Ancestry DNA

[Bob8]

5 hours ago, tonyXIII said:

Hmm. I don't think you've quite understood the point. However, as both my mum and my dad are dead, I cannot ascertain the answer to your question. I believe my dad is (was) my dad and I am more than happy with that.

Sorry, it was a cheap joke. 

[John Rhino]

On 2/5/2019 at 11:29 AM, Maximus Decimus said:

Thanks for this. I would say it isn't only Americans who are a problem, there are many people too willing to make leaps that you can't make. To do it properly, you have to be highly sceptical: a 90% probability isn't enough.

I'm still a little unsure that the ancestry DNA companies are claiming with their percentages. If I go back to my mum's results, 85% of what is Irish? Is it saying 85% of her DNA is similar to Irish people now or 85% of her ancestors were Irish? My initial understanding was that they look at sections of the DNA and are able to identify small changes in the genes that happened amongst certain populations. So if you have that change in your DNA it is evidence that you had that ancestry.

As you've pointed out, populations are very mobile but so are genealogies. Apart from very recent migrants, I'd be surprised if there is anyone in the UK who doesn't have some Viking ancestry.

Yes but who were the Vikings? And don't forget the Normans came from Scandinavia. 

It's not as simple as the ancestry companies make out. 

I'll dig out my references this weekend and post them. They are highly technical but go right to the heart of the matter 

[Farmduck]

 

The FBI is partnering with an at-home DNA kit provider to help solve crimes

 

 

 

[ckn]

My DNA profile.

That'll come as a surprise to the Yugoslav side of my family who have a multi-century history of being landowners in Serbia!  Especially I'm straight down the first-born side and can trace back that family to at least 1700 in the area.

The other parts suits close enough my family makeup of two English grandparents, one Scottish and one Yugoslav.

[Maximus Decimus]

So I finally took the plunge and decided to try this. I mainly did it to see if I could find any more information out about my ancestry through living relatives.

I actually managed to find a white paper ancestry.com released explaining their methods. They take a group of people from a certain area, say Ireland or England, and only include people who can confidently trace their ancestry back to that area for the last 4 generations I think. They then compare your DNA to this group's DNA.

Unsurprisingly, I came out as 78% Irish and 22% English/British. They were able to pinpoint my Irish connections to two regions I already knew, but I'm a bit suspicious that they used data from my family tree to do so. There's a couple of lines in the white paper that suggests they use a mixture of DNA and evidence from family trees.

I'm still uncomfortable with it for some of the reasons I initially outlined: I know it's talking about DNA but I think it has potential to be used in a divisive and misleading way. My mum still makes little comments about not really being English whenever she sees something she doesn't like over here. Also, in the current climate how useful is it to say someone like Anthony Joshua has 0% British DNA? When 13/14 of my most recent direct ancestors were born and lived their whole lives in England, it seems ridiculous to be told I have mostly Irish DNA. 

That said, I hit the jackpot when it came to living relatives and found exactly what I was hoping for. 3rd on my list of closest matches was an American woman with the same surname as my nan. I was soon able to confirm that she was my mum's second cousin. Her grandad was my great-grandad's younger brother. I can't for the life of me figure out why he emigrated to New York after his older brother's had emigrated to Widnes.

I'm slowly in the process of seeing if there are any rich American relatives who might be able to invite me over... 

[Bob8]

2 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

So I finally took the plunge and decided to try this. I mainly did it to see if I could find any more information out about my ancestry through living relatives.

I actually managed to find a white paper ancestry.com released explaining their methods. They take a group of people from a certain area, say Ireland or England, and only include people who can confidently trace their ancestry back to that area for the last 4 generations I think. They then compare your DNA to this group's DNA.

Unsurprisingly, I came out as 78% Irish and 22% English/British. They were able to pinpoint my Irish connections to two regions I already knew, but I'm a bit suspicious that they used data from my family tree to do so. There's a couple of lines in the white paper that suggests they use a mixture of DNA and evidence from family trees.

