AncestryDNA and Private Trees

Don’t let private trees stop you from figuring out how your DNA match and you are possibly related.

So on my husband’s matches, I have a person who is managing three tests and has a huge tree, however it is locked down and private. AncestryDNA is teasing me with a display of a Green Leaf and Common Ancestor as follows:

When I view the match, Ancestry gives means a hint of who the Common Ancestors might be:

When I view the possible relationship to the match, all I see are a bunch of Private boxes. ARGH!

However, when I click on the first Private Box, the sibling of my husband’s 2^nd great grandfather, it gives me the following clue.

I am able to do this three more times and I get valuable names to research and see if this looks accurate. By doing this I end up to my matches’ grandmother. Now I have someone to start looking for and to see if possibly I can find out more about the grandmother, thus more about the match.

Therefore, AncestryDNA has now allowed me to figure out how my husband’s match and she might be possibly related. Also, using the Shared Matches of this match with my husband allows me to sort those matches.

Need a New AncestryDNA Extension or Features

I need a new feature or two with my AncestryDNA matches. However, it might be possible with an extension and I would take it any way I could get it.

Here’s my idea…. I have multiple DNA kits that I manage. I would love an easy way to copy the notes from one kit I manage to another kit that I manage.  

Currently, I am copying the notes manually, by having my DNA test results up on one monitor and having my sibling’s results up on the other. 

I use the AncestryDNA helper extension so I can type in the matches’ user name on my test results page as I sequentially work through all the DNA test results of my sister’s matches.  When I click on the result from my page, it opens a new tab with the match. From my sister’s page I have to click the “View Match” button to open matches page and manually copy the match from my screen over to my sister’s screen.

 I wish that I could modify the notes from the main page, without going into the “View match” button of my sister’s page. Currently, I use the MedBetterDNA extension to display the notes associated with the tests matches. So if MedBetterDNA could let us edit the notes from this page, I call it BONUS!

Otherwise, if there was a way to just copy all the notes for common matches between two test.

Currently, AncestryDNAHelper allows you to compare two tests for common matches, now once it comes up with that list, if there was another option that would copy Test A notes to Test B notes for common matches, I would be in heaven!

Now here is the real bonus, if I could only mass copy those notes. I manage my two half-siblings DNA results. Plus my half-nephew has shared his DNA results with me.  If there was a way to copy my nephew’s notes to my half-brother’s common matches first, then copy my notes to my half-brother’s common matches second. Keep in mind, that my notes may override a few notes of my nephews on those common matches that all three of us share.  My half-brother has over 1000+ 4^th cousin matches or closer. I would love to quickly add all those notes. Then I could manually go through his matches and find all the ones that are unique to him and add notes. When I was done, I could copy my half-brother’s notes over to my half-sister’s notes and then manually go through her matches and find those remaining unique matches.

What a time saver this all would be!

However, since I don’t have these features, its back to manually copy notes from one DNA test to another. WHEW!