For those who are not aware: ROOTSTECH Connect is the world’s largest family-history technology conference. And this year it will be a completely FREE and VIRTUAL experience! Hundreds of amazing sessions will be available online during and also after RootsTech Connect has ended on February 27th! Many of those sessions will offer precious insight for Africans and Afro-descendants in their quest to Trace African Roots! All it takes to attend is a free online registration. Right now more than 315,000 participants from more than 200 countries and territories worldwide have already registered! For more details:
- ROOTSTECH CONNECT 2021
- Classes for Africans by Africans (series)
- Discovering African Ancestry through DNA (series)
- Ethnic Filters and DNA Matches: The Way Forward to Finding Your Lineage! (my own presentation!)
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I am very honoured, grateful and excited to also be part of this tremendous event! Because I will be giving an presentation as well! I will be demonstrating my scanning and filtering method to zoom into African matches or any other type of lineage you are interested in researching. I originally devised this technique in 2017. And I have been using it ever since to conduct my ongoing African DNA matches surveys. After registering for ROOTSTECH you should be able to find my class listed in the various search menus. But you can also just directly see it by following the link provided above.
If you are having trouble finding your African DNA cousins this can hopefully offer you a great opportunity to systematically look for your African DNA matches! During the event there will be an occasion to ask any questions by way of a chatroom. But of course you can also always reach me here on my blog if anything needs clarification or just to leave a comment. See also:
In the remaining part of this blog post I will show a few slides for a sneak preview 😉 Furthermore I will also provide all materials/links mentioned during my presentation. For those intending to watch my presentation: Thank you for your attention! I will be rooting for you that the ethnic filtering method I have discussed will be beneficial for you as well!
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Let’s get this cocktail party started! 😉
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Ethnic Filters and DNA Matches: The Way Forward to Finding Your Lineage!
Opening slide; my scanning & filtering method can be used to zoom into any type of distinctive lineage you’re interested in!
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Main Topics, I will be demonstrating my scanning & filtering method based on my own DNA matches.
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Benefits of a “Glass Half Full” mentality!
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This is an overview of my own DNA matches. My closest DNA matches are Cape Verdean and Dutch which makes perfect sense given my main recent lineage. My most likely Gambian DNA match I found already in 2017 remains very evocative as it connects me to my more distant mainland African/Upper Guinean heritage!
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Materials & Links mentioned during my presentation
- Advanced & Text Filtering Criteria
- Advanced Filter Criteria (link to my online spreadsheet containing the advanced filter criteria discussed during my class)
- Text Filter Criteria (link to my online spreadsheet containing the text filter criteria discussed during my class)
- Syllabus (click to download the PDF file)
Best of luck and enjoy Rootstech 2021 and all of the wonderful & insightful classes it has on offer!
Tracing African Roots 
My mum has an intruiging cluster of matches on MyHeritage that are from Reunion and France they appear to match my mum on a European segment of DNA. The closest are 4th cousins but my tree on the Mauritian side isn’t far enough back for us to find common ancestors yet. MyHeritage has assigned us the French Settlers in Reunion genetic group.
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Wow, that’s a really specific group! Are these DNA cousins living in Europe? I believe MyHeritage has relatively more European customers. So that might increase the odds of receiving such matches I guess.
Would be truly useful if some time in the future genetic groups will be created to indicate shared Malagasy ancestry across the Diaspora!
The ethnic filtering method I will be discussing in my presentation is only valid for DNA matches as reported by Ancestry. Because sorting & filtering tools for DNA matches on Ancestry are currently rather basic. Which is why I devised this workaround procedure in 2017.
However I have been impressed for a while now by the advanced filtering tools available on MyHeritage. Including highly useful ethnic filters! On 23andme you can now also get such ethnic filters through 23+. This kind of powerful filtering of your DNA matches on ethnicity is poised to bring about even more insightful breakthroughs to uncover your specific ethnic lineage!
