I agree with Catherine Kesseler. A step by step dummy tree building process for the DNA matches video would be fantastic. I get some of what you are saying but not all.

Great presentation. Suggestion for a follow-up video, one where you walk people step by step through the process of looking at shared matches, doing the tree, etc. Like a case study. I think a lot of people, who don't have experience with tree building , would benefit. Cathy

You know what else would be a really useful tool? A CHROMOSOME BROWSER.

Going forward, can you please do something about audio quality? Every time I try to watch one of these videos, I'm so distracted by the poor-quality, muffled/garbled/tunnel sound that I have trouble focusing on and understanding what is being said. I'm sure Ancestry can afford to do a more professional job of producing these videos.

This was a really neat topic! I had never heard of "mirror trees" so I'm glad you talked about it. However, you covered a whole lot of information in a short video. It would be neat to watch it being done using an example. I love the Shared Matches tab because when I get a match who does not have a family tree and is rather new to Ancestry, I just go thru that Shared Matches and I can find where we match at; recognizing the other shared matches we share. I use that Note box copiously but I just put in the shared surname.

Two of my favorite ladies sharing their vast experience and knowledge!

That’s how I found my friend’s biological father. I felt it was just awful that she had no idea who he was. I talked into doing the test. When a half niece showed up as a match it took me about an hour to identify him. He was born in 1922. Still living. She gained 4 half siblings and is slowly making progress in connecting.

I wish Ancestry had a feature allowing matches I've grouped to be dragged and dropped into a specific folder for that bunch. Or maybe more symbols/icons (like the star) which can be placed alongside a match to immediately identify which group the match belongs to.

Great presentation Crista and Angie.. love your comments about the note field and emoji's-- I raised the issue of increasing the note field at RootsTech 2018...still waiting...but I hear from folks behind the scenes, that some cool alternatives are in the works... I hope, I hope, I hope... As for the the Q&D issue, it is far too much work to do them on separate trees, so i use my "Master" tree, and simply add posible parents, etc...and put a ? or NOT PROVED in the JR/Sr field..and leaving them "living"... BUT, leaving them living seems to prevent the Ancestry system from searching for all the best records for this "proposed or suggested" parent, relative, etc. Yikes, floating people...I've lost a few, and...aargh! I do like simply using the edit relationship field and add 5 or six possible parents, simply alternating them as the biological parent until I hit gold. Then delete all the wrong parents. What REALLY needs to happen here is for Ancestry to allow an individual profile to be PRIVATE WITHOUT MAKING THEM ALIVE... WHY? Alive hinders the search features in Ancestry...or at least IMHO. And, in the long and short of connecting to the 2nd-4th cousins, I have found great success in simply using descendancy research building out and down to these RELATIVELY close matches (even those with no trees) and using Google research to find them, and ultimately many of my 2nd cousins and 3rd cousins who have no trees, have made me the manager of their DNA, allowed me to add them onto my tree...making them part of "our big family"- a huge win-win. Thanks so much for this great video... loved it! Three cheers!

Thanks for doing this video. As someone who blogged about "mirror trees", which happened to be the most popular thing I've written, I agree that it is an idea that is now past its time. I've tried (in vain) to get people to use the term "proxy pedigree" instead of "mirror tree" because it is more descriptive. Yet today I find by far the most useful tool to be the Shared Matches capability on an AncestryDNA match page. This has helped me to solve several mysteries. Even for matches with no tree attached to their kit, using Shared Matches I can still form networks and this can quickly tell me if I am looking at a close-ish cousin, or a very distant one. However, I'm now convinced that one of the big stumbling blocks for newbies is that many people just aren't comfortable with working the tree editing software. Many people I come across seem surprised that one can connect and disconnect relationships as desired for anyone in their tree. So I believe that emphasizing people to practice with a learning tree as much as possible is very important.

This is so critically important. I've been building out trees for my matches, but not as separate from my own "working" tree. Yikes! Now I shall create a new unsearchable tree for building out my matches to find commonalities (and clean up my real tree!)

This is the technique that I have been using since I started using DNA to help people find their biological parents in 2014. I do use mirror trees on rare occasions when I cannot find a common ancestor in a cluster but that is the exception rather than the rule. Another good tip that ancestry recently made a big improvement in is to look for unattached trees. Often times someone who has taken a DNA test also has a family tree but that tree is not attached to their DNA results. These were hidden before but Ancestry recently made a change to make unattached trees more visible which helps to speed up the process considerably.

