You’ve signed up and perhaps convinced a family member to take the DNA test, and now you have your results. Now what?

The most important information comes from people who are a genetic distance of 0 or 1 from you and who have publicly posted their family history information

Any time after your DNA results have been analyzed and recorded in the FTDNA system, you can retrieve information about your matches. Youcan also sign up to get automatic email alerts from FTDNA whenever a new person orders a DNA test and it matches your pattern.

To find your matches in the entire FTDNA database, log in to your account, and select “matches” under Y-DNA in the left-hand menu.This will generate a page of information, showing a range of possible matches, starting with 12 markers. The two most important things to focus on in this list are 1) the names of participants who have an exact match or a genetic distance of 1 on the highest number of markers you tested for, and 2) the little orange box with FT written in it next to those people’s contact information. That FT is basic family tree information they have uploaded to FTDNA.

Your next task is to do as much cross-referencing between your family tree and your matches’ family trees as possible.

A perfect match at the 12-marker level may or may not be worth this effort. It could be if your pattern is fairly unique. It won’t be if you have a LOT of people matching you at the 12-marker level. Don’t bother trying to cross-reference a less-than-perfect match at just the 12-marker level.

Perfect matches and genetic distances of 1 at the 37-marker level are very strong indicators of relationship. A genetic distance of 2 at the 67 marker level is probably also worth pursuing, but only after exhausting information on closer matches.

Cross-Referencing Family History Information

Once you know who you match with, see if you can get fairly detailed family history information. If your match is willing to share, get ALL the data on siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, places of residence, etc. you can.

Cross-referencing involves tracking every line for every person in your tree for at least two generations and sometimes three below your oldest known ancestor. The Camerons and other Scots very frequently traveled in family groups from place to place and between wars. Very frequently you will find that cousins married cousins and there was a tight network of interconnections within these groups. You may also be able to deduce who your ancestors’ cousins were by following these other lines backward and forward in time.

The trick to breaking that brick wall is to find out if your extended family information coincides with extended family information from your DNA matches. Did two branches live in the same place at the same time?

Project Tools For Supporting Cross-Referencing

The Clan Cameron DNA Project has added a family tree database to the project web page designed to store detailed information on families within the project. Oldest Known Ancestors are being linked directly to their family file in the database, and Project Administrators will help load more complete family files for those who wish to share.