Category Archives: Family Tree DNA

DNA Tidbit #5: What’s Your Goal?

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You probably see this all the time on social media:

“I just got my DNA results. Now what?”

No further information is given.

The answer is, “What is your goal?”

Why did they test and what are they hoping to learn?

DNA Tidbit Challenge: Define goals for answering genealogy questions, allowing you to focus your efforts.

Your DNA testing goal depends on a number of factors including:

  • What test you took, meaning Y DNA, mitochondrial or autosomal.
  • Where you tested and the tools they offer.
  • What you’re hoping to achieve. In other words, why did you test in the first place?

For a short article about the difference between Y, mitochondrial, and autosomal DNA, please click here.

For more seasoned genealogists, we may have taken all the tests and answered many questions already, but still, our research needs to be guided by goals.

I regularly check my matches. I still think I may have had a half-sibling that is yet to be located. After I confirm that no, I don’t have any new close matches, I then look at the rest, making notes where appropriate.

Recently, late one night, I thought to myself, “why am I doing this?” Endlessly scrolling through new matches and randomly seeing if I can figure out where they fit or which ancestor we share.

But why?

Originally, I had two broad goals.

  • I wanted to find Y line males in each line and other males from the same supposed line to confirm that indeed the ancestral line is what the paper trail had identified.
  • To confirm that I am indeed descended from the ancestral lines I think I am, meaning no NPEs. As a genealogist, the only thing I’d hate worse than discovering that I’ve been researching the wrong line for all these years is to keep doing so.

Given that I’ve confirmed my connection to ancestors on most lines back several generations now, what are my goals?

Broad and Deep

I’ve realized over the years that goals are both broad and deep.

Broad goals are as I described above, in essence, spanning the entire tree.

My broad goals have changed a bit over time. I’ve located and tested descendants of many Y lines, but I’m still working on a few. I’ve confirmed most of my lineage back several generations by matching the DNA from other children of the same ancestor and using tools like triangulation and DNAPainter to confirm the segment is actually from the ancestral couple I think it is.

I’ve added the goal of breaking down brick walls.

This means that I need to look deep instead of broad.

Deep means that I need to focus on and formulate a plan for each line.

Looking Deep

I’ve identified three specific deep goals and put together a plan with action steps to achieve those goals.

  • Deep Goal #1 – Collecting and Using Y and Mitochondrial DNA

I like to “collect” the Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA results/haplogroups of my ancestors for different reasons. First, I’ve discovered surprises in where their DNA originated. For both Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA, you can identify their continent of origin as well as confirm ancestors or break down brick walls for that one specific line through matches and other tools at Family Tree DNA.

Looking at my tree, my closest ancestor whose Y DNA or mtDNA I don’t have is my great-grandmother, Evaline Miller (1857-1939) who had 4 daughters who all had daughters. You wouldn’t think it would be this difficult to find someone who descends to current through all daughters.

How do I go about achieving this goal? What are some alternatives?

  • Track and ask family members, if possible.
  • Find descendants using MyHeritage, Ancestry and Geneanet (especially in Europe) trees. Bonus – they may also have photos or information that I don’t, especially since this isn’t a distant ancestor.

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Ancestry’s ThruLines shows your matches by ancestor, so long as the connection can be made through trees. Unfortunately, in this case, no one descends correctly for mitochondrial DNA, meaning through all females to the current generation which can be male. BUT, they might have an aunt or uncle who does, so it’s certainly worth making a contact attempt.

  • I can also use WikiTree to see if someone has already tested in her line. Unfortunately, no.

However, I don’t know the profile manager so maybe I should click and see how we might be related. You never know and the answer is no if you don’t ask😊

Deep Goal #2 – Confirming a Specific Ancestor

I want to confirm that a specific ancestor is my ancestor, or as close as I can get.

What do I mean by that?

In the first couple of close generations, using autosomal DNA, we can confirm ancestral lines and parentage. We can confirm our parents and our grandparents, but further back in that, we have to use a combination of our tree and other tools to confirm our paper genealogy.

For example, as we move further back in time, we can’t confirm that one particular son was the father as opposed to his brother. In closer generations, autosomal DNA might help, but not beyond the first couple of generations. Second cousins always match autosomally, but beyond that, not so much.

Using Y DNA, if we can find a suitable candidate, I can confirm that my Estes ancestor actually does descend through the Estes line indicated by my paper trail.

I need to find someone in my line either to test or who has already tested, of course.

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If they do test and share their match information with me, and others from that same line have tested, I can see their earliest known ancestors on their Y DNA match page.

If someone from that line has already tested and has joined a surname project, you can see their results on the public project page if they have authorized public project display.

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This is also one way of determining whether or not your line has already tested, especially if you have no Y DNA matches to the expected surname and ancestor. If others have tested from that ancestor, and you don’t match them, there’s a mystery to be unraveled.

To see if projects exist for your surnames, you can click here and scroll down to the search box, below.

Please note that if someone else in your family takes the Y DNA test, that doesn’t guarantee that you descend from that ancestor too unless that person is a reasonably close relative and you match them autosomally in the expected way.

Confirmation of a specific ancestor requires two things without Y DNA testing:

  • Sharing autosomal matches, and preferably triangulated segments, with others who descend from that ancestor (or ancestral couple) through another child.
  • Eliminating other common ancestors.

Of course, Ancestry’s ThruLines are useful for this purpose as are MyHeritage’s Theories of Family Relativity, but that only works if people have linked their DNA results to a tree.

My favorite tool for ancestor confirmation is DNAPainter where you can paint your segments from FamilyTreeDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage and GEDmatch, either individually or in bulk. You can’t use Ancestry DNA information for this purpose, but you can transfer your Ancestry DNA file to those other vendors (except 23andMe) for free, and search for matches without retesting. (Step-by-step transfer instructions are found here.)

Here’s an example of a group of my matches from various companies painted on one of my chromosomes at DNAPainter. You can read all about how to use DNAPainter, here.

I identify every match that I can and paint those segments to that ancestor. Ancestors are identified by color that I’ve assigned.

In this case, I have identified several people who descend from ancestors through my paternal grandmother’s side going back four generations. We have a total of 12 descendants of the couple Henry Bolton and Nancy Mann (burgundy), even though initially I can only identify some people back to either my grandparents (mustard color) or my grandmother’s parents (grey) or her grandparents (blue). The fact that several people descend from Henry and Nancy, through multiple children, confirms this segment back to that couple. Of course, we don’t know which person of that couple until we find people matching from upstream ancestors.

What about that purple person? I don’t know how they match to me – meaning through which ancestor based on genealogy. However, I know for sure at least part of that matching segment, the burgundy portion, is through Henry Bolton and Nancy Mann, or their ancestors.

Deep Goal #3 – Breaking Down a Brick Wall

Of course, the nature of your brick wall may vary, but I’ll use the example of not being able to find the parents of an ancestral couple.

In the above example, I mentioned that each segment goes back to a couple. Clearly, in the next generation, that segment either comes from either the father or mother, or parts from both perhaps. In this case, that oldest burgundy segment originated with either Henry Bolton or Nancy Mann.

In other words, in the next generation upstream, that segment can be assigned to another couple.

Even if we don’t know who that couple is, it’s still their DNA and other people may have inherited that very same segment.

What we need to know is if the people who share that segment with us and each other also have people in their trees in common with each other that we don’t have in our trees.

Does that make sense? I’m looking for commonality between other testers in their trees that might allow me to connect back another generation.

That common couple in their trees may be the key to unlocking the next generation.

