Invisible Histories

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A detailed post on where we are at the moment with Family Finder is now up on our project’s website.

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Yes, another week primarily spent immersing myself in the study of Family Finder, autosomal inheritance and testing; I’ve been jotting down notes, collecting resources and drafting the Finland DNA Project’s Family Finder page as I go.

Two more successes to add include paper-trail confirmed matches at the 7th and 8th cousin level on my own results with more pending confirmed matches in the works for both myself and my husband. In my four years’ involvement with genetic genealogy these are the first confirmed matches I’ve had for either of us and it’s exciting indeed. And I’m fascinated by some of the larger chromosomal shared blocks I’m seeing between fully Finnish members’ results and matches whose family history, as far as they know, is (to name a typical example) entirely in the British Isles. Genetic archaeology? To say the least, I am intrigued to see what happens as FamilyTreeDNA’s database grows.

Family Finder is now out of the beta phase and being offered to the general public.

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Much of my so-called “free time” this week has once again been spent on Family Finder.

My husband and I both participated in FamilyTreeDNA’s beta launch of their new autosomal test and while I’m still communicating with and actively seeking the common ancestors with many of our respective matches, I discovered yesterday that my husband has a confirmed match with a likely 4th cousin (either 3rd or 4th – waiting to hear the exact relationship between the other person who tested and the known common ancestors, which we’ve identified as my husband’s 3rd great-grandparents). Learning about this match has in the process allowed me to add substantially to our family tree.

And seeking the commonalities with matches over the last few days has re-emphasized two critical issues for me when it comes to using autosomal testing with traditional genealogy:

• For those who have the capability, I strongly encourage you to fill out and extend back your family tree as much as you possibly can. By doing so you’re not only making it that much easier to find common ancestors with your matches, you are also providing invaluable help to adoptees, those with adoptions and NPEs in their family lines and/or those who face a situation of sparse, unavailable or destroyed records. What goes along with that is having on hand and posting to your FTDNA account the list of surnames from your tree. If you’re an adoptee, please put that in the surname field so your matches know; otherwise it can be dismaying to have a strong match with somebody and not know if you have any information whatsoever to work with.
• I would also recommend compiling a location list of where your ancestors have been. If nothing else, it gives you shared locations you can focus in on.

While I’ve been studying Family Finder I’ve simultaneously been drafting our new Family Finder page for the Finland DNA Project’s website. It probably won’t be up until sometime next week and will be cobbled together from my own notes, observations/suggestions from project members and posts to DNA-Forums and the ISOGG list. As with so much else in genetic genealogy, it will be a continual work in progress.

Update 5/1:  the person who tested is a 2nd cousin twice removed. The suggested relationship was 3rd Cousin, range 2nd Cousin – 4th Cousin, shared cM 101.03 and and longest shared block 45.11. I am particularly delighted this is on one of my husband’s Kentucky lines because they have been a troublesome bunch to sort out.

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Since last Friday we have had another flurry of Family Finder results come in (including my husband’s) so beyond returning emails and dealing with a few pressing project to-dos, the rest of my day will be spent entirely on attempting to bring some degree of tidiness to this business of understanding and successfully making connections with Family Finder.

Family tree pruning may be in order in some spots; MegaQuickGrow may be necessary in others. And over at our project’s home I will be re-arranging the furniture to make room for a new Family Finder area. The interior designer I hired describes the look as “Spartan” (complete with a haughty sniff and moue of distaste) but hey, genetic genealogy ain’t exactly bringing in the big bucks these days. A cot on the floor and a chart on the wall is about as good as it’s gonna get. Maybe throw in a dusty trunk of surnames that people can sort through. We’ll see how it goes.

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Update 4/26: this video was created for FTDNA by Finland DNA Project member Cece’s production company.

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Today and tomorrow have been and will be spent studying our project’s first Family Finder results and I’m in the process of drafting a more in-depth report on them to be posted early next week.

But briefly:  Family Finder tests over 500,000 SNPS across your 22 chromosomes and shows matches anywhere from close relationships (immediate family, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins) up through 5th and more distant cousins in FamilyTreeDNA’s database. Looking at the results of just 19 members, I think this test has tremendous potential for the Finland Project. Of those 19, 11 are related to at least one other project member, most of them not having known about that connection before. We are already seeing multiple, previously unknown 3rd and 4th cousin matches as well as 3 more 5th-to-distant cousin (also previously unknown) connections that have now been confirmed through the paper trail.

