This might be a basic, but how might one best figure out if a Ancestry DNA match is a relative when there are no surname matches between the two trees? For example, a cousin I actually know is a DNA match and surname match, as would be expected. Other members are DNA matches, but contain no ancestor surname match and often no location match either. It just seems quite random and more improbable to find a real relative among the 7 pages of possible matches I have been given. Can any one advise on this? Thanks.

Careful research and communication. That's the slow way. There is no fast way.

Cyndi

I haven't been successful in absolutely determining matches in cases such as you cite. HOWEVER, because of general family migration patterns, I can often figure that there is probably a match amongst this line (or another) due to looking at surname, location AND time period.

For example, I have lots of colonial lines. I've been able to trace from say eastern NC up to Virginia or Maryland. I've paid attention to other names in the censuses (family groups tended to migrate together, and often intermarried). You may look at the surnames and the years and the location and find that's an indication that some generation or two further up your tree (or theirs) may be where your lines converged.

Another thing that has helped me is to continue to flesh out the cousins and the siblings of my ancestors. That links me up to more surnames and locations.

AND, when I'm looking at the trees, I ALWAYS look at the PEDIGREE to go upward. It's useless to compare the family view until you've gotten back to the common place and time...

I posted earlier today about finding YouTube videos about DNA; some of them are produced by Ancestry.com. I didn't know until we watched the YouTube video titled "AncestryDNA; What to Do With All Those Matches,"
[link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv3_JCWUF-s]
that the surnames listed at the top of your match are NOT matches to your family surnames, unless found in a "Hint" chart. They just highlight names in common between your tree and a tree of someone whose DNA IS A MATCH to yours. I was puzzled for a long time because, like probably most of you, we have a sprinkling of Jones and Smith surnames in our tree, and we kept getting matched to other trees with those surnames. When I looked at them, the individuals belonging to those names were not at all in the same geographic or chronological location as my family members. Now I know the surname list MIGHT help me to look more closely at a lineage, but the real DNA match may be elsewhere, even through an ancestor I don't have listed yet in my tree.

hrnmsf, you are totally correct, and I realized after reading your post that I need to clarify something in my earlier post.

I have realized that I don't necessarily look for surname matches as much as I have a 'running tab' in my head of names that appear in certain areas frequently, as neighbors, or as 'married into' names. Those names as as important as any surname. And you have to also be willing to consider how names varied in their spellings. I have Troublefields who were also Turbevilles and sometimes Turbyfills. Moores and Mores. Parrott and Perotts. Any combination thereof! And then there was the (as yet unsolved) Johnson also once listed as Butler. Go figure on that one.

And to confuse people even more - even with a "hint leaf" for a common ancestor in both trees, the possibility exists that the common ancestor isn't where your dna connection to your match is!

OR you could be related a few times over to someone through a few lines (I've found a couple so far that look like they could be related through a Butler line, a Lee line, etc.). And if I'm related to someone through the Lee line, I could be related a few times over. [Same thing it if happens in my Grandmother Newell's line. Her mother and her father were both Blakesleys, third cousins or so, and a few generations back in the Brown line, there were Walkers and Jones that were related a few times over).]