The objective of this 52 Ancestor Challenge is just to get one writing about their family history research. Nothing says I have to stick to the suggested topic. This week's theme is "Negatives" and there is just nothing from my own family history research that springs to mind. When I hear "Negatives" I think of film negatives, which shows my age I guess but I don't have any negatives in my collection. Then I think of blood types. And the only members of my family for whom I know their blood type is me and my dad. I'm O+ and dad is A+ so no negatives there.
Instead I'd like to write about the ways I have been helping other researchers lately. That is through analyzing DNA test results.
First, for those of you who do not know what an NPE is, it stands for a Non-Paternity Event or Not Parent Expected experience. No matter what the letters stand for, NPE is common parlance for finding out you are adopted or your father is not your biological father. Now this could be something you discovered about yourself, it could be something you know going into your DNA testing, or it could be some mysterious DNA match you have that is facing this predicament.
And trust me, this happens more than you think. It has happened all throughout history. Hanky-panky has existed as long as mankind. Let's not paint it all with the same brush, though. Sure, spouses cheat, teenagers have unprotected sex, but women also get assaulted, or chose to be single mothers and opt for artificial insemination, and people give up children for adoption for all sorts of reasons. Back in the day it was all much more secretive than it is now. Hell, now it is very common for the birth mother to select the adoptive family herself. Some parents communicate with the birth mother (and perhaps the bio father as well) through letters and pictures throughout the child's life.
Again, my post is not meant to be negative at all. I am just bestowing my advice to you if you are thinking about taking a DNA test. If you can't handle the truth, don't take a DNA test. Everyone ought to be prepared to be shocked when you look closely at your gene pool. That's all I'm saying.
Here are the first few things you should do when analyzing your AncestryDNA results:
1. Don't take a DNA test until you have built yourself a substantial well-documented family tree. There are a few reasons I recommend this but the most obvious being you need to know some of the surnames that are going to pop up among your DNA matches. Try to know your great grandmothers' maiden names going into this and who her sisters might have married. Because in my experience very few of my DNA matches share my surname. And it helps to know if you have very large families in your family history. Was grandma one of 5 or 15? The bigger the family the more likely the more matches you'll have on that line.
2. Connect your DNA to your family tree. This will also help to trigger any alarm bells that might need to be heard. AncestryDNA has a feature called ThruLines. This feature is no more reliable than using someone else's tree as a source. And, as you probably know, there are a lot of bad family trees out there. By "bad" I mean wrong. Just wrong. Someone has my grandfather's WWII Draft Registration attached to their great uncle. Dude is just wrong.
Typically you can suspect a bad tree when no sources are attached to any people in the tree. That's a sure giveaway that the person has not done the research. Don't copy anyone's tree. Look at the sources they use before adding anyone to your tree. So don't "trust" ThruLines. It is, after all, based on the family trees of your DNA matches. However, if you link your DNA to your tree and then look at ThruLines and see you have absolutely no DNA matches who have the same people in their family trees, well, then you, my friend, may be looking at an NPE.
3. Look at the pie chart (a.k.a. ethnicity estimates): I wish people would stop caring about this feature so much. You know these estimate are just that - estimates. And surprise, surprise, they are going to change over time. Oh yeah. Every time the company updates it's algorithms you get more Irish or Jewish or maybe like me, your Central European disappears. Nice, huh? Stop caring about this so much. I only mention it in case the estimates are overwhelmingly not what you expected. Maybe you are like me, kind of a WASPy American mutt. I've got a little bit of everything going on in my tree. I expected Irish, English, French, German, Czech. But I don't have any known Italian ancestors for example. If my pie chart had come back 50% Italian, that should set off alarm bells. I had a client who took her DNA test expecting to be 100% Italian. She came back 50% Jewish. What does that tell you? Maybe her father isn't her biological father? BINGO!
If no alarm bells have gone off for you yet, try this...
4. Apply the Leeds Method: The Leeds Method is a technique developed by genealogist Dana Leeds in which you examine your shared matches with those in your second cousin range (400 cMs - 90 cMs) which will result in about 4 DNA groups; each group will align with one of your 4 grandparents. Now this doesn't always work out for people for a variety of reasons but for most people it is a wonderful tool. Let's assume you get 4 groups.
Now, cMs or centimorgans are how DNA is measured. The amount of DNA you have in common with someone forecasts the relationship you might have with that person. For example, 1600 cMs is likely a half-sibling or an aunt/uncle. A half sibling or an aunt/uncle will have 2 grandparents in common with you. So the Leeds Method will color code these people into 2 groups and they will align with either your paternal grandparents or you maternal grandparents. Now you will likely know these people. If you don't, you ought to. Do you hear that ringing noise? You should be able to identify your aunts, uncles, and half-siblings without research. They should have shown up at some family function at some point in time.
Additionally, this method will help you group together distant cousins who only connect to one of your grandparents. So where as cMs help one to determine the potential relationship, the Leeds groups helps you to place those relationships on the correct branch of your tree.
Again, it doesn't work for everyone but it is one of the first techniques I use to help sort out someone's matches.
Now, I have a DNA match at 183 cMs which puts him in a range likely to be a half 2nd cousin, or a 2nd cousin once removed (my mom's 2nd cousin), or a half 1st cousin twice removed (my grandma Gardner's 1/2 cousin - meaning they share 1 grandparent), or a 1st cousin 3-times removed (one of my great grandparents' 1st cousins on my grandma Gardner's line). It is hard to say for sure because the man has no tree up, no profile describing his age or where he lives, and he has not replied to any of my Ancestry messages. Ordinarily I'd go looking for him on social media but he has a really common name, Daniel Clark. Don't be afraid to reach out to a match. These people took a DNA test. Some part of them wanted to find connections to other people. Connect!
I'd love to know how I'm related to Danny, so if you know him, please send him my way. I suspect he might not know who his bio father is. I don't either but I can certainly help him narrow it down.
That's my advice for if you spot an NPE in your life by any of the above described steps - COMMUNICATE! People are so afraid these days to call someone up or contact someone they match. There are so many scammers out there, sure, people are going to be suspicious but you're never going to know more if you don't ask. "Well, I don't want to upset anyone" And what if the information you share is what they have been looking for their whole life? What if what you have to share brings them joy or closure? Just reach out and ask.
Not everything has to be so negative. (See what I did there?)
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