Connecting Matches

Debbie reveals how you can solve your matching brick walls

My match iis usingi a pseudonym or initials. How can I work out their full name?

Sometimes people use the same user name on different websites. Check out social media websites, try a Google search on the user name, or save your match’s profile photo to your computer then upload it to Google Images ( images.google.com) to run a reverse image search and find out where else it is used online. Examining the Facebook accounts of other putative relatives might also provide clues to solve the problem.

I have messaged a match but they haven’t got back to me. What should I do?

When messaging matches we need to remember that not everyone who has tested is interested in genealogy like us. Keep messages short and simple. Research their tree, and work out how you think they might be related to you. A good tactic is to start by asking the names of their grandparents. Also, people have busy lives and don’t always check all their accounts regularly – sometimes we can receive replies many months or years later. A follow-up message might work, but you might have to accept that you will get no response. If so, don’t be put off because it’s often possible to work out the relationship without contacting the match.

My match doesn’t have an online tree. How can I work out how we’re related?

If you’ve sorted your matches into shared-match clusters then you will already know which branch of your tree your mystery match belongs to. To make it easier to identify unknown matches, it helps to build out all of the collateral lines and trace as many of them as possible down to the present day. Common-ancestor hints and ThruLines can help with this process. If you can identify the person from their user name, start tracing their tree back in time using birth, marriage and death indexes, the 1939 Register, online family trees, Facebook and other resources for researching people within the past 100 years.

What is a quick-and-dirty tree, and how do I create one?

A quick-and-dirty family tree is like a sandbox where you can explore relationships and hypotheses using the power of Ancestry’s Hints system. It is often used in unknown parentage cases, or if you are trying to identify the common ancestral couple for a mystery cluster. You need to create a new family tree on Ancestry that is separate from the one attached to your AncestryDNA test; this new tree must be private and unsearchable. The idea is to start building out different branches of the family trees of your matches to identify recurring surnames and shared locations, and ultimately the ancestral couple that you share.

What is a floating branch on a tree?

A floating branch is disconnected from the rest of your family tree. To create a floating branch, add the new individual as the spouse or child of an existing person in your tree. Go to the profile of the new person, click on ‘Edit’ and edit the relationship to disconnect them. Alternatively, when browsing records you can choose to save the record and add it to a new person in your tree. Click on ‘Connect to tree’ in your match list to link the match with your tree.