Caveat – please note that people they have in common that we don’t may also be wives of their ancestors downstream of our common ancestor. Just keep that in mind.

Let’s shift away from that Bolton example and look at another way to identify clusters of people and common ancestors.

In order to identify clusters of people who match me and each other, I utilize Genetic Affairs autocluster, or the AutoCluster features incorporated into MyHeritage or the Tier 1 “Clusters” option at GEDmatch.

Based on the ancestors of people in this red cluster that I CAN identify, I know it’s a Crumley cluster. The wife of my William Crumley (1767/8 – 1837/40) has never been identified. I looked at the trees of the people in this cluster that I don’t know and can’t identify a common ancestor, and I discovered at least two people have a Babb family in their tree.

Babb was a near neighbor to William Crumley’s family, but I’ve also noticed that Babb married into this line downstream another 3 generations in Iowa. These families migrated from Frederick County, VA to Greene County, TN and on, together – so I’ll need to be very careful. However, I can’t help but wonder if my William’s wife was a Babb.

I need to see if any of my other matches have Babb as a common name. Now, I can search for Babb at any of the testing vendors to see what, if anything, I can discover.

Genetic Affairs has a combined AutoCluster and AutoTree/AutoPedigree function that compares and combines the trees of cluster members for you, here.

Goals Summary

Now, it’s your turn.

  • What are your genealogy goals that DNA can assist with?
  • Are those goals broad or deep?
  • What kind of DNA test can answer or help answer those questions?
  • What tools and research techniques fit the quandary at hand?

I suggest that you look at each ancestor, and in particular each end-of-line ancestor thinking about where you can focus to obtain answers and reveal new ancestors.

Happy ancestor hunting!

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Books

DNA Tidbit #2: FamilyTreeDNA’s Compare Origins Map

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When I started this series, my goaI was to find tidbits that might not be well known – features that people might not realize are available. We can all use all the help/hints we can get, right?!.

FamilyTreeDNA’s myOrigins “Compare Origins” map fits that bill perfectly. The functionality changed recently, probably with the introduction of myOrigins 3, and I had no idea.

It’s a pretty well-hidden feature, so I bet lots of other people don’t know either.

Hat tip to one of my readers who DID notice and suggested this tidbit.

You’ll need to have taken the Family Finder autosomal test at Family Tree DNA or transferred an autosomal DNA file from another vendor. If you haven’t tested or transferred, and you’ve tested elsewhere, you can transfer for free, here. You’ll need to unlock the advanced features for $29 which is a significant savings compared to a new test.

DNA Tidbit Challenge: Sign on to your account at Family Tree DNA and click on the myOrigins tab in the Autosomal DNA section.

The first thing you’ll see is the estimate of your population origins. What you may not notice is that there’s a second tab, “Compare Origins,” shown below.

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When you click on the Compare Origins tab, you’ll still see the map, but you’ll also see a list of your matches who have opted-in to sharing their origins.

To opt-in, go to your Account Settings, in the dropdown by your name, and click on Privacy and Sharing. Scroll down to “Origins Sharing” and move the button to on.

If you have not opted in, I believe you’ll see a question at this point asking if you wish to do so. If you don’t opt-in, you can’t compare.

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If you’re looking for someone with a specific population ancestry, especially at the continental level, this comparison feature may be particularly useful. For me, that would be Native American, although Donald doesn’t share that population with me. If you do find someone with that same population, that doesn’t mean that’s HOW you match the person, just another hint.

The comparison is a cool feature, but not where we’re focusing in this tidbit article.

Map Pins

Notice this map pin button?

If you click on that pin, a popup screen will open where you’ll be able to select the paternal ancestor markers or the maternal ancestor markers for your matches.

To be very clear, these pins are their direct patrilineal and direct matrilineal lines, only, meaning your Y DNA if you’re a male and your mitochondrial DNA if you are either male or female and have taken the mitochondrial DNA test.

Of course, your match will only have a pin if they’ve taken that test AND completed the Matches Map geographical information on their own page. If you haven’t done that, please do so your pins will be visible to your matches here and for Y and mitochondrial DNA Matches Maps.

Your Matches’ Y and mtDNA Lineages

How can you use this information?

You may not be related to these people through their patrilineal or matrilineal lines. But then again, you may not know how you are related, and location may still be relevant because, let’s face it, our ancestors married their neighbors.

There are two different ways to utilize this map. From the map and from your matches.

Working from the Map

My mother’s grandfather immigrated from the Netherlands. There’s a good chance that the people I match with Dutch roots, especially recent Dutch roots, may be related to that line.

On the map, I clicked on a blue (paternal) pin and the paternal ancestor information for that tester is displayed.

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Surnames and locations are both important, especially in countries where surnames weren’t standardized or were/are patronymic.

You can view your match’s profile for additional information or compare your origins.

If you click on “Pin Marker,” you can then go back to the map pin screen and elect to show only pinned markers. Pinned markers are temporary and not saved beyond your current session.

Working from the Match

Each match that has a pin available will be indicated with a pin beside their name.

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If you click on that pin, it will display the pin on the map. If no other pins are displayed, it will be the only pin showing.

If you do have all of the pins displayed and you mouse over the pin for that match, it blackens the pin on the map so you can see which pin represents the most distant patrilineal (blue) or matrilineal (red) ancestor for that particular match.

Search for Surnames

When I discovered the search facility in conjunction with the map, I was like a kid in a candy shop.

I entered “Miller,” my great-grandmother’s surname, in the search box.

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I have 10 Miller matches on the first page. The Miller line I want to look for is on my mother’s side. You can see based on the little red and blue people icons which of the matches are assigned to either (or both – purple) parental sides based on triangulation between me and identified, linked cousins in my tree.

Of the Miller individuals on my mother’s side, 4 are males. Of those, 2 have pins. Of those 2 men, one man’s pin is in the US, but the other cousin’s pin is located exactly where my Johann Michael Mueller line originated AND that’s also who my match has listed as his direct patrilineal ancestor.

Now, I’ve confirmed unquestionably that we share at least this one common ancestor. Of course, I can’t yet tell if our autosomal DNA match is through this ancestor, but I know where to start looking.

Now it’s time to see if:

  • He also matches my mother.
  • He matches the other 3 Miller males on Y DNA.
  • We share other autosomal matches in common that might shed light on our common ancestor.
  • If the matches we share shed light on how those other matches are related to both of us.

Compare Origins Summary

This little-known tool is a great way of discovering if any of your paternal surname lines have Y DNA tested and if they match you autosomally.

If you’ve followed my articles for long, you know that I “collect” the haplogroups of my ancestors. There’s a great deal of ancestral gold to be mined there.

Using Compare Origins, it’s easy to search for the surnames of your ancestors.

As an experiment, I entered the surnames of my 16 great-great-grandparents and found relevant Y DNA matches for 13. Of course, in my case, I had recruited a few of these cousins, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

For mitochondrial DNA, the red pins, I know that my mitochondrial line originated in Germany, so I’ll be looking for matches in close proximity to my matrilineal ancestral village, then utilize advanced matching to see if we are mitochondrial matches as well.

In countries like Germany and the Netherlands where I have relatively recent ancestry, I’ll be using the “by map” method to view the individuals on the map so that I can inspect that match more closely to see if they also match my mother and maternal cousins.

Take a look at your myOrigins “Compare Origins” matches and map and let me know what you find.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Books

Genealogy Tree Replacement – Should I or Shouldn’t I?

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22

Eventually, every serious genealogist faces the question of tree replacement at vendors – whether they should do it at all, and if so, how to proceed safely.

