Mapping DNA relationships on paper

Question

I have recently started digging into my DNA matches.

I have several closely related matches. I was born in Montana and my grandma was married to a man who has no biological relationship to me. However my mom has lied about who my father is my entire life.

The result was unbelievable I have DNA matches to my non bio grandpa's first wife who had 6 siblings and 4 kids. I first went straight to my grandma's grandchildren luckily one had done the same Ancestry test as me. We had no DNA match but shared matches.

I am 75% 1st cousins with a female and even closer to her cousin and 2 others that are above 500 segments all related.

I have most of the grandparent's, great grandparent's and sibling's names. I just do not know how to map it on paper.

Any suggestions on how to go about this?

Also I have reached out to several people and only a few will even respond and I have been blocked from seeing matches with a few as well.

Answer 1

What you probably want is a McGuire Method Diagram.

This technique of charting DNA matches was developed by Lauren McGuire in 2016.

Lauren wrote a guest post on Blaine Bettinger's blog in 2017 describing her technique. "GUEST POST: The McGuire Method – Simplified Visual DNA Comparisons - The Genetic Genealogist"

"This visual summary, allows you to ... determine which cM relationships do or don’t fit properly. Conversely, if you have a match that you know fits somewhere, but haven’t been able to place, knowing the cM match and the likely location where they belong can bring a seeker much closer to the proper spot in a family."