You are both so informative; thank you!

Also, when I work on mirror trees or research trees from my match list, I take the time to attach some of the records from the hints for those ancestors of my matches, then later when I come across that person again in another tree (who can remember all those names anyways?), ancestry tells me that this certain record was also attached to this same person in the previous tree that I was working on. So i know that I am looking at the same ancestor between those two cousin matches of mine, and helps me see some patterns in the lines. Very useful trick there.

This was really helpful, thanks for sharing!

Got to do my first quick and dirty tree helping my cousin find his birth parents with DNA and a tiny bit of information the adoption agency gave him. Took me less than 20 hrs and I am hooked! I WANT TO HELP MORE and do it OVER and OVER and OVER!!! SOOO much fun and VERY rewarding! Great video that helped me!

I just did my first Quick & Dirty tree by following your instructions. I started with a guy from the first page of my 23andMe matches, whom I could tell was on my father's side, but I couldn't get any reply from him and his tree was very sparse. I got an immediate success and it was as quick and easy as demonstrated by you and also by Blaine Bettinger. No waiting to edit out two days of waiting! I was unable to find Angie's recommended charting software. It sounded like Luciter, but I am sure I am spelling it wrong.

I've recently found a half brother and biological family I never knew I had...it was so amazing.

Is Ancestry looking at adding any new ways to manage DNA matches? I have tested three of my four living grandparents and I would love to be able to move my matches into folders based on which branch of my family they are in. So that way I am not wading through 50+ pages of matches but 11 or 12 pages. Because when I am looking at all my matches it becomes overwhelming. And things like notes and shared matches help. Or do you have any tips or hints for just dealing with going through all the pages that we can end up having?

This is very helpful. I'm looking for my bio dad and I have found the common dna relationship but there is alot....alot of children , grands and great grandchildren to go through wow these people were busy lol 😂thank you for the work you do.

Everything you said goes over my head. I don’t understand. Watching you do what you describe might be easier than watching you talk about it. I just can’t picture what to do at all. Still waiting for dna results.

another great preso - thank you Crista and Angie! I am off to create my Q&D tree. Really appreciate these tutorials 🤩

Thanks for the video. Great information. Do you know if the Shared cM Project Tool is accurate for matches with a lot of endogamy such as French Canadian? Should the user adjust the input or output themselves or is it built into the tool? Or does is not make a big enough difference to worry about? Thanks.

💖 Appreciate your sharing! 😍 🌟

I have close matches that appear as first cousin once removed when they are actually second cousin once removed because of endogamy.

One of the great things about shared matches with a person is that if you are adopted, you can pick the first one and then click on the shared matches and click the stars. Then go back to your regular list of matches and you will see that some are starred and some aren't. Great way to sort paternal from maternal when you have no clue who is whm.

I know where the term quick and dirty came from, because as a programmer we used that term quick-and-dirty program to get something fixed or figured it out quickly. An early operating system QDOS, from the original Microsoft days, meant quick and dirty operating system. It was only later they relabeled it to Disk Operating System for public use.

I did everything you just said with the 'floating' person. when I go back to the tree I don't see them. Where did they go and how do I see them on the tree or their information?

For a while been pairing. Common matches by group numbers and if you gIve me a group number pretty good at knowing what side belongs to with out much search now it is which ancestor

Now that we have thrulines how can we use a mirror tree? To use thrulines the tree MUST be public!?

When you add someone and then edit and disconnect them where do they go as not visible in tree?

Thanks for the video. I have watched it several times and I cant figure out how to do the Quick and Dirty trees. Maybe I'm missing something. I agree that it would be nice to see a step by step video. Thanks.

so adding emoji's to help organize matches what Ancestry SHOULD ACTUALLY HAVE IN THE SYSTEM actually helps....

thank you for this presentation. I love the add new person feature and I'm wondering if you still need to have your tree private.

Hi Crista, you say that you put all your research trees in one tree. Do you have a video or a website that would give a visual of how that may look for the different trees?

I just used the Q & D match method successfully for someone predicted to be a 3rd-4th cousin who had 3 people including himself in his unlinked tree. I was able to determine quickly that the person at ground zero was indeed the person whose DNA was matching mine at 123 cms. I then built the rest of the Q & D tree for him and eventually found our connection. We are 4th cousins 1x removed. I am wondering though about the Shared CM project numbers which indicate that a 4th cousin 1x removed is on average 28 cms. with a range 0-117 cm. Our 123 matching cms are not far over the top of that range but it is over. Any comment on this? Is the CM shared cm project a tiny bit unreliable even with the broad range of possible results for any given relationship? Or does this result suggest another family connection that contributes to the shared DNA but is not captured with this tree? I would be very interested to know your thoughts.