I’ve started to write this article a couple of times now, but I hesitate to publish articles when I haven’t tried all the different scenarios.

In this case, I haven’t, but I’m sharing what I DO know and why I’ve made the choice I have so that you can do your own research on the rest. Keep in mind that software changes from time to time, so information that you find online about this topic may be stale and it’s always best to confirm with the vendor in question before making a major change.

I use RootsMagic on my computer for my master tree, but I also have trees at Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Family Tree DNA so that I can derive the maximum benefit from those DNA/research platforms. This, of course, leads to the challenge of keeping multiple trees up to date – and the inevitable question of replacing trees.

Why Might You Want to Replace a Tree?

Let’s say you uploaded a tree from your genealogy software on your computer years ago to the various sites and now you’ve made a lot of changes.

Or, let’s say you didn’t want to upload your entire tree originally, so you created an abbreviated tree at the various sites.

Initially, that’s what I did, creating a direct line ancestors-only tree to upload. I had incorporated lots of non-documented information into my tree on my computer over the past many decades and I certainly didn’t want to share information online without verifying. I don’t want to be “THAT” person who spreads bad information, even unintentionally.

Now, let’s say you’ve continued your research and you want to share more than the original tree you uploaded or created at a vendor. You don’t want to update individual trees in 3 or 4 places though.

Or, let’s say that while you originally included an ancestors-only tree, now you want to add children and extend to current so that ThruLines at Ancestry, Theories of Family Relativity at MyHeritage and Phased Family Matching at Family Tree DNA can work more effectively. I uploaded my original “ancestors only” trees before those products were introduced.

What are the effects of deleting an existing tree and uploading a new tree at the various vendors? Should you or shouldn’t you?

Deleting Trees – BAD IDEA

First, if you ARE going to replace your tree, DON’T delete your existing tree first.

Deleting a tree breaks all of the links you’ve established – both to records, connected DNA kits, and some DNA tools. Any notes or groupings will be gone as well. Let’s look at each vendor individually.

Please keep in mind that there may be additional issues that I’m not aware of because I have not personally deleted my primary tree at any vendor.

Ancestry – If you delete an existing tree, your ThruLines will be gone and will likely regenerate differently with a new tree. Of course, that may be part of why you want to upload a new tree. Any documents you’ve saved to people in your existing tree will be gone and the links to those documents as well.

You can, of course, download the documents to your computer one by one. Downloading your tree does NOT download associated documents from Ancestry. Conversely, uploading trees doesn’t either, no matter where you upload it.

You can sync some desktop genealogy software applications with Ancestry. Both RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker synchronize your tree on your desktop with your Ancestry tree. Some software is better suited in synchronizing “both directions” than others. Syncing issues in user groups are quite prevalent.

Warning: I do not sync. If you’re going to try syncing between the two sources, I would recommend experimenting on a tree that is NOT your primary tree either at Ancestry or on your desktop, and reading extensively before attempting. Check user groups for the software in question to see what issues are being encountered. Also, be sure you have a current backup and check that synchronizing worked correctly before proceeding further.

If you delete your tree at Ancestry and upload a new tree, you will need to reconnect your DNA test or tests that you manage under the DNA tab, then the settings gear at right.

You’ll then need to redo any work such as TreeTags, notes, comments or saving records that you’ve already performed.

In essence, you’re uploading a blank slate.

MyHeritage – If you delete an existing tree, your Theories of Family Relativity. any Smart Matches, notes or records will be deleted along with any photos that you’ve linked. Furthermore, your DNA kits associated with people in your tree will lose their names when they become disconnected.

MyHeritage provides free software called Family Tree Builder for your desktop that does synchronize your tree with MyHeritage, including records.

MyHeritage has also collaborated with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to import a portion of their tree from FamilySearch into MyHeritage, and keep the trees synchronized.

Caveat: I have not used the Family Tree Builder software or the LDS sync feature.

If you delete your tree and upload a new tree, you’ll need to reconnect your DNA and that of any kits you manage to your tree. In order NOT to lose the names on your kits, do that in reverse order, meaning upload the new tree, reassign the DNA kit to the proper person on the new tree before deleting the old tree.  Beware of same name people when making this assignment.

You can reassign kits under the DNA tab, “Manage DNA kits,” then the three dots at right of the kit you want to reassign.

MyHeritage runs the Theories of Family Relativity (TOFR) algorithm periodically, every few months. You won’t get new TOFR until they run the software again. If you delete your tree, be prepared to wait on TOFR and redo everything you’ve currently done to anyone in your tree.

Just like with Ancestry, you’re uploading a blank slate.

Family Tree DNA – If you delete your tree, links to any DNA tests that you have connected to the appropriate people in your tree will be broken. Assigning family members to their proper place in your tree is required for Family Matching to function.

Family Matching utilizes the DNA of relatives you’ve linked in your tree by comparing in common segment matches between you, them, and other people to identify shared matches as maternal or paternal.

If you delete your tree and upload a new tree, you will need to reconnect your family members under the myTree tab at the top of your page. You can connect matches for the Family Finder autosomal test, Y DNA, and mitochondrial – whichever tests you’ve taken. If you only have a few matches that you’ve linked, relinking is no problem. If you have a lot, it’s more time-consuming.

Beware: Uploading very large trees is problematic due to file size and/or bandwidth. Call support before attempting.

My recommendation would be to include direct line ancestors, their spouses, descendants of those ancestors with spouses, but not unrelated (to you) spouses trees. In other words, your sister-in-law’s family isn’t relevant to your genetic genealogy.

23andMe – 23andMe does not support trees in the traditional sense, so uploading is not possible. You can, however, link to a current public tree that you’ve created elsewhere which can be viewed by your matches. To enter a tree link, look under the settings option (gear), then under “Edit enhanced profile.”

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When providing a link, be sure the tree you link to is public, not private.

Alternatives

At both Ancestry and MyHeritage, which are the two vendors who offer genealogical records and the ability to save records to people in your tree, you can upload multiple trees to the same account, presuming you have a current subscription.

If you don’t have the option to sync through your desktop software, or aren’t comfortable doing so, you can upload a more robust tree, but keep in mind that any records you save to the new tree will be lost if you delete that one in the future too.

If you’re going to upload a new tree, upload the new tree BEFORE deleting the old tree.

Connect any records person by person before deleting the old tree. That way, you don’t have to search for those records all over again.

I would let the old tree sit idle for some time so that you know you’ve retrieved everything. There’s no rush to delete the old tree.

Of course, a third methodology is to maintain multiple trees. That’s actually what I do. Here’s why.

My Methodology

I use the third alternative that certainly isn’t ideal, but I maintain four separate trees. I hear you cringing, but it really isn’t as awful as it sounds – and it’s infinitely better than redoing everything because I’m an active researcher and have thousands of connected records.

  • One tree lives on my computer where I update information and add new people, including speculative – although they are clearly noted as such. I also include massive notes – in some cases much longer than notes fields at vendors typically allow. I download documents to a folder on my computer with that person’s name from all subscription sites. I also write my 52 Ancestor’s articles using documentation from all sites that I compile in one place on my system. I also back up my system religiously, meaning every night, automatically.
  • One tree lives at Ancestry where I add links to my 52 Ancestor stories, save documents found at Ancestry and extend lines as I work on them. I don’t add extensive side branches. I have included all of my direct ancestors for at least 10 generations, or as far back as I can document, along with their children and grandchildren to enable Thrulines and green leaf hints.
  • One tree lives at MyHeritage where I upload and link many photos because I can easily enhance and colorize them and see my ancestors more clearly. I link ancestors in my tree to my published ancestor stories, save documents and use the same approach with the MyHeritage tree that I do with Ancestry, including extending families for my ancestors to enable the formation of Theories of Family Relatively. I methodically work all of my DNA matches and AutoClusters, recording my findings in comments.
  • One tree lives at Family Tree DNA where I include all of my direct line ancestors to about 10 generations. I extend each ancestral branch to include each DNA match as I identify our common ancestor and how my match fits into my tree. At Family Tree DNA, linking each match to the proper place in their tree enables additional people to be assigned as maternal or paternal which is their methodology of triangulation.

