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In this episode of Armchair Genealogy, The Genealogy Guy UK chats with Donna Rutherford. She has been involved with genealogy for many years and more recently has started working in genetic genealogy. In her spare time, she manages a Facebook group to help others with their DNA research. She has worked with Y-DNA, mtDNA and has experience with autosomal DNA. Donna aims to make the complex side of DNA testing easy to understand for those who are new to genetic genealogy and their DNA kits.
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Genealogy Guy 0:00
Hello and welcome to the Armchair Genealogy podcast, where we aim to demystify technology and make it useful in family tree research. Whilst making it fun and easy to do, featuring interviews and alternative tips. Please remember to subscribe and share the podcast. So on with the episode, at the family history show, back in autumn 2023, I watched with great interest on a Rutherford talk. And she gave a great tips and very helpful advice on using DNA and general research tips. When using social media. I was so impressed I thought it just made sense to have her as a guest on Armchair Genealogy to run through some of the main tips that she mentioned. I'll try and stick to questions in front of me. But according to her, the conversation Unfolds, I may sort of deviate slightly because I know Donna has a lot of information in her head. And sometimes it's great to try and grab some extra bits. So to start us off, Donna, how did you get into genealogy
Donna Rutherford 1:05
It started looking at genealogy and looking at my family history way back when I was a teenager so many years ago now. I talk a lot to some of my aunts, great aunts and uncles who would tell me all about the family history. So I got involved with genealogy really early on. And then in New Zealand, I used to do a lot of work in the weekends, looking for records back in the day before the internet. And then slowly the internet came along. And I continued with my love of genealogy and of course, my love of technology. And so I started doing online family trees, which I loved, and then roll forward to 2015. And Ancestry DNA or A ncestry announced their DNA tests. And I thought, well, this will be interesting, why don't I give this a go something I don't know anything about, I literally knew nothing about the science of it. And did an Ancestry DNA test and was absolutely fascinated, I didn't have very many matches back in 2015. I was one of the early adopters of the DNA tests. But it was just absolutely fascinating. And I threw myself into learning all about genetic genealogy. And I just been working on and and trying to learn all the time, every day's a school day. And every day, you know, there's new things coming along to learn about and new tools and so on. So I love it. And I love then imparting that knowledge to other people and presentations and blog posts and a Facebook group as well.
Genealogy Guy 2:34
Okay, then. So right, I've sent for my results. I've got them back. What, what do I do now?
Speaker 2 2:42
Its always the question, I think some people think they're going to get a result where it just gives them a whole family tree, and they can just tick it off and say, Yep, that looks right and good to go. Of course, that's not what happens, they get a they get an ethnicity estimate, which they look at and then wonder why they've got region percentages for regions of the world. They know they've got no ancestors in from their research, and then they just see a load of matches, which are just names to them, and probably not even anyone they recognise. So it can be very confusing to start with. It is nice to have a look at the ethnicity estimate the that can actually pose some interesting issues. If you do see your from a region of the world you really weren't expecting. But otherwise, the best places to then start moving on and looking at your your DNA match list. Those are your DNA cousins, people you share DNA with. And that's when it takes a bit of learning that is quite an uphill learning path. And it can take some time. But learning how to use those DNA matches to actually then confirm whether your known tree that you've already built is as expected or with you might have some interesting mysteries to solve.
Genealogy Guy 4:00
The other big question everyone asks is, I've tested on another company, I'm uploading my DNA to another company. Why are the results different?
Donna Rutherford 4:09
They're different, because when they do the ethnicity estimates, they're measuring you against their own Reference panel. And a Reference panel is a group of living people, modern people they had, they're not comparing you to ancient remains or anything like that they are comparing you to other people. It's not everyone else in the database is tested. It's a very select group of people, those reference panels now some of the companies are growing to, you know, 1000s upon 1000s of people in this Reference panel. Those people were selected because they have no one ancestor in specific regions of the world. And they've got all the documentation that backs that up, and then they compare your DNA to that to those people, that companies so every company has a completely different set of reference people that they use, and then along with that they have different computer algorithms to try and work out what your ethnicity is, by after these comparisons with those reference people.
Genealogy Guy 5:09
So basically, you should take your DNA and definitely upload it to as many other databases that you can possibly get your hands on.
