On 2008.03.31 Annette Stolberg <annettes@...> wrote:

I am in deep quandary over the meaning of "low resolution" that
provided 50 names of people that match my dna. The high resolution
results of my test will be unavailable until mid April.

As often happens with Family Tree DNA, your high resolution results
are in early. If you check your personal FTDNA webpage or the
Jewish Ukraine West website you will see that both your HVR1 and
HVR2 results are there now, as well as your low resolution and high
resolution matches

The quandary is if a dna match means a relationship between myself
and 50 people on the low resolution list, can I assume that they are
relatives of mine?

You can assume that you have a common ancestor with all of them, but
that common ancestor could have lived many generations ago, in an
anthropological rather than a genealogical time frame.

These are names >from the Jewish Ukraine project, where my roots
are. One of the people has already contacted me and my reply gave
the towns where my family were born; I have yet to hear back from
this person, and am feeling reluctant to contact any of the others
on the list.

If you click on the MyMaps feature of your FTDNA personal webpage,
you will see which of your low resolution matches have maternal
ancestors >from the same area as yours are from. There is a "bubble"
to click on under the map if you want to see the ancestral villages
of your high resolution matches. The matches are shown as teardrops
on the map. If you click on any of those teardrops, you will see
the name of the match whose ancestors came >from the location where
the teardrop is pointing.

I would recommend you start by contacting the matches whose
ancestors are geographically closest to yours. You appear as the
"little blue man" on the map.

So - if I do make an effort to contact the other 49 names, what does
anyone suggest that I reveal about myself? Because the female line
wouldn't have a surname base that would be constant, as with the male
line, I thought I wouldn't give family names. Should I give the names
anyway?

It helps to give the shtetl name and the surnames of your maternal
ancestors as far back as you know as well as the dates (roughly)
when they lived. Depending on how comfortable you feel discussing
more that this based on your matches' responses to your information,
some other things that can be helpful in finding out if your
families are related in a genealogical time frame are oral histories
about famous relatives, recipes that are particular to your mother
and her mother, and unusual physical or medical characteristics on
your maternal line. I'm sure SIG members can think of additional
clues they have used to help discover if their matches are related
in the last couple of hundred years.

I hope this helps.
Judy Simon
co-administrator, Jewish Ukraine West