Help Your DNA Match Expand their Family Tree

Show your DNA match who's the genealogist in the family!

You've probably got more genealogy skills than many of your DNA matches. If you want to figure out your connection, why not do some of the work for them? We all complain about our matches' missing or flimsy trees. Let's put some more leaves on their trees.

It helps if you can spot the best place to dive in.

My dad and I have one DNA match, Annie, who shares 44 cMs (centiMorgans) with him and (surprisingly) 43 cMs with me. Annie has a very small family tree posted. It doesn't have a lot of facts. But 5 of the 13 people in the tree have my 2nd great grandmother's last name.

That's our only apparent connection: the last name Girardi. Now, I know that name comes from more than one part of Italy. Former Yankees manager Joe Girardi's ancestors came from up north. My people are all from southern Italy.

But that name is the place for me to dive in.

If you're a genealogy warrior, why not help your DNA match find their missing link to you?

I decided to see if Annie's Girardi ancestor was born in my 2nd great grandmother's town. Annie's tree had no date for Luciano Girardi's birth. But it had a December 1900 date for Luciano's wife. I went to my folder of 1900 birth records from the town of Pescolamazza.

There she was: Lorenza Immacolata Viglione. And in the margin of her birth record was the date of her marriage to Luciano Girardi.

Now I was sure this Girardi family was from my Girardi family's hometown. And it's a small town, not a city.

I went year by year, checking each birth index for Luciano Girardi. I found him in 1892 and held my breath. Was he a fit for my family tree?

Both his father and his mother were named Girardi. Even though neither of his parents were in my tree, I had my marching orders. Because of his birth year, one of Luciano's parents might be my 2nd great grandmother's 1st cousin.

Let's play a little game, shall we?

Annie seems to be the child of Luciano. That'd put her close to my father's age, just for reference.

Imagine Luciano's parent is my 2nd great grandmother's 1st cousin. If so, Annie's 3rd great grandparents are my father's 4th great grandparents. She would be my father's 3rd cousin once removed. (I had to draw it to make sense of it.)

I couldn't do this in my head if I tried. A drawing helped me understand the theoretical relationship.

Ancestry DNA estimates Dad and Annie are 4th–6th cousins. I checked the "consanguinity relationship chart" from Family Tree UK that I mentioned last week. With their shared 44 cMs of DNA, Annie and my dad could most likely be:

• 1st cousins 4 times removed
• 2nd cousins twice removed
• 2nd cousins 3 times removed
• 3rd cousins

Each of the above relationships has the exact same probability based on the numbers.

Now let's add in the "divide by 68" rule from last week. Dividing their shared 44 cMs by 68 tells me that Dad and Annie share .647%, and Annie and I share .632% of our DNA. Wow. We share such a small percentage of DNA with our not-so-distant-cousins. Even 2nd cousins share only about 3.125% of their DNA.

I sent Annie a link to Luciano and Lorenza's Italian birth records. But I need to keep researching. I need to investigate these new Girardi names. I need to find Italian documents for them and hope to connect them to my family.

Knowing your possible relationship to a DNA match won't solve the puzzle. As you do the genealogy research, keep those possible relationships in mind. Draw yourself a diagram. You can solve many of your DNA relationships this way.

Same Name; Which Ancestor is Which?

It isn't only John Smiths that get mixed up. Naming customs are to blame.

No matter what ethnicity or nationality you ancestors were, you've probably seen this.

Everybody has the same name!

Many cultures followed a naming pattern that led to repeating names over and over. (Go to the FamilySearch Wiki and search for "naming customs" to see the rules.)

Here's an example. Imagine a man named Giuseppe Bianco whose father was Giovanni. Giuseppe names his 1st son Giovanni after his father. He names his 2nd son Salvatore after his wife's father. When young Giovanni and Salvatore grow up, they each name their 1st son Giuseppe after their father. No you've got 2 first cousins each named Giuseppe Bianco.

Now imagine that type of thing happening in every branch of your family, over and over again. The repeated names can drive any genealogy researcher crazy.

Picture yourself searching for a record of someone with a common name. How will you know you've found the right person?

