Smith DNA Project Community Forums

The Smith DNA Project matches testers primarily with YDNA. This requires a male Smith/Schmidt/Smythe/Smyth/Smitt etc descendant to do the DNA test. YDNA is straighforward as the DNA is passed male to male to male. Secondarily, those who have autosomal tests, mtDNA or tree-only, if the tree matches with a high degree of probability, may be grouped into an existing YDNA group. 

Autosomal tests (Family Finder/Ancestry/23andme) cannot be compared with YDNA tests because they are different. Therefore, it's not possible unless an autosomal tester has 1. also done YDNA with a male Smith participant or 2. has tested against a YDNA participant that has also done autosomal to know by DNA if there is a match. Sometimes one can have an excellent tree match but unknown situations such as adoption or NPEs can cause a line to not functionally match. 

In order to provide another way to do matching, we have created autosomal groups. If there are 2 or more people who have done autosomal testing AND they match with each other, although not necessarily with a YDNA tester, they will be placed in an autosomal matching group. This requires the people who have done the testing to alert the admins that there is a match AND for the match to join both FamilyTreeDNA Smith DNA Project as well as tree site smithsworldwide.org as a member so he or she can be placed, with the tree, as a matching kit. Further, this puts the responsiblity of ensuring that other kits are actually matches on the person with the autosomal kit. 

How does one figure out who the match is AND that the match is with a common ancestor with a Smith or similar surname? By using the matching tools in FamilyTreeDNA or Gedmatch to find those who match on the same chromosome and comparing the tree. A lot of people track their matches via a spreadsheet or document that can be sorted. For reference, see this article on chromosome mapping. Quite often this requires that the tester write via email to a kit they believe may match to compare tree lines. If the match goes back so far as not to know who the common Smith ancestor is, but it is sure that it is a Smith, that person can be listed as an autosomal match. 

If you find that you definitely have matches and want to have them listed as an autosomal group on a given ancestor page on smithsworldwide.org, please 1. send a message to the admins of the project requesting a group -your information should include the kit you believe yourself to match with and the ancestor that is in common, or if not known, why you believe that line is a match. 2. make sure that the people you match with are also part of the project and please reference the kit # or other identifying ifnromation so we can add them to a group.