Update February 2014: Gedmatch now has a utility which is even more useful than the one described below--see my recent post of 2/21/2014. It is now possible to triangulate chromosome segments. Once you see it, you will see why this is a fantastic advance.
http://www.gedmatch.com/
Gedmatch.com has a lot to offer and it can only get better as time goes on. What is it useful for? It is useful for getting more out of the autosomal DNA results (RF and FF) that you get from FTDNA or 23andme.
People who have tested can sometimes make contact with potential relatives through the company they test with to try to find the common ancestor. But matches don't always respond to requests, and they don't always post a gedcom. By using the utilities on gedmatch.com, you can at least see, (through the triangulation utility), who your matches match. Of course they will match many individuals who have nothing to do with you. But you may be able to work with the names that are there to narrow down geography, or even to find matches in common. For example I might see that my match Mary Jones, who doesn't respond to my email requests, matches five people with ancestry that I can at least identify (from their posted gedcoms or from their posts on genealogy forums) as from the southern States.
The triangulation utility is only one of the many options on gedmatch. You can also use the chromosome browser to compare where you match with all of your matches on each chromosome. This can point to common ancestry for some of the matches.
The chromosome painting is an amazing feature. You can see the genetic ancestry as matched with populations for each chromosome. If you find you have unusual matches on 17, for example, you may see on the chromosome painting, that that particular chromosome matches a population that is quite different from the majority of your projected ancestry.
Another utility at gedmatch.com is the gedcom comparison. You can upload a gedcom, which requires no genetic testing whatsoever, and have the names and dates compared to those of other gedcoms.
And now there is a sister site: Ancestor-Projects.com. You can sign up for a project and load up your results to see how they compare to others looking for commonalities. Projects include Lost Colony/Melungeon. Roma/Gypsy, Quaker, and Ashkenazi, all very interesting areas of research.
These are only some of the great features at Gedmatch.com and its sister site.
I have no business affiliation with the website. As a researcher, I think it is just great.
No comments:
Post a Comment