I'm still uncomfortable with it for some of the reasons I initially outlined: I know it's talking about DNA but I think it has potential to be used in a divisive and misleading way. My mum still makes little comments about not really being English whenever she sees something she doesn't like over here. Also, in the current climate how useful is it to say someone like Anthony Joshua has 0% British DNA? When 13/14 of my most recent direct ancestors were born and lived their whole lives in England, it seems ridiculous to be told I have mostly Irish DNA. 

That said, I hit the jackpot when it came to living relatives and found exactly what I was hoping for. 3rd on my list of closest matches was an American woman with the same surname as my nan. I was soon able to confirm that she was my mum's second cousin. Her grandad was my great-grandad's younger brother. I can't for the life of me figure out why he emigrated to New York after his older brother's had emigrated to Widnes.

I'm slowly in the process of seeing if there are any rich American relatives who might be able to invite me over... 

I think you treat it the same as I would.

Looking at a person's face gives a rough indication as to their ancestoral background. Irish people will look at me and think "Cork" and they would be right. There are some faces that as distinctly Finnish or Waloonian.

But, your DNA and mine are Engish. Because we are English and it's our DNA.

"I can't for the life of me figure out why he emigrated to New York after his older brothers had emigrated to Widnes."

- That might be the quote of the year.

 

[Bleep1673]

On 03/04/2019 at 09:29, ckn said:

My DNA profile.

That'll come as a surprise to the Yugoslav side of my family who have a multi-century history of being landowners in Serbia!  Especially I'm straight down the first-born side and can trace back that family to at least 1700 in the area.

The other parts suits close enough my family makeup of two English grandparents, one Scottish and one Yugoslav.

Not sure Yugoslavia existed when your Grandparents were born?

[ckn]

59 minutes ago, Bleep1673 said:

Not sure Yugoslavia existed when your Grandparents were born?

Yes, it did.

[Bleep1673]

50 minutes ago, ckn said:

Yes, it did.

I thought Tito created it in 1947?

[ckn]

3 minutes ago, Bleep1673 said:

I thought Tito created it in 1947?

No, it was created after the First World War. It was effectively a loose amalgamation of separate countries under one banner. And it was a mess that wasn’t solved until after the civil wars of the 1990s.

[DavidM]

7 minutes ago, ckn said:

No, it was created after the First World War

How much trouble was caused by all those people drawing lines on maps and saying , yeh that’ll do , no more problems !

[ckn]

20 minutes ago, DavidM said:

How much trouble was caused by all those people drawing lines on maps and saying , yeh that’ll do , no more problems !

No trouble ever came from that happening in the Middle East. None at all.

[Shadow]

1 hour ago, ckn said:

No trouble ever came from that happening in the Middle East. None at all.

Or Ireland

[DavidM]

55 minutes ago, Shadow said:

Or Ireland

Go back a bit further in the arbitrary map drawing history and throw in Africa . See straight lines on maps and something’s usually up !

[Wolford6]

1 hour ago, DavidM said:

 . See straight lines on maps and something’s usually up !

On the Deadliest Catch a few weeks ago, it was pointed out that there was/is an issue about the USA/Russia border down the Bering Sea.  The USA wants to use a line of longitude ... i.e. a curved border. Russia insits it should be a straight line A-B, which gives Russia more sea and more fishing rights.

 

OI! Get orff my sea!

[ATLANTISMAN]

ANCESTRY is an interesting one I did the test (Along with my wife around 4 years ago) being adopted (Wonderful parents sadly no longer with us) a few interesting things came out.

Have nailed down lots of 3/4th cousins on my birth mothers side along with her name (Not interested in any this is your life type reunion:)

All seem to come from Hampshire (Before Kent/Sussex)

On my fathers side it seems to link to Yorkshire (Hull/Goole/Sheffield) however I have only got as far as a 2nd cousin.

