Each New Match is a Puzzle

On my recent days off and evenings I have been plugging away at analyzing my AncestryDNA matches and adding all those I can identify to my family tree. It's tedious and time consuming but of my thousands of matches I now have more than 40 of them identified and in my tree.

It used to be that I really only had my past relatives in my tree; not many of my living relations. Then, many years ago now, Ancestry assured users that the identity of living relatives would be concealed in public trees so I added my cousins and a bunch of living relatives but I didn't go nuts. My tree is at a nice compact 2200 or so members.

Now though that all these people are taking DNA tests - living people - who are third or fourth or even more distant cousins, if I can identify our connection I want to put them in my tree.

Each new match is a puzzle to figure out.

If you have a very full fleshed out family tree on Ancestry, if you see this symbol appear above a relative's name, it means it may be them who has taken a DNA test and matches to you.

You can then confirm it and link that DNA match to your tree.

I highly recommend doing this is you have both an Ancestry Tree and have taken an AncestrDNA test.