Sorting DNA matches is a science, but it is an inexact one and sometimes requires a little bit of creativity in order to see the best way.
What worked for DNA matches that were connected to my grandfather was to put matches into one of four groups (if I knew how they were related to me):
- Descendants of a Neill-Rampley marrriage–there were three of those, including my grandfather’s parents.
- Descendants of my third great-Rampley grandparents only (three of their grandchildren married Neills)
- Descendants of my Neill second great-grandparents only (three of their children married Rampleys)
- Descendants of William and Rebecca Newman
To help with match analysis, I broke my Neill only matches into those who stayed in the same geographic area as my family and those who left and settled in Montana. The Montana families married into completely different families which makes the analysis easier.
I do have three additional groups not shown here:
- Related through an ancestral family of James and Elizabeth Rampley.
- Related through an ancestral family of William and Rebecca Newman.
- Related through an ancestral family of Samuel Neill.
Sometimes just sorting is helpful.
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