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. September 2024 - There have been recent updates at AncestryDNA including the optional subscription to ProTools. While my approach to grouping remains the same, I am now trialling slight changes to numbering and colouring to take advantage of these changes. For examples, groups are numbered as 1P and 1M rather than P1 and M1 as the number and colour of the group signifies the ancestral line. This post will be updated prior to the Summer 2025 program.  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. Remembe...

To recap on the messages from the earlier post with the activity:- You'll now be sorting your matches into groups. You might have initially sorted to your paternal (P0) and maternal (M0) lines and then moved to your four grandparent lines - P1/4, P5/8, M1/4 and M5/8. You might also be now breaking down your groups further. You'll probably have a few groups of matches that you can't allocate to the P1/4, P5/8, M1/4 and M5/8 groups and you'll be creating research groups eg _PUK1, _MUK1 and UK1. My hint is to limit your unknown groups to no more than six groups. Ungrouped matches can either be left for later grouping or placed in high level group eg P0, M0,  _UK#, _UKP# and/or _UKM#. I also use US or UK for "unknown side". Remember that I use symbol at the front of the research groups so they don't get mixed amongst the P and M groups. UK and US will appear after the P and M groups. The P0 and M0 groups can also be used for matches without share matches. Ther...

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. Depending on your level of experience and what you know about your pedigree, you might group to grandparents (4 ancestral lines) or great-grandparents (8 ancestral lines).   The grouping schema that I use is shown in the next diagram. This is covered  HERE.  In the second diagram, I've shown the number of ancestral lines a range of relationships would be grouped to if you are using grandparent, great-grandparents or 2nd great-grandparent ancestral lines. Here are a couple of examples- If your AncestryDNA match is a...

Sorting your AncestryDNA matches into the likely ancestral line/s they share with you is the first step in solving your DNA dilemma.  Dana Leeds introduced her grouping method to us in 2018. It's ideal if you know very little about the common ancestors you share with your AncestryDNA matches. So it's great for adoptees or people looking for a parent.  However, if you know more about the common ancestors you share with some of your AncestryDNA matches, my "twisted" Leeds Method allows you to develop your groups based on your known biological pedigree. But remember that we are looking at our AncestryDNA matches to "prove our pedigree" from our parents back by generation.  In this module, we'll start by looking at the Leeds Method and then move on from there.  I've looked at many approaches to using the AncestryDNA grouping and will be presenting the one that I've found works best for me. Like most things with genetic genealogy, a systematic approa...