Genealogy

For quite awhile, I've been cautioning people that 23&me did not want genealogists, and was not serving us. Now although they still hide the tools, they are available. First, many people have now "opened" their profiles, allowing matches to see what the match IS. Of course this is the default on all other sites. And I've figured out how to see all those opened matches on your matches page:  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/#people . Sort by Open Sharing . Now for the fun stuff. Go to  https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/dna/  and search for your first open match. The code controlling the search is a bit funky, but keep at it and search for the rare part of the name, rather than the common part -- "hiram" rather than "smith". One can compare two other users as well as with yourself. I do that before before writing to people, so I can give them a bit of information. Be sure to scroll down below the simplified chromosome map to the...

It's been about a month since I gave up waiting and started "making something happen" on 23andme . I have 983 "DNA Relatives" there, and Gedmatch shows me my top 1000 matches. I've messaged all of the 23andme matches, with mixed results. First, only about one-third of the cousins have a name or profile that I can see on 23andme. Those people I have messaged by name, and if they have surnames and/or localities listed, I often mention those if they sound interesting or familiar. Many people have nothing listed in their profile but a name. Those folks without a name can be messaged, but it has to be generic. A few of those nameless people have accepted contact, and some "sharing", which is what 23andme calls comparing genomes. Of course sharing genomes is the whole reason I'm doing this, so it has been a lot of work just to get to starting line. For those who are not interested in doing this work to get matches, my advice is: use FTDNA or An...