I see Berry surname in that tree and my mom has that name in hers too! Would be nice if they are connected.

At one point in the video one of you all mention right clicking on a match's info and I can't quite catch what that is. Can you help?

My last grandfather goes back to 1499 his son who also is a grandfather but it stops there no wife record just grandad and son England is where their from any suggestions I'd like to go further or at least find my grandmother any tips.

Thank you for the video! I will have to watch it again to try and follow. I am trying to find the parents of my paternal grandmother. I have a 2nd cousin match that does not match with DNA from my mom who tested with Ancestry as well as me. My grandmother has not tested and has actually let her test expire. My 2nd cousin match, I built out a tree with all of our shared matches and then some. Is it possible to find a parent of my grandmother using this method? I feel like I'm so close yet so far to figuring this out.

Really great, I just wish this had been a two part series or something. You had so much information to pack in and I will have to rewatch several times to catch it all. Is one of the DNA centric videos helpful for telling how to correctly manage a DNA account for a family member? I don’t want to mess his up because he will be key to many of my brick walls.

That was a great presentation, filled with a lot of information. I would love to have you slow down and provide a real example of the clustering and making the mirror tree. No doubt you guys knew what you were talking about but there were not enough examples for me to be able to leave this presentation and go and use the info. Even watching it a number of times was not enough. I'll check out the facebook pages.

What about situations where you are related to a DNA match in multiple ways? Will this affect the number of cM or the reading of relationship? My mother was from SE KY. 'Nuff said.

My biggest gripe at the moment are those people who have left Ancestry and/or don't respond to my questions about our DNA match. Do you have a video about how to find passenger lists? A cousin can't find the point of entry where her ancestors might have entered the US. She has followed them back to Virginia and that's where the trail stops cold.

Is this done by simply creating a new floating branch for each new match?

Very poor sound - does anyone know the name of the App mentioned at about 16 mins? Just can't hear what's said. Thanks!

Great Video. Needs updating to the new features though!

Very helpful video! You briefly mentioned shared matches. Do you have a video that discusses that topic in more detail? I am mostly interested in the accuracy. Also, is there a way to make program suggestions to Ancestry? I think it would be really helpful when looking at “Ancestry Member Trees” under “Hints” if there was some indication if the owner of that tree is a DNA match.

Chromosome browser...please. 😇 Also limiting shared matches to those who are 20cM and higher really hurts those who are not of Colonial American ancestry. My mom's maternal line were from Poland and most of her matches on that side have no shared matches because they are under that 20cM threshold. It's very difficult to find "clusters".

Hello, what is the name of the tool mentioned by Angie, that she uses once shee has found common ancestors (at 15:55)?

Krista How did you do the power point thing? I was trying to figure out a way to place all my matches in a format where I can visually see where they fit in with myself and one another. I couldn't quite tell what you were doing on my phone. The other thing is it would be very helpful to have a way to sort my matches the way I want them sorted. For example; if I wanted to sort all my Sheppard's into one file, box or folder so I can work on them Lastly is there ever going to be a way to connect my matches to my tree?

Is there a way to find the relationships of my shared matches to their matches? And maybe the cM they share with their matches. In other words, put each of my shared matches in the number 1 position and see the matches and shared cM.

My husband and I sent our DNA week's ago. Haven't gotta the results yet.

Christa, I’m unable to find the link to the chart of possible relationships axed on length of shared cM. Could you point me to it’s location? You and Angie packed a lot of great info into this video! Sue

Help please? My account has been failing to update SAHs for mirror trees since Sept2018. Is there any news on when ancestry will have the current issues repaired>

Sound quality is pretty bad, must click away. Thanks for your time.

Angie, my brother is trying to find his paternal family members. he did the ancestry DNA and has not had much luck any tips?

I love your information. I am adopted but I do have info on my DNA mother and know nothing about my DNA father. I have a DNA match who is a close relative with 1843cM who is on my paternal side. She also does not know her DNA father. As beginners, we are having difficulty narrowing information down to even work with. We have some common DNA matches but nothing close. Can you give me suggestions of where/ or what I should be doing to work on this match? I understand the DNA clusters but nothing pops.

