to play around in genealogy every day to keep the blog going.

What I'm doing right now is stretching my skills by helping other people with their family trees. I specialize in Italian ancestry. So I'm offering to:

• locate Italian vital records
• translate them, and
• piece together families for my customers.

If you've been working on your own family tree for a while, you're probably in your genealogy comfort zone. You're locating government documents from your own country, like:

• census records
• immigration and naturalization records
• vital records
• military records, and more

The documents are often very similar, so you get comfortable with them. You know where to look on a census sheet for the head of household's occupation. You know where to look on a death record for the names of the deceased's parents.

Things can get so easy they start to bore you. There's a lot more to genealogy.

Now imagine suddenly diving into a pool of different documents. They can be so…different. It can throw you off your genealogy game a bit.

All my ancestors came from neighboring towns in Italy. Each town's birth, marriage, and death records are pretty similar to one another. I know exactly how to handle my towns' documents and extract what I need from them.

But in different regions of Italy, the pre-printed forms can vary a lot. The father's name on a birth record may not be where I expected. The baby's name may be written very large (that's great!) or small and blended into the paragraph (harder to spot).

What I'm finding right away is that we can learn and adapt quickly.

I hope you'll get ambitious and start to explore a branch of your family tree you haven't touched before. You may find that documents from their country are different than what you're used to.

Don't get worried. All you need to do is get settled in. Here are the 2 main tips for dealing with dramatically different documents.

1. Learn Some of the Language

If you're going to gather documents from a new country, you need to learn a handful of words in their language. I'll be working with all Italian documents, but eventually I may need to learn the dreaded Latin.

Whenever you need to dig into foreign-language documents, you must learn the keywords.

Say you're viewing a birth record. You need to know the words for born, husband, wife, the days of the week, months of the year, and numbers. Memorize those months and numbers. FamilySearch.org offers a list of all the important keywords in a bunch of languages. See What Language Barrier?

You can do this!

You've learned so much already. Stretch yourself and see how much more you can master.

2. Recognize the Key Facts

When I'm looking at a really old Italian document, it's all hand-written. There is no pre-printed, easy-to-read form. But I don't get overwhelmed. I find a key fact and dive right in.

A very old birth record often begins with details about the volume where you can find the record. It may include the beginning and ending dates covered by that volume. I don't need all that.

The first thing I look for on an old birth record is the word comparso. That means appeared. The recorder of the document is saying so-and-so appeared before me, the mayor or town official.

The person who appeared is either the father of the new baby or the midwife. In rare cases it's the grandfather of the baby or another relative. But by and large, it's the baby's daddy. So I find comparso and read what follows. It should be a name and an age. If it's a man's name, like Antonio delGrosso, and he's about 28 years old, that sure sounds like he's the father. If he's 68 years old, I'll check to see if he's the grandfather.

Now that I found that important entry point, it's easier to decipher what's next. I expect to find:

• when the baby was born
• the mother's name
• whether she is "Antonio delGrosso's" legitimate wife
• the baby's given name.

If the birth record format for a particular town is different than my towns, I know I can adjust. I like to page through the documents, looking for a particular last name. I keep my eyes only in the part of the page where it says a name after the word comparso.

I can flip through the documents, looking at that one spot, and stop only when I see the name I want. Only then will I read the rest of the document.

If you have a multi-ethnic background, you may have dabbled in a few countries already. But I'll bet a lot of you haven't ventured outside your own country yet. Don't be afraid! You can get used to anything.

Step out of your genealogy comfort zone and expand it. It's not hard once you get settled in.

How to Find Your Connection to a Distant Relative

It may happen at any time. And when it does, you should drop everything.

One of the best things about keeping my family tree on Ancestry.com is the mailbox. At any given moment, I can get a message from a possible cousin.

It's like Christmas Day each time I get a new message. Will this person help me find a missing piece of my genealogy puzzle? I pay attention to each message and treat it seriously.

Last week I heard from a woman I was about to contact. I noticed she was a DNA match to both my dad and me. And I saw her borrowing census forms I'd saved to my family tree. We quickly established that her ancestors once lived up the block from my parents in the Bronx. And we both have roots in Colle Sannita, Italy.

Yesterday I heard from another woman who may not have taken a DNA test. But Ancestry informed her that she and I had shared ancestors. Her 3rd great grandparents were in my tree.

Look beyond the face-value relationship. There may be more to it.

The relationship is hard to wrap your head around, but her people are tied to my 2nd great aunt's husband. And he happens to be the great grandson of my double 4th great grandparents. (See 3 Ways to Find Double Ancestors in Your Family Tree.)

There are no suitable words for these crazy relationships. Let's just say her people are my people.

I dropped everything and got to work. Her 2nd great grandfather was not in my family tree. So, using her online tree for clues, I found his 1829 birth record in my collection of vital records. Then I found his son Giuseppantonio's 1854 birth record.

My new contact's family tree says Giuseppantonio married a woman born in the next town, Circello. Luckily, I have ancestors from Circello. So I have all the available Circello vital records on my computer, too.

I found his wife's 1850 birth record and saw that her mother's name was Petriella. That name has a lot of significance to me. It's my 1st cousins' last name, and it's the last name of some of our DNA matches.

Working on the family tree of a possible cousin can net you a lot more relatives.

This Petriella married in Circello in 1842. I harvested as much information from her marriage as possible, including:

• Her 1819 birth record
• Her father's 1838 death record
• Her grandfather's 1821 death record
• Her husband's 1817 birth record
• His father's 1839 death record
• His grandfather's 1790 death record
• The full set of marriage records, including:
  
  • publication of their intention to marry
  • permission to marry
  • the date they married in church.

Each time I found a new name, I glanced at my new contact's tree to see if my information agreed with hers. It did, but my document collection lets me go much further back in time.

An unexpected relationship is made clear with some color-coding.

I'll continue exploring the documents and adding facts to my family tree. My new contact saved me from hitting a dead end with this particular family. I might never have known that Giuseppe married a girl from the next town and had several children there.

Now I can keep on building that family. I can follow them across the ocean to (of course) the Bronx. And I may make even more connections to distant relatives. That's what you've got to do to find that connection.

At this moment, my family tree has 21,761 people. And that's after I cut out and stopped documenting American in-laws.

Do you want to find your connection to distant cousins? Stretch out your branches as far as possible.

If you're keeping your family tree to yourself, you're missing out on tons of opportunities.