Making Discoveries With the New and Improved AncestryDNA Match List | Ancestry 

32:55 I know that feeling. My grandmother wanted to find her half sister for her entire life. 10 years after she died, I found her 80 year old sister. I speak to her every week.

Last year, I found my great aunt through Ancestry and ordered her an AncestryDNA test. Within a week, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A couple months went by. Within 2 days after receiving her results, she passed away. Her mother (my supposed Woodruff great grandmother) was my brick wall, and her results helped me find out her true identity, through triangulation. the great grandmother had 5 children we didn’t know about and none of her children were biologically her husband’s, and I am not a Woodruff!

First, I would like to say how happy I have been with my Ancestry subscription and especially the AncestryDNA test I purchased in 2013 or 2014. In 2015 my twin brother took a job in Oklahoma City and a few months later I also moved to the state. We were born in California; however, our biological father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all born in Oklahoma. Our father passed away in an automobile accident in July 1981. We were 12 years old at the time. So, once moving here, I wanted a copy of his birth certificate to put with all other documents I have that were his. Much to my surprise, when I went to the Department of Health's Vital Records Division and applied for his certificate under the surname he used - Reed - I was told the certificate did not exist. I was able to obtain it because I knew his mother was married, but in the process of divorcing, her second husband who's last name was Osburn. My father never had a copy of his birth certificate. He used his Cradle Roll Certificate for identification. My AncestryDNA results put me into 32 DNA Circles - several confirming my lineage as a Reed. I requested the Department of Health to correct the record and provided the results; however, they said that they lacked the ability and authority to make the change. They also doubted any judge would change the certificate. So, I hired a lawyer to write up a petition in Oklahoma County District Court case titled, DAVID LEON OSBURN via FRANK LEE REED Petitioner vs. OKLAHOMA DIVISION OF VITAL RECORDS Respondents Case Number CV-2019-661 filed March 20, 2019. At first, the judge was not going to accept the case because everyone on the certificate were already deceased and she said I would not have standing, and she did not have authority. However, we discovered at least three laws pointing out that any judge in a competent jurisdiction has the authority to change the name on a certificate. The judge set a hearing for April 23, 2019. I used the DNA Circles, which went back 6 generations, and then provided 4 generations of genealogical data for the Osburn line. The evidence being overwhelming in my favor, and without any objections from the State, the judge granted my Petition. It is a unique - one-of-a-kind - case that would not have been possible without AncestryDNA results. Normally, paternity is not petitioned by someone other than the principles. Additionally, paternity is normally sought by those living. This case, everyone involved were deceased except myself. It was a special day and a testament to the power of the AncestryDNA results and their use in daily life. Thank You. Sincerely, Frank Lee Reed

First thing I do before I start watching your videos is open a new tab to my ancestry tree and follow along with you. Your tips and tricks help me daily on this journey. You are my research buddy. Great video!

What really annoys me with DNA matches on Ancestry, is the amount of people that have taken DNA test, but no tree.

more DNA videos please I miss the content we used to get every month.. I especially want more videos using thru lines please and thank you. love your videos Crista thank you so much 🙏🙏🙏 I wouldn't even mind older DNA videos being redone and rebooted since the website has changed and improved so much with DNA in the past year.. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE KNOWLEDGE ❤️😊

We're thrilled to hear that you've enjoyed this discussion, Darlene! Please let us know if you have any questions and we'd be happy to address them!

This allowed me to break through a brick wall on my husband's side that has driven me crazy for months. I also found a picture of my friend's grandfather, which was a huge find because she had never seen a single picture of him!

I just love your enthusiasm and clearly explained information. I always get a boost to start up again right away after listening to you. Thank you so much for all your support to all of us.

Excellent, Crista! I watched it shortly after you published it, and then watched it again this evening after spending a few weeks implementing it. I've been looking for a method of managing DNA matches across several kits, and I love your approach. I also implemented an Excel log and email-based reminders of those I messaged, but your approach is the foundation of it all. Thanks again!

One minute in and I felt the need to comment on your hair! Lol! I love it. Back to watching... 💁‍♀️ As always, great info!

