Pigeonholing DNA Matches

[canadianbeth]

Referring to the December 8th issue, I am trying to do as Peter recommends, allocating colours to each of my 2x great-grandparents. However, that will require deleting some of the ones I have allocated to other names/subjects, and I cannot figure out how to do that. I asked the question to Ancestry with no help. Can someone else help me with this? Thank you.

 

[Stuart]

Select any match, and then "add/edit groups". Each group in the list has a crayon icon at the right for "edit". Click on that and the edit box has "delete group" at the bottom.

 

[canadianbeth]

Thank you.

 

[peter]

A word of warning: make sure that you have added a note against each of the matches in a group before you delete it. Typically I record the surnames of the common ancestors, and often the branch from which the person is descended.

 

[canadianbeth]

A word of warning: make sure that you have added a note against each of the matches in a group before you delete it

The groups I wanted to delete were listed as "unknown" and "no shared matches". I did not delete any of the names I already had, and added several more.

But I am wondering, if I have several 3x great-parents listed as common ancestors, should I not have at least one listed as a 2x? I have Eli Turner and Sarah Rider several times, but Eli's son Enoch and his wife Elizabeth Brunswick are not, and they are my 2x great-grandparents. I noticed this when I was looking at my groups and saw no numbers beside their names, so went back through the list again. Also, there were no numbers beside four names in the Webster list, probably because I only have two Webster names.

Is there a way to find out how many common ancestors I have, without scrolling down and counting them? I keep getting mixed up doing that.

 

[peter]

The groups I wanted to delete were listed as "unknown" and "no shared matches".

You wouldn't necessarily have needed to delete those groups in order to implement the suggested scheme as it only requires 16 of the 24 groups.

But I am wondering, if I have several 3x great-parents listed as common ancestors, should I not have at least one listed as a 2x?

Not necessarily - it depends whether you have any matches with 3rd cousins and, if so, whether they have linked a tree to their DNA test.You'll have many more matches with 4th cousins than 3rd cousins - about 9 times as many, on average.

Is there a way to find out how many common ancestors I have, without scrolling down and counting them?

There is a Common Ancestor filter.

 

[peter]

Just in case anyone reading this discussion gets the wrong end of the stick, the suggested scheme for utilising Ancestry groups isn't based on Common Ancestors.