A PBS Genetic Genealogy Special/ +Are a bunch of shared small segments meaningful?

A PBS pledge drive special featuring a genetic genealogist that all of those in the genetic genealogy community have been following for years and is well known to us has been airing on PBS. Diahan Southard hosted this PBS special called "Your DNA Secrets Revealed". It features people who took DNA tests and found unexpected, surprising, health, relationship, or ethnicity results. Some of those participating in this show are also well known to those in the genetic genealogy community such as Jerome Narramore. Hopefully Diahan's enthusiasm about DNA testing encouraged people to donate to PBS, so they might sponsor more shows like this, and motivate more people to consider testing. I have noticed a drop off in the number of matches my family has been getting and would love to see more people test. 

What could a bunch of small segments shared mean? 

Every once in a while, looking at shared segments in chromosome browsers, I've discovered 5 or 6 small shared segments and wondered what the relationship with this match could be? I had heard that the more segments you share with someone the greater the likelihood the match is close as opposed to one large segment. 

There are several reasons why we might share a number of segments with a match including:

1. Endogamy, caused by ancestors who exclusively married within a small religious group or population group. 
2. Being related to a match more than once. 
3. False positive segments.
4. A close family relationship to your match. 

I'm finding matches that share 5 or 6 segments with me are close family. At least 2nd or 3rd cousin range. 

How do DNA companies define close relatives? The DNA testing companies generally place first cousins under close relatives, and sometimes 2nd cousins.  Aunts and Uncles are also under close family. Extended family generally includes 2nd and 3rd cousins. The rest are under distant cousins. 

When I first saw a particular match, illustration below, in the chromosome browser I didn't know what our relationship was? Some of the segments are small and could have been false positive segments? The largest is 20 cMs. 

Could be a close cousin or a more distant cousin? My paternal aunt's results answered this question. She shares 16 larger segments with this shared match. 

I contacted this match and found out exactly how we are related. This family lives in Austria and I had an idea of how we were related but not on which line until I heard from his nephew. This tester was a 1rst cousin once removed of my aunt. This family had photos of our family we didn't have. One of our best cousin finds. 

Not  long ago this Austrian family uploaded their MyHeritage kits to FamilyTree DNA. I discovered one of my first cousins at FTDNA shared even more DNA with this match than my aunt. My cousin shares 533 cMs with this match and my aunt 450 cMs. 

Why do I only share 90 cMs with this same match? Looking at my Genome Mate Pro segment map. I see that I inherited DNA from my grandmother's French Canadian family instead of my Austrian family like my aunt and cousin on some of those segments.

Four generations of our Austrian extended family have tested. Since I didn't share as many large DNA segments with the eldest member of the family, the uncle, I don't match with other members of this family. My cousin and aunt match all 4 generations. My first cousin is my aunt's nephew, not a child of hers, so he inherited his segments from his father, my uncle. They both match four generations of this family.

The uncle shared 16 segments with my aunt, but only 3 segments with his great-great-niece. 

A number of small segments can definitely be meaningful and, as in this case, the match is a member of our extended family. As we can see it's important to test older members of the family because younger members may not share enough DNA to show up in our results. Also testing as many family members as you can afford is very helpful because we all share different segments of DNA.

Using Ancestry.com LifeStory To Share Documents In A Timeline Format/Melvin Family Problems

I'm finding that LifeStory at Ancestry.com family trees is a great way to share the documents and newspaper articles I've collected. You can use Google Chrome. or another print feature that allows you to save the story as a PDF on your computer. You can bind a number of ancestral stories together using a PDF binder app. 

Since I have documents, articles, messages, saved in a number of places it is time consuming to access and information can get lost. I do have files on my computers for ancestral couples, but I haven't always been good about transferring information from downloads or flash drives to these file explorer folders. I decided to go through the 3 computers I have and my flash drives and attach my documents to ancestral life stories at Ancestry so I could easily review these documents in a timeline format. As I was doing this I found mistakes in my tree. I also found out I left out information which I have added. It was a very fruitful exercise.

I had forgotten about some discrepancies which I discovered again while reviewing the documentation in a timeline format. For instance below, my 5th great-grandfather, John Melvin appears to travel back and forth hundreds of miles in the early 19th century, when travel was slow and difficult. In 1810 he is living in Worcester County, Maryland, according to the 1810 Census. We then find John Melvin in Bracken County, Kentucky in 1812, many miles from Worcester Maryland. In 1814 we find John Melvin back in Maryland selling land with his wife Polly (see PDF below).

This discrepancy needs to be resolved. To do this I need to establish the John Melvin of Bracken County, Kentucky is actually the same man as the John Melvin in Worcester County, Maryland. 

John Melvin never left any information about exactly where he was born. The 1850 Census gives Maryland as his place of birth. John Melvin's children are listed below. The best way to establish exactly where the Melvin family came from is by researching his family members. All of the children state they were born in Maryland. 

I had never found a document that stated exactly where in Maryland the children were born? I began researching this line again and found a Civil War disability form for John W. Melvin at Fold3. I didn't think any of the Melvin children were in the right age range to serve in that war. John W. Melvin may have lied about his age in order to serve or the crossed out age on the form is his actual age and someone changed it in error to age 45. The age appears to have been recorded as 45, then 58, and then 45 again on the form. 

I have been able to confirm this is John W. Melvin of Bracken County, Kentucky. His wife applied for a widow's pension and she appears on the veterans' schedule for the 1890 Census in Bracken County, Kentucky. 

I feel confident that I have proven my Melvin family of Kentucky migrated from Worcester County, Maryland. Maybe John Melvin traveled to Bracken County, Kentucky before bringing his wife and children? I'm continuing to research this family in hopes of finding more documentation. 

I do like the LifeStory and how it presents my documentation and lays out a coherent story for my ancestors. It's a great way to share information we've collected and to refer back to this information while continuing research. Below is my grandfather Rudolph Kapple's LifeStory. I had forgotten about some of the information I collected about him before attaching information. 

Going through the documents in a timeline format has helped me find several gaps in my information. It's going to help improve my documentation for my tree. 

I've also downloaded the new version of RootsMagic and downloaded all of the information I just attached to the Ancestry.com tree to this program. I know for a fact, after losing some information from a computer crash, that you can't have too many backups.