If you are from an endogamous population, you're used to getting predicted "close" relatives that aren't really so close after all because of endogamy. One of the best strategies for determining if a match is truly worth pursuing for us endogamous people is looking at the size of the largest segment, since many small segments may be artifacts from being related in many ways on many lines, pretty far back. Most of the large genealogical testing companies give the size of the largest segment, but AncestryDNA hasn't done so.
I've accosted Crista Cowen at many genealogy conferences for years (sorry Crista) with my largest segment plea; in fact, I was thinking that Crista appreciated Covid stopping in-person genealogy conferences for now so I can't bother her in person.
But Ancestry has come through!!
AncestryDNA will be rolling out largest segment in the beginning of August! At this point, there will be no sorting by largest segment, but we did ask about it, so hopefully that will come in the future.
This is HUGE for Jewish, Cajun, Hawaiian, and other genealogists who are from endogamous communities.
My only complaint is that now I have to re-do slides for next week's GRIP classes that I'll be teaching. But this is worth it.
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You can like my page on Facebook:
or follow @larasgenealogy .
Only weeks away. What a big help this will be. Thanks for highlighting it! I'll watch my Ancestry DNA results for this helpful new feature.
ReplyDeleteFinally! A rate event when Ancestry actually listens to consumers. Thank you for your persistent advocacy for this, Lara. Now if they would roll back their cease and desist on 3rd party tools..
ReplyDeleteAt this point, I’ll just take this as a huge win and wait on other things. But maybe after a short break.... :)
DeleteAha! Thanks for talking to Crista. I didn't talk to her but did approach the science team about it at least a couple of times. I'm so glad that they're finally doing it!
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what did it, but I’m thrilled!
DeleteThank you Lara! Your persistance has paid off!
ReplyDelete