Donna Rutherford 5:18
Absolutely. And not just to have a look at the ethnicity estimate differences, but also you'll get a different pool of DNA matches. So for example, I might have 400, 4th cousins and closer ancestry. If I upload my file from there to My Heritage, or Family, Tree DNA, and some of the other companies, then I will get, I will get some people that have also tested at ncestry. But I'll get a load of people that have only tested at, for example, My Heritage. So now I'm growing my pool of DNA cousins to do my genealogy research.
Genealogy Guy 5:56
The next one is, what does my match list mean? How do I use this information when it starts telling you, oh, we've got a match list whats it actually saying..
Donna Rutherford 6:06
And it can be confusing to people because they look at their matches and go, I don't recognise that name. How can this person be connected to me, wherever I'm in your match list is your DNA cousin, it means they share DNA with you and you, you can only get your DNA from your parents, you get 50% of your biological father and 50% of your biological mother's DNA. For the type of DNA tests, we're doing the autosomal DNA, and their DNA is made up of all their ancestors before them as well. And every generation, it's that 50% is handed down to a child. So you've got DNA from all your ancestors going back with the type of DNA we're working with autosomal DNA, we're looking probably about five to six generations back as when we can really research using this type of DNA. So your all your great great great, great grandparents, you've got parts of the DNA, and so do loads of other people, because those four times great grandparents of had children who have had children who have had children who have had children, and those are people who are also DNA testing, so you won't know those people, which is why your match list is usually made up of a whole lot of people you've never heard of what you're looking for on your DNA match list all the companies sort it by size. So DNA matches are measured by Centimorgans. It's a scientific term. And nobody needs to understand the complex calculation behind the centimorgan. So it's written with a little c and a capital M (cM), but you're looking for the centimorgan amount on your match, the more Centimorgans you share with someone the closer they are to you in relationship. So you'll share around about 3500 Centimorgans, with a parent, and around about 1500 Centimorgans, maybe about 1700 Centimorgans, with an aunt or an uncle or a niece and a nephew. Now that companies can't tell you who this person is or what their relationship is with you, they can just tell you how much DNA you share with them. And as you saw there, in that example, around 1700, Centimorgans, could be an uncle or a niece, nephew. You can't tell the sites can't tell you which way round that is, you need to work that out by doing genealogy. And I always say to people, genetic genealogy is really all about the genealogy and not about the genetics, because the only way you can work out someone's actual relationship to you is to compare family trees. And when you compare family trees, you can then place that match into your family tree based on the common ancestor you have with them. So you're always looking for your matches common ancestor with with you and with them. And you know how far to go back based on how many Centimorgans you share. So once you get down to about 35-40 Centimorgans, you could be sharing that with a four times somebody who's shares a four times great grandparent with you, for example. So it could be a lot of tree building required to get you back to your common ancestor with the match
Genealogy Guy 9:15
what's on Centimorgans when it saves shared Centimorgans, what's the lowest common ancestor there should go chasing for what what the numbers should go anything below that it's going to be really hard.
Donna Rutherford 9:26
So I usually set myself a limit around about 30 Centimorgans. And anyone listening to this, I can hear them already say but I've got confirmed 20 centimorgan matches, and that is quite possible. But at the 30 centimorgan level is where science tells us we're likely to have a common ancestor with that match back about five to six generations most of the time, once we start getting under 30 Centimorgans. That common ancestor could be 10 generations back 20 generations back and we never going to be able to find them by doing all the research because there is no availability of records back that far to do that research. So we're kind of stuck. We know we share DNA with someone, maybe 25 Centimorgans. But we don't know whether that common ancestor could be 10 generations ago. Now, it could be somebody who has a fourth cousin or a fifth cousin, and they have a nicely documented tree, you have a really good documented tree, and you're able to clearly see your connection to give to where your common ancestor is. So that's great, that normally with those matches under 30, Centimorgans, unless I can see a clear connection on the genealogy I don't go chasing them at all. Because while I did want it, so I spent her entire weekend building a beautiful tree for a family from the Isle of Wight, only to find there just wasn't enough records to connect this huge distant tree to the closer match because they weren't The matches were just too small. And there was obviously some generations there with the paperwork just wasn't available. So it can waste your precious research time doing that, once we get down to about 10 Centimorgans. And we're really in the realm of where we might find a genealogical link. But we can't guarantee that the DNA came via that route. Because someone we share only 10 Centimorgans. With it could in fact be a false positive. And unfortunately, that can happen. We just coincidentally, the the, the matching algorithm, the DNA matches, but it doesn't match because you have a common ancestor. So, anything under 10 Centimorgans, we're looking at what we call small segments or small matches. And those matches you even if you find a genealogical connection, you cannot be sure that the DNA came to you via that route of the genealogical connection you found,
Genealogy Guy 11:51
When you get the think we have found somebody connected, either A/ you can find I've got no tree at all. And you think Well, that was a waste of time. And the other one, is it completely private and they're not responding, you send them messages, and I never respond. How can you work with a match when when you know it's really high, but you're going but I can't make the connection here.
