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For Y-DNA Members

How do Y-DNA results tell me about my ancestors?

Working with Y-DNA matches

We hope the last page convinced you of the value of exchanging information with previously known and unknown cousins who are "your matches." How do you locate your matches?

The FTDNA dashboard opens after your personal login to FTDNA's website.  Note the HOME link in the top left hand corner.  As you work, this will return you directly to the dashboard.

All your purchased DNA tests will display on the dashboard, but we are now interested specifically in the Y-DNA Results & Tools section.

The dashboard provides links to interesting information about your DNA revealed in the process of analysis.  You may find this interesting reading and by all means dig in.  If you need more directions for doing so, download this pdf for more detailed instruction. Our immediate interest, however, is deepening your understanding of your male ancestors by using your Y-DNA test.

Step 1: Your Y-DNA Matches

Click on Y-DNA Matches (circled above). A screen opens with a series of lines, one for each match.  For right now, choose the Table View.  Your display will look something like this example:

The most important information on each line is in the third column: Genetic Distance.  In the example, the first two matches are both 1 step from a perfect match for your DNA, a very close relationship.  Experience with Y-DNA matches tells us that 1 step matches will have a common male ancestor who was alive between 1750 and 1950 with the average 1850.  The 3rd match has a genetic distance of 2 steps which predicts a common male ancestor between 1650 and 1900 with the average 1800.  That will help you locate about when you are looking for the common ancestor with each of these matches.

The next most important item is accessed in the three Actions icons to the right of each entry.  Note the symbol.  When this symbol is dark blue, this match has uploaded his family tree.  Click on this icon and the match's family tree will open.  When the tree opens, choose the Pedigree View at the top of the tree image and move the Details slide at the bottom to the right to show details.  On the tree, trace along the top line of male ancestors from father to grandfather to great grandfather, etc., until you see a common ancestor that you recognize.  If this tree goes back more generations than your own, you will have a clue as to an earlier ancestor with whom you will link as you work with your match to follow the male line back.  You may also change from the Pedigree View to the Family View at the top of the tree and search for your Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor among the uncles on this family tree.  In either view, be sure and look not only for a recognizable ancestor by name but also for a recognizable place where your ancestor lived.

Note that the Family Tree symbol for the 2nd match is only outlined.  This match has not provided a family tree.  Remember what you have lost by not being able to search for the common ancestor on that tree.  This should be motivation for you to include your tree as we proceed to step 2, so other matches can work more closely with you.

Paternal Country of Origin and Paternal Earliest Known Ancestor (6th and 7th columns) will prove useful, but this information does not come from the Y-DNA test but from information supplied externally by the match.  Their value may be limited by that match's knowledge of his family.  For example, the 3rd match here cannot yet trace his ancestor back to their immigration to North America.  Further, we know, in fact, that the 1st match is probably incorrect that his paternal origin is England.  (Although you cannot tell this from your match display, this match carries FT-DNA's "Niall of the Nine Hostages" badge on his home page, an indication that his Y-DNA originated in Ireland rather than England.)

One more very important piece of information to harvest for each match.  Click on the match's name.  The following window opens:

Note that your match's name and email address is displayed, key to communicating with them.

(By the way, see that symbol under Actions on the match chart above?  Click there and a note pad opens where you may save notes for that match and your correspondence with him/her.)

To summarize, you have now identified a cousin who shares a common male ancestor with you.  You may even have an idea of whom that common ancestor is, or where on a map that common ancestor lived.  This will provide a way into your conversation with your new cousin.

More importantly for a family group project, yours and your match's ancestry will help all of those in the project to sort out the relationships within the descendants of that earliest common ancestor.  Identifying where mutations occurred that created the genetic distance between you and your match will help to construct the descendant tree of that common ancestor and place you and your matches on it.  This is the advantage of family group Y-DNA research.

For more detailed instructions (pdf format).

Continue to Step 2 of Working with Your Y-DNA Matches