How to Add Context to DNA Matches

No. I still haven't figured out my parents' DNA connection. It's a journey, and along the way, I keep finding tools and methods to help make sense of DNA matches.

After giving up on DNA triangulation, I wanted an easier way to understand my DNA matches.

Here's what I did, and it's really helpful. I looked at my Ancestry DNA matches to find the closest relative I haven't yet identified. Let's call her TK. TK and I share 125 centiMorgans (cMs) across 12 segments. Ancestry DNA says we may be in the general range of 2nd cousins once removed.

I clicked on TK's name in my DNA match list. Then I clicked to see our shared matches. It's a fairly long list, and since the 1st shared match is my father, I know TK is on his side of the family.

I opened a blank spreadsheet. In column A, I put the names of our top shared DNA matches. (I included TK in the list.) In column B, I added the amount of centiMorgans (cMs) I share with each person.

It turns out I know who almost all our top shared DNA matches are. A bunch of them have the same last name, and our connection is my father's 1st cousin.

So, in column C, I entered my relationship to each person. The majority are descendants of my great grandfather Pasquale. Some are a bit more distant. They're descendants of Pasquale's sister, so we share my 2nd great grandparents.

Arranging our shared DNA matches in order added context to this unknown match.

The results were unmistakable:

• The closest relative, my dad's 1st cousin JM, shares 441 cMs with me.
• Her children, my 2nd cousins JM and DM, share an average of 230 cMs with me.
• Their children, my 2nd cousins once removed MM and TM, share an average of 124 cMs with me.
• 3 matches are my 3rd cousins LH, MW and JP, sharing a pair of 2nd great grandparents with me. One of them shares 153 cMs with me, but the other 2 share an average of 78 cMs with me.

You can see a pretty strong correlation between the cMs and the relationship.

I ended my list with a recently discovered DNA match, GP. We share only 40 cMs, but we have an unusual relationship. Each of her parents is my 6th cousin. I needed her in this set as a reference point.

In my list of 12 DNA matches, there are only 3 with an unknown relationship. Two of those are in my tree, but our relationship is very convoluted. Our blood connection is still missing.

I highlighted each of the 3 unidentified DNA matches, including TK, and saw a definite pattern. TK should be my 2nd cousin once removed through my great grandfather Pasquale. Her number (125) fits right between my known 2nd cousins once removed.

But that isn't our connection. Pasquale had 3 children, and I know the names of their children and grandchildren. None of the girls have a name starting with T.

But TK's 125 cMs also fall in line with my 3rd cousins. They're the ones descended from Pasquale's sister.

I happen to know one such cousin with the right first name, but she spells it differently. I've reached out to her and hope she can help me unravel TK. The good news is, she already knows me, and we're planning to have a conversation later.

My next DNA match with an unidentified connection, MM, fits right between 2 of my 3rd cousins. As I said, she's in my tree, but there are a lot of empty branches hiding our true DNA connection. I know my great grandfather had another sister, but I don't know who she married. Could MM be her great granddaughter?

My last unidentified DNA match from this set, SZ, has almost the same amount of shared cMs as my 6th cousin once removed. She and I probably have a more distant relationship. I know she was born before my parents, so I expect us to have a once or twice removed relationship. The big deal about SZ is that she's a match to my mom, too!

Now I have a spreadsheet that gives me a much better idea of my relationship to these 3 DNA matches. Seeing the relationships in order of shared cMs adds context. It makes the possible relationships much clearer.

What if we list even more of our closest DNA matches this way? How many others can we figure out when we give them some context?

Is DNA driving you bonkers?

• Combine DNA Tools to Calculate Unknown Relationships
• Using Ancestry's ThruLines to Find DNA Matches
• How to Find Your Strongest DNA Matches

Are Your Dead Ends Hiding DNA Matches?

Some dead ends are more important than others when a DNA connection is missing.

Despite some juicy leads, I still don't know why my parents share some DNA. They have a distant cousin relationship that I can't nail down. So let's try something else.

Recently I wrote about How to Diagram a Mystery DNA Match. It was a new technique that worked incredibly well on my first try. So why not try it on my parents?

I chose one parent's DNA test and found the other parent in the match list. I clicked to see all the possible relationships for 2 people who share 37 centimorgans. In my relationship calculator spreadsheet, I highlighted these possible relationships.

I know the names of all my father's 3rd great grandparents. I'm missing 8 of my mother's 3rd great grandparents due to a lack of records from their hometown. With so many ancestors known, I was able to rule out all the most likely relationships.

Mom's maternal side still has a lot of missing ancestors, some of which I may yet find.

But my parents may have a half-cousin relationship. What if one of his 3rd or 4th great grandparents married one of her 3rd or 4th great grandparents? I know my Italian ancestors didn't stay widowed for long. They would remarry for help raising the children or for companionship.

I went through my parents' ancestors looking for those I knew had more than one marriage. I kept noticing all the missing ancestors and wondering about them.