Some Norwegian/German in me as well (Must go back hundreds of years) and the links to the humber make sense as the vikings came in and did plenty of rape/burning/pillaging :))) LOL

My wife is much more interesting a proud RUSSIAN however she can only go back as far as her grandfather who was a priest and was banished to Siberia by Stalin, she came out as 60% Lithuanian my research took me to a period in the early 1800,s when the Rus tribes invaded and banished many to Siberia (She thought it was all american ###### until a 2nd cousin came up and all the links were proved:)

BTW we all know who owns Ancestry the mormons who now must have the largest database of DNA on the planet:(

 

Paul

[Bleep1673]

On 21/08/2020 at 20:32, DavidM said:

Go back a bit further in the arbitrary map drawing history and throw in Africa . See straight lines on maps and something’s usually up !

Yeah, usually European invaders., Britain, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Spain

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

Being Scottish, I can more easily trace large parts of my family tree as records are, as a general rule, more easily available than is the case in England.  For instance, my dad's side of the family are all Shetlanders from my grandfather backwards, and one strand I already have traced back to my great (x11) grandfather, who was born c. 1510.  That particular strand of my family tree uses the old Scandinavian surname practice of taking your father's first name and adding '-son' or '-daughter' to it, a way of doing things only seemingly given up in Shetland in the late 1700s and early 1800s as, first, women no longer used the '-daughter' suffix and then the surname starts to stay the same from one generation to the next. 

My maternal uncle did extensive work on the other side of the family, my mum's, and I have a copy of all he did.

There is also a very good, easy to use website, Scotland's People (though they do get some names wrong)

Paradoxically perhaps, I am therefore loathe to try DNA testing; maybe I am just being cowardly and wouldn't like something I couldn't explain to turn up.  Or maybe my Aberdonian nativity has imbued me with an inclination to watch the pennies; in this instance, why pay for confirmation of what I already know?

My Yorkshire born and raised wife is a bit envious of the ease with which I get into my family tree through online searching.  I tried to help with some exploratory work on her dad's side of the family, who are from Goole, but struggled to make progress.  Even my initial search threw up the search engine response to 'Goole', "Did you mean Google?"  So I then put "Goole not Google", which got the response, "Did you mean Google not Google?"  There's probably no answer to that!

[shrek]

On 21/08/2020 at 12:33, Maximus Decimus said:

So I finally took the plunge and decided to try this. I mainly did it to see if I could find any more information out about my ancestry through living relatives.

I actually managed to find a white paper ancestry.com released explaining their methods. They take a group of people from a certain area, say Ireland or England, and only include people who can confidently trace their ancestry back to that area for the last 4 generations I think. They then compare your DNA to this group's DNA.

Unsurprisingly, I came out as 78% Irish and 22% English/British. They were able to pinpoint my Irish connections to two regions I already knew, but I'm a bit suspicious that they used data from my family tree to do so. There's a couple of lines in the white paper that suggests they use a mixture of DNA and evidence from family trees.

I'm still uncomfortable with it for some of the reasons I initially outlined: I know it's talking about DNA but I think it has potential to be used in a divisive and misleading way. My mum still makes little comments about not really being English whenever she sees something she doesn't like over here. Also, in the current climate how useful is it to say someone like Anthony Joshua has 0% British DNA? When 13/14 of my most recent direct ancestors were born and lived their whole lives in England, it seems ridiculous to be told I have mostly Irish DNA. 

That said, I hit the jackpot when it came to living relatives and found exactly what I was hoping for. 3rd on my list of closest matches was an American woman with the same surname as my nan. I was soon able to confirm that she was my mum's second cousin. Her grandad was my great-grandad's younger brother. I can't for the life of me figure out why he emigrated to New York after his older brother's had emigrated to Widnes.

I'm slowly in the process of seeing if there are any rich American relatives who might be able to invite me over... 

My wife and I have both done the DNA test, the Ethnicity is way off for hers based on recent relatives and having done large amounts of research into them.  But I like rolling out the fact I'm 26% Irish when it suits, despite any potential inaccuracies in the claim!

The matches have been interesting though, found some great stories, that whilst not direct links have been an interesting distraction from the usual brick walls going straight back.  Currently looking into some 3rd cousins who moved from Accrington to America in the 1800's with the surname "Slinger" which struck me as being unfortunate given the stark differences in gun culture between where they started and where they ended up!

