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Showing posts from June, 2020

Free BMD - and the tale of a close DNA match

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This week I messaged a DNA match at My Heritage - they are the largest shared cM match I have on my father's paternal line. I had tried to work out their ancestors by first checking Free BMD - one of my favourite index sites to look for birth, death and marriage info for my English connections. Unusually I couldn't find enough pointers from this site to gather more clues, so messaging was my only option. When messaging somone for the first time there are a few key points to keep in mind: the person may not be actively researching their family - they may have tested out of curiousity they may have just started researching their family and not have a lot of information they may be a descendant of unknown parentage and hoping to find their biological family they may not like to share information with total strangers So my I aim to make first messages: Friendly Short and sweet only ask one question, usually about grandparents rather than currently living peo