Summary – To Replace or Not to Replace?

Yes, I’m painfully aware that maintaining 4 trees is a pain in the patoot, but each vendor, except for 23andMe of course, provides important features that are sacrificed with the deletion and replacement of trees. The more you take advantage of the vendor’s features, the more difficult it is to redo your work.

The only tree I would consider replacing would be the one at Family Tree DNA because there are no genealogy records attached. Genealogy research records are not a business they’re in.

The only useful portion at FamilyTreeDNA is the ancestral line and the branches that descend to other testers and I simply add those branches manually as needed.

Having said that, I would never replace any tree, anyplace, with my “master tree” that lives on my computer system.

If you are considering replacing your tree, particularly at either Ancestry or MyHeritage, I strongly suggest that you contact support at the vendor in question to discuss the ramifications BEFORE you take that step.

Once done, there is no “undo” button, so be sure that you really want to make that decision and proceed in well-thought-out, measured, “no regret” steps.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Books

Introducing DNA Tidbits – DNA Tidbit #1: Triangulation

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4

I know this winter is going to be difficult, but don’t lose heart. I have a plan.

Covid is already spiking and many families have already canceled holiday plans. This situation, combined with the seasonal darkness and cold will make things even more difficult for people in the northern hemisphere. I’ve been trying to think of some way to help make things better, to lift our collective spirits – and I’ve come up with an idea.

Drum roll please…

Today, I’m introducing the first of what will be weekly “DNA Tidbits” – fun genealogy+DNA tasks that might, just might, reveal buried treasure.

You know, tidbits, as in those wonderful tiny little nuggets of luscious goodness that tide you over until you can eat the whole thing, whatever your “thing” is. No, wait…eat the whole thing – that’s not what I meant to say:) Tidbits are about pacing ourselves, right??!!

DNA Tidbits will be enjoyable to do together because we can share our findings. They will range from introductory to a little more complex so everyone can play, and learn.

We will be jumping around between different vendors and third-party tools, so this might be a good time to be sure you’re in the 4 major databases, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, Ancestry, and 23andMe, either by testing or by transfer, where possible.

Here’s a step-by-step article about how to transfer results to both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage, which are the only two testing vendors that accept transfers:

DNA Tidbits

DNA tidbits will be different from my regular articles in that they aren’t going to be detailed educational lessons on HOW to do specific things. That’s already handled in lots of articles on my blog that are keyword searchable.

Keyword Searchable

For example, if you want to read about triangulation, what it is, and how to use triangulation at the various vendors, use the search box on the blog and type in “triangulation.”

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You’ll find educational and instructional articles along with other articles where I’ve mentioned triangulation, plus lots of examples.

DNA Tidbit #1 – Triangulation

A DNA Tidbit challenge will read something like this:

Challenge: Go to each of the three testing vendors, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and 23andMe who provide triangulation, plus GedMatch. View your 5 highest matches that triangulate. Triangulation, of course, means that three people – you, a match plus someone else (not a direct relative meaning not parents or siblings) all match each other on the same segment.

Can you tell how the person or people you triangulate with match? Through which ancestral line? You might be able to discern this by viewing each triangulated match to see:

  • Who else they match in common with you. If they triangulate with you and your first cousin who you already know, that’s a huge hint as to the ancestral line.
  • Who else they match on that same segment.
  • Ancestors share by you and those matches. Look at their surnames, trees, and other tools to see if you can identify common ancestors.

How can or does this help your genealogy?

Have you painted those segments at DNAPainter? That’s yet another way to achieve triangulation.

Triangulation Instructions

When I’ve written articles about how to perform the various tasks referenced in a DNA Tidbit, I’ll include links to instructions.

Why is Ancestry missing from this list?

Because Ancestry doesn’t have a chromosome browser or triangulation, which is why checking at GedMatch is important. At least some Ancestry customers will upload their DNA files to GedMatch and not elsewhere.

Community

During these next few months when we won’t be able to see members of our own families, our genealogy community will be more important than ever. Be sure to post a comment sharing your outcome for each week’s Tidbit. Did you find something unexpected?

Trust me, you’ll inspire others and we all need positive inspiration right now!

This triangulation exercise is DNA Tidbit #1.

I’ll go first with a couple of examples to help you along the way. This is probably more detailed than future Tidbits because Tidbits are designed to be quick for you and me, both. Can’t do everything? That’s OK, do something.

There are no tidbit or chocolate police!

DNA Tidbit #1 – Triangulation Results

Family Tree DNA – My top 5 triangulated autosomal matches are people assigned to one parent or the other. That’s how triangulation occurs at Family Tree DNA. I’ve skipped the people whose relationships I’ve already identified, which I track by notes, and selected my top 5 that I haven’t previously identified. Their note icon is grey meaning nothing recorded there.

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Unfortunately, Christopher has uploaded no tree. He is, however, assigned to my paternal side with a sizeable piece of matching DNA across multiple segments.

Looking at who we match in common, I can discern immediately that we connect through my great-grandparents, Lazarus Estes and Elizabeth Vannoy because we match people who descend from both of those lines upstream of that couple.

Christopher and I match on three significant segments.

  • The first segment also matches a cousin who descends through Lazarus and Elizabeth.
  • The second segment matches a cousin who descends from the Campbell/Dodson line which is Lazarus Estes’s mother’s line.
  • The third segment matches a cousin who also descends through the Campbell line so this segment can be attributed to Elizabeth Campbell of the Elizabeth Campbell/Lazarus Dodson marriage. That means, in generational order, this segment descends to me through my father, his father William George Estes, his father Lazarus Estes, his mother Rutha Dodson, and her mother Elizabeth Campbell and her parents John Campbell and Jenny Dobkins.

Next, I viewed these matches in the chromosome browser of course, and in the matrix tool.

I made a note on the match at FamilyTreeDNA and painted these segments at DNA Painter, noting how I identified the segments.

Unfortunately, none of my top 5 triangulated matches had trees that were productive in terms of identifying a common ancestor.

Have you gotten this far? Good job. Eat a strawberry or chocolate tidbit.

MyHeritage – I chose Jason from my match list, the first person with whom I did not have a note indicating I’ve already worked with the match.

I reviewed the DNA match to see if Jason and I share triangulated segments with other people, indicated by the purple icon on my shared matches with Jason.

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Jason and I triangulate with my cousin Buster, which tells me that we share a common ancestor from either the Lazarus Estes or Elizabeth Vannoy lines, my paternal grandfather’s parents They are my most recent common ancestors with Buster.

However, as I scan on down the list of shared matches that Jason and I triangulate with, I see several people from my paternal grandmother’s side who do not share ancestors with my paternal grandfather’s side. My grandparents were not related to each other.

This indicates that Jason and I are related through two different lines that lived in the same area and intermarried.

I might need two pieces of chocolate for this one!

