Whose Side are They On?

There's nothing more daunting for new DNA testers than seeing the seemingly impossible numbers of people that show up in the matches list. It is fairly easy to determine who those who match you with a high number of shared centimorgans (cM), especially if you have spent a lot of time building your own family tree.

A trick I use for those who share less than, say, 50cM with me is so easy, beginners can do it.
In this example, I looked at how many of my matches at MyHeritage live in Germany--where my most persistant brick-wall ancestors came from. I went to that list and clicked on the first name, Christan, shown here to match me at 25cM.

Next, I click "Review DNA Match" and scroll down to the list of the matches he shares with me. I was surpised and, well, excited, to see that our top shared match was my paternal half-niece, Melissa (username starts with "wild")! What's great about that is now I know for sure that this person in Germany is related to me somehow through my second-great-grandparents on my father's maternal side!

All of a sudden, I have a great lead as to figuring out where they are from. On his tree, which is sparse, one of his ancestors was born in Bayern, which is a German location I have seen in documentation I have found on John (Johannes) and Catherine (maiden name unknown) Hill or Heil.

So, now I'm on a mission that I hadn't anticipated when I began writing this tip. Wish me luck, and good luck with YOUR search!