CUSTOMIZE Your Leeds Method Chart to Cluster Your DNA Matches - Genetic Genealogy Tutorial

Both my parents are lone children of their fathers, and have siblings. All my matches are half matches until I get up high…. Should the cM range be modified? I imagine I’ll have to map out relationships to figure it out but all my matches in the provided range are 1C1R or half.

The cM column would look a lot better if it was rounded to whole numbers and right aligned.

Hello 👋
Can I go above the people leading each color if they do match a new colored column? I noticed you had someone colored in green that was above the green leading person with an asterisk. My Leeds chart is modified because the person I am doing this for is adopted and their highest match is 98 cMs. 🫤

I've expanded my chart to great grandparents. My matches are still all assigned to a primary, but then grandparents are lighter and lightest shade of the primary color. If I can identify which great grandparent a match is associated with, they go in to that color group too. I'm hoping to collect enough information at some point to help identify the ancestry of my great grandmother who was adopted.

Hello need assistance in finding the birth mom of my paternal grandfather.Also my paternal grandmother mom dad is unknown and same for her brother dad.They share the same mom.Third I’m trying to verify my maternal grandfather maternal line too.Finally my mom maternal grandmother parents lines?I have a lot of 4th cousins that could possibly hold the key to some of these queries.
Thanks in advance
Robert S

So, Love all your videos and someday I'll learn enough to be able to figure things out. So, Step 3, Prioritize Individuals with multiple color groups totally confuses me. So, if I have someone in my tree called Mary Jane and she is in 2 color groups, red and blue. Mary Jane shares 140 cM with me. The leader of Red Group shares 220 and the leader of Blue Group shares 190. Would I list Red Group as 1 and Blue Group as 2?
So, in another instance, if I share 124 with Bob and he is in 2 groups, Yellow and Green. The leader of Yellow group shares 170 and the leader of Green group shares 101. It would be Yellow group 1 and Green group 2?
Just by creating the Leeds Chart, I have already had some break thru's. Thank you again.

Breakthrough!! My Grandma Susie wasn't a Stewart. She was a Wilkerson. I kept having Wilkerson/Davis/LeQuire DNA showing up and started tracing them back. I've gathered quite a few proofs . . marriage records, a couple of death certificates, but the kicker came when I found her and a child whom I've already traced and confirmed on a 1900 census record!

I am also completely not understanding how to compare between the groups of people who have more than one match.
BUT, I MAY have found a sibling to my great great grandfather, who was a rotten egg, to be sure, but still trying to trace him back. IF the person's family tree is correct then I did indeed find a sibling. Oh!! Happy Dance!!

Oh Lord, please go into prioritizing more. I have 6 column. I just don't get it. PLEASE! I see your comment below but I still don't get it!

So I decided I was going to do a Leeds chart on my matches and I was only going to go down to 90 CM's (though I do have the higher matches like my grandparents that I would not make leads). That was 36 matches, 26 not likely to be first cousins or closer. Out of those 26 matches I only have 8 that I have not identified exactly who they are, and most if not all of those eight I have identified what great-grandparent side at the very least they have come from. And I take that back, one of the matches is newer and I am trying to get some info from the match but I think he is my great-uncle's grandson which makes him my 1C1R. So I am working with 7 matches and I don't know if it worth going farther.

So I think I am asking, is there a more advance version of a Leeds chart that goes back a further generation? The Leeds chart gets you to great grandparents and I have that info. So what is my next step? Especially as this is through Ancestry. I am going to start working on my grandparents' kits but I am thinking I am not going to get much further because more of the matches are going to be in the first cousin range.

Thank You Andy. I already understood in context what needs to be done to cluster my matches. But you provided The Best Explanation of HOW to do this! I So Much Appreciate it. Subscribing again.

at 5 minute mark, is the lead not Mabel instead of Deborah?

Doesn't work, on account that for any segment you can't tell by segments alone which of your parents the DNA came from. These segments are all half identical, specifically because half the DNA on them typically came from each parent. I have many segmetns where some people match me from an ancestor of my father's in Pennsylvania and some from ancestors of my mother in New England.

I am having no luck with finding a dna match on my paternal grand mothers side.

Where EXACTLY are you getting this information on your 2-3rd cousins dna matches from? What dna testing site are using? Because it does not work with Ancestry!

Could you explain further about the overlap please? I have created my spreadsheet and have a number of people with 2 or 3 people. In your video you suggest assigning them numbers 1 and 2. I couldnt quite work out if you are assigning #1 if the match has a higher cM than the * and then assigning #2 if they have lower? or are you assigning #1 if the * they share with has a higher cM? Im a little confused. Your example doesnt quite show exactly what to do with the orange and teal. Not sure where you got your numbers from in those examples. Thank you for your time

I started doing it your way and skipped the closest matches but I've had more luck just using all the matches down to 20cM and then going to my tree and working out where and how the connections are.

These 2 videos were really good. In one day of work, I finally have a handle on my 2nd and 3rd cousins.

But, I wish there was another video to keep going!

Or, a more in-depth description of the steps in this video. Please give us more detail because this is very specific and fruitful work!

Using ancestry info mostly- how do you know how much your matches share with each other?

While watching the previous video, and this one, I set up a spreadsheet, did the color-coding, etc .. made it through #2 on this video but got stuck @ #3. How am I supposed to know DNA % between two people, neither of which is me?

I have Ancestry DNA: how do I work out the shared DNA between the lead person and the others in a group. I ca only see where it compares to mine. Thanks

Hi - Is prioritising the individuals in multiple colour groups necessary as in my case all the 2nd and 3rd cousins I am researching are all in the same multiple colour groups. If so, can you explain further please as I can't get my head round it!

So to confirm this, I wouldn't add anyone at all above 400 cM? Even if I they are a shared match? I have six colors (known lines) and two unknown. I suspect at least two of these colors are going back to GG on each side. I've checked some of these relationships and a couple are half 1C1R. I'm just trying to understand why I get so many colors. I don't know my paternal side of the family other than what I've learned during this journey.

I add a column for whether they have a tree (yes, no, locked, unlinked) and how many people are in their tree.

Very interesting I use a simplified similar Excel chart. but I have trouble sing the names of the columns in your chart . Do you have a bigger version of it somewhere ?

Would you add from different dna sites, ie all matches on the same spreadsheet?

I am still completely lost 😞. I feel that I will never understand this DNA stuff. It is so frustrating, especially since I don’t even know who my dads parents were. We only have his mothers name, and from the Azores, and his father could be John Taylor or Robert A. Taylor. There is not enough information to figure out who the real man is. Everyone from that side of the family is gone. I figured you would be the best to help me understand, but the more I try the more confused I get, and your the only one that seems to have made any sense to me when I thought I understood 😳🤦🏻‍♀️.

Loved the video Andy! I first watched the two videos in the series and then watched again while following along. My results were strange. I only had two really significant color groups. In total I had 8 colors, 1 group only had two matches, two colors had only one match. I think this is due to a combination of half cousins and 3rd cousins. Wondering if I may get better results using myself as an example, I used my father’s DNA and maybe due to his age he doesn’t have as many 2nd cousins that have taken the test.

Andy, you and Devon do such a wonderful work! I'm a fan of yours! 🌳🧬🙂

Very interesting 🧐

The problem I am finding is very few of my matches on MyHeritage have trees.

Hi everyone!