I need to send Jason a message. He doesn’t have a tree, but I bet he knows at least some of his genealogy since this connection seems to be within the past few generations based on the amount of DNA we share.

23andMe is more difficult because you can’t quickly see which matches have notes. Notes only appear after you’ve clicked on the match, and then at the very bottom of that page after scrolling to the end. Instead, I use the stars to indicate that I’ve worked with the match.

I click on the star to turn it yellow after I’ve analyzed a match, in addition to making notes.

My first match at 23andMe with no yellow star is RA.

Checking who I match in common with RA, I can see that 23andMe has assigned RA to my father’s side of my genetic tree, as a descendant of Lazarus Estes and Elizabeth Vannoy. Keep in mind that this tree is not uploaded, but genetically created by 23andMe with the customer adding the appropriate names of their ancestors in their proper position. This relationship tree can be incorrect, but it’s certainly a useful tool.

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Clicking “Find Relatives in Common” on my match page with RA, I see that RA and I do share DNA, meaning triangulate, with several relatives on my list. That’s what “Shared” means in this context at 23andMe – shared same segment.

Unfortunately, RA has not entered any additional information such as a tree link, family surnames, or locations.

I’ll message RA for more information as soon as I finish my next bite of chocolate.

GEDmatch is a bit different because your match list is not pre-generated, meaning there is no stored match list so no ability to create and save notes for matches.

At GEDmatch, I did a One-to-Many comparison which allowed me to view my match list.

In the far right column, you can see the testing company and test version. A=Ancestry, F=FTDNA, and M=23andMe along with the version when it says the results were migrated to the current platform. Otherwise, you’ll see the name of the testing company your match uploaded from more recently.

I selected an Ancestry match since I’ll match the people from MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA at their respective sites that already have triangulation capability. I will match close matches at 23andMe, but 23andMe caps matches at 1500 (unless you’re on the V5 chip WITH a subscription), so some matches may be here that aren’t there.

Ancestry testers are my best bet for finding new triangulated matches at GEDmatch because Ancestry doesn’t support triangulation on their own platform.

Based on my match’s name, I think the first person on this match list that I can’t identify is the same match, Christopher, that I was working with at Family Tree DNA. He uploaded 4 different files to GEDmatch, including an Ancestry file. This tells me he might have a nice tree at Ancestry since he’s obviously interested enough in genealogy to test multiple places😊

I went back to the main GEDmatch menu and selected Triangulation from the Tier 1 (paid subscription) options. Triangulation selects your closest matches and indeed, Christopher was among the triangulated groups with other people I recognize, providing immediate hints as to how we are related.

Next, I’m going to run over to Ancestry to see if indeed, I can find Christopher and view his tree there.

Unfortunately, I can’t find Christopher at Ancestry by the name he used elsewhere, although I do see a good candidate using initials but who has a private tree☹

Time for another chocolate!

Fortunately, I have Christopher’s email from GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, so I can send him a friendly email introducing myself and asking about his genealogy.

DNA Tidbit #1 – Summary

Surprisingly, with reviewing just 5 triangulated matches at each vendor, I found a LOT to work with and discovered the ancestral lines through which several people are related to me, even if I can’t isolate exactly which ancestor. I painted each of those matches at DNAPainter. I’m currently sitting at 90% of my segments painted, which means they are identified with a specific ancestral line. Every identified match gets me closer to 100%.

I’m left with the distinct impression that after I find genealogical connections with these closest matches, that the leftover matches that triangulate will be the ones to break down brick walls.

Those will be the matches I really need to concentrate on, because somehow these people DO all match each other too, and the common ancestor they share between themselves may be the clue I desperately need. You know, the key to those people waiting just behind that brick wall of burned records and no last names.

Making that discovery will, indeed, be cause to celebrate with more than tidbits!!!

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Books

Holiday DNA Sales Have Started Early

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Wow – the sales started early this year! I understand that Black Friday has morphed into the month of November. I’m good with that!

I’m not really surprised because many people are spending more time at home and let’s face it, genealogy is a great at-home activity. I’m glad the sales are starting earlier and running longer because it encourages more people to become engaged.

Genealogy can even help you produce holiday gifts for others in a myriad of ways. Not just purchasing DNA kits for yourself and family members but creating stories or giving them a book you’ve created with photos of grandma and grandpa’s life, perchance.

Of course, DNA is a HUGE part of genealogy. Even if you’re not going to be able to see Uncle Joe this Thanksgiving, you can certainly have a fun Zoom session and document him swabbing or spitting for his DNA test! Make memories, one way or another

Let’s see what the vendors are offering. Then, be sure to read to the end for a surprise.

FamilyTreeDNA – Early Bird Holiday Sale

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FamilyTreeDNA has more products to offer than any of the other vendors with autosomal, Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests, each offering something unique.

Y DNA focuses only on your direct patrilineal (surname) line if you are a male. Mitochondrial DNA follows your matrilineal (mother’s mother’s mother’s) line for both sexes. The Family Finder autosomal test traces all ancestral lines. You can read a quick article about these different tests and how they work in this article:

The Family Finder test uses matches to known family members like parents, aunts, uncles and cousins to assign other matches who match both you and your family member to either maternal or paternal sides of your tree.

You can also use Genetic Affairs AutoCluster, AutoTree and AutoPedigree tools at FamilyTreeDNA to get even more mileage out of your DNA tests.

If you were an early tester with Y and mitochondrial DNA, you can upgrade now to a more robust test to receive more granular results.

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Have you noticed the ancient DNA articles I’ve been writing recently?

Your most refined haplogroup revealed only in the Big Y-700 or mitochondrial mtFull Sequence test allows you to compare your haplogroup with ancient samples most effectively. I promise you, there will be more articles upcoming! These are just pure joy, connecting back in time.

The FamilyTreeDNA sale ends November 24th. Please click here to order or upgrade.

MyHeritage

MyHeritageDNA includes lots of features that other vendors don’t have, such as integrated AutoClusters and Theories of Family Relativity (TOFR) which connects you and your matches through a network of common records and trees. TOFR is surprisingly accurate, either pointing the way to or identifying common ancestors.

I wrote about how to use these and other included tools to unravel your genealogy in this recent article, with a free companion webinar:

Additionally, MyHeritage has a strong focus in Europe that includes lots of European testers – perfect for people whose ancestors are emigrants from another country.

MyHeritageDNA is on sale now for $49, a $30 savings, plus free shipping if you purchase two or more kits. Please click here to order.

This sale ends November 25th.

Ancestry

Best known for their large database, AncestryDNA offers ThruLines which takes advantage of their database size to suggest common ancestors for you and your matches based on multiple trees. I wrote about ThruLines in this article:

The AncestryDNA test is on sale now for $59, a $40 savings, with free US shipping. Please click here to order.

Sale ends November 23rd.

23andMe

23andMe is best known in the genealogy community for the accuracy of their Ancestry Composition, known as ethnicity results, which they paint on your chromosomes.

23andMe also creates a “genetic tree” between you and your closest matches based on who does and who does not match each other, and how they match each other. I wrote about genetic trees and subsequently, how they solved one mystery in these two articles.

While the genetic tree technology isn’t perfected yet, it’s certainly the direction of the future and can provide insight into how you and others are related and where to look for them in your actual genealogy tree.

The 23andMe Ancestry only test is available for a 10% reduction in price at $88.95. Please click here to order.

Of course, 23andMe also offers a health product that includes the ancestry product.

The 23andMe Health + Ancestry test is available for $99, a saving of 50%. Please click here to order.

These sale prices end November 26th.

Surprise!!!

