Can't Connect to Your DNA Match? Keep Trying

I've got my super-charged database ready to help crack those connections.

It was my day off. And there isn't anything I'd rather do with my free time than work on my family tree. But where to begin?

After a quick look at GEDmatch, I decided I wanted to finally figure out why John is my DNA match. And my dad's match, too.

You see, my dad has 1st cousins I've visited in Italy. Their mother was my grandfather's sister Assunta. So Dad and I are blood relatives on their mother's side. But John is on their father's side. He is their father's brother. How am I related to their father's family?

I've built out my cousins' father's tree (and their Uncle John's) far and wide. His roots are in my grandfather's town where everyone is related somehow.

But all the people in John's family tree were related to me only through my Great Aunt Assunta's husband. How frustrating! Where was the hidden connection?

With extra determination, I finally found my connection to an unusual DNA match.

Be Methodical

I began by viewing John's ancestors. Right away I saw a hole. I didn't have his maternal grandmother's birth date or ancestors. Another relative had a family tree showing her birth date as 6 Nov 1867, so I got straight to work.

My ace in the hole is my amazing database of Italian vital records. I've got all available records from my grandfather's hometown sitting on my computer. Plus, I renamed each image to include the name of the document's subject. Now I can search my computer for any name from the town.

Once I located John's grandmother Maria's birth record, I began working on her parents. Over and over I found death records for ancestors that gave me their parents' names. It was working so well that I identified all 8 of Maria's great grandparents. Only 1 of the 8 was a dead end.

Leave No Stone Unturned

As I found new ancestors, I used the Relationship Calculator in Family Tree Maker. Each new person was still related to me only through my Great Aunt's husband's family. No blood relation.

At this point I worried that my day off had been a bust. It was still fun, but I didn't get what I wanted. So, of course, I kept searching.

Again and again I went back to John and climbed each of his branches till I found a dead end. For each dead end, I searched for a death record that would tell me the names of the next generation.

Late in the day, I was looking at an ancestor named Vincenzo Mascia. I needed his parents' names, but he was too old for his marriage record to be available. (Records begin in 1809.) But Vincenzo's 1st wife died. He remarried within the range of my collection of marriage records.

In his marriage documents I found his birth record with his parents' names, Giorgio and Giulia. And there was his father Giorgio's 1812 death record. That had his parents' names, Domenico and Caterina.

Before typing Giorgio's parents' names into my tree, I did what I always do. Check to see if they're in my tree already. I held my breath because these parents were born in the late 1600s. I was way up there. And I did have a Domenico Mascia who was about the right age. Before I hovered over his name to see who he married, my heart skipped a beat. He had a yellow circle next to his name in the person index. That means he is my direct ancestor. Yellow means he's a direct ancestor of my father's father.

When I hovered over Domenico's name I gasped. His wife was the Caterina Paolucci I was hoping for. Domenico and Caterina are my 7th great grandparents, and I had climbed John's family tree to find them. They are his 5th great grandparents.

Consult the Charts

So I whipped out my relationship chart. I'd found something similar online once, but decided to make my own, which is much easier to use. Since Domenico and Caterina are my 7th great grandparents and John's 5th great grandparents, he and I are 6th cousins twice removed. John and my dad are 6th cousins once removed.

Download your own: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksvp08b99pzk9hl/relationship-calculator.xlsx?dl=0

Ancestry DNA estimated that John and I (and John and my dad) were 4th–6th cousins. Well, there you go!

This finding was a long time coming. I've been collaborating with John's daughter-in-law since 2017 trying to figure this out. Ironically, while John is my 6th cousin twice removed, his wife is my 5th cousin twice removed. I was working on her ancestors this past Sunday.

I've got a ton of work yet to do on this branch. I was so excited with my progress that I entered all the facts, but I have to go back and add the documents and source citations to my tree.

I hope I've inspired you to keep at it when you can't find the connection to your DNA match. Use all your resources and keep pushing forward. You never know which path will help you solve the puzzle.

How Many Genealogy Gems Are You Sitting On?

Are you guilty of ignoring the tips and leads you stashed away? I am.

Years ago I put a folder on my computer desktop called "gen docs". It was a handy place to stash anything that:

• I hadn't added to my family tree yet, or
• belonged to someone who wasn't in my tree yet.

I even took the time to organize this stash with sub-folders for the different document types.

Then I moved the folder to another folder that's automatically backed up to cloud storage. That's keeping it safe. (See "How to Back Up Your Family Tree Files Automatically".) But since it's not staring me in the face anymore, it's been out-of-sight, out-of-mind for a long time.

I'm sure there are a ton of genealogy gems in that folder. Things like:

• photos of relatives I found online
• draft cards for men who weren't connected to me, but may be connected now
• vital records I photographed from microfilm (badly)
• the flight record for my Uncle Johnny who crashed and died in World War II

There's so much in that folder that past-me thought would be important to future-me. And I'm sure she was right.

This is what happens when you have a "deal with it later" folder.

Aside from this jam-packed folder (I'll bet that phrase doesn't translate well), I also have my earliest genealogy research. It's a school notebook I filled with facts taken from ship manifests I saw on the Ellis Island website 16 years ago. It's hard to believe I ever did something so non-digital. I wish now it was a Notepad file. And I have the college paper my brother wrote about our family history in the 1970s. That paper has some stories that came straight from our grandparents. I need to capture all those gems!

What about you? What gems have you been tucking away to deal with later? Do you have death certificates you never scanned? An audio interview you never transcribed? (Guilty!) Photos you meant to digitize?