Great video and a huge improvement in the DNA Match list! Here's some feedback for the Ancestry team: when I have common ancestor with a match, the two of us are related is the main thing I want to see. It's a shame that it's two clicks away and (IMO) hard to find. I'd much rather see that info when I click on a person, rather than their tree. Also, how cool would it be to see one large family tree with all my matches (with known common ancestor) on it!

My mom found out a few years ago when she was 60 years old that her dad was not in fact her biological father. My grandma died many years ago and is not here anymore to ask her who my mom's real father is. The reason I sent my DNA to ancestry is so that maybe I can find relatives that will lead us to answers about who her real father is.

I like your colour coding method! I think I may use something similar myself. I normally make a note detailing which great grandparents line the connection is from. Your method will make filtering the resolved matches a lot simpler. Keep up the good work, Crista!

Wow! I did not know Ancestry automatically privatized everyone listed as living. That info. changes EVERYTHING!!! I need to watch all you videos!

Great video as always! I love the filter for matches I've messaged - and everything else here. Keep up the amazing work!

Hi Crista, Thanks so much for this great video! I think it would be better if Ancestry had 34 groups for our matches. 32 - one for each of our 3x Gt Grandparents and one each for paternal and maternal unknown matches.

This is great, thank you... And thank you for being so engaging yesterday on my post on Facebook. It helped me to understand a few questions I had.

Thanks for demonstrating some of the cool new features and for sharing with us how you apply them in your very own real account. I'm so sorry to hear that you recently lost your grandmother. I love the new features and I'm sure that more updates are on their way. Two things that would be very useful: 1. ability to search not just for matches with notes, but for keywords in those notes. Also 2. Please make a suggestion to make the "test picker" more sticky. When I'm working on my father's matches for example, it keeps defaulting back to my test as I jump from screen to screen. Sometimes I don't realize that the picker unpicked Dad and I have to go back and transfer my notes to his match list.

Yes, I kept saying I was hoping Ancestry would make it easier to know which side of your family your matches came from. And I like the new information with the DNA evidence. I love it all. I'm not wasting hours on matches I can't figure out.

Really great to have these new tools explained and means Ill put them properly to use !

Thank you so much, you have answered more questions that have solved the puzzles for me.

I just found your videos, thank you for your clearly explained information on how to use the DNA. I was at a lost how to use it let alone add it to my family tree. Although I have done research for years its been a lost how to connect all the information and make a tree up. I will be watching a lot more of your videos !

As of right now, I am creating a descendant list/book of my great-great-great grandparents. There was a book made in 1999 but has become outdated. Luckily it included addresses and phone numbers so it helps a lot. With the DNA match list I have come in contact with 8 cousins. That doesn’t seem like a lot but it is a huge start!

I love all the new features, I've been using them since the beta started. Can't live without the new groups feature, and I'm so glad the Notes are showing on every layer of the interface now.

I love your Idea about the color coding and implementing it for your matches. I did not do the color coding in the profiles but I surely using the coding for grouping my matches between my mother and paternal grandparents. Now that I know you are the person who is truly behind a lot of the updates with what we can do for DNA. I think a filter that allows us to filter those that we have already seen the profile would be a another good addition for filters. I think it would be good for those that did not yet group their people to find those they may have seen. There are so many more things that i would love to see that gets added. Im sure I will let you and ancestry know of the things I think that could make research even better.

I didn't know much about dad's side of the family and discovered quite a bit that he never talked about. I didn't expect to uncover new information about my mom's ancestry, but I was surprised yet again. I assumed I knew most of her history, but discovered how wrong I was.

So glad to hear you say that those with Southern roots may have more DNA matches! This has been my theory for quite some time. With my New England roots back to The Mayflower, I have a mere 37,000 total matches but my son-in-law's mother, with deep Southern roots has 75,000! I see this a lot with other tests too.

I have been searching for my Grandfather for nearly 40 years. My Father never knew his Father but there were some likely people it could have been. I took the DNA test and this past year I began to see people popping up in one persons line and I have found the elusive Father not in the lst cousin but 4th but it comes back directly to the man I had always thought it was. Thankyou..

A lot of the people who don’t have trees attached are adoptees. We don’t have that information and sometimes we don’t want to be intrusive or expose any secrets the bio family may have, so some may use initials for the purpose of protecting both sides.

