Diane, Another way to look at it that you're finding the matches on the very well documented lines. Among your atMatches who can't find a Common Ancestor with you, there are probably Common Ancestors with your lesser known lines. All the more reason to include ancestors out to 10th cousins and to add in alternative/iffy/probable/good-guess ancestors. If you still don't find more Common Ancestors, you'll need to start looking hard at matching place/times. atDNA is a great tool, but it takes a lot of work. And some luck.... Good luck, Jim Bartlett On 05/14/12, Diana Gale Matthiesen<[email protected]> wrote: On my mother's side, I have deep New England colonial ancestry, with dozens of couples in my ancestry who arrived during the "Great Migration" of the 1630s. What probably depresses the number of matches I have is that my father's paternal grandparents were Danish immigrants, from a small family with few descendants (in Denmark or the U.S.). In fact, I just realized... Except for the known cousins I deliberately tested, all of my confirmed FF matches have been with people who also share these well known, prolific New England progenitors. I'm getting just the result one would expect, that is, the most matches where I need them the least. How discouraging. Diana > From: Jim Bartlett > Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 1:35 PM > > Diane - you requested a survey: > > For Family Finder I have 249 matches (probably due to deep > Colonial VA > roots); suggested relationships are 18 are up to 3rd cousins, and > 49 are 4th > cousins. But I can tell from my experience all are somewhat > greater. I know > all of my 16 2G-grandparents; and 30 of my 32 3G-grandparents > (4th cousins); > and very few of my matches are from those generaitons. <snip> ______________________________ For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about mailing lists, please see: [1]http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to A[2][email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message References 1. http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html 2. mailto:[email protected]