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My apologies for the delayed response, I didn’t see your reply. They are mostly people living in France who were born in Reunion or French people who had ancestors with ties to Reunion. We do have some DNA matches from Reunion on all the DNA services and there are surnames that keep popping up across all the matches. So definitely something I need to look into further. The 23+ looks interesting, I would have to upgrade my mum to the +health to be able to use it as she’s currently just an ancestry only kit at the moment. I’ve found the filtering tools on MyHeritage to be very hit and miss, the ethnicity filters don’t always pick up the people with the ethnicity that I’m filtering for, for example if I want to find those with South Asian ethnicity it only brings up a few matches when I know there are a lot more than that when I go through the matches manually.
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Let me know if you do decide to upgrade to 23+! Also as I aim to expand my survey to include more Indian Ocean Afro-descendants as well I was wondering if you’d be interested in collaborating with me. I would greatly appreciate it!
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I just signed up! This is my first post, although I’ve been following your blog for several years. Thank you so much for the work that you do. 23andme identified 2 relatives with recent (grandparents) Liberian ancestry (22cM and 37cM) and one with Nigerian ancestry (22 cM). I’m looking forward to learning how I can glean more information about my African DNA relatives from my AncestryDNA results as well.
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Great to hear from you Rochelle, I really appreciate your interest!
Those are pretty big matches btw. Especially the one with 37cm! Are they fully (4gp) Liberian or perhaps Americo-Liberian? From what I have observed on Ancestry it is already quite rare to receive African matches greater than 20 cM. The majority of matches being inbetween 8-10 cM.
In case you have not done so yet already you should check out if you have any relatives in common with them (via the “Find Relatives In Common” button on the bottom of the profile page of your match). This could provide you with some really valuable clues helping you to zoom into a mutual ancestor within your own family tree.
Here’s a video btw for navigating the RootsTech Connect website. Hope you have a great time!
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How good or not is gedmatch for finding matches? I found two more Igbo matches using gedmatch I already had three on AncestryDNA.
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From my experience you can indeed find additional African matches on Gedmatch. Not as many as on Ancestry but still usually a few. In theory the pond should be bigger because Gedmatch will include people who’ve tested with several DNA testing companies. However currently not many new testers might be uploading on Gedmatch due to privacy concerns.
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I just found a match on gedmatch 9.7cM. with surname associated with Rivers state Nigeria their first name is Ijaw, also my Yoruba match has an AA mom explains un-Yoruboid results
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Thank you for the information! The relative with the largest shared DNA (37cM) I disregarded initially because she does have one American grandparent. Then, I received another relative with all known grandparents born in Liberia (22cM) and it made me pay more attention. Lol. It could just be a coincidence though. I did think about the Americo-Liberian connection as well. Interesting stuff though. My family has been in Georgia and Alabama since the Civil War (the earliest I was able to trace), so I’ve considered that they may have come through South Carolina and that I may have ancestors from the rice-producing regions of present-day Liberia/Sierra Leone (among other places).
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Yes it’s very interesting! It’s too bad 23andme doesn’t have genetic communities in place such as available on Ancestry. If so then you could probably get more details on your possible Pre-Civil War roots from South Carolina.
Have you looked into the admixture scores for your Liberian matches (also the one with 22cM)? Due to privacy settings they are not always visible. But if so their results could already provide indications on whether they might be Americo-Liberian. From my survey results Americo-Liberians are still often shown to be 100% African. However they do tend to show distinctive regional scores from outside of the expected area around Liberia. Which is to say substantial amounts of “Nigeria” and even more so “Angolan & Congolese” can be very useful to indicate Americo-Liberian background. The same goes for Krio Sierra Leoneans in fact. Liberians without any Americo background will tend to have very convincing scores of over 80% or even over 90% for “Ghanaian, Liberian and Sierra Leonean”. See also this page where I have posted a few Americo-Liberian results (scroll down for it):
https://tracingafricanroots.wordpress.com/west-africa/
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I’ve tested with Ancestry as well. They have “Early North Carolina African Americans” and “Alabama, Georgia & South Carolina African Americans” listed for my communities. As for 23andme, one of my Liberian matches has a sizeable amount of European ancestry (over 25%) so that may point to the grandparent that was born here. My other Liberian match has nearly 93% DNA from the “Ghanaian, Liberian, Sierra Leonean” category with about 6% Congolese/Angolan and no Nigerian DNA. I tested 30.6% “Ghanaian, Liberian, & Sierra Leonean” and 27.8% “Nigerian.” I have 91.1% Sub-Saharan African DNA.
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