Ancestry Academy  > Education  >  AncestryDNA Using Your Matches to Solve Brick Walls

 

In this enthusiastic and highly educational virtual event, Ancestry’s Corporate Genealogist Crista Cowan teaches viewers how to use their AncestryDNA match list to break through genealogical "brick walls". Crista defines a brick wall as a place where research gets stuck, specifically focusing on identifying unknown ancestors. The main goal of the session is to equip family historians with the knowledge of random DNA inheritance and a structured methodology—comparing the search for distant ancestors to a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture—to confidently organize matches and pinpoint biological relationships.

 

The virtual event follows a practical, step-by-step framework, beginning with the crucial strategy of testing the oldest living generations, such as parents or their siblings, to capture the most DNA. Crista then demonstrates her personal organizational method: creating eight color-coded custom groups corresponding to a researcher's eight great-grandparents. By sorting the first 50 known matches into these groups, researchers can easily identify the "leftovers"—unknown matches that hold the key to breaking through a brick wall. The session ends in a compelling real-world case study of Crista's own ancestor, John O'Brien, showcasing how to build private "quick and dirty" trees for unknown matches and use tools like Ancestry ProTools to trace lineages back to a common ancestor.

 

Chapters:

[0:00] The Science of Random Inheritance

[9:04] Understanding Tree Views and Relationships

[19:26] The Eight Great-Grandparent Strategy

[24:42] Hunting for "Leftover" Matches

[51:14] Case Study: Building Quick and Dirty Trees

 

Create custom color-coded groups for your eight great-grandparents and start organizing your top 50 DNA matches today.