As my blog title indicates, I often blunder.
Yesterday I realized I missed an important aspect of the GEDmatch tool:
People Who Share on One or Two of Both Kits
(It may even be the reason it was designed in the first place, and I totally missed it.)
Blaine T. Bettinger often reminds us, we have two trees. Our genealogical tree and our genetic tree. I quote him often when explaining why cousins don't all share matches. (It has to do with recombination and only so much genetic material can be handed down through the generations thus squeezing other DNA out.)
I have a friend who works at the local library and it really bothered me we share so many surnames in the same regions of the country, in the same time frames, but we don't share DNA.
That dimmer switch turned up the light bulb that floats over my head.
We had to share someone. But if I didn't get that little bit that connects us, who might?
I ran People Who Share on One or Two of Both Kits. The result was a list of about fifteen people who share DNA with both of us. They are our link to finding our common ancestor. I have not written them yet. It will be interesting to find out if we share one, or possibly more common ancestors.
Happy finding!
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