Charting Common Ancestors You Don’t Have

It could just be that my DNA results are an outlier, but I have many DNA matches who are related to each other in a way separate from how they are related to me.

Sometimes that other relationship results in DNA matches that are somewhat confusing. To reduce the confusion, I’ve created a chart where I track known relationships between DNA matches that is not the relationship I share with them. My chart includes the username of each match, actual name of the match (if known), their shared set of ancestors (who are not my ancestors), their line of descent, and whether I’ve included my analysis in a master document where I track my DNA work.

This reduces the chance I do work more than once and that I keep track of these relationships between matches that aren’t connections I share.