Donna Rutherford 12:09
These are my favorite matches, because that means I can put my dear stalker on and go sleuthing to figure out who that matches. And I love that detective work. It's really surprising how many hints and clues are on that person's profile. In some of my talks, I spend a bit of time talking about the tips and tricks of sleuthing a match that doesn't have a tree or is not replying to messages, or has a private tree, the ones that really have nothing. Sometimes when you click through to their actual profile on the site, you might find that they've registered a location or an age that might give you some details. But also Facebook is and any social media is fantastic for trying to sleuth out a match, if they have a very common name it is it is often a lot more difficult. But if they've got a name that you can recognise as probably not been that common, you could just tap that into Facebook and look through sometimes their Facebook profile has the same picture they use on the site as their profile picture for their DNA kit. So there's lots of ways to do that. And it takes some time to get used to using those sleuthing techniques rather than just saying that's a lovely match, but they're not communicating with me our bypass thers a bit of a trick for looking into private trees. If you're on Ancestry, at Ancestry DNA, there's some lovely search features at the top of the match list. And if you type a surname, and for example, if I type Rutherford in, what will come back to me is a list of all the people in my match list that have Rutherford in their tree. And they're connected DNA tree, whether it's private or public. And I will see that match come back with their private tree under Rutherford. And I now know that in that private tree, they have the Rutherford surname, it doesn't mean to say I'm connected to them, by the Rutherford surname, but I now know that Rutherford is in that private tree. So it's a really nice tip when you've got matches that have private trees.
So you've uploaded to GED match. And then what does it all mean?
Speaker 2 14:20
GED matche is a very confusing site for people who go to it directly after just working with their first DNA test. And it used to be that people would immediately say, Oh, you've done your DNA test Quick, get it into GED match those days and starting to go. One of the reasons is GED match has had some security problems, which you can read about on the on the internet and some of the Facebook groups. But GED match is a public DNA database. So when you're uploading to this database that was just started by a couple of guys actually wanted somewhere to put these DNA Kits but that since changed. When you go in there, you have to learn how to use all the different reports. It's doesn't have a nice user interface like some of the other companies do. And in most instances, now, genetic genealogists are saying, if you've tested at Ancestry, then the next place to upload is probably My Heritage, because it has a very nice user interface. It has a growing pool of people it is bigger than it has a bigger pool than GED match. And it also uses the color if you're using the color dot feature at Ancestry, My Heritage has that as well. They also have some really good built in theory of family relativity and so on. So it's much like using the Ancestry interface if you started with Ancestry. So GED match is now not really the next go to upload site. It is used by law enforcement, you cannot opt out of being matched for human remains, testing with law enforcement, and but you can opt out of the murder cases and the ongoing law enforcement activity around murder cases and cold cases. That's all been done in the USA. But of course, Jed match is one big database like they all are their worldwide databases, you can't siphon off part of a database just to be for one country.
Jingle 16:32
Email the podcast by contacting us info@armchairgenealogy.com.
Genealogy Guy 16:38
Returning back to the chat with Donna Rutherford here on Armchair GXenealogy. I asked her about X DNA and what is it?