I have an early holiday gift for you too.

Beginning later this week, I’m publishing the first article in a new interactive series aptly named…drum roll…“DNA Tidbits.”

Indeed, there is fruit-of-the-vine to be harvested and that’s exactly what we are going to do – in small steps! Tidbits.

Just like everything else on this blog, it’s completely free of course and we are going to have lots of FUN!

Let me give you a hint – you’ll probably want to have test results at all of these companies because the Tidbits will be bouncing around a bit – so if you need to buy something, please click on the links below.

Thank you and I can’t wait to get started!

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Books

Free Y DNA Webinar at Legacy Family Tree Webinars

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I just finished recording a new, updated Y DNA webinar, “Wringing Every Drop out of Y DNA” for Legacy Family Tree Webinars and it’s available for viewing now.

This webinar is packed full of information about Y DNA testing. We discuss the difference between STR markers, SNPs and the Big Y test. Of course, the goal is to use these tests in the most advantageous way for genealogy, so I walk you through each step. There’s so much available that sometimes people miss critical pieces!

FamilyTreeDNA provides a wide variety of tools for each tester in addition to advanced matching which combines Y DNA along with the Family Finder autosomal test. Seeing who you match on both tests can help identify your most recent common ancestor! You can order or upgrade to either or both tests, here.

During this 90 minute webinar, I covered several topics.

There’s also a syllabus that includes additional resources.

At the end, I summarized all the information and show you what I’ve done with my own tree, illustrating how useful this type of testing can be, even for women.

No, women can’t test directly, but we can certainly recruit appropriate men for each line or utilize projects to see if our lines have already tested. I provide tips and hints about how to successfully accomplish that too.

Free for a Limited Time

Who doesn’t love FREE???

The “Squeezing Every Drop out of Y DNA” webinar is free to watch right now, and will remain free through Wednesday, October 14, 2020. On the main Legacy Family Tree Webinar page, here, just scroll down to the “Webinar Library – New” area to see everything that’s new and free.

If you’re a Legacy Farmily Tree Webinar member, all webinars are included with your membership, of course. I love the great selection of topics, with more webinars being added by people you know every week. This is the perfect time to sign up, with fall having arrived in all its golden glory and people spending more time at home right now.

More than 4000 viewers have enjoyed this webinar since yesterday, and I think you will too. Let’s hope lots of people order Y DNA tests so everyone has more matches! You just never know who’s going to be the right match to break down those brick walls or extend your line back a few generations or across the pond, perhaps.

You can view this webinar after October 14th as part of a $49.95 annual membership. If you’d like to join, click here and use the discount code ydna10 through October 13th.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Quick Tip – Trees, Death Dates and Unintentionally “Private” Ancestors

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I manage trees for a number of DNA tests for my relatives at various vendors. DNA and trees work hand-in-hand to identify common ancestors, providing hints to direct you along that path.

If you don’t have a tree at the sites that support trees, meaning FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry and MyHeritage, please either create one or upload a GEDCOM file from your genealogy software. Many of the features provided by those vendors depend on both your DNA results and the tree you’re linked to. While 23andMe does not support trees, you can include a link to a tree in another site under “settings,” then “enhanced profile” – so do that.

In many cases, especially for Y and mitochondrial DNA at Family Tree DNA, I only enter the relevant line for the tests taken. That way, anyone who matches my cousin can check their tree and easily view the relevant line for the test.

Often, especially if the person tested at my request, I’m the one who has done the genealogy and I don’t research the wives or collateral lines that are not relevant to the test that was taken. I don’t want to do a lot of maintenance work to export only a small branch from my desktop software, so I create each tree by hand from scratch.

Of course, if they have taken a Family Finder test, I upload a more robust tree for them that includes as much of their various lines as I know.

Uploading or creating trees helps us and other genealogists break through their brick walls too.

Ned Matched John – But Encountered a “Privacy” Roadblock

Recently, another Estes tester, we’ll call him Ned, matched the Y DNA of my cousin, John, and emailed me, saying that John’s entire tree was private. I told him that I had not made John’s tree private, so Ned sent me a screenshot.

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There’s no dispute – while the tree itself isn’t private, every single person in the tree is.

What could be causing this? In other words, how do I fix it? That’s not AT ALL what I intended.

Let’s Check the Privacy Settings

The first thing to do, of course, is to check the settings – so I signed in to John’s account.

I checked the privacy settings, located under Account Settings just below the user name of the kit, after you sign in.

According to the Privacy and Sharing settings, John’s tree is not private.

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That seemed odd, so I checked John’s tree myself. It looks fine to me, so I wonder what might be wrong?

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Nothing is showing as private from John’s perspective from within his account.

I decided to send Ned a direct sharing link to see if that made any difference.

The link I shared with Ned made no difference, but reading the information in the red box did! Yay for documentation!

I had not filled in the birth or death dates of the people in question or marked them as deceased. Yes, I know – my bad.

I clicked on the profile and then “View Profile” to verify.

Sure enough – no dates. To edit the profile, click on the pencil.

In order to cause the death date and death location fields to display, you must check the “Deceased” box which then turns blue.

Even if you don’t know the death date or location, marking the person as deceased allows their information to be displayed, such as their name, and NOT to be marked as private.

If you do NOT click the deceased box, the person’s profile WILL be marked “private” and will not be shown to anyone except you, the tester, if you sign in. You’ll have no idea that it isn’t showing to other people when you had intended to share all along.

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I marked each person as deceased and added death dates and locations while I was working on the tree.

Did that take care of the problem?

Let’s take a look from Ned’s perspective.

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Sure did.

In order for people to display, you need to kill them off, again😊

Tree Privacy

Every vendor has a combination of features that control tree privacy and security. You will be able to mark the entire tree private or shareable. You may be able to make it searchable, or not, depending on the vendor.

No vendor will display known living people to others – but the calculations they use to determine who may be living, unless you specifically mark them as deceased, will vary.

Be sure to check all of those factors, and find a way to view the tree from someone else’s perspective to check and be sure it’s functioning the way you expect.

I would never have known that all of John’s ancestors were private if Ned hadn’t contacted me.

At Family Tree DNA, if you view your own tree and you notice that neither dates nor question marks appear in the date field on the pedigree page – that means you have not marked these people as deceased – so no information for them will show to anyone else.

If you see any dates or question marks beneath the names of people on your tree – then that individual’s profile will show and is not private, unless you have marked the entire tree as private.

Check your trees to see if you have an unknown issue. Those valuable trees provide critical information to your matches. They may not contact you to ask why your tree is private – in fact – most won’t. They assume it’s a choice you meant to make.

Be sure you’re not unintentionally driving cousins away. You never know who’s going to have that crucial piece of information or photo, and you want all of your cousin-bait to function as intended!

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Ancestry Releases Updated Ethnicity Estimates – Hope You Still Have Your Kilt!

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Ancestry has been rolling out their new DNA ethnicity results over the past couple of weeks. By now, pretty much all customers have updated results.

When you sign on and click on your DNA tab, you’ll see a message at the top that tells you whether you have new results or they are coming soon.

I wrote about how ethnicity results are calculated in the article, Ethnicity Testing – A Conundrum. You might want to take a minute and read the article because it applies to methods generally and is not specific to any one vendor.

Ethnicity analysis is quite accurate at the continental level, plus Jewish, but less so within continents like Europe. Your results will vary from vendor to vendor and from update to update with the same vendor over time.

To be very clear, your DNA doesn’t change – and neither does your genealogy, obviously – but the evaluation methods used by various vendors change as more people test, reference populations grow, and the vendors improve their algorithms.

