How to Add DNA Matches to Your Family Tree
This is the second blog post in the Top Five Things To Do With Your Ancestry DNA series. No matter what your goals are, follow the posts in this series to get the biggest family-history bang from your DNA buck.
Genealogy is all about taking things that you know, and building on top of them, to figure out great new things about your family history. Each time you learn something new, it can be combined with other things you’ve learned to gain new insights.
The longer you do genealogy, and the more you learn about your DNA matches, the more important (not to mention, harder) it becomes to keep track of your DNA matches and how you’re related to all of them. Thankfully, Ancestry gives us some great tools to remember how we are related to our DNA matches.
When you are beginning your journey with Ancestry DNA, one of the most important habits to build is connecting every known DNA match to your family tree. This not only records what you learn about your DNA matches, it’ll help keep you from accidentally researching DNA matches twice. I wish I could say I hadn’t done this (a few times)!
How to Connect a DNA Match to Your Tree
To connect a DNA match to your family tree at Ancestry, there must first be an entry in your family tree that your own DNA match links to.
- If you haven’t linked your own DNA kit to your family tree yet, please check out Link Your DNA Kit to Your Ancestry Profile
- If you don’t already have an entry in your family tree for the DNA match that you want to connect to your tree, go add it now.
I’ll use the DNA match list entry for my maternal aunt, Judy Swanson, as an example. I’ll connect it to the family tree profile I have for her in my family tree.
- Click the picture, or the name, of the DNA match to be taken to their match details page.
- Select the “Connect to tree” button on their match details page.
- In the side-bar menu that pops out on the right side of the screen, enter the name of the family tree profile you want to connect the DNA Match to.
- Ancestry will provide a list of DNA kits that match the name you type in. Once you see the profile that you’re looking for, click on it to make the connection.
Note that the name for the kit in your DNA match list might be different than the name of your relative’s profile in your family tree. This might be because their current name is different than the birth name you have entered for them in your family tree. It could also be because they used a non-descript or anonymized name when they submitted their Ancestry DNA kit.
You know that you’ve successfully connected the DNA match entry to your family tree when you see the “View in tree” button on their match details page. If you click on that button, it’ll take you directly to their family tree profile.
- Now that you’ve got your relative’s DNA match entry connected to your family tree, it’s time to record how you are related to them. This is a super helpful piece of information to help you keep track of what you know about your DNA matches, particularly when you start to work on more and more distant matches. To add your relationship, click on the “Edit Relationship” button on their match details page.
- In the side-bar menu that pops out on the right side of the screen, select which side of the family that your DNA match is on
- Select the known relationship between you and your DNA match
- Click the “Save” button
Great! You’ve made it. You’ve connected your DNA match to your family tree, and you’ve recorded how you’re related to them.
To see the fruits of your labours, head back to your DNA match list and look at the entry for your relative that you just updated. There are three big improvements you’ll notice.
A. Connected DNA Matches have a green family-tree icon added to the lower right of the profile picture. This lets you see, at a glance, that you’ve already researched and match and figured out where they fit in your tree.
B. You can see the specific relationship that you have with your match. This is far more helpful than the vague estimate that Ancestry normally uses.
C. The “View in tree” button shows up for the match. This allows you to quickly jump to their family tree profile directly from your match list.
If you think this Top 5 Tip will be useful for your family and friends to use, please forward it to them as well.
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