* Marking and connecting DNA relatives

[RickJ]

I have two questions, but since they are related I'll post both here.
First, is there a way to connect individuals with an unknown common ancestor? I have several DNA relatives with a conclusive yet missing link: testing several of their cousins has allowed me to pinpoint their earliest ancestor with whom I share blood, but (for lack of sources) I'll probably never find our common ancestor. I'm looking for a way to add them to my tree without "faking" a connection. My goal is to have them appear when I select an All Relatives diagram for myself.
My followup question is, is there a convenient way for me to mark all individuals who have taken a DNA test?
Thank you for your time!

Kind regards,
Rick

[tatewise]

Welcome to the FHUG Rick.

If you use the Search... box top right and enter DNA it will list a great many associated discussions.
I advise you tick Year of Posting for 2020 and 2019 to get only recent ideas.

I am sure others will give more specific advice.

[E Wilcock]

Rather than refer back could we perhaps have a catch up on DNA marking?
I find it all very unsatisfactory.

I downloaded and use Jane's Gedmatch event and query from here and here.
The Gedmatch event is part of the record of the person with whom one has a match. It links to the common ancestor or common ancestral couple and identifies which child of that couple the Matching person descends from. Running the query (which is accessible from the home page) reveals those linked people.

The shortcoming of this system is that the linkage is one way only. There is no way of seeing whether a particular person has a descendant with whom one has a DNA link.
There is also no way of showing whether or not two people with whom one has a DNA match, also have a DNA match with each other.

In many cases there is no common ancestor. I enter any significant possible link with the / surname/ followed by DNA. I have been told not to do this by experts on this forum. But I do it as I can think of no other way of adding individuals not (yet) linked to my tree but with a surname already in the tree.

There is no way in fh to note failed searches or matches for a particular surname or location. I use the note facility in ancestry to add and save short notes by each of my matches. But there is no way to output those notes to one's home computer.
Before I moved to TMG and then fh, I used Custodian software to store my additional information for common surnames, and also excel or MS Access database. But recording and keeping DNA links is different from tracing the correct relatives with a common surname.

One worry about throwing numerous DNA matches into my trees - many of them unknown - is that the living are mingled with the dead and may accidentally get uploaded to my website.

I would like to know what other people are doing?

[RickJ]

Welcome to the FHUG Rick.

If you use the Search... box top right and enter DNA it will list a great many associated discussions.
I advise you tick Year of Posting for 2020 and 2019 to get only recent ideas.

I am sure others will give more specific advice.

Thank you. I read several threads, but I couldn't find anything relating to my first query. I may have done a poor job of explaining myself, as English isn't my first language.
I have a master tree in FH6 to which I wish to connect my DNA matches. The exact relationship remains unclear, but I have pinpointed their earliest ancestor with whom I share blood (by way of testing their cousins).
What I wish to know, is whether it's possible to add an individual as an "ancestor" or "descendant" instead of a parent or child, so I may keep everyone in a single tree. I tried drawing an example:

[Gowermick]

The simple answer is yes.
You can add an ‘unrelated’ individual at any time. This enables you to add mini-trees, completely independant of each other, all in the same project. I’m not at my PC at the moment, so cannot explain exactly how, but it is one of the basic commands, how else can you start a tree?

One way that I know will work, is to add a child to someone, then ‘unlink’ them, they then become unattached and unrelated! Unlinking them does not delete the individual, but merely deletes their relationship with everyone else.

In your example, add the blue individuals as descendants of the green common ancestor, then unlink the topmost blue individual. The blue tree will still be there, but disconnected from main tree.

[Valkrider]

I do a surname study and have several hundred unconnected trees in one master FH project.

It is easy to add an 'unconnected' individual just go to Add > Unrelated Individual and add the person then build their tree backwards and add to it in the normal way. When you get to the common ancestor you just link an existing person as the parent rather than creating a new one.

[RickJ]

Thank you, Mike and Colin. You were very helpful!

[rakow]

What I would like to do is roughly the opposite of what Mick suggested. I don't want two completely unlinked trees. I've worked hard to establish which branch of the blue tree is connected to which branch of the red tree, and want to have that information saved. At present I'm linking the branches by putting in a place-holder person with a name such as "unknown common ancestor" or, if I know the surname, "unknown Smith" (or whatever). Is there a better method?

[davidf]

To answer this surely you have to be very clear what you are wanting FH to do.

FH will hold what ever genealogy data you want and if you want to hold a "linkage" between two people (or two "pools") there are various ways of doing it ("Associated person" - accessed by right-clicking on the name in the "All" tab and looking under "Miscellaneous" - is possibly worth examining).

If you want FH to draw diagrams showing these linkages you need to set them up as familial. FH diagrams show people related by marriage or parentage (genetic or adoptive etc). Therefore for diagrams "to work" you have to put in intermediate individuals even if they have names such as "unknown common ancestor Smith". The trouble is FH diagrams (and relationship calculations) assume a level of precision greater than the situation justifies. The DNA match indicates some level of "cousinship" (with different levels of certainty about degrees and removals of such cousin ship). So for diagrams to "work" you also need additional individuals representing "unknown generations".

Linking two pools

Screenshot from 2020-05-27 11-03-51.png (13.55 KiB) Viewed 5137 times

The above diagram "says what it says" and puts both family groups into the "same tree" (the same pool in FH terms). You may need to be more explicit with the naming to avoid accidentally "reusing" one of the unknowns to create a DNA link with yet another tree. It also suffers from having to assign a gender to the unknowns to add children. Marking the unknowns with a flag such as "DNA link" allows you to set up a different box shape so they look different in diagrams.

The alternative may be to not create "unknowns" but to put both trees on the same diagram and then draw additional elements on the diagram. (Right click in the diagram and select "Insert into Diagram").

What you do depends on how you use FH.

• As a repository of information which you alone draw on when writing Family History, or
• As a repository of fully validated information which can be used to "automatically" produce Trees, CDs, Websites, books etc.

[RickJ]

Thank you, David and rakow. That is precisely what I was looking for: A way to keep everything in a single tree yet mark the missing connection.