Gold Stars

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A Segment-ology TIDBIT

There are several key elements of good genetic genealogy – I’m going to call them Gold Stars.

1. DNA Match – as designated by the testing companies and GEDmatch. Most of these are our genetic cousins. I have a lot of them (over 120,000); and they are a good subset to work with. Worth a Star.

2. IBD Segment – We generally assume that virtually all Matches above 15cM have true genetic links; and my analysis is that about 66% of those 8 to 15cM are also true. Granted, some of the under-20cM Matches will be beyond a genealogy time frame (about 9 generations for me), IBD gets a Star.

3. Common Ancestor – This is a primary goal of genetic genealogy – finding a Common Ancestor with each Match. Notes: some Matches will have multiple CAs within a genealogy timeframe; just finding a CA does NOT necessarily mean that the Shared DNA segment came from that CA; a Match may share multiple DNA segments, and possibly multiple CAs. So finding a CA is worth a Star.

4. ThruLines (and Theory of Family Relativity) – I’ve found these to be over 90% correct. If you agree with them – add a Gold Star.

5. Same side – Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA now indicate the “side” that each of our Matches is probably on. So far, I think this process is pretty accurate. The Common Ancestor should agree with the “side” for a Gold Star. If there is not agreement with the side, there may an additional Common Ancestor with the Match (on the same “side”]; or the “side” may be incorrect.

6. Paper Trail – each Common Ancestor should be supported by good genealogy paper trail of solid records. Not always possible; but add a Gold Star if you can document your and your Match’s paper trails.

7. Segment Triangulation – indicates your DNA segment is an IBD (true) shared segment; and probably the Matches’ segments are too. A Gold Star.

8. Shared Matches – [aka In Common With; Relatives in Common]. If most of the Shared Matches are in agreement, add a Gold Star.

9. Clustering – tends to group DNA Matches on an Ancestor. If the consensus of Matches in a Cluster is an Ancestor (or even 2 or 3 in an Ancestral line), add a Gold Star.

10. Reasonable Tree – does the Match with a Common Ancestor have a reasonable Tree? If a Match has a Tree with just one descendant (the Match’s Ancestor), that is a warning signal [NO Gold Star]. If a Match has a Tree with way too many children, given names repeated, different children with same birthdate – this is probably a research Tree with a collection every possible child – sometime born at many different locations – warning-warning! This is very flimsy evidence (NO Gold Star]. However, if the Match’s Ancestral line shows a reasonable number of children, spaced 1 to 3 years apart, that is a good sign. Alignment with census records is a plus. Use judgment to claim a Gold Star.  

Ideally, we’d have 10 Stars for each Match – but, that ain’t gonna happen very often… And I probably won’t be adding a Star # in my Notes. But I do review most of these when I accept a Match with a Common Ancestor. I just thought I’d share my compilation of thoughts when I find a CA.

This may be an imperfect list, but I hope it is helpful. Improvements/suggestions are welcomed in the comments. This Gold Star concept is not a set of hard rules – it’s intended to be helpful ideas. Your judgment should be the final say for your genealogy.

Note for genealogists – our genetic cousins are a small fraction of all our true cousins. I often add individuals to my Tree who are not DNA Matches.

[22CD] Segment-ology: Gold Stars TIDBIT by Jim Bartlett 20231229

13 thoughts on “Gold Stars”

  1. Good work, Jim. I agree with all of this.
    Have come across some people who say that if you have two people, parent and sibling, say, who share a match of 15cM or more (and it is the same segment), that just because this is IBD, that this could be two unrelated bits of DNA that came together in that line only just beforehand, and therefore parent-child shared segments with oneself should be discounted! Even up to 30cM!!
    Checking with the guys who invented the term, the academics, IBD is literally a piece of DNA that is inherited and passed on to a descendant and many of the studies using this (both human and non-human DNA) are quite happy with parent-child identical segments of around that size as evidence of DNA descent.
    Can you recall any related cases that might illuminate this?

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    • Chris, I don’t recall any. My focus is a litte different – like in segment Triangulation, I wouldn’t add a Star for a child – his/her DNA is already accounted for in the parent, so – as far as our Ancestors are concerned – there is no new info from the child. Also in segment Triangulation, each segment stands on its own merit – if a two people who are siblings share the same overlapping segment, go with it. If one of them has a split segment, then it would be VERY unusual for them to overlap the full Triangulated segment. See my: Let the Chips Fall Where They May post. Jim

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  3. Another Gold Star – a complex, but important and valuable one. Under-20cM Matches do not show up as Shared Matches, BUT they can have Shared Matches of their own (their SMs would be over-20cM). So in my Spreadsheet of Common Ancestors – sorted like a Family Group Sheet – I note two under-20cM Matches are 2C or 3C to each other. On their own pages they should be Shared Matches to each other (if the genealogy is correct). Messages rarely work. So I checked each of their SM lists – sure enough they each had many of the same over-20cM SMs on their respective lists > a Gold Star! Almost certainly that part of their Tree is correct, and they both match me…

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  4. Great idea Jim for assessing the ‘quality’ of the match, particularly where there is no segment data. It’s always a quandary for me about how you can ‘confirm’ a match without the segment data for distant matches. I tend to call them ‘tentative’ but not all matches are the same. One distant match does not confirm an ancestor. However, it’s a continuum isn’t it, with further supporting evidence being gathered all the time. Just like traditional genealogy. The more supporting evidence we have, like your stars, the more confident we can be about the connection.

