DNA Diary: Calling all Cousins!

Are you related to someone mentioned in this blog?  Do you even share their surnames and place of origin? And, have you already tested your autosomal DNA?

It has come to my attention there are quite a few people out there researching my ancestors and potential ancestors, who have already tested their DNA. But, they used a different testing company. So, we have no chance of ever matching, UNLESS we both upload our results into the same database.

I’m no expert, but, I've also recently concluded the only way to really progress on this DNA Genealogy journey is to gather together an assortment of my parent’s known second, third and maybe fourth cousins. This way we’ll be able to identify the matches we have in common and flag them as probably being related somewhere on our common lineage.

This will help bring my DNA research back in line with the basic principles of genealogy research - i.e. start with what is known and work backwards from there. And, working together, we might discover another cousin, who also matches us on the same shared segment, enabling us to identify the specific ancestor, or ancestral couple, who bequeathed that DNA segment to us all.

Down the road, we might meet enough cousins to be able to label all our DNA segments with the name of the ancestors who donated them. Then, we’d know anyone else sharing the labelled segment must also be related, somehow, to the named ancestors. Well, that would be the dream!

So, if you’ve already tested your autosomal DNA at AncestryDNA™ or 23andMe©, PLEASE upload your test results to GEDmatch. It’s easy and FREE and it only takes about ten minutes. And, let me know if you do! Even if we don’t match, you will gain access to another list of DNA cousins, perhaps including that one person who will help you knock through your genealogy brick-wall.

Also, you can now upload your results to Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage, again without it costing another penny, and gain access to all your matches in their database too.  You never know where your cousins are hanging out. 

Image courtesy of PhotoFunia. 

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© Black Raven Genealogy

Update 23 January 2021: Given the number of privacy breaches at GEDmatch in the past year or so, I nolonger feel I can reccomend it for genealogy purposes, and have deleted my kits from the site.