Early on, I had a set of similar matches. I wrote to the members of the match group. In most cases none of them matched one another. I later tested my half brother, we share the same father. It turned out that some of the people in my match group are common with my brother and some are not, so in spite of what looked looked like common ancestry, some of the matches were paternal, and some maternal. In many cases, I can now determine which side of my ancestry the match is on, because they also match my half-brother. I still have not been able to identify a common ancestor with these people. The fault does not seem to be what I know about my ancestors, as I have a very mature pedigree. The fault seems to be that my matches know very little about their ancestors. In the last two and one-half years, one common ancestor was identified, out of over one thousand matches. In that case, using my surname list, my match did further research, and found an ancestress whose surname she had not identified who also descends from my fourth great-grandfather. So, there is hope. I think I have close to one hundred surnames on my list. These are my direct ancestors, not married out surnames. Marleen Van Horne

Marleen - Can you clarify on one aspect of this; I think it's crucially important. As I see it, there are two basic kinds of these "matches-in-common" phenonema: 1) 3 or more of us match each other, but when I look at all of us in my chromosome browser, I don't match the others on the same segments (maybe a few partial-looking matches at or below 3cM, but nothing above 5cM). versus 2) we match each other AND we at least apparently share a meaningful (>7cM if not >10 cM) segment in common. When you say you had a similar set of matches, what exactly do you mean? Is it as I described in #1? Thanks. On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Marleen Van Horne <[email protected]> wrote: > Early on, I had a set of similar matches. I wrote to the members of the > match group. In most cases none of them matched one another. > > I later tested my half brother, we share the same father. It turned out > that some of the people in my match group are common with my brother and > some are not, so in spite of what looked looked like common ancestry, > some of the matches were paternal, and some maternal. > > In many cases, I can now determine which side of my ancestry the match > is on, because they also match my half-brother. I still have not been > able to identify a common ancestor with these people. > > The fault does not seem to be what I know about my ancestors, as I have > a very mature pedigree. The fault seems to be that my matches know very > little about their ancestors. > > In the last two and one-half years, one common ancestor was identified, > out of over one thousand matches. In that case, using my surname list, > my match did further research, and found an ancestress whose surname she > had not identified who also descends from my fourth great-grandfather. > So, there is hope. > > I think I have close to one hundred surnames on my list. These are my > direct ancestors, not married out surnames. > > Marleen Van Horne > >

Dwight, There were 10 matches including me. The matches were on Chromosome 4, and were all in the same general area, ranging from 1.82 cM to 17.53 cM. I only looked at this one location. These people matched me to greater or lesser degree on other chromosomes, but this was one place where we all match one another. Unfortunately, if I remember correctly none of the other nine people matched one another, it was a while ago. In retrospect, I would probably say matches of less than 7-10 cM, in one place are probably not worth following up. If you do not have a match that is at least 7-10 cM long in the same place on the same chromosome, it would be almost impossible to find a common ancestor. Of the nine, one is 17.53 cM, another is 12.45 cM and the third is 8.21 cM. We have matches on other chromosomes, too. We have not been able to identify a common ancestor. Two of the people also match my half-brother on Chromosome 4 and the third one does not. Of the other six, none shows up on my half-brother's Family Finder match list. Marleen Van Horne