Finding relatives through DNA

[LindorDoubleChoc]

This is a bit outing, so I'm going to change some details.

Someone in my family does not know who one of their birth parents is. The only thing that's almost 100% certain is that this parent lived most of their life outside of the UK and that they will be dead now. Accurate name and date of birth are unknown.

The family did do some research about 20 years ago, or maybe even longer, it was pre-internet anyway. It came to nothing because we didn't even have the starting point of a correctly spelled surname.

I've been watching a TV drama where a policewoman traces the sister of an unidentified dead body (literally within minutes but that's TV for you !) by using a genealogy website. How does this work? can anybody do it? surely someone's DNA would only be on a non-criminal website like this if they had registered it there voluntarily. So it seems a bit unlikely?

Could you trace distant relatives through DNA and then get to work on narrowing the field down? Or does it only work for close (one step away) sort of relatives? If anyone has any experience to share I'd be interested, thanks.

Watch Stacey Dooley's DNA Family Secrets. I understand that you can find second cousins or cousins and then get more information. Perhaps your relative would even want to go on that TV show?

Not much experience but I've done a 23andme kit so am on one of those websites. So are two of my first cousins (i have loads of them). I get regular notifications of distant DNA relatives joining the website, usually '3rd to 6th cousins' which seems ridiculously distant. The option to message them is there though I've never done it. I guess if they did this and had some connections outside the UK they could follow it up? Do they know which country?

My parents did DNA tests, more to find out their heritage (ie 5% Scandinavian etc) on ‘my heritage’ website.

if other people have also done dna tests on that website, it tells you how much DNA you share (eg 3%) and how you are likely related (eg 2nd cousins daughter).

this of course depends on whether a relative has done the test/ used the website. When new people join and are related, you get an email. You can potentially contact the person ( we had a person contact us to connect the family tree that you can also build.) other websites do the same thing I think.

I’m waiting results on a My Heritage test - it takes around six weeks.

Does anyone know, will I only find matches who’ve also done the test with My Heritage?

You look at your matches, build their trees, and see where they link. You can often work out a birth parent - I found an unknown great grandad this way, but only narrowed it down to two brothers. Ancestry is the biggest database but it's recommended to test with all of them and upload to the different websites to widen the net. With Ancestry though you now have to have a paid subscription to look at shared matches and to split them by parent.

There are a lot of groups on Facebook and you can sometimes get a search angel to help.

@supercatlady you will only get matches with My Heritage. But you can upload to some other sites (some you can't, like Ancestry and 23 and me, so you have to do them separately). Personally I've found way more matches on Ancestry, I have loads of 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousins on there. There's also a website called Gedmatch that you can upload your results for free. Ancestry is quite expensive now as you pay to subscribe, but we'll worth it in my opinion.