Tonight I was so pleased to see in my email inbox another acceptance of one of my genome sharing requests. When I logged onto 23andMe and saw the persons details, I started to get excited. I have thought of all kinds of ways to tell the story here on my blog and none of them appealed to me. So, I figure the best way to do it is just to start typing and see where it goes.
After seeing the email, the first place I go is to my Relative Finder list to see if this person (I’ll call her Cousin P) is a match for me, or one of the other 7 profiles I have linked to my account. I have several family members to the test and all of them are linked to my account. Unfortunately, when 23andMe sends me the email that I have a new sharing request OR that someone has accepted my sharing request, the email does not tell me which profile it applies to. This is definitely a potential opportunity for 23andMe to improve. So, each time I have to search through all the profiles until I find the right one. Lucky for me, since I always search me first, she popped right up.
Absent from her match information is which side of my family she matches me on. I have had both of my parents do the 23andMe test, so the system should have had an M or P next to her name. For some reason, it’s not there, so I guess I’ll report it to the company. Anyway, I was eager to learn more for the following reasons:
- Our predicted relationship is 3rd-6th cousin and the percentage DNA we share is 0.51%. That’s enough to make it more likely we could find our common ancestor IF the stars lined up (so many variables affect this).
- She shares more DNA in common with me than a three cousins of mine (a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousin), who have done 23andMe AND for whom I already have a documented paper trail connection prior to any of us doing 23andMe testing.
- One of her locations in the profile was “Rocky Mountain, NC”. I realized right away that this was likely “Rocky Mount, NC” and I have ancestors on my mother’s side of the family from Rocky Mount (a city in Edgecombe and Nash counties).
- She has a View Family Tree link! Not too many people have taken the time to put in their family tree at 23andMe. The quality of the information in the tree can vary widely. But, it’s a start!
Before looking at her family information though, I wanted to find out where our DNA matched. In my next post, I’ll describe what I learned.