    Some time last year I came across a post by dutchgenealogy about tree health and the rating system she used. I was surprised DNA wasn’t covered and tried to look at how I could assess my tree in the same way from the genetic viewpoint. I came up with these 5 rating points and assessed my ‘confirmed ancestor’ tree heath according to these criteria:

    0. Unidentified ancestor
    1. No DNA matches
    2. Tentative DNA matches
    3. Confirmed – Ancestral couple
    4. Confirmed – Individual ancestor (sourced in tree with appropriate confirmation techniques = GPS)

    I was never happy with #2 as it included some I was extremely confident about and others where there were only isolated matches and no supporting clusters.

    I’m now thinking that the two processes could be combined and your star ratings for matches could help to provide an additional level in the confirmation – 2a could be ones that have multiple matches with ‘multiple stars’, with 2b being the non starred ones, or very low. It would help me to focus more energy on the 2b category.

    Thanks for sharing your ideas!

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  5. I have found all of these to be accurate. I have been working on a match I have from England with a man born in 1982 who now lives in Australia and his paternal aunt on My Heritage. SO I can deduce from these matches that our CA is on his paternal line. I did find a CA back farther than the CM’s suggest but I know the current CA or connection is about the 4th great grandparent level. His aunt is in my age group the 1950’s,

    I have had success with finding the CA on a match I have on My Heritage with a man born in my decade in St Louis and is the same age as my oldest sister 1951. We were projected to be 4th cousins. I ran his line in my tree and went as far back at the beginning of the 1700’s in Germany. Then the family name Schleicher piqued my interest as our newly elected Clerk in El Paso COunty COlorado where I live has the same last name but the only difference is a phonetic change of the last ch for a k in his last name Schleiker. Knowing German as it was my 2nd language after English, I understood why at some point his family did that. SO I ran the clerks line back and sure enough the Schleicher from Missouri and the Schleiker in Colorado had a CA couple just past the couple born in early 1700’s. They were all from Hessen Germany, The curious thing was 6th great grandfathers were brothers but one brother took his wife and family to Sartov Russia and the other stayed in Germany. The St Louis line was the one which went to Sartov Russia. SInce my connection is on the St Louis line and the 6th great grand parents in that line were a Schleicher Male and a female from the family Spanier, SPanier was the name I knew from university time in 1975-1976. My university dance professor’s maiden name was Spanier too. I knew that line was Jewish because her family was though personally she wasn’t practising Jewish faith but Buddhism which was cool. SO I had a hunch that the Spanier woman , connected to my dance professor’s family too.

    There was also at the time a man connected on my maternal line with whom no matches can to fruition in Ancestry.com in thru lines. farther back in the Green line from England yes but not at the level of my 2nd great grandfather on my mom’s paternal line. SO I didn’t de;ete him but I unhooked him from my 2nd great grandmother Emeline Nelson born 1862 in Savannah Georgia. My close lines are all African American and Emeline was born in enslavement. I wracled my brain thinking a bit narrowly that it had to be a male Schleicher from the St Louis line that fit into my line somehow. But after a week of frustration, I got a flash of insight. The thought was this ” why are you so focused on finding a male Schleicher to fit into your tree when a female Schleicher from that same family level would accomplish the same connection?” That was the V-8 moment! I went back to the early 1800’s as one Schleicher male Carl Lorenz was born about 1817 in Sartov Russia moved with his family in 1841 to the US making the Schleicher family emerge here settled in St Louis, MO.

    I checked out the children from that line the brothers and sisters of Carl Lorenz. The other three brothers didn’t turn any documentation up. The youngest Anna Maria, born 1825 remained in Sartov in this German enclave and married a Ludwig Gruen. They had 3 daughters and a son Johann born 1852. Only one sister married. SO I focused on Johann. He came to the US working on a ship in 1870. He went back, married in 1871. I got no documentation of children with the wife. The wife dies in 1884. SO the idea was if he was working on ships and came here once then he must have come back. I found Emeline had two daughters that carried her last name born in the 1890’s Matilda and Amanda. No father was suggested. But I felt like putting Johann and Emeline as the parents of Matilda and Amanda. It was picked up in Ancestry.com in Thru Lines in about an hour. They never update those lines that rapidly. I was 4th cousin 1 times removed with the man living in St Louis, MO, 8th cousin to the county clerk! My mom did have a result of German ethnicity picked up by my oldest sister.

