A Filtering Wish on AncestryDNA

I’m still playing with my results on AncestryDNAso I’m still learning.

However there is one thing I wish I could do there: filter my results by submitter.

Manually searching trees and searching trees by specific surnames seems highly inefficient to me. And there’s no guarantee that a surname that matches is even the line on which we connect.

One reason I submitted to on AncestryDNAwas to locate relatives of my two Irish-born great-great-grandparents, Samuel and Anne (Murphy) Neill. He was born in the general area of NewtownLimavady in the 1830s and she was born in Ireland (location unknown) in the early 1840s.

My maternal side is fairly well-documented with a paper trail and I have more than adequate leads on my other paternal families. What I would like to do all my matches on AncestryDNA is:

  • throw out those who match the two descendants of my Ufkes great-grandparents who have tested
  • throw out those who match the descendant of my Habben great-grandparents who have tested
  • throw out the descendants of my Trautvetter great-grandparents who have tested

That would leave the descendants of my Neill great-grandparents, Charles and Fannie (Rampley) Neill. Charles was the son of my Irish immigrants. Descendants of Fannie’s parents have tested–they could be thrown out too.

That would leave the descendants of my Irish great-great-grandparents as my matches.

Then I could focus on those matches.

That’s what I’d like.

And I’d really like that instead of my ethnic ancestry–although I understand that it what motivates many people to test.

And if there’s a way to do that on AncestryDNA I would like to know it, because I overlooked it.

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4 thoughts on “A Filtering Wish on AncestryDNA

  1. Nancy DiGiovanni says:

    I agree on more filtering capabilities. I called Ancestry about a search function on specific DNA circles. I wanted to know if a DNA circle existed on a particular part of my family tree. It is not possible right now. For five years my mom and I have used reasonable assumptions to establish a certain mother/father/son relationship but a paper trail was not available due to courthouse fires, Civil War, etc. So my brothers and I did Ancestry DNA tests in hopes to land in a DNA circle that would give us some assurance we were on the right track. It worked! Over the past few months I have had several DNA matches on the maternal line. It takes time and patience but it is another tool for searching.

    • Thanks. That will let me sort out the data that appears on my screen, but won’t let me filter out those trees that match other specific DNA submitters.

  2. Holly S Sorensen says:

    My way of doing that was to star the branches I wanted to work on, and leave he others blank. It has worked well with several different DNA results from various “jobs” I’ve been hired to work on, as well as my own. The other tool available is the shared matches, which quickly (for me) sorts out the branches I have well documented. Though, I’ve had one or two surprises from cousins who adopted out children I didn’t know about. I assist those who I can.

    Key is to remember that the DNA is only a clue. The “in the trenches” genealogy with citations is necessary to prove the clue.

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