I am fortunate, in a way, that with Elder's tree I haven't been able to get very far with records. I don't have twelve generations back on every familial line to when parish records began in the mid 1500s, a total of 4,096 individuals (cousin marriages notwithstanding), with whom the large number of the 17,117 current DNA matches above 9cM would no doubt match. Contrariwise, having an all but unknown maternal line has meant the journey begins with a mere five suggested matches, all on the paternal side; three in cluster #2 and two in cluster #4.
Filtering Elder's "Common Ancestors" actually results in additional nine individuals in this category, though all under the 20cM threshold that I initially decided based on likelihood of accuracy of results. However, as long as proof of lineage holds up, and the shared matches with these additional individuals match the lines I expect them on, I will add them to the dataset in the same manner as others. It turns out that eight of the nine have links to individuals in cluster #2, whereas the last matches none of the others, so I've created a cluster #47.
Creating the familial link to these fourteen individuals is a matter of checking Ancestry's algorithm's accuracy by finding the relevant records. If records do not exist, then a suggested link is possibly only based on an incorrect assumption by another user, so due diligence when doing so is essential.
Upon adding the new individuals and linking their family members to the Ancestry tree, I then change the text colour of the record in the dataset and overwrite the notes column with a description of the relationship of the match to the common ancestors, ie the pair (or individual in the case of half-relatives) which appears on Elder's pedigree.
There are a couple of other visual representations I like to undertake. The first is to add a graphic to the portrait entry for each DNA-linked individual on the Ancestry tree. The second is to create a series of Descendancy Sheets. Now that I have fourteen linked, common DNA matches, I will use them as examples to illustrate these visuals over the next couple of blog entries.
Comments