DNA matches favoring certain sides?

[wisteria]

I’m really confused because I tend to find a lot of matches from my paternal grandmothers and paternal grandfathers family. I can also find quite a few from my maternal grandfathers. But so far I’ve only confirmed one person after looking in myheritage, ftdna, and 23andme that is connected to me through my maternal grandmother. And I just found them yesterday after looking for 2 years. Through her father. I still haven’t found any matches through her mother. My maternal grandmother only had one sister and her mother was an only child. But her father had a pretty large family. I was wondering maybe it was because the family size is smaller, but most of the hits I’m getting come from a 3rd, 4th or 5th great grandparent on other sides.

As as side note, my maternal grandmother and I were really close growing up, and with her mother (my great-grandma). I know the most about their family history from my great grandma and hardly know my other sides. However I don’t look, I think, at all like my maternal grandmothers family. I’m sort of sad that I’m having a hard time finding some connections on that side. Is it possible that I just didn’t inherit nearly as much dna from my maternal grandma? How uneven can it be exactly?

[Luke35]

I think the range of inheritance at the grandparent level is 20-30%, something like that - so I expect you got at least 20% from her.

It seems to me Americans test the most, I have a ton of American matches. Was this maternal line of your fam more recently located in Europe, relative to your other ancestors?

Also, it could be simply chance, she had a small family and perhaps the people on that side of your family just have not done DNA testing?

[wisteria]

I think the range of inheritance at the grandparent level is 20-30%, something like that - so I expect you got at least 20% from her.

It seems to me Americans test the most, I have a ton of American matches. Was this maternal line of your fam more recently located in Europe, relative to your other ancestors?

Also, it could be simply chance, she had a small family and perhaps the people on that side of your family just have not done DNA testing?

Her family is mostly colonial English. Maybe it is just chance! I thought it is really odd, though. Of course when I found the one on myheritage it was through a 5th great-grandparent, and there were relatives we shared, but the percentage was tiny and they didn’t have trees. AncestryDNA results should be here any day, so maybe I’ll have more luck there, I’m hoping!

Was just curious if anyone else has had similar issues with their relative matches seeming to favor certain sides. I keep on getting matches to same great grandparents it seems from a ton of people...maybe it just is family size and chance!

[Morena]

I think your matches are just chance. But I do think that people tend to inherit a little more from one parent than another. I seemed to have inherited more from my mother than my father if I look at the raw numbers. I don't know how that works.

[wisteria]

Ok, since I got my dna matches from ancestry, I have my maternal grandmothers sister on there. When I look at who we have in common, it is my sister, her, and then jumps to 4+ cousins. And there aren’t very many. But they are there and now I know whose side they are on! I don’t have many from my maternal grandfathers fathers side either, more on his mother’s. But he was an only child and so was his father. That must be part of the problem.

I noticed I get a lot of the same ancestor matches, like to an ancestor last name George on my paternal grandmothers side. Several of those. They seem to dominate my list. Maybe just a bigger family, I guess!

Is there no way to find shared segments? I was hoping there was since I was using dna painter, but it’s not looking like it. What a big bummer.

[Chris596]

I've noticed a similar thing in my case. But it's mainly an ,,ethnicity'' related thing, but it's also related to my maternal side. I mean I have a little bit of Jewish (Ashkenazi) ancestry and more than 50% of my matches at Myheritage, FTDNA, GEDmatch etc. are Jewish people. Really interesting.

Some people say it's because the common ancestry of the Jews are closely related so it's easy to find matches for people who have some Jewish ancestry. I think this is the explanation in my case.