Speaker 2 16:47
X DNA comes on chromosome 23. So when we talk about autosomal DNA that I mentioned before, that we use for these types of direct to consumer DNA tests, we don't include the DNA or what we call the sex chromosomes. So autosomal DNA is on chromosome 1 to 22. But we all have 46 chromosomes 23 pairs. So every the its pairs because one, one of the Pair comes from your mother and one comes from your father. When we get to chromosome 23. We call those the sex chromosomes because if you're a born female, you will have 2 X chromosomes, you get X DNA from your mother and X DNA from your father, your father actually only has 1 X chromosome, his other chromosomes is a Y chromosome. So chromosome 23, for a man is a Y and an X. So the man actually determines the sex of the child, the child either has a Y chromosome, meaning they're born male, or an X chromosome from the Father, which means they're born female. So X DNA can be quite useful too, because it has an inheritance pattern. For example, two males who match you have some X chromosome matching, it can't come from their fathers because their fathers only gave them a Y chromosome, it must have come from their maternal side. It's really useful for people who have unknown parentage and are looking to kind of prove that there are particular men is their biological father. If these two have siblings that are female, and they look at their X DNA, they know they don't match through their mother, but their X DNA will be the same because they've got it from the same father because the father only has 1 X DNA to pass on. So they will share a full X chromosome if they share a father.
Donna Rutherford 17:00
I'll give you a scenario if if I'm working with my match, and we were found somebody and we both have solid trees and we find this a common ancestor. But we can't find the common surname what what can you do there?
It could be that it could be simple things it could be your you, you or your match could have a wrong tree you've just done wrong with the paper trail. You found the wrong family if you're like me you've got Smith's in your tree I have an Elizabeth Smith born in Lincolnshire in the middle of the 1800s I cannot tell you how many of those Elizabeth Smith's there are. So it could have been quite easy to go wrong and pick the wrong Elizabeth Smith and follow the royal paper trail. So if your matches followed or correct paper trail, then you're not going to be able to see your connection if it's back on say that Smith line for example. It could be the other way around it could be you've got the right paper trail but your matches followed a wrong paper trail so the tree doesn't show that common ancestor because they've gone off with the wrong family somewhere along the line in their in their research. It could be that you both done fantastic trees and and they are correct for the paper. trial. But unfortunately one of you have what we call an NPE, or a non parental event, not parent expected, sometimes it's called. And more often these days, it's called Misattributed parentage. What this means is that a father somewhere in your tree, usually it's the father somewhere in the tree. The biological father is not the man who's on the birth certificate, I actually have this in my own tree where I had a cluster of mysterious matches, who I found out living, it's their family lived next door to my family in Yorkshire. And, as it turns out, it appears the man next door was actually the father of my great great grandfather and not, not the man named on his birth certificate. So that happens. Throughout the ages really, that unfortunately, somebody is going to find that in their tree that the man named on the birth certificate is is not the biological father of the child. And so when you find that in a tree, you can find it by doing a DNA test, because you'll have a cluster of matches, that all go back to a family you've never, you've never heard of you don't know about, and you have no matches to a particular branch in your tree. And then you need to do some sleuthing. some detective work to figure out how you know how the other family slots into your tree. And in my case, when I was sleuthing, looking at all the records, I've noticed an address that was the same and realised it was the address of the people next door. And so I could see that this unknown group of people that I could see they were close matches to me, but we just couldn't find a connection in our trees. And then I found that their family lived next door to mine. And they had more and more matches, that all went back to the next door neighbor's and I had no matches back to the man named on the birth certificate. So that can be one of the problems when you've got a match, and you're comparing trees and you cannot find a link. That will happen as you get smaller matches, you know, when I was talking about going down to 20-25 Centimorgans. And it just could be your common ancestor is too far back, you're not going to be able to find it. But if you've got a close match, kind of above that 30 centimorgan range, you would expect to to find a connection. But there could also be an error in a tree or an MPE,
Genealogy Guy 22:28
One of the great tips was talking about a dirty tree. If someone has just started out, why is it a good idea to set up a dirty tree?