Also thanks to the DNA - found a common relative between my wife and I, quite distant mind!  My father in law used to have a portrait of a guy called Lord Strange at the top of the stairs, always claimed he was a relative but wasn't sure how, tracked him down on the wifes side to being a 8th cousin 7 x removed.  Thanks to the DNA matches, he turned up on my side as a mere 4th cousin 8 x removed - my claims to have the portrait relocated to the top of my stairs have so far been refused!

[Maximus Decimus]

On 21/08/2020 at 19:36, Shadow said:

Or Ireland

I wouldn't call that drawing a line on a map, more a case of splitting one country into two along existing county borders.

[Maximus Decimus]

On 22/08/2020 at 11:14, ATLANTISMAN said:

Some Norwegian/German in me as well (Must go back hundreds of years) and the links to the humber make sense as the vikings came in and did plenty of rape/burning/pillaging :))) LOL

I would caution against this line of thinking. It seems very appealing, and in many ways seems like common sense, however we're talking about events that happened well over 1000 years ago.

To put that into perspective, if you were to take your family tree back 1000 years you would have over a billion ancestors. I doubt there's a white person in the UK who doesn't have hundreds of Vikings in their family tree.

[Maximus Decimus]

19 hours ago, Wiltshire Warrior Dragon said:

Being Scottish, I can more easily trace large parts of my family tree as records are, as a general rule, more easily available than is the case in England.  For instance, my dad's side of the family are all Shetlanders from my grandfather backwards, and one strand I already have traced back to my great (x11) grandfather, who was born c. 1510.  That particular strand of my family tree uses the old Scandinavian surname practice of taking your father's first name and adding '-son' or '-daughter' to it, a way of doing things only seemingly given up in Shetland in the late 1700s and early 1800s as, first, women no longer used the '-daughter' suffix and then the surname starts to stay the same from one generation to the next. 

My maternal uncle did extensive work on the other side of the family, my mum's, and I have a copy of all he did.

There is also a very good, easy to use website, Scotland's People (though they do get some names wrong)

Paradoxically perhaps, I am therefore loathe to try DNA testing; maybe I am just being cowardly and wouldn't like something I couldn't explain to turn up.  Or maybe my Aberdonian nativity has imbued me with an inclination to watch the pennies; in this instance, why pay for confirmation of what I already know?

My Yorkshire born and raised wife is a bit envious of the ease with which I get into my family tree through online searching.  I tried to help with some exploratory work on her dad's side of the family, who are from Goole, but struggled to make progress.  Even my initial search threw up the search engine response to 'Goole', "Did you mean Google?"  So I then put "Goole not Google", which got the response, "Did you mean Google not Google?"  There's probably no answer to that!

As I said, I held off DNA for a long time and only justified it to see if it could help me with some dead-ends that I've reached with my Irish ancestry and potentially help me find living relatives in America. It has done the second of these but not the first yet.

I suppose it comes down to how certain you are about your ancestry. Ancestry records don't often record milkmen!

[gingerjon]

9 minutes ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I would caution against this line of thinking. It seems very appealing, and in many ways seems like common sense, however we're talking about events that happened well over 1000 years ago.

To put that into perspective, if you were to take your family tree back 1000 years you would have over a billion ancestors. I doubt there's a white person in the UK who doesn't have hundreds of Vikings in their family tree.

We are all descended from Charlemagne

[Maximus Decimus]

11 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

We are all descended from Charlemagne

I've seen this rephrased as all living humans are descended from Julius Caesar. Whilst I can easily accept this for all Europeans and even Asians/Africans, I find it harder to accept for relatively cut off groups like Aboriginal Australians or Native Americans. 

[gingerjon]

14 minutes ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I've seen this rephrased as all living humans are descended from Julius Caesar. Whilst I can easily accept this for all Europeans and even Asians/Africans, I find it harder to accept for relatively cut off groups like Aboriginal Australians or Native Americans. 

This is specifically about Europeans.