Test the siblings if you can.
The world of DNA testing for genealogy has been moving rapidly and I have been trying to keep up! Strong marketing by Ancestry with regular reductions in the cost of tests means that they now have over 14 million kits so I am gradually adding to my list of matches.
It is obvious that, if you can, you should test your parent(s) but it has been noticeable from the start that my brother has many more matches than I do and without him testing I would have far fewer matches to follow up, so I started to collect some tests for testing aunts, uncles and cousins.
Thus far, a paternal aunt has tested and sure enough she has matches which my father does not. At the time of writing between us we have 775 matches listed in Family Historian who match one or more of us and distinct family groupings are beginning to show up. Very few match us at 2nd or 3rd cousin level and there is an enormous paternal group who all match each other but we have no idea where the connection is …. yet.
| AncestryDNA | Total | 4th cousins or closer | Distant cousins | Paternal 1st-4th cousin | Common ancestors |
| Me | 38,706 | 229 | 38,477 | 81 | 61 |
| Brother | 45,879 | 378 | 45,501 | 131 | 64 |
| Father | 35,018 | 231 | 34,787 | N/A | 48 |
| Aunt | 27,382 | 206 | 27,176 | N/A | 43 |
AncestryDNA only highlight paternal/maternal matches from 1st to 4th cousin i.e. 20cMs and above, but using the new color grouping we can differentiate distant matches as well, although this is not going to be 100% accurate at the lowest levels of number of cMs.
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