I have to keep working on my under-explored towns:

• Apice and Santa Paolina on Mom's side
• Pesco Sannita and Circello on Dad's side

Each one of their towns is pretty close to the others.

Can I fill in more holes in my family tree? Will any new paths lead to my other parent's ancestral hometowns?

I thought it might help to check the Relationship Calculator in Family Tree Maker. It might tell me where to start searching.

I clicked on Dad and checked his relationship to Mom. Besides "husband", I found these relationships:

1. Dad is the nephew of the wife of the 2nd cousin once removed of the wife of the 2nd cousin of Mom
2. Dad is the nephew of the wife of the 4th cousin once removed of the brother-in-law of Mom
3. Dad is the half 1st cousin 3 times removed of the wife of the 2nd cousin once removed of the brother-in-law of Mom
4. Dad is the grand nephew of the wife of the half grand nephew of the wife of the nephew of the husband of the 2nd great aunt of Mom
5. Dad is the nephew of the wife of the 1st great grand nephew of the wife of the 1st cousins of the husband of the half 1st great aunt of Mom

Well, that's clear, isn't it? I checked Family Tree Maker's relationship chart for each of the 5 relationships to make sense of it.

The Relationship Calculator in Family Tree Maker shows you hidden relationships.

Here's what jumps out at me:

• Relationship 1 hinges on a marriage between Mom's paternal hometown (Baselice) and Dad's paternal hometown (Colle Sannita). But that marriage happened only a few years before my parents were born.
• Relationships 2 and 3 above end with the brother-in-law of Mom. That's my Uncle Kenny—my aunt's husband. Other DNA relationships point to a blood relationship between Uncle Kenny and me. I haven't figured it out, but here it is again.
• Relationships 4 and 5 above also include marriages between the 2 towns. These marriages happened in the 1830s and 1850s.

I'm always on the lookout for marriages between my 2 grandfathers' towns. The marriage in relationship #4 includes the last name Pozzuto. All my roads seem to lead to Pozzuto. I found this out when I did some DNA mapping using the Leeds Method. My parents share DNA matches with a high percentage of Pozzuto, and a heapin' helpin' of Zeolla.

So, what does all that analysis tell me to do? Keep working on dead ends in specific areas of my family tree. I'll start by exploring those 2 inter-town marriages. I'll also work on some other towns, searching for Mom's missing ancestors.

I know that any new relationships I add along the way may connect me to more DNA matches.

Do you have DNA mysteries you can't solve? Spend time researching the common branches. Or concentrate on particular last names. Fill in as many blanks as possible.

It's a never-ending journey. But when you love genealogy, the journey is what makes it fun.

Recipe for a Father's Day Genealogy Project

It's time to turn your genealogy skills into a great gift.

You're the family tree nerd in your family, right? Then you're the best person to whip up a genealogy-based Father's Day gift. (If you can't give a gift to your dad, I'm sure there's a father in your family that you like a lot.)

Time's running out, so let's get to it.

Pull together every genealogy item you've found that includes your dad. These are your main ingredients:

• Birth record
• Census forms
• Yearbook photos
• Marriage documents
• Photos throughout his life
• Highlights of his accomplishments

Blend these ingredients together in a way that helps tell dad's life. I'm going to mix images from the list above into a Microsoft Word document. That way I can write detailed captions for each image. And I can write a few sentences between the images, telling the story of Dad's life.

Who could be better than a genealogist to make the perfect Father's Day gift?

With your ingredients gathered, whip up a timeline of Dad's major life moments. My dad's timeline would go like this. Think about how these types of events might relate to your dad.

• Birth in Ohio (I can't get the document itself.)
• Move from Ohio to New York (He's in the 1940 census in New York as a little boy from Ohio.)
• Grade school graduation (I recently got photos of him with his diploma and his parents.)
• High school graduation (Dad's Cardinal Hayes High School yearbooks are online.)
• Move back to Ohio (I have photos of his family in Cleveland.)
• Joining the U.S. Air Force (My dad was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, which is a big part of his identity.)
• Marrying my mom (I've got images of the Bronx, New York, marriage license index in 1954.)
• His bail-out as his jet plane started to break apart and crash (I have a copy of a newspaper article about his bailout.)
• Vacations with his young family (My brother digitized our old family slides.)
• His long succession of houses (Houses and moving are a big part of our family story.)

With your outline well-mixed:

• Fold in dates and places
• Knead each bullet point into a few sentences
• Sprinkle in photos and document images to taste

I can't give my father a hard-copy of this collection in person. He lives too far away, and I thought of it too late! But if I build it in Word and save it as a PDF, I can email it to him.

Here's how a section of my dad's story is shaping up. It's not a lot of text because I think he'll enjoy the photos more.

Think through Dad's life and its milestones for a wonderful Father's Day gift.

Don't over-cook it. Don't stress out. Just start writing and finding images to use. The words will come to you.

It's a lot more satisfying than a generic Father's Day card, don't you think?