GEDmatch's GEDcoms

Most people don't have one!!

So, what do you do without a family tree to check?

1. Contact the person.   If they are from Ancestry (A kit #'s) and you have a subscription, ask for a link to their tree, and send them one for yours.   If you want to draw up a short family tree on paint, that is a good thing to send to anyone.  You can customize it to have your mom and dad as "Mom" and "Dad".   Include dates and places if you have them.

2. Run the person's ethnicity on the chromosome you match on.

     Go to the admixture tool, choose chromosome painting of the chromosome your match is on. Try out the different ethnic programs, more on that later.  If you share a certain ethnicity at the spot you match at, and it could only be from one of your parents, then you know it is from that parent.

3. Use the "People who match one or both of 2 kits" tool, between you and that person.  Pick the people with the closest matches to both of you, and see if they have a GEDcom, or try contacting them as well.

4. Run the person's "one-to-many" matches.  See who is very close to them, and try contacting those people.

5.  If you have a match on your primary DNA site (Ancestry, 23andMe,FTDNA) that you have matched to ancestor in your tree, get them to post their DNA data into GEDmatch. That way you will have a known piece of DNA to compare against.