When I first started working on the matches for one of my DNA tests, I discovered that one of my correspondents was adopted and was trying to locate her birth parents. No big deal. Their test results had a tree attached to it (with the name of the birth parents and nothing else). We corresponded briefly after sharing what information we could, but a regular correspondence when there’s nothing to discuss is rather meaningless. The match was somewhat distantly related to the testee and I was not initially able to give them any real specific suggestions.\u00a0 To be honest, I forgot about the match after our conversation ended.<\/p>\n
In reviewing that match again recently, the tree is gone. The account remains, but the individual is not responding to messages and has not logged into their account in months. I’m not certain whether they are unable to communicate or have simply lost interest. Their username may also have been changed as it’s more “generic” than I remember it being.<\/p>\n
I didn’t copy the information from their online tree while they had it up (screen shots at the very least would have been helpful). So there’s a little reminder here: capture that information. Some DNA testers die or become otherwise unable to respond. Others get busy. Some lose interest. Some lose access to their account. Those are problems that all of us occasionally have.<\/p>\n
Others discover things they didn’t want to know and don’t respond to anyone to keep peace with living family members…and sometimes when they have that realization, they remove their tree or set it to “private.” And then they go incognito.<\/p>\n
Capturing information about the match and their tree when you encounter it may be a good idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first started working on the matches for one of my DNA tests, I discovered that one of my correspondents was adopted and was trying to locate her birth parents. No big deal. Their test results had a tree attached to it (with the name of the birth parents and nothing else). We corresponded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}