There’s only so much time and one has to prioritize where they are likely to get the most bang out of their genealogy time.
That’s where I tend to put DNA matches like this one. Not because of just one reason, but really because of three. We only share 9 centimorgans of DNA. This means, probabilistically speaking, that the match shares nothing closer than a set of third great-grandparents. That’s not bad and it’s not the real problem.
We also have no shared matches. That gives me no way to put the match into a pull or cluster of other shared matches whose common ancestor is known or reasonably known.
There is no linked tree and the public tree the account has is lacking in details.
In terms of making good use of my time, this is three strikes and they are out. There’s only so much time in the day. If the person reached out to me, I would certainly respond and ask if they had a more complete tree or information that could help in determining the relationship. But unless something changes, this match would have me spinning my wheels more than I care to.
Particularly when I have hundreds of others for whom I have more details with which to work.
2 Responses
Thank you for this brief article; it’s a good way to eliminate those matches that have little information, and also have no other matches that are shared. I’ve participated in Facebook DNA groups that utilize the GED match site. The pages long lists of matches, some with very low cMs counts, are included. Of course if the person matches, it’s very difficult to determine how there’s a family tie, especially when either they or myself doesn’t have enough generations to look back to. As you stated, a match in the 7cM to 10 cM is very far back generations. I’ve actually used the color codes on Ancestry DNA to designate these types of matches as “Family Ties Unknown no in common matches” in green; if I have matches that are already marked in that group come up with another unknown family tie match, I have another shade of green code for family tie unknown has matches. It’s helpful for me because I know I don’t know enough about the matches to pursue it further.
In certain circles, there’s the belief that every match needs to be figured out. I don’t think that’s the case at all–especially when you get ones this distant with no shared matches and non-existent trees.
I do like the coding idea for these as well.