Dates, Relatives, and More Documents

Search for your person in a wide array of years. Even if you think you know their birth year, check a bunch of surrounding years. Make note of every other person with the same or similar name. Who were their parents? Who did they marry?

Can't find an ancestor in the year you expected? Check a number of surrounding years.

Search for every related document you can. Find other records that include the person's age to help you estimate their birth year. Examples are their children's births and marriages, and their death. Carefully consider every fact you find before deciding which one is your ancestor.

This past weekend I was building a family tree for a client. I was off to a good start because she knew several ancestors' names. When I found a birth record, I could see that the baby's parents matched the names my client gave me.

But one ancestor, let's call her Giulia Russo, was a problem. I couldn't find a birth record for her or her father. I did find Giulia's 1911 marriage record. It told me her parents' names (Francesco and Maria) and her approximate birth year.

I continued piecing together the rest of the family. Giulia and her father Francesco were the only 2 people missing a birth record. Actually, I found more than one birth record for a baby named Francesco Russo. But they were born so much earlier than Giulia's mother.

How could I know which Francesco Russo was the right one?

I needed Giulia's birth record so I could get an idea of when her father Francesco was born. Based on her marriage record, she should have been born in 1887 or 1888. She wasn't.

I had to assume they got Giulia's age wrong on her marriage record. I broadened my search and found the only baby girl with a name even close to Giulia Russo. She was born in late 1884. She was actually 26 when her marriage record said she was 23.

But I knew it was her. Why? Because I'd checked a wide range of years in 2 towns and this "Giulia Maria Russo" was the only option. She had the right parents. Their names matched those on the marriage record.

Finally I was able to say with some confidence that her father Francesco Russo was born in about 1842. That's much earlier than his wife, and much earlier than I'd expected.

I searched birth records from 1837 through 1865 looking for every Francesco Russo. I found only two. But they each had a problem. They each had a note saying who he married and when. And neither bride was Giulia's mother.

But Giulia's birth record put her father's birth year at 1842. The 2 Francesco's I found were born in 1842 and 1848. I took another look at the Francesco Russo born in 1842.

As a rule, it's always a good idea to search records in the surrounding years.

When I considered everyone's ages, it became clear to me. The 1870 marriage to another woman written on his birth record was his 1st marriage. His 1st wife must have died before he married Giulia's mother Maria. Maria was 22 years younger than Francesco. She was 6 years old when he married the 1st time.

When Francesco married his 2nd wife, she was very young. She gave birth to their daughter Giulia at the age of 20. Ideally I'd want proof that Francesco's 1st wife died before Giulia was born. But the record isn't available. Neither is the marriage record for Francesco and Maria.

I searched a range of years for his 1st wife's death. No luck.

But I had one more ace up my sleeve. I could search for all the babies Francesco had with his 1st wife and see if they end by 1884. When the babies stop coming, that could be when his 1st wife died.

I found 4 babies born to Francesco and his 1st wife from 1872–1880. I kept searching, knowing that Giulia (the daughter of Francesco's 2nd wife) was born in 1884.

Good news, everyone! From 1881 to 1883 there no more babies for the 1st wife. Plus there was an 1883 baby born to the other Francesco Russo and his wife. The better clue came in 1885. A year after Francesco had a baby with his 2nd wife, the other Francesco Russo had another baby with his only wife.

This proves to me that I chose the right Francesco Russo.

In my experience with 19th century Italians, widows always remarried—sometimes awfully fast. And a man usually married a much younger woman and continued making the babies.

Francesco's experience fit perfectly into this mold. It's the same exact experience my 2nd great grandfather had. He married his 1st wife and had several children. Then his wife died. He quickly remarried, choosing a young lady who was his eldest daughter's age! Thank goodness he did, because that young 2nd wife was my 2nd great grandmother.

You won't always be 100% sure you've identified the right ancestor. But if you seek out as much information as possible, you're bound to have more success.

And speaking of the name game:

• This Genealogy Policy Takes the Guesswork Out of Names
• 6 Ways to Add Another Generation to Your Family Tree
• Share Your Family Tree Names in a Word Cloud

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