I know we like to forge ahead in our genealogy hobby. We're eager to search through the newest database. We want to try another software package that shows a lot of promise. We want to focus our energy on that brick wall.

But past-you has already laid the foundation of your family tree. What if the clue you need to break through your brick wall has been sitting in your collection all this time?

I challenge you today to a project I'm beginning right now. Go through your old notes, files, and collections. You know more about your family now than you did back then. Take a close look at each scrap of information past-you set aside and make a decision.

These documents should have gone straight into my family tree. No more procrastinating.

Does it belong in your family tree?

• If yes, scan it, crop it, type it, and get it in your family tree. Now.
• If no, put it in another folder and make note of why you kept it and why it isn't in your family tree.

I'm starting this project by dealing with one sub-folder at a time. The "legal docs" folder has things like the sale of my grandfather's house in 1990. The "funeral cards" folder has pictures of these mementos I need to enhance in Photoshop. The "Missing Flight" folder has Uncle Johnny's flight record that I keep forgetting to put into my family tree.

There's no telling what I'll find in my stash that may:

• answer age-old questions
• establish unknown connections, or
• add a missing piece to one relative's life story.

So, yes, I challenge you and me both. Stop forging ahead for a couple of days and clean up the trail of evidence past-you created. Then tell me what genealogy gems you've discovered.

And speaking of discoveries:

• My 5th Great Grandfather: A Random Act of Kindness?
• Finding the Story Behind an Intriguing Family Photo
• POW: My Grandfather's World War I Experience

Is This the End of DNA Matches?

The industry is reporting layoffs as the DNA kit surge reaches its peak.

Should genealogy fans worry about the future of DNA tests? Ancestry cut 6% of its staff. 23andMe cut 14%. MIT Technology Review says more than 26 million people submitted DNA ancestry kits, with a huge spike since 2017. There was such a rapid increase of kits in the last 2 years, it's surprising to read about these staff cuts.

Whoever is in your DNA match list today, you shouldn't expect a tremendous increase in the future. And the reason so many of your DNA matches have no tree or don't answer you is simple. They aren't interested. The kit was a gift, they went along with it, they saw their pie chart and said, "So what?"

This past weekend I worked on one of my 2020 Genealogy Goals. I tried to figure out my connection to someone in my DNA match list who had a family tree. I've figured out a lot of them already. I spent my time working on a 4th cousin who'd reached out to me on Facebook a while back.

I know the connection is there, but missing documents are keeping it secret.

I told her that her grandmother's maiden name was my grandmother's maiden name. She was Concetta Sarracino. I found Concetta's 1887 birth record in my vital record collection. I found her 2 siblings, her parents, her aunt and uncle, 3 grandparents, and 1 great grandparent.

Free to use.

But none of them tied into my family tree. The Sarracino family is from a town with records that don't go back before 1861. I tried to find any loose threads that might tie me to this loose branch. Concetta came to America with her husband and 3 children. I have their ship manifest. Her 1st cousin Angelo was already in New York City. I built out his part of the family, too.

Now I've got dozens of people in my tree, closely related to my DNA match. But their profile pictures are my "No Relationship Established" graphic. Once again, I had to put this branch aside and hope for a future breakthrough.

As I was about to quit playing with my family tree for the day, someone sent me a message on Ancestry. My family tree kept coming up in her search results over and over. She gave me a handful of names, and I went to her tree.

While her family names are clearly from my grandfather's hometown, she is not in my match list. But she is in my dad's match list. It's a distant relationship. Between the DNA and those last very familiar names, I wanted to know more.

In her family tree I saw 2 last names that are important in my family tree: Pozzuto and Zeolla.

These 2 names seem to hold the hidden DNA connection between my mother and father. I've been trying to find my parents' distant cousin connection by adding those names to my family tree. Last year I added every Pozzuto baby from my vital records collection to my family tree. This year's goal is to add every Zeolla baby.

This past weekend I found that I am connected to this DNA match's great grandmother. I can't see her 1875 birth record because that year is missing from the records collection. But I have her parents' and siblings' records. Filomena Zeolla, born in 1875, is my 3rd cousin 4 times removed.

That doesn't help me figure out my parents' DNA connection. But it does extend my family tree into an area I couldn't reach before. I had no way to know about Filomena because there are no 1875 birth records. I had no way to know she had married a Pozzuto who has a huge branch in my family tree.

Because of this DNA match, I realized I'd attached her grandfather to the wrong parents. Their names were almost identical. I had no way to know!

And this is the importance of DNA matches' trees to me. I don't expect to discover many close relatives. Years ago my family tree (not my DNA) attracted my 3rd cousin to me. I knew nothing about her ancestor—my great grandfather's sister. But now I've built out my 2nd great aunt's branch of the family and extended them into America.

I need my distant cousins' family trees to find out what happened to relatives who scattered across America—or stayed in Italy.

If you want to find long-lost family through DNA, don't despair about the DNA-test market. There are still millions of family trees online and other research that can connect you to 3rd and 4th cousins.

It's the people trying to find their birth parents' who have the most to lose as this DNA-kit fad winds down. On the flip side, more people are afraid to test because they might learn their mom and dad aren't their birth parents.

So, should genealogy fans worry about the future of DNA tests? For most of us, the answer is no. There are still 26 million DNA kits out there. And your DNA match list was never meant to replace genealogy research.

Still, you should reach out to those matches while they still have a shred of interest.

And speaking of DNA matches:

• Don't Give Up When Your DNA Match Has a Puny Little Family Tree
• Use Cousin Baiting to Expand Your Family Tree
• This DNA Reference Site Solved a Mystery