Too Many DNA Matches?
- Leslie Ryan
- May 30
- 3 min read
Too many DNA matches! What a great problem to have you may think! My latest client is in search of their birth parents. The mystery mother has been identified, but there is no record of a marriage for the biological father. And since Client was adopted those are the parents on the birth certificate, not the biologicals.
They have tested at MyHeritage and Ancestry, and as you would expect, we have different matches at both sites. Client has 12,561 matches at MyHeritage, and 75,658 matches at Ancestry: 17,052 Maternal, 26,146 Paternal, 7,052 BOTH SIDES, and 25,428 UNASSIGNED MATCHES. What the heck is up with that many, right?
As you probably are aware, Ancestry will divide your matches by parent. MyHeritage does not, but they will do an AutoCluster, wherein they sort out your top 100 matches into clusters of ancestors, enabling you to narrow down grandparents and cousins. Here is mine, an example of what a "normal" AutoCluster looks like:
Here is my client's result:
Their top 100 matches are all IN THE SAME CLUSTER. Luckily for me, as the Genealogist, Client's ancestry is Mexican. In earlier blogs I covered various naming traditions from around the world, and Mexico is a great country to do genealogy research in, as the child receives their father's surname AND their mother's maiden name. For example, "Jose Fuentes Gonzales" - the father is a Fuentes and his mother is a Gonzales. And if you can find Baptism and Marriage records you may also find the grandparents!
After building Client's tree by finding and fitting in relatives from shared matches, it became apparent that these ancestral relationships go back for several generations. Meaning, friends, we are dealing with ENDOGAMY! According to Family Tree Magazine, "Endogamy is the process of marriage within the same group of people over and over and over again. Jewish, Acadian and island populations (including Ireland) are all good examples of endogamous groups, as are many small insular towns where residents lived for generations."
Diahan Southard of My DNA Guide has a great explanation of what this means in this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmYqgRsx7U
When we have endogamy in our trees, we may share DNA with people so far back we may never find the original Adam and Eve just using shared matches. What we really want is to find the LARGEST segment of shared DNA. Both Ancestry and MyHeritage show you the longest segment of shared DNA. To find it on Ancestry, you must click on your shared match, and then click the blue text that says how much DNA is shared to get the length of the longest segment.
Here's how that information looks on the two sites (these are NOT the same nephew candidate because Client does not share close matches on the two sites):
I have always been a huge fan of Ancestry, but MyHeritage has them beat when you have an endogamy issue. You can sort matches by segment length at MyHeritage, but not at Ancestry. This is important, because when your family is very intertwined, the LONGEST segment is going to belong to the MOST RECENT relative! And when you're looking for a biological parent, you want the most recent match you can get!
If your DNA match cup still runneth over a bit too much with too many DNA matches, you may also want to do further testing or sharing of DNA with FamilyTreeDNA or GEDMATCH to solve a missing parent or ancestor problem. If you have a direct male descendant (i.e. son) of your mystery ancestor you can test his Y-DNA, or in case of a missing direct female ancestor, you can test the mitochondrial DNA.
Father's Day sales on memberships and tests are surely coming, so keep your eyes open. PLEASE NOTE that MyHeritage is shutting down free uploads of DNA to counteract the use of the data against policy by the FBI. If you would like to save the expense of buying new tests, upload right away while you still can! (they still have a 2 week free trial).
I hope your research is going well! Let me know if I can help! We offer a FREE NO OBLIGATION review of your current tree.
Rewinding back to 1979, or if you prefer, The Bible, wishing you Peace, Hope, and Understanding,
Leslie Ryan
Chief Genealogist
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