Terrible audio. Could not make out what program the guest mentioned. It sounded like "Lucifer".

What about those "shared matches" that are under known Maternal and Paternal lines? How do you figure them out?

How much does it cost for your services? I have a giant family tree for my bio dad, but I can’t figure out which family line he’s in.

What a timely video, today I clicked on a random match. She matches both my grandfather and I at the 5-8th cousin match. But whether I look at her through my test or my grandfather's no shared matches come up. And she was adopted and only knows her biological mother. She also lives across the pond and that side of the family I have not been able to follow back to my immigrant ancestor. I can only get back to my grandfather's great-great grandparents. Any suggestions on what I can do to figure out how we are related. (We share 9.3 and 9.2 centimorgans over 1 segment respectively with her.)

Timely video as on am on a mission to find my biological father and cement the fact that I have determined who my birthmother was. Need a little more help on the mirror project as it would pertain to those matches I have discovered on the paternal side.

What about double lineages - intertwined lineages increasing the cM

Pro Geni is high. I wish y'all had a deal for low in com people.

I will have to watch this several more times to try to understand it. But, big question: An unknown great grandfather hunt. In 1904 Clara had a child, my grandfather Edward and a name appears on a birth record in NYC. Edward is born in the NYC Foundling Home system, St Vincents and is later adopted. Fortunately Clara goes on to have 11 children and I have a number of descendant DNA matches. A few of the matches go to Edward who has an unknown father and the rest are clearly from Frank who marries Clara and fathers those 11 kids. Is this relationship too far from me to use this DNA mirror tree system you are describing here? The great grandfather is level we are seeking. Thanks

What is the name of the on line app that you use to drag and fill out names and information.....Luciter?

Could you tell me again the name of the App that Crista uses to chart the DNA matches. Thank you.

What was the name of the App that Angie mentioned that she uses to Chart ?

When you're building these "quick and dirty" trees, how many generations do you go back?

Very useful video to get out there. I've been doing this for years but I would LOVE it if ancestry would also include a NOT Shared matches to separate matches. fyi, I use draw.io (free) to do the dna comparison charts they talked about here.

Please give a link to the app Angie uses for lists. Starts with L but she speaks too quickly to catch it

The term centiMorgan was new to me. It should have been defined at the outset

Hi. Are we able to match our DNA with people from other countries?

What about people who come from an area with endogamy?

I'd be grateful if your approach descriptions are accompanied by examples because I find your descriptions difficult to follow.

OMG this is so far beyond my understanding...I just don’t understand the DNA stuff...I’m so confused 😐

Of course, 90% of the world measure space in centimetres & metres 😀 - I shall certainly look into the shared centimorgan site.

Is saliva the only way to pull DNA samples?

I don't want Ancestry to drop the 6-8 cm matches . I have cousins that match me at that amount that are common ancestor matches . Upgrade your system if it's too much data to handle !

How do you find someone who died 14 years ago but there’s no records on them or their spouse?

I couldn’t catch the name of the charging app spoken of, could you repeat that name please?

You said that second cousins can help you find your parent. My brother has a different father than I, that we are trying to find. He has 2 second cousins that match along with him 4 other people. I have built trees for all these people, but cannot find the answer. BTW my brother and one of these 2nd cousins do not know their father either. This cousin was born in the Philippines so we know her father is American. My brother and the 2nd cousin "A" share 320/19 and with 2nd cousin "B" 254/12. 2nd cousins "A" and "B" share 258/16. Now there are 5 other cousins with varying degrees of DNA between 179-93. Even though I have these trees that I had to make, I can't find the two men who are clearly 1st cousins that fathered my brother and 2nd cousin "B". I have spent over two years on this. I am ready to just quit. Any advice or direction to try? Please....

This is great info, but what do you do when you don't know who your shared ancestor is? I'm adopted and I'm trying to determine who my father is.

what about endogamy?

Why not call them Quick Research & Discovery trees since that is what they are.

40.00 per month is way too much for me.. family search is mostly free and you can access info there too.. I’m not saying they are wrong for charging that.. it’s just more than I can afford...

Confused, if a female has a son does he get the X and Y chromosomes from his maternal grandparents?

Now I've found my biological father...I'd like to help my dad find his...his first cousin has yet to repond... I'd like to find his biological family.

I call my research tree "Trial Tree".

Dont use Ancestry.Dodgy.