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Ancestry says I have 904 matches who are 4th cousin or closer (20 centiMorgans shared). I don't see a figure for total matches--they only let you see matches who share at least 7 cMs. I have distant relatives who have taken the Ancestry test but don't show up as matches--either we share under 7 cMs or perhaps zero (if one or both of us have no DNA from the ancestor we share). Are your 1000+ matches "4th cousin or closer"?

I don't have any ideas on where else to search records.

Possibly it would help to take another DNA test because many of the matches would be people who did not take the Ancestry test. MyHeritage had a sale last week for $39. That's over but you might watch for their next sale.

No, I don't have many close matches. I have two first cousins that match. One has shared DNA connections of 982 cM across 41 segments. The next first cousin has shared DNA connections of 347 cM across 18 segments.

I have two second/third cousins. One has shared DNA connections of 263 cM across 14 segments. The other has shared DNA connections of 235 cM across 9 segments.

After that is drops down to a third/fourth cousin who has shared DNA connections of 179 cM across 11 segments.

The rest are third/fourth with diminishing connection and segments. I tried loading the list but only got down to sixth/eighth cousins. They seemed to be going on forever. My laptop is old, so it takes the page forever to load them all. I just stopped it at 17 cM across 1/2 segments. I don't know how far down the connection line Ancestry.com goes when listing your matches...but that's far enough for me.

Because my parents were born in other countries, I had no option but to go for the full subscription from Ancestry.com so I'd have access to the records in the various countries that the family line takes in. I wrote for an estimate to hire one of their genealogists to search in lines that ended early on, but they told me their prices start and $5,000 and go up from there. Thanks, but no thanks.