Donna Rutherford 22:36
We usually call these quick and dirty trees or research trees. And we kind of use that too quick and dirty like we might use in the corporate world. Or you might use at home yourself. If you're trying to spec something out a budget or something like that, you might just write on the back of an envelope, and a quick and dirty calculation. And that same term has been used for these types of trees that we create, which we then name is quick and dirty trees, doing a quick and dirty tree is a great way of doing research. The quick and dirty tree has one thing that's really important, it cannot be found by anybody else. So we need to make sure it is not indexed in any of the databases that the companies have. And the reason we want to do that is because it's so quick and dirty, we could have errors, we could, we could be just testing things out. We don't want anyone else to just copy it. We know in the genealogy world, there's a lot of really bad online trees, we don't want to be somebody adding into that pool of really bad trees out there. So we keep all this research private. And now if we're doing a quick and dirty tree at ancestry, there's a great way to do it to keep it private. Not only can we make the tree private, but we can also make that tree unsearchable, and it's a different there's two little toggles when you create a tree. That's to make it public or private. But if you make it private, there's another switch that says do you want to make it searchable? And do you have to switch it off is that I do not want to make it searchable. At that point it won't into the ancestry database of trees, and no one will even know that you've created it. So you know you've got match lists where you've got private trees and I gave you that little tip of how to find if the private tree has a certain name and by searching your quick and dirty tree. Even if you you link your DNA to it is never going to show on a match list. There is absolutely no reason to link your DNA to a quick and dirty tree anyway because you're keeping it out of any places that where it can. It can be compared to any other DNA match, but it will attract hints. So if you're using Ancestry you'll get potential ancestor hints so you can build a tree really really quickly. This is really useful if you've got a DNA match. You don't know where they sit with you. And they've got a partial tree it's only got about three people in it in your quick and dirty tree you can go in at that person and and then you can put in the information they've got And then start building it up yourself. We are genealogists, we know how to do that research. So we can do that research and then create these trees ourselves. And that will lead us to the common ancestor of our match. And that will that is a lot easier than trying to sometimes then even trying to message them, if they don't want to met don't want to message with you, or just bypass them because the tree only has three people in it. If you build it out further, you might come to the common ancestor. So you do all that tree building in your private and unsearchable quick and dirty research tree, no one can see what you're doing. And sometimes I put screenshots of I've been doing some sleuthing on social media, I might put some screenshots into that quick and dirty tree as well. But they never find their way to my public tree. And once I've established how I connect with a match, I just take that line where I'm connected, I'm happy that they share the right Centimorgans for the relationship are found. And I will go and put that whole connection through and my public tree, but my quickened duty tree will never be seen by anybody. So we just use it to do the research to keep it out of keep it out of that whole database of trees that do include some quite bad wrong trees, we just do it, we no one can see it. Some people might just do it on a piece of paper, do a quick and dirty tree on a piece of paper. But that's why we use a quick and dirty tree to do all that research where it can't be found. And then when we establish who somebody is, we can put that into our proper tree that is properly sourced.
Genealogy Guy 26:31
Well, Donna Rutherford once again, you've proved to me that you have a phenomenal data edge in your head of bits of information. What if people want to find out more about what you do and what you can help with and what you can advise with and links and all that sort of stuff? Is there a place they can go to?
Donna Rutherford 26:48
And they can find me on the web at Donna rutherford.com But it's there on Facebook they can find my Facebook group where people come in with exactly these types of questions mail they come in, they're asking these sorts of things every day, they get replies from all the other people in the group who are also very knowledgeable I have been researching for a long time. We help a lot of newbies we help a lot of people with advanced things. And my DNA group is set up for the UK because we have different ways of we have a different types of matches and perhaps if we're in America, we they have hundreds of first and second cousins, we typically don't have such good matches so we do try and specialize for the UK and but we have lots of Australians New Zealanders and Americans in the group as well. So that group group is called DNA help the genealogy UK so it's got UK and bracket so DNA help for genealogy UK. And you can find me there I answer, I come in and answer most of the threads that are on there. And we keep a close eye on it and have some fantastic admins helping in that group as well. You can find me on Twitter at Donna Sr. This is for Sally, for Rutherford at Donna Sr. I'm usually on the social media as much as time permits.
Genealogy Guy 28:11
Well thank you very much for your time and your expert knowledge on everything that you've gained over the years of surfing around and doing your detective and sleuthing work.
Donna Rutherford 28:21
I love it. I love it a lot.
Genealogy Guy 28:23
And my thanks there to Donna Rutherford for her time and expertise on genealogical matters. And I can highly recommend checking out Donna rutherford.com and reading her blog posts. And on the site, you'll find one of them called "DNA what, when, how, why, FAQ for Beginners 2023 edition", where you will find many of the links that we've discussed in this episode. And that brings us to the end of another episode of Armchair Genealogy produced by Broadcastmedia UK and the Genealogy Guy, UK. And finally, this episode's tip is from Jared Kins who said, "Why bother taking a DNA test to discover your genealogy? Just go buy a lottery ticket, and if you win, all your distant relatives will find you". And on that note happy and conclusive researching.
Donna Rutherford 29:19
And remember to subscribe to the podcast to be informed when new additions are published.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai