If you have an unknown parent

Learn how to set up your tree if you want to use WATO plus to help identify an unknown parent

Let's take the example of Janet, who was born in 1975. Janet has identified her biological mother, but would like to use her DNA matches to identify her biological father.

• She has used information and matches from various testing companies, including shared matches at AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, Living DNA, and MyHeritage, and the SideView feature at AncestryDNA
• This has allowed her to connect some of her top matches into family trees
• She knows that these family trees must connect to her biological family tree

Janet starts by identifying the tree that has the strongest matches in it, since this is likely to contain the genetic relatives who are most closely related to her unknown father. She can create a new WATO plus tree and work through the steps to set it up.

When she generates hypotheses or hovers over a node and clicks use as hypothesis, WATO plus will automatically create a trail down to Janet

The trail that will be created for hypotheses in this tree

Step 1. Set up the research question #

Screenshot of the research question form

In this form, Janet can select Father from the dropdown and enter her own name and birth year. She has tested herself, so she can leave the using the DNA matches of field set to This person.

Since she also knows the birth year of her biological mother (1957), she can add it under Optional info. This will enable her to use age-based probabilities that include the age of both parents.

If she is using matches from just one testing company and wants to be able to distinguish between trees easily in the dashboard, she can also select that testing company from the dropdown menu under Optional info.

Step 2: Input a family tree #

Screenshot of the research question with prompt to import a tree

Janet can import a GEDCOM file, which she can export from the website or software where she has been building the tree. To do this, she would click the Actions and Settings button and then the action Import GEDCOM. This will bring up the following overlay:

Screenshot of the GEDCOM import form

After Janet drags her GEDCOM file onto the overlay, or clicks to browse for it, WATO plus will generate a list of the people in that tree who have descendants. She can type some letters into the box to find the common ancestral couple that she wants to import.

She would choose the couple to import on the basis that she thinks they are likely to be common ancestors to both her and the matches in the tree.

In this case, she chooses John Davidson and Catherine O'Neil.

Screenshot of the GEDCOM ancestor selection form

Once she has clicked Import descendants, this subset of the tree will be imported and she can start to add matches.

Screenshot of the GEDCOM import confirmation

The advantage of using a GEDCOM file is that it's quite likely that you added birth years when creating your tree, and these will be imported into WATO plus. This will make the suggestions much more useful. If a GEDCOM is not available, other methods are available:

• She can build a tree manually by hovering over the node Most recent common ancestor or couple and clicking add child.
• If she has previously worked with the tree in the older version of WATO, she can export a text file under the SAVE menu within that tree, and then import the file via the import text file option under Actions and Settings