Of course, “improve” is subjective. Changes that “improve” one person’s results have the exact opposite effect on other people.

The Eye of the Beholder

Every time vendors release new population or ethnicity results, everyone runs to check. Then – queue up either “they finally got it right” or teeth gnashing! 😊

Everyone hopes for “better” results – but expectations vary widely and how people determine what “better” means to them is quite subjective.

So yes, the accuracy of the results is truly in the eye of the beholder and often related to how much genealogy they’ve actually done. Surprises in your genealogy can equal surprises in your ethnicity too.

Quantitative Analysis

First, let’s be very clear – you do NOT inherit exactly half of the DNA of each of your distant ancestors in each generation. So you might have NO DNA of an ancestor several generations back in time and multiple segments contributed by another ancestor in the same generation. I wrote about how inheritance actually works in the article, Concepts: Inheritance.

Obviously, if you don’t carry a specific ancestor’s DNA, you also don’t carry any genetic markers for any portion of their ethnic heritage either.

Measuring

The best you can do in terms of ancestral ethnicity percentage expectations is to methodically analyze your tree for the geographic and ethnic heritage of your ancestors.

I explained how I calculated realistic ethnicity estimate percentages in the article, Concepts – Calculating Ethnicity Percentages.

In summary, I made a spreadsheet of my 64 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, each of which, if the DNA was divided in exactly half and passed to the next generation, would contribute 1.56% of my DNA.

Vendors can typically measure geographically-associated DNA less than 1%. At some point, however, the segments are simply too small to reliably identify and associate with a geographic location or population.

Over time, how different vendors refer to and label different parts of the world both vary and change.

Region Names and Ancestral Assignment

I created a spreadsheet where I track both my “expected” DNA based on my genealogy and the amount of reported DNA from that region by each vendor. As I added vendor results, I sometimes had to add categories since their categories aren’t exactly the same as mine. You’ll observe this in the following sections.

You might notice the “inferred” category. I wrote about this in the Calculating Ethnicity Percentages article, but the inferred locations stem from situations like an unknown wife of a man who is living in England or Germany. We can probably infer that they are from that same country.

In the US, an earlier era spouse’s ethnicity might be inferred from marrying a Scot’s-Irish person, living in a Scots-Irish community or being a member of a Scots-Irish church, for example. Chances are very high that a Scots-Irish man’s wife is also from the “British Isles” someplace.

When creating my spreadsheet, I was intentionally conservative in my genealogical estimates.

Ancestry Update in General

Are there any trends or themes in this most recent Ancestry update? As a matter of fact, yes.

Everybody’s Scottish it seems. I hope you didn’t trade your kilt in for that liederhosen a few years ago, because it looks like you just might need that kilt again.

In fact, Ancestry wrote a blog article about why so many people now have Scotland as an ethnicity location, or have a higher percentage if they already showed Scotland before. I had to laugh, because let me summarize the net-net of the Ancestry article for you, the British Isles is “all mixed up,” meaning highly admixed of course. That’s pretty much the definition of my genealogy!

Another theme is that many testers have Scandinavian origins again.

Back in 2012, Ancestry had a “Scandinavian problem,” and pretty much everyone was Scandinavian in that release, even if they had nary a drop of Scandinavian ancestry. And no, not every person has an unknown paternity event and if they did, the Scandinavians cannot possibly be responsible for all of them. The Viking prowess was remarkable, but not THAT remarkable.

Eight years later, Scandinavian is back.

So, how did Ancestry do on my percentages?

Well, I’m Not Scottish…

In the greatest of ironies, I now show no Scottish at all. My calculations show 5.46%, and it’s probably higher because I descend from Scots-Irish that I can’t place in a location.

I guess I need to turn in my Campbell tartan along with a few others.

I do, however, have Norway back again, but no Scandinavian genealogy.

This chart shows all of the Ancestry updates over time, including this latest, plus a range column for this update.

In addition to the 2020 percentage numbers, I’ve included the ranges shown by Ancestry in the far right column for the 2020 update.

Ranges

When viewing your own results, be sure to click on the right arrow for a population to view the range.

You’ll be able to view the range and additional information.

In this case, Ancestry is confident that I have at least 35% DNA from England & Northwest Europe, and perhaps as much as 41%.

You’ll note that my range for the questionable Scandinavia is 0-5. The only two ethnicities that have ranges that do not include zero are England & Northwestern Europe and Germanic Europe.

My Opinion

I know that I have Native American heritage and that it’s reflected in my ethnicity – or should be.

23andMe results, below, shows me the chromosome locations of Native American segments, and when I track those segments back in time, they track to the ancestors in the Acadian population known to have married Native American partners as reflected in church records. Those ancestors were proven as Native through Y and mitochondrial DNA of their descendants which you can view in the Acadian AmerIndian DNA Project, here.

I wrote about using ethnicity segments identified at 23andMe with DNAPainter to triangulate ancestors in the article, Native American and Minority Ancestors Identified Using DNAPainter Plus Ethnicity Segments.

For me personally, including my Native heritage in my ethnicity results is important. I can’t “do” anything much with that at Ancestry, other than view my match’s shared ethnicity. Since my Native heritage doesn’t show at Ancestry, I can’t use it at all genetically.

Why is this important? Looking at a match on my Acadian line and seeing that we share at least some Native heritage MIGHT, just MIGHT be a hint about a common ancestor. Of course, that’s just a clue, because we might both be native from different sources. If my Native ethnicity is missing at Ancestry, I can’t do that. It’s worth noting that in 2017, Ancestry did report my Native heritage and other vendors do as well.

23andMe provides detailed, downloadable, segment information that translates into useful genealogical information. FamilyTreeDNA has announced that they will be providing ethnicity segment information as well after their new myOrigins release.

The Big 4

How do the Big 4 vendors stack up relative to my genealogy and ethnicity?

And for Native American heritage?

I took the liberty of highlighting which vendor is the closest to my estimated genealogy percentages, but want to remind you that these percentages will only be exactly accurate if the DNA is passed exactly in half in each generation, which doesn’t happen. Therefore, my genealogy is an educated estimate as well. Still, the results shouldn’t be WAY off.

An appropriate sanity check would be that my genealogy analysis and the DNA ethnicity results are relatively close. Many people think they are a lot more of something because those are the family stories they heard – but when they do the analysis, they realize that they might expect a different mixture. For example, my aunt told me that my paternal grandmother’s Appalachian family line was German and Jewish – and they are neither. However, German and Jewish lived in my head for a long time and that was what I initially expected to find.

What’s Next?

Both MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA are slated to release new versions of their population genetics tools – so you’ll be seeing new estimates from both vendors “soon.” Both announced at RootsTech they would deliver new results later in the year, and while I don’t have a release date for either vendor – keep in mind that both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage have brought new labs online from scratch in record time in a humanitarian effort to fight Covid. This critically important work has assuredly interrupted their development schedules. You can read about that here and here.

Kudos to both vendors. Ethnicity can wait.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Y DNA Haplogroup P Gets a Brand-New Root – Plus Some Branches

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With almost 35,000 branches comprised of 316,000 SNPs, branches on the Y DNA tree are split every day. In fact, roughly 1000 branches are being added to the Y DNA tree of mankind at Family Tree DNA each month. I wrote about how to navigate their public tree, here, and you can view the tree, here. You can also read about Y DNA terminology, here.

Splitting a deep, very old branch into subclades is unusual – and exciting. Finding a new root, taking the entire haplogroup back another notch in time is even more amazing, especially when that root is 46,000 years old.

