How do I confirm relationships via DNA on WikiTree?

Question

I have a potential breakthrough with a brick wall ancestor, Hall-26544, thanks to DNA matches on Ancestry. There are some profiles here on WikiTree that are associated with this new connection. How do I explore those connections? I've done some comparisons on GedMatch, but nothing comes up. Ancestry is telling me the DNA connection is there.

Answer 1

To answer a portion of your question - WikiTree's DNA Confirmation Citation Maker app
https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/clarke11007/DNAconf.php

Can help you generate the confirmation statement required to mark ancestors DNA confirmed.

How find find which cousins have shared DNA to use for the confirmation - that is another topic that requires  knowledge of your matches on Ancestry and which of them appear on WikiTree.
I hope you get a breakthrough with George Washington Hall.
D

Answer 2

Welcome to WikiTree and DNA.

 

Please check out the DNA Help page to see all the DNA help that is available, and the How to Get Started page in particular. 

 

You may see some relatives show up in your list of "DNA Connections" if they have added a DNA test to their profile. These DNA Connections are possible DNA test matches, they are not sufficient for marking parental relationships as "confirmed with DNA" without providing a DNA Confirmation source citation providing details of the DNA match.

When you are ready to start documenting that your genealogy sources are confirmed by DNA test matches, be sure to follow the guidance at the DNA Confirmation help page. A profile should not be marked "confirmed with DNA" without source documentation for both genealogy and DNA test matching. Also, please do try out the DNA Confirmation Citation Maker, I strongly recommend it for creating and/or validating your DNA confirmation source citations.

If you have questions or need assistance, feel free to ask on the G2G Forum using the Tag "DNA" and/or "DNA_Confirmation".

 

John Kingman -- A Coordinator with the WikiTree DNA Project

Comments

Hello, John, and thank you for your reply. I have been on the DNA page, and I tried to work with it a bit, but wasn't having any success. I am not trying to "confirm" anything officially . . . I just want to try to map DNA connections that are showing up on Ancestry but do not have a clear path of connection via family trees. There are gaps, missing ancestors, and I know that DNA can help fill in the blanks, I just don't know how to "see" what I know is there.

Christine

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As people who are related to you add their DNA test information to WikiTree, your "DNA Connections" should display them. These connections may be what you want to "see".

I have found that Ancestry and other sites like to inform me that they have found new matches, but when I look into the provided data, a lot of them are with people that I cannot discover how they are related to me.

John

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Hi John, welcome to the club of us confused DNA researchers! I only began to have success when I began putting *every* DNA match into my tree, and using all the tools that Ancestry offers - good notes on the DNA match page, assigning each known person a color with the dot system (and all their matches in common with me), assigning the correct relationship, and using the little tool to connect the match to their place on my tree, creating a DNA fact for each with the size of the match, and if I see them on other sites, and finally, using My Tree Tags all the way up my tree to our most recent common ancestor(s). I've been working on this for a few years, and am now using Thrulines (at Ancestry) and the tools at Gedmatch, MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA - and put all those people in my Ancestry tree. Wikitree keeps giving me great DNA hints too!

Don't give up -- DNA is a source like any other that we use in genealogy. The tiniest bit of information can crack things open when you look at it again. The adventure never ends.

All the best,

Valorie

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Thanks, Valorie.

By the way, would you mind removing the "confirmed with DNA" relationship indicator for Thomas Cowan's father?  It looks like it was made by mistake, since there is no source citation for it.

Thank you for helping us improve the accuracy of our shared WikiTree data.

John Kingman

 

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Done. Thanks for pointing it out. -v