First 1,000

[Frederator]

Today marks a milestone. My FF kit just got its 1,000th match.

Maybe 2/3 thirds of them are phantom matches on chromosome # 9 (seriously), but it is still a symbolic landmark.

I think I remember hearing about other people having 1,000 matches or more when I started 6 years ago. Back then I had only 20 matches.

I got so excited about the single match I had with a segment >10cM that I wildly overinterpreted it.

I bet there are people in the database today who have 20 matches or less.

[MoberlyDrake]

I remember my mother reached 1000 at the end of last April. My father is right at 130.

I've been waiting for Mom to get new matches for a few weeks and she finally got 10 new ones this week - all 5th to remote except for one 3rd-5th. So what good is it? Hardly a one up to 10 cM.

[Biblioteque]

I have 4,332 matches; and no Askenazi which tends to increase the numbers.

[prairielad]

My Grandmother, born in Romania, only has 379
of which,
10 are immediate family
23 are 2nd to 5th cousins
The rest are speculative (4th to Remote and 5th to Remote)

[ltd-jean-pull]

Time to crack open the champagne Frederator.

The kits I manage range from 1900 to 2300 matches. The people with 1900 and 2300 matches are siblings and the one with fewer matches tested first. I'm very glad the surviving sibling was happy to help.

Even with being able to use cousins for paternal and maternal matches not one single relationship has been determined with a person in Britain or Ireland yet. I think the uptake is lower in Britain and someone from say Yorkshire knows they're from Yorkshire and the test will most likely tell them that they're British, so they don't see any point in it.

[Frederator]

Time to crack open the champagne Frederator...Even with being able to use cousins for paternal and maternal matches not one single relationship has been determined with a person in Britain or Ireland yet. I think the uptake is lower in Britain and someone from say Yorkshire knows they're from Yorkshire and the test will most likely tell them that they're British, so they don't see any point in it.

Thanks.

I've noticed a similar trend. I'm focused on my father's side of the family which has just one narrow band of English ancestry--one 5th great grandfather. Luckily, I've identified certain segments associated with this ancestor, but not yet identified the specific common ancestor with those people.

I wonder if there is something about English demographic history that accounts for this. Some sort of huge bottleneck in the population that could account for a relatively high level of genetic homogeneity. I guess I'm thinking that I'm much more distantly related to these English people than the mere size of the shared segment would suggest.

I have lots of confirmed specific German ancestors on my father's side, and the size of the matches with the English people seems comparable. It's not like I don't know how this works. Yet I'm kind of flummoxed at being unable to get any nearer the specific English ancestors.

[MoberlyDrake]

You are looking for the English ancestors of a 5th great-grandfather???

My mother has only one grandparent of Colonial American (mostly UK) ancestry. I've been trying since 2011, at least, to find Mom's 3rd great-grandparents, without any luck. I doubt that you will ever be able to find 6th.

For some unknown reason, I was invited to be a beta tester when Family Finder was introduced. It's a good thing they never actually asked me to do anything, because I know little about computers and just about all I knew about DNA was what I remembered from distant schooldays.

But they made it sound like we were going to be able to very easily find unknown ancestors back to 5th great-grandparents. It all sounded so exciting!!! Not a hint of all the work you were going to have to do and all the record-keeping. Or that you'd have to keep testing more relatives. Maybe I am just extremely stupid, but I can't make it work!!!

[ltd-jean-pull]

I didn't mean to imply that we'd not nutted out any matches with origins from Britain/Ireland. We have worked out the mutual ancestors of some matches, but the matches (their descendants) are in Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand.

For a USA match the mutual ancestors were his English 5xgt-grandparents, but I had the advantage of recognising his mother's surname whose patrilineal line goes back to the English couple's son-in-law.

[Lucky]

I co-admin a geographic project in Northern Ireland. The vast majority of people with predominantly Irish heritage get between 3,000 and 4,500 matches with family finder - a few have over 5,000 now. In England 1,000-2,000 matches appears to be more usual.

[Frederator]

I co-admin a geographic project in Northern Ireland. The vast majority of people with predominantly Irish heritage get between 3,000 and 4,500 matches with family finder - a few have over 5,000 now. In England 1,000-2,000 matches appears to be more usual.

That I attribute mostly to the inherent bias of these self-reported databases. Just natural given the demographic composition of the companies' primary markets.

But I suspect that some of it also can be attributed to Ireland's unique demographic history. The population of the island nearly trebled in the 60 years before the Famine, from a very low base.

[Frank Kelch]

As of right now:
My mother has 4,052 matches.
I have 3,362 matches.
My father has 2,446 matches.

Kinda funny, because my father's family has been in the USA just as long as my mother's family. (dating back to colonial times, in many cases).

[ltd-jean-pull]

My Grandmother, born in Romania, only has 379
of which,
10 are immediate family
23 are 2nd to 5th cousins
The rest are speculative (4th to Remote and 5th to Remote)

Your grandmother's DNA is priceless.

One of my colleagues is from Georgia (the country, not the state) and intrigued by this. Her mother is in her 80s, but hasn't tested. She might have as few matches as your grandmother.

[Biblioteque]

Frank Kelch: Your father could have fewer matches because in some of his lineages, his ancestors waited until later in life to marry; whereas on your mother's side, they married at a younger age.

Therefore on your mother's side, there were more generations of descendants giving her a potentially larger pool of people who have tested.

An example from my tree: I have an ancestral couple, born 1723, and I have a tree match with a dna cousin, Jane, and from her to the couple upstream, there are 13 generations; but from me to the couple there are only 7 generations. So, there are probably many more descendants on Jane's line with this ancestral couple.

This helps me understand how one parent could possibly have more dna matches than the other.

[Frank Kelch]

Frank Kelch: Your father could have fewer matches because in some of his lineages, his ancestors waited until later in life to marry; whereas on your mother's side, they married at a younger age...

This is entirely possible, and quite likely to some degree. My father's paternal grandfather was born way back in the 1840's.