Thank you for the tutorial! I hope to get the chance to implement your ideas for groups within my tree(s).

I also like the matches because when I do see a relative that has followed their roots, I often find names of other sources that have become public to search, like a new obscure newspaper that I would never had known about to search obituaries. Or perhaps a name of a high school that a related family member might have gone to and then I was able to find my ancestor in another volume! I also had a brick wall of being adopted by father. I knew my natural father’s name and the matches helped to verify I was on the right track in following my ancestry on his side. Without knowing his family, I was completely in the dark.

Love your videos! I hope ancestry will allow us to add more custom groups because I've done used all the allotted amount already and need more.

An idea for future updates would be the ability to color code all the people in your tree, not just with emojis, but with something similar to what is used for DNA matches.

Brick walls, with time, just disappear. Then I found my great grandmother who had been hiding for 6 years. Somebody found her but I can't imagine how and to know who found this info would be interesting!

I love your color coding with the number and dash and then the name, I can keep the families together!

Great video presentation. Will share with others.

Fantastic Crista! Well informative and well presented

This video and another has made me look closer to my Matches. Finding my bio father's line and confirming it, you certainly have helped me look in this direction. Thanks

I love the groups! I've been using them like clustering

The DNA matches have been a HUGE help to me in building out my Family Tree! In trying to find my Meehan ancestors in Ireland. Starting many years ago with a death certificate from New York that listed my Great grandparents' parents, I checked John Grenham for places that had the two last names in common. I kind of settled on County Leitrim and almost immediately found a baptismal record from 1845 with all three names! Then in talking with a couple of Irish genealogists and specialists, I was warned not to make that jump. I was even told that name wasn't common in Leitrim when there are Meehans everywhere! Well, ten years later, I am now not only sure of Leitrim but am in close contact with about six "DNA cousins" who are all from the exact parish and, in some cases, the same townland as my ancestors! DNA for the win! Plus, on completely different sides of the family and through DNA matches, I have made contact with and actually met in person a second cousin and a FIRST cousin who I knew nothing about! They are both adopted and are thrilled to be a part of our quirky but fun family! Thanks, Crista, for all you do!

We're happy to hear it, Rita. Please let us know if there is anything else that we can help you with. Good luck with your research.

I look forward to the videos that you create. I have needed a clear understanding of this new tool. Thanks for your user friendly approach.

The common ancestors help me be able to see other tree's through thru lines so i can find other relatives i needed on my tree its great.

A new member, just as today. Hoping to learn from everyone!

Love the new tools!

I'm a newish member and loving your videos. You showed a surname list that you compiled for DNA cousins on your match list. Is there a chance that you could point me to the video it was on. Thanks!

Really enjoyed this video and have learnt quite a bit from it. Is there a video on how to create groups?

You look great Crista!

I have some very deep southern roots, I guess. So I have over 113,000 matches as of now. My husband, however, has a lot of New England roots and he has a little over 60,000. Fascinating!! And some really big families! I am still sorting through my "known" matches four or five years later, rofl. Oh, by the way, you are distant cousins with my husband through the Huber/Hoover line. I found that a while back. :)

Looking forward to this, I hope you guys give ethnic Egyptians their own category

I love love love the map feature!

Just ran across this video. I love your hair. I've watched many of your videos and have seen many hair styles. You look so pretty with this straight style. Love your videos too.

So glad I viewed this, I used to have many individual family names color coded. I've changed to your suggestion of using the Great - Grandparent family names only and deleted the individual , so much clearer my old group old system was muddled a mish-mosh

I decided to go back one more generation with the hearts, to my daughter's great-great grandparents. I couldn't find a couple of the colors you found in hearts, so I substituted a white heart. I just repeated the hearts on my husband's side and my side, but then when selecting the 16 colors from the 24 was a little bit challenging. I couldn't follow the rainbow twice for all 16 people, but I did the best I could. Thanks for this suggestion.

Hi Crista love watching your videos. When I first started I organised with two trees but with the changes being made I am doing a bit of doubling up etc - is there a way to merge two trees on ancestry where it takes all the data/info/gallery/photos etc across?

CRISTA ~ All this info is so interesting... I've been trying to do research for many years and sure I have hit some road blocks... I'm going to be 70 this month and just about all of my family has passed on but going through photo albums led me to scratching my head... OK my hair LOL... I thought I knew who my family was but I have always been blond and I have yet to find even one ancestor ( many many generation back ) that doesn't have dark hair...... Sure I know hair color skips generations and it doesn't mean my father isn't my father. But the the question still makes the hair on the back of my blond head stand on end.... So I thought taking the DNA would narrow the ethnicity or country ( as I know what countries my parents came from ) As far as I know - none of my family members never took a DNA test - but just recently sent in my test kit... It hasn't been processed yet... So sitting here anxiously ~ nervously awaiting if I will find surprises or not...

Thanks for doing this video! I was at RootsTech this year and I was so excited when these features were announced that I didn't take very good notes. FYI my adopted son has 91,600+ DNA matches - keep the videos coming!!!

Thank you for a great presentation. I would love to have a keyword search on the notes I've made. I haven't used the notes quite as you have. It would help me tremendously. Thanks!

The filter that actually helped me to finally break through a brick wall was the "regions" option. I really hope you bring that back. Please add that to the filter. I turned off beta for that reason

Great information. Very, very useful.

Loved this presentation! For the first time I viewed this on my iPad and had my laptop up, so I could listen and interact so to speak! Main question I have is where can I find the missing little blue line that indicated whether a match has responded to a message from me? I used to see "2 messages " or something? As you know the messaging area is very unreliable on search for sent or search for messages. So that is not a good option for looking to see if a match ever responded and quickly seeing the response! Miss that area, please bring it back!

Your color organizer makes so much sense! Thanks for sharing that idea. Hopefully you don't mind me copying it.

Amazing these few changes to Ancestry. Thanks it will make Ancestry & DNA better, Okay

For a time in the beta, the message button on DNA matches was missing, so you actually needed to have a sub to send one. It looks like it was fixed within the past week or two.

With DNA matches, I was able to eventually find and confirm who my biological grandfather's family was, even though my mother and I never knew him. I had 1 3rd cousin match and it took me a long while to find the attachment - but once I had that connection, I was able to connect other DNA matches that were 6th/7th cousins. Still trying to find his paternal DNA matches as all the ones I have found so far are his maternal family. :-)

Cool video loved it

I I'm So Happy I saw this video. I am wanting a new color scheme for my ancestors and yours is Perfect. I don't know the song you were speaking of so I'm going to have to look it up since you won't sing it. 😹

Very informative, & after hearing this presentation, I will turn on the beta button. I didn't in the beginning, because I was afraid of losing attached records. Sounds as if though beta is safe to use, plus my curiosity is killing me!

great info, I may have to watch again... and do like Judy m go to ancestry and follow along. I'll be back.. Are you in SLC at the FHL ????

So you code for the 8 ggparents using the names of their parents ie 2nd ggps) so what about DNA matches 'above' that level or am I missing something

The one thing I'm having trouble with is the validity of the potentials. So many of them have 0 sources for those people. So I'm leary of just adding them to my tree

I don't know if anyone else has commented on my reason for using ancestry match list but my father was adopted, and just passed away this year. I promised him I would not actively search for his bio-relatives but now all bets are off and the match list is there to give me clues to relatives I never would know otherwise!!!

Hi Krista, I appreciate the information you give, it’s so helpful since I haven’t been on this site for 20 years. A lot has changed! About how the site works, I have a question. I have someone in my working tree that has been attached to her mother and to her step mother. I would like to remove the record from her stepmother. I have their relationship tagged as step. Since the record was on both, I merged the record thinking that would fix the problem, but no! Is there a fix? Thanks Shelley.

Thank you for helping to understand all this a little better. One question: If you make notes for a match, are they only viewable to the one who made them or are they public for all to see?

I was excited about my ancestry DNA hoping I could find some connections with my Dads side of the family. I am completely missing this side of my family. I have the name of a grandma and grandpa who lived in Lithuania. Nothing else on them. But no connections. Still at a brick wall.

I just got a kit as a gift I went to activate my kits but it said I needed an account so I tried to get the free one but it said it's only free for 14 days so my question is am I gonna have to pay to see my DNA results? The help option on the website was no help

Hello Crista. Thank you so much for another wonderful session of learning thru with your video. I appreicate all the help you gave me on the FB group Ancestry, sorting, helping, venting etc and I want to say that today's video has open need doors of working thru my matches. I do have one question. As you know the spelling of last names from home country to north america can be a horrific challenge for some of us. My two most difficult languages are with Ukrainian and Sicilian spellings of last names. So what do you suggest I insert into my family tree? Here's an example. Sicilian/American Spelling of " Rizza". Yet went I've had the marriage, birth and death certificates translated, the last name is spelled "Rizzo". Now there is a Rizza Family in Sicily...and yes maybe back a century they were one family. So what should be inputted in Last Name? Now one last question, this time about names from France. My research shows that "titles" were given to distinguish the families from one village to anothr and from one generation to another. Currently I'm putting these titles in "Suffix" but then in my tree it displays more of the Suffix than Last Name. Now do you a video on "How to insert last names and/or titles? So for lengthy questions. But again, big thank you. You really know how to save our santity ---- Cynthia.

Thanks for the tips. I'm hoping at some point Ancestry will give us the capability to incorporate the color dots on our tree....maybe through the "My Tree Tags" instead of copy and pasting emojis in the suffix field or uploading colored dots as the profile photo for people in your tree. I understand it's a work around but we could run into issues where people get tree "hints" and review/approve the hints and now they have my color coded heart "suffix" on their tree without understanding the meaning for it. Ancestry created the "My Tree Tags" to encourage people to tag their matches and discourage them from uploading DNA Match/boats/Tree icon's and so on for profile photos. By adding something to the suffix field, other than the actual suffix, it is potentially creating a problem like the profile photos....and in some cases worse.

Love your site

I wanted to use the DNA Matches to fill in holes, but had to adjust based on the information I found. I also wanted to get access to photos I don’t have in my possession. Once I started, I found out that I was the one with more information (at least built up on Ancestry). Your information has helped me fill in some information, but at times I figured it out on my own (saw your video after I figured it out 😊). Notes being added to the DNA Matches is fantastic. I haven’t seen notes others have made on their own trees, is that something that is available? That would be great, especially when you need to make notes for others to see. I have a challenge with my 2nd great grandmother changed her name and be nice to be able to have both showing but not messing up search results. Or least make a note, this person changed their name to be more religious (in my particular case). Parents DNA is interesting and I like that. I also finding it annoying at times too. There are those of us who parents are deceased and have noted in our tree of such. I would think be simple enough for the computers to notice, oh hey they marked their mother dead….maybe shouldn’t offer the “buy test”. It lacks a huge amount of tact (and a slap in the face), in my opinion, that it shows “buy test” for my dead mother. I’ve told the computer she is dead, why market to someone no longer available for a test. You have shown how you’re doing it with the data, I don’t have that data and like to see some practices to work around that. I see your DNA info has your brother marked as “brother”. Is that something you typed in, or does that show up when a biological (share both parents) sibling shows up? My ½ sister is showing as close family/1st cousins. I would like the ability to change that to ½ sister. I noticed that all your siblings had same tree, did you build out their trees for them? And when you did, how did you save time by not going through all the add/process? I would hate to build a 100,000 tree and have to rebuild that for someone. The work was done, like to do a copy/paste thing….if that is possible.

Cool and I love it

When is the new DNA going to be on the website. It has been a year and I do not have it.

Ancestry's DNA matching technology is absolutely excellent! It has correctly matched me with many people people who I can prove are relatives of mine. That's the upside. The downside is that almost all matches will not respond to messages sent through Ancestry. It is extremely frustrating to have many messages to matches just go out into the void and be ignored, so much so that I now believe DNA matching is a almost complete waste of time. I am considering deleting my DNA data and walking away from their matching program because, no matter how technically excellent it is, in fact it doesn't result in much in the way of effective productive conversations with matches.

You’ve broken the feature for iPad 9.7” users, the “apply” button for filtering is now off the bottom of the visible screen, please reverse the CSS change, or add specific 9.7”, 10.5”, 12.9” rules.

If you have shared ggg-parents on your father's side and shared gg-parents on your mother's side with a DNA match then that match is both your third and fourth cousin.

Thanks - great video. I share all your reasons for working with DNA matches. You got me motivated to try using your new DNA groups, but unfortunately I encountered some glitches. On the matches page in the Groups dropdown menu AND in the "add to group" dropdown menu, the "create custom group" is not clickable. However, when I access the more detailed match comparison page, the "create custom group link does work" and the pop up window appears. BUT when I click the "back" button to return to the match page, the groups I had just assigned to a match were no longer showing. So I had to reassign the appropriate existing groups to that individual. THEN, when trying to edit any of the existing groups on either page to tweak my colour choices, I couldn't access the edit window (edit link didn't work). I have already deactivated ad block utilities for the ancestry.ca site (where I have a full World Deluxe subscription as well as my DNA kit results). Any thoughts on why I can't fully access these features? Frustrating.

HI Crista I am wondering if the notes section in the DNA matching remains private for those living or if that information can be seen by anyone?

Hello Chista, I love your you tube channel. When I first became a member of ancestry, I created to many trees. Most of the trees contains the same relatives because on my parent's trees I created parental and maternal for each parent...How can I combine my trees into just two trees, one for my mom and one for my dad (like you did) Is it safer to to this manually so I won't lose what I have discovered so far?

Hi Crista! I have watched this video plus so many of your others. Thank you for doing these! I just want to clarify a few things. When you select your person to have a colored dot, do you give all of the shared matches that same dot? Then if so if that person has multiple colors does that mean our shared matches get all of those colors or only the one color that you assigned originally?

I used the DNA match list to find connections for my husband's birth parents. Found 1st cousins did a tree and narrowed them down to a Family of siblings. then we sent off for his original birth certificate. To verify what we found was correct we only put his birth mother's surname on the application. now trying to connect with half siblings.

I would love seeing more colors other than what they already provided us. Or we create our own colors mixing colors together

I’m trying to find information on my maternal grandfather, can’t find anything lol

This video was very helpful in showing me how to work through my DNA matches. I have lots of matches to work through! I am also helping my sister--in-law to try and find her biological parents. This has been more difficult than I realized. She has a few close cousin matches but only 1(has 538 cM across 26 segments) has a linked tree with less than 100 people in the tree. Trying to figure out where to start with my sister-in-law's DNA matches and how to work through them to hopefully find her biological parents. Not sure if these matches are on father or mother's side. She does have her potential father's name and her half sister on her father's side has DNA tested but is not showing up in her DNA matches so now I'm wondering if she has incorrect information about her potential biological father. Any advice on where to start or what to do with DNA matches for an adoptee?

Slightly off topic but would love if you guys could pinpoint DNA from Northern Italy, Northern Spain and France. Alot of Spaniards and Italians are getting high French percentages. I know these 3 countries are in close proximity but to narrow it down in the future would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

I don't see the option on the DNA dropdown to see the last viewed test? Is that going away?

For the shared matches with mother or father does it pick up all of them or does it stop at 4th cousin like the shared matches?

You make this so understandable. I have been very frustrated with DNA results. Neither of my parents are living. I am supposedly telated to what seems like 10 million people here in tge States. Trouble is their trees don't go back to England where I am from. The cousin I have found here we have no DNA,match. I suspect that is male-female ancestors, we did find 1 match in common, i.e. in both our trees. I know that a fair number of my family emmigrated to US but I don't seem to make any connections. I will try this new system but until they push back I seem to have no way of figuring these cousins out. The few people I have connected with all live in the UK.

Thanks for giving me this link, My Dotson line never kept any records that I can find, and My Dads DNA matches are telling me we come from the Thomas Dodson-Mary Prigg line of Chester Co, PA, I want to find who my 4th GGFather is

SO happy I found this channel, I am looking for my father as I've found out (at the age of 61) through DNA that my dad is not my BF. I watched up to, so far, the part where you say to make sure your DNA is attached to your tree. I did do that, but since then I started a tree that I am only putting DNA matches on. The tree I have it matched to right now is my Maternal line but I don't want to see matches there right now (there's a lot as mom was one of 13 children and her parents were from a large family ....), I'd just like to see my paternal matches until I get this figured out. The siblings I grew up with thinking were full siblings are actually half siblings so I can figure out pretty quickly if a match is Paternal or Maternal but I am wondering if I should attach it to my new DNA tree? Can it be on both?