    All was good. The brother of Eva Elisabeth Spanier was David. He married a woman with a very Jewish name Jeittle and he was the first in the paternal line of my dance professor making us 8th cousins.Two things drove this. One was in uploading my raw data from 213andMe to My Heritage and then my raw data from Ancestry.com, I got two analyses that confirmed each result. One was having an ancestor 1.97% Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity. then another of .97% of middle eastern ethnicity.

    I told the county clerk about my findings and he was very happy. His line remained in Germany but came to the US settling in Pennsylvania. Now writing to my professor, I told her the story of Anna Marie Schleicher and Ludwig Gruen and Johann. When I began recounting the information I looked at what I was writing and another big insight. My maternal grandfather was named Lewis Jones born in 1909. I knew that even if Johann and Emeline didn’t marry he told her about his parents. Matilda knew of her paternal line and name her son after his German great grandfather Ludwig which is Louis in German. That wasn’t the last insight. I began writing to a friend in Denver about this same story and then I realized that Matilda was named Matilda Louise Nelson. so Emeline named Matilda their first daughter’s middle name in honor of her grandfather Ludwig. I normally see those things but didn’t right away. Then there was the superficial dna evidence. My maternal grandfather Lewis had a very p-rominent nose and his irises changed colors from green to blue to just like my oldest sister born 1951 and my younger brother born 1957. All my siblings have the same mother and father I know in terms of DNA connection shes are the least significant but the clerk’s irises are fixed blue outer level with a yellow then blend green in between the yellow and blue. My mother had dominant brown eyes but the prominent nose. Yes there is dna diversity in my dad’s maternal line too. One of her brothers had blue eyes, and yes they share the same parents. Then on my direct paternal line my 3rd great direct paternal line grandfather was Robert A Hawthorne Jr born 1835 died June 27, 1962 in battle of Seven pines, Virginia ourisde Richmond as a captain in the confederacy. I have a picture of him with blue eyes and more than likely red hair or strawberry blond. SO there are two lines on my paternal lide to contribute that dna for my oldest sister and younger brother’s irises. I suspect that my maternal line has another source of the recessive gene for blue eyes through a woman whose father carried that gene married into the direct maternal line females.

    I knew that Emeline and their daughters remained in Savannah , Georgia most of their lives. Matilda did eventually move to NYC with my mom’s half brother, my grandfather Lewis’ son Lewis Jr and she died there. I had to reconnect the English greens back into the line as I did get a DNA match of a woman and her two sons in Tennessee from a daughter of a 7th great grandfather Rev Nathaniel Green whose daughter married into this woman’s paternal line in the 1800’s. It went one generation back from someone born in the mid 1800’s and just moved the cousins still from 5th cousins to 6th cousins still within the projected target with the cm’s shared with the woman and her sons. I researched the names of Gruen, Schleicher and Spanier in a database and they all came back as Ashkenzai Jewish family names. I say that because in my research with documents Johann Adam Schleicher and Eva Elisabeth Spanier were baptized as Lutherans. But the DNA I have found of both Separdic and Ashkenazi Jewish people are able to be traced genetically by markers. On my paternal line on my grandmother’s paternal line we have a 4th great grandmother whose parents were of Spanish Portuguese ethnicity and I have a picture of her. Her eyes look blue too. Her parents both came here and their names are in the Sephardic Jewish family name database. Barros was her father’s paternal line. The line goes so far back into the 1400’s the beginning man of the paternal line was from Venice Italy who married a Betancourt woman and the family took her last name until a few generations later a Betancourt man married a woman from Portugal named Barros and the family took on her last name males included so all the males are from that same man Perdomo of Venice.

    Thanks for letting me bend your ear.

    James A Clark Jr Colorado Springs, CO

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  6. I suggest adding Y-DNA matches to the gold star list … some of these can be within the time frame of conventional genealogy. e.g. In my case, a Y-DNA match, estimated by FTDNA to be 12 generations of divergent ancestry, (i.e. born c. 1600) and identified using wills and land records.

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    • Gary; A great add – I look for and use Y-DNA and mtDNA and should have included a Gold Star for any line with an all-male or all-female line of descent from the Common Ancestor to the Match when they agree to take an Y or mt test to confirm. Looking at the Surname Projects at FamilyTreeDNA (looking and working with the Project Admins is free), I’ve been able to determine the Y-DNA haplogroup for many of my male Ancestors. I always try to inform my Match, when I think I know the Y haplogroup of their line. mt is somewhat harder, but finding that all-female line is a tremendous opportunity. Thanks for your input. Jim

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  7. I just realized a double Gold Star – Matches who appear to be close cousins to each other – do indeed share somewhat larger cMs between themselves – a stong indication that their path is correct, plus they both match you – 2 Stars. Jim

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