Since within the next week Family Finder will be made available to the general public, I strongly encourage any project members who might be interested to order it now; FamilyTreeDNA will be giving current customers first priority in test processing. According to the enthusiastic response FTDNA has already seen during the beta launch, public demand will no doubt be high. The retail cost is $289 and you can find the order link in the left side menu of your FTDNA account page.

I would be happy to answer any questions; please email fimtdna@gmail.com or post a question in comments.

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47 Finland Project members are participating in the beta launch of FamilyTreeDNA’s new Family Finder, which tests over 500,000 SNPs in your autosomal DNA and provides you with the results and a match list of potential relatives (and predicted relationships) within their database. The test will enable us to connect with previously unknown relatives, back up/extend the existing paper trail and perhaps clear up a family mystery or two along the way. FTDNA puts the confidence range within five generations but you will also get matches identified in the 5^th – distant cousin range; it may take some work finding those connections but for those who have a well-developed tree it is indeed possible. If you are considering ordering Family Finder and/or seek more details I highly recommend reading through the excellent, exhaustively comprehensive Family Finder FAQ. DNA-Forums also has an informative, ongoing thread pinned here.

Note:  FTDNA is testing with a different chip and for the most part different SNPs than 23andMe does for Relative Finder (~ 26% overlap). This is one of the reasons why, if you and a match have tested with both labs you may show up as matches at one of the labs and not the other.

If you have recently ordered the test, from my own experience and that of others I recommend you next put as much time as possible into filling out and extending your family tree as many generations back as you can manage. As with any genetic genealogy test, it is simply no substitute for a solid paper trail. A good example why is news heard yesterday from a Finland Project member about a successful connection made with a previously unknown relative:  he and his match were listed as 5^th – distant cousins and discovered through sharing information they are actually 10^th cousins once removed. So although the general recommendation is to take your family tree back five generations, more (again, where possible) is better! This may particularly be the case for Finland Project members, where due to pedigree collapse and marriage patterns within certain communities, relationships may tend to be more distant than what is predicted by Family Finder’s algorithm.

When your tree is as complete as it’s going to get for now, upload your GEDCOM to your account. From there, you can generate a surname list which will be both visible to and searchable by your matches when your results are in. I would also recommend creating an ancestor location list that you can refer to and share.

Once you receive your results, explore the chromosome browser tutorial and match filter options, review the FAQ and then contact any matches to compare family info. Know that by default, FamilyTree has set the match filter to “Close and Immediate” so to see all of them you will need to choose “Show All Matches” in the drop-down menu. Be persistent, yet patient, in trying to find those common ancestors; while a few have been able to find the shared ancestor quickly, most have taken serious investigative work. One helpful suggestion offered by a project member is to download match results from the link provided in your Chromosome Browser into a spreadsheet in order to compare precise chromosomal match locations between yourself and multiple matches. This is particularly useful for pooling information if multiple matches share the same chromosome block. And remember that it is early days yet – Family Finder has FTDNA’s substantial, ever-growing customer database (currently about 280,000 Y and mt records, with approximately 250,000 individual kits ordered) to build on and will no doubt be making adjustments to the match system and already robust available tools in response to feedback from the beta testing.

The test is now open to ordering by any current customer of FTDNA through a link in their account page. The price is $289. They’ve also set up a link here for potential new customers to order.

Updated 4/22 with more precise info on 23andMe/FTDNA percentage of SNP overlap and numbers on FTDNA customer database size.

[Kiitos CeCe, Rebekah and Ilmari!]

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In the Finland DNA Project we have our first handful of Family Finder results; I am in the process of drafting a post that includes an overview of this new FamilyTreeDNA test, suggestions on things to do before and after you receive your results as well as help in understanding them. However, it’s taking me longer to wrap my mind around the available information than I thought it would.

For the moment, if you have any questions please check out FamilyTree’s excellent and comprehensive Family Finder FAQ. It has detailed answers to over sixty questions and also includes some helpful charts.

Update:  FTDNA’s glossary for terms commonly used in genetic genealogy is here. [h/t Rebekah]

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