Sifting for gold matches

As part of my O'Brien DNA research, I spent some time over the weekend sifting for gold, looking for matches who might help break through some of my brickwalls. The matches in common between my Dad's kit on FamilyTreeDNA and his first cousin, MO, currently generate a list of 661 individuals. I downloaded that group as a CSV file, and then tried to separate those matches further, color coding in the spreadsheet based on known connections to my O'Brien, Lambert, Lamon, and Smith branches.

I have also tried a similar approach within Ancestry, using ProTools and color coding matches. As I've discovered since last summer, one of the big challenges to overcome is a lack of matches connecting to the O'Brien-Bridget side of the tree.

Using the 661 matches in common on FTDNA, I still do not see very many matches that point to unknown families who may be connected to Bridget. On the O'Brien side, there were a few great matches to see. One match, JJO, had the YDNA haplogroup R-FGC5628, which is associated with Brian Boru, the founder of the O'Brien clan. Another match, EM, is a known descendant from the Pennsylvania O'Briens group.

I'm still working to create a group of mystery matches, as so far almost everyone is either Lamon-Smith or O'Brien-Lambert when I do the color coding.