DNA Painter or Phasing Grandparents or both

Now that I am well into using DNA Painter and can see the benefit of putting all known matches into profiles (I now have 15 profiles), I decided to have a deep look at what I was doing. I discovered that my husband's profile was 49% complete with all of his known cousins painted. I was not making any progress on phasing his parents or grandparents because he is the last one of his generation (all grandparents, parents and sibling have passed away). But painting his nearly 70 known cousins has proven to solve that problem. Some of the chromosomes are almost complete including the X chromosome which I thought might be a real challenge to produce. The X chromosome passed to his mother by his maternal grandfather shows up beautifully in the colouring. This section of the chromosome having come from my husband's great grandmother Mercy Ann (Rathbun) Link. Matches on that chromosome that do not carry any autosomal material will be quite distant but that line can be traced back to her mother Eliza Jane Hotrum who was born 22 Feb 1831 in Upper Canada and the daughter of David Hotrum and Mary Baker Smith. Eliza would have received one X chromosome from her father coming directly from his mother Catherina Jons (married to Conrad Hotrum) and the X chromosome she received from her mother Mary Baker Smith would have come from her father Henry Smith and her mother Elizabeth Baker. Until DNA Painter arrived the process of looking at these DNA results from cousins was quite cumbersome.

Looking at myself and my four siblings who have tested and our matching cousins I am coming up with smaller percentages of completion - between 10 and 15 % only. However with so much material and around 30 known cousins (a lot in the same family lines), I had phased my grandparents. The painting proved to be a good check on that phasing. Using the same colours is helpful! I am still painting in just four colours whether in DNA Painter or phasing but eventually I will go to eight colours for the great grandparents.

Because of my experience, I can see a benefit to doing both if you have sufficient material to do the work of matching. I use both charts for an unknown match even yet for my family lines. I had started to phase my husband's chromosomes but was finding it pretty slow going.