Mossie's Musings

These notes are for participants in the Society of Australian Genealogists' program, Analysing your AncestryDNA results . Others are welcome to use these notes for their personal research. Please contact me at  chrisw9953[at]gmail[dot]com for other uses.  I'll strive to update the notes as there are further developments or my understanding of the area grows. Introduction to the Leeds Method Click  HERE  to watch a twenty five minute video I've recorded on the Leeds Method and my "twisted" Leeds Method. Remember that many of us have two predigrees we research - our social/known family and our biological/genetic family. In 2018, a US study estimated that one in four people who take a DNA test discover an unexpected parentage event between themselves and their great grandparents ie 25% between you and your closest fourteen ancestors. Genetic genealogy is an important tool for every family historian and cannot be ignored. Knowing your tree and knowing your matches is

In this activity, you're placing yourself (the target/tester) into a well known tree - your own well researched tree!  Chose one of your great-great-grandparent couples where you have a group of known AncestryDNA matches who have that couple as your MRCA. Build a WATO tree from the great-great-grandparent couple out to each of the matches where your shared DNA is less than 400cM and enter the cM you share with these matches. Select "switch to beta probabilities" - do this whenever you're using AncestryDNA matches, Use the "Suggest Hypothesis" function at WATO and delete any hypotheses that don't meet the "time and place" criteria. Which hypothesis are you? Is it the strongest hypothesis? Now include any matches where your shared DNA is between 400cM and 1500cM and enter the cM you share with these matches.  Use the "Regenerate Hypothesis" function at WATO and delete any hypotheses that don't meet the "time and place" cri

These notes are for participants in the Society of Australian Genealogists' program,  Analysing your AncestryDNA results . Others are welcome to use these notes for their personal research. Please contact me at  chrisw9953[at]gmail[dot]com for other uses.  I'll strive to update the notes as there are further developments or my understanding of the area grows. Remember that WATO is useful to record the relationship between your DNA matches where they share common ancestors. Using WATO to examine hypotheses is a more advanced technique that will take time to understand. From reading, watching and looking at WATOs, these are a few things I keep in my mind as I develop WATOs. The fact that WATO only looks at one ancestral line leads into the search for the two ancestral lines to add important evidence of the relationship between the target and DNA matches.   Working out the relationship with a DNA match This can be difficult because- There’s a range in the amount of shared DNA for

These activities are designed to give you some familiarity with WATO prior to Module 4. To undertake these activities, you should register for a free  DNAPainter.com  membership if you don't already have one. Just do as much as you can. There's a link to a 30 minute video I've prepared to explain the case study  HERE. If you have any questions, your can raise them in our discussion session or post them in Basecamp. Research question:  What is Gail's relationship to Chris, Deb, John and Rob? This is an example of a DNA dilemma from my family. You were introduced to the case study during the Module 3 presentations. In the Module 4 presentations, we’ll take some twists and turns with the case study to look at the WATO tool. What we know: Gail is a shared match with Chris, Deb, John and Robert.   Deb, John and Rob are siblings. Chris is their first cousin. Deb, John and Rob's mother, Pat, is the sister of Frank, Chris's father. Frank and Pat are the children of Jim