What to do with Your Ancestry DNA Matches

What do you do with your DNA matches. Learn how to sort your DNA matches to identify relationships. Use Ancestry's colored dots to separate your four family lines.

Thank you Patricia Frye for sharing your DNA results!

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ANCESTRY AFFILIATE LINKS (join or purchase a DNA test with one of these links to help my channel - thanks!)

#familyhistory #genealogy #ancestry #familysearch

[AncestryAimee]

Did you make any discoveries with your matches?

[TommyAlanRaines]

I am one of those people who have cousins marrying and more. My grandmother Raines's mother had an identical twin sister, the twin marred my grandmother Ranies's father's brother- yeah. So the kids were double first cousins, and genetically they would show up as half siblings. Also, my grandmother Raines had cousins from that group and another brother of her father's that married, her husband/my grandfather Raines's siblings. Thus making me related to people from 2 and 3 directions.

[nailahdawkins]

I love how you can compare trees and cross-reference and to a certain point meet (either to them 'living' or find out what ancestor (usually a grandparent) you have in common. If your cousins match has enough to work with to get you to where you know how you are connected it's great! A few cousins had trees of 30+ people, I share which grandparent we share (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and since the tree I made it 2, 200+ people I can see where it meets!

[jericherry]

DNA matches helped me break through a brick wall.

[patranye]

Awesome explanation Aimee! I'm glad that I had just enough matches to be able to effectively showcase the process. I'm anxious to finish up working on what you started with the rest of my cousins and hopefully find where they fit into my tree! I'm sure it will be more difficult as the cM go down but I'm hopeful of success using this method to at least delineate which side of the grandparents they are from and go from there. Thanks for a well done and very instructional video!!

It's amazing to me that the dots you assigned to the matches are absolutely spot on without even knowing! I've already figured out that some of the dark pink cousins would be from my mother's father's side and the light pink are from her mother. Fascinating stuff!!

[lisawatson]

Thank you for this newest video. I’ve had to watch it a couple of times and have it playing in the background while working on my Ancestry DNA matches to correctly color code down to below 90 Cms. My notes are rather vague but I’ll add more later. I’m just glad to be making a start. Thank you again.

[debbenzenberg]

Aimee, this is brilliant! I did do the colored dots but the way you did them is so concise. Off to simplify mine now, thank you!

[connecticutaggie]

Nice technique for using the DNA groups with the Shared Matches.
I have used both but I have never combined the two to help organize things. Thanks!

[TerriAu]

Thank you so much for this, Aimee. Finally a way of sorting matches that makes sense to me! I have just bought the download that goes with it.

[alvree]

I had no information on my maternal grandfather’s family. Yet I had tons of cousin matches I had determined was on that side, but I didn’t know any of them. It was frustrating seeing so many cousin matches that I didn’t know. I reach out to a few to no avail. But low and behold about 5 years later I contacted a newly found cousin match. Long story short they had information on my maternal grandfather’s siblings and parents, confirmed by census records. The brick wall fell. Also confirmed by several of the cousin matches who were descendants of his siblings that was on their family trees.

[suzannechalifoux]

Thank you! Very well explained and it’s been very useful!

[lionheart]

Oh, oh, I was building my family tree using cousins, 2nds, 3rd, etc. Then adding every persons spouse and children. From there I eventually noticed some familiar names. Yours, Aimee, is a much shorted method! Thank you!

[MarySmith-qs]

Thank you very much for sharing this process! My dad was adopted a long time ago and thought my mom was adopted, but it looks like that's not the case. All of a sudden cousins are popping up on my dad's side, but I had no idea where to start. Your video helped alot!

[BlueBird-vivo]

Thank you, thank you!! I've watched many videos on color-coding and this is one of the best explained that I've watched.

[lindaelliott]

This video was very helpful, thank you so much!

[ibrocpcanman]

I have had my family tree up for a few yrs! All of this information that I just watched from you is totally new to me and after watching it I still have no clue of how to even start doing what you did! 😂

I need to hire someone to look over my information because all I've been doing is examining the leaves and matching up people by the census records! That's all I know how to do 😮

[debbiecarroll]

Hi Aimee..this is fantastic! I cant find your link for the shared matches you spoke of that someone created..thanks

[karen]

Dna matches have been priceless for me

[robarsenault]

Great video. However, it does not apply for me as I have endogamy in my tree 😢

[SusanBWynn]

I having been working on my DNA matches for awhile-mainly the ones with trees. Now I am discovering that it's much easier to figure out who the people are that don't have trees based on what I know about others and obituaries. Just because someone doesn't have a tree doesn't mean they are necessarily unknown or that you can't figure it out. I used to not even click on a DNA match because they didn't have a tree. I have used ThruLines also. It's not as hard as you would think to figure it out where someone belongs in the tree. Has anyone else done this?