Haplogroup P is the parent haplogroup of both Q and R.

This portion of the 2010 haplogroup poster provided to Family Tree DNA conference attendees shows the basic branching structure of haplogroup P, R and Q, with haplogroup P being defined at that time by several equivalent SNPs that had not yet been split into any other subgroups or branches of P. Notice that P295 is shown, but not F115 or PF5850 which would be discovered in years to come.

Haplogroup R, a subclade of P, is the most common haplogroup in Europe, with roughly half of European men falling on some branch of haplogroup R.

Map and haplogroup R distribution courtesy of FamilyTreeDNA

In Ireland, nearly all men fall into a subgroup of haplogroup R.

A lot of progress has been made in the past decade.

This week, FamilyTreeDNA identified a split in haplogroup P, upstream of haplogroups Q and R, establishing a new root above haplogroup P-P295.

The Previous 2020 Tree

This is a 2020 “before” picture of the tree as it pertains to haplogroup P. You can see P-P295 at the top as the root or beginning mutation that defined haplogroup P. That was, of course, before this new discovery.

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At Family Tree DNA, according to this tree where testers self-identify the location of their most distant known patrilineal ancestor, haplogroup P testers are found in multiple Asian locations. Some haplogroup P kits may have only purchased specific SNP tests, not the full Big Y and would actually be placed on downstream branches if they upgraded. Haplogroup P itself is quite rare and generally only found in Siberia, Southeast Asia, and diaspora regions.

Subgroups Q and R are found across Europe and Asia. Additionally, some subgroups of haplogroup Q migrated across the land bridge, Beringia, to populate the Americas.

You might be wondering – if there are only a few people who fall directly into haplogroup P, how was it split?

Great question.

How Was Haplogroup P Split?

Testing of ancient DNA has been a boon to science and genealogy, both, and one of my particular interests.

Recently, Goran Runfeldt who heads the R&D team at FamilyTreeDNA was reading the paper titled Ancient migrations in Southeast Asia and noticed that in the supplementary material, several genomic files from ancient samples were available to download. Of course, that was just the beginning, because the files had to be aligned and processed – then the accuracy verified – requiring input from other team members including Michael Sager who maintains the Y DNA haplotree.

Additionally, the paper’s authors sequenced the whole genomes of two present-day Jehai people from Northern Perak State, West Malaysia, a small group of traditional hunter-gatherers, many of whom still live in isolation. One of those samples was the individual whose Y DNA provided the new root SNP, P-PF5850, that is located above the previous root of haplogroup P, P-P295.

Until this sample was analyzed by Goran, Michael and team, three SNPs, PF5850, P295 and F115, were considered to be equivalent, because no tie-breaker had surfaced to indicate which SNPs occurred in what order. Now we know that PF5850 happened first and is the root of haplogroup P.

I asked Michael Sager, the phylogeneticist at FamilyTreeDNA, better-known as “Mr. Big Y,” due to his many-years-long Godfather relationship with the Y DNA tree, how he knew where to place PF5850, and how it became a new root.

Michael explained that we know that P-PF5850 is the new root because the three SNPs that indicated the previous root, P295, PF5850 and F115 are present in all previous samples, but mutations at both P295 and F115 are absent in the new sample, indicating that PF5850 preceded what is now the old P root.

The two SNPs, P295 and F115 occurred some time later.

This sample also included more than 300 additional unique mutations that may become branches in the future. As more people test and more ancient samples are found and sequenced, there’s lots of potential for further branching. Even with more than 50,000 NGS Big-Y DNA tests in the Family Tree DNA database, there’s still so much we don’t know, yet to be discovered.

Amazingly, mutation P-PF5850 occurred approximately 46,000 years ago meaning that this branch had remained hidden all this time. For all we know, he might be the only man left alive with this particular lineage of mankind, but it’s likely more will surface eventually.

click to enlarge

Michael Sager had previously analyzed samples from The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene by Sikora et al. You’ll notice that additional branches of haplogroup P are reflected in ancient samples Yana1 and Yana2 which split P-M45, twice.

Branch Definitions

Today, haplogroup branches are defined by their SNP name, except for base and main branches such as P, P1, P2, etc. Haplogroup P is very old and you’ll find it referred to as simply P, P1 or P2 in most literature, not by SNP name. Goran labeled the old branch names beside the current SNP names, and provided a preliminary longhand letter+number branch name with the * for explanatory purposes.

The problem with the old letter+number system is that when new upstream branches are inserted, the current haplogroup “P” has to shift down and become something else. That’s problematic when reading papers. In order to understand which SNP the paper is actually referencing, you have to know what SNP was labeled as “P” at the time the paper was written.

For example, a new P was just defined, so P becomes P1, but the previous P1 has to become something else, resulting in a domino effect of renaming. While that’s not a significant issue with haplogroup P, because it has seldom changed, it’s a huge challenge with the 17,000+ haplogroup R branches. Hence, the transition several years ago to using SNP names such as P295 instead of the older letter+number designations such as P, which now needs to become something like P1.

Haplogroup Ages

Goran was kind enough to provide additional information as well, including the estimated “Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor,” or TMRCA, a feature currently in development for all haplogroups. You can see that P-PF5850 is estimated to be approximately 46,000 years old, “ca 46 kybp,” meaning “circa 46 thousand years before present.”

The founding ancestor of haplogroup Q lived approximately 31,000 years ago, and ancestral R lived about 28,000 years ago, someplace in Asia. Their common ancestor, P-P226, lived about 33,000 years ago.

How cool is this that you can peer back in time to view these ancient lineages – the story still told in our Y DNA today.

What About You?

If you’re a male, you can upgrade to or purchase a Big Y-700 to participate, here. In addition to discovering where you fall on the tree of mankind, you’ll discover who you match on your direct patrilineal side and where their ancestors are located in the world.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research

Deleting DNA Results or Closing Your Account Does NOT Automatically = Destroying Your Original DNA Sample

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First and foremost, I want to state unequivocally that I am NOT advocating closing your account at any of the testing vendor sites. That’s not the purpose of this article. In fact, I encourage everyone to use each tool to extract every drop of information possible.

The purpose is to educate and inform you that IF you close your account and/or delete your DNA RESULTS from your account, even if the vendor in question says that the action is irreversible and you will need to resubmit a new sample and purchase a new test if you change your mind, that does NOT necessarily mean that your physical DNA sample itself will be destroyed unless you take separate action to request sample destruction. It also does not automatically reverse any previously-granted research permissions.

Many people presume that if they delete their results and/or close their account, that automatically means that their original spit or swab sample is destroyed – and that’s not necessarily true.

First, we need to understand the difference between:

  • A DNA sample
  • A DNA raw data results file, also referred to as a download file
  • DNA matches or a match file

The Difference Between a DNA Sample, Results and Download Files, and Matches

There are three distinct parts of the DNA testing process that people often confuse. It’s important to understand these distinct pieces because you interact with them differently and vendors do as well. In other words, deleting your DNA results file, or closing your account does not necessarily mean that your original sample is destroyed unless you request (and confirm) that separately.

DNA Sample – The DNA sample itself is the swab or vial of spit that you submit to the vendor for processing. That sample is sent to a lab where DNA is extracted and processed on a specific DNA chip that produces a file with roughly 700,000 locations for autosomal tests.

After your DNA results are processed and the vendor knows that they do not need to rerun your sample, how or if your DNA sample is stored, and where, is a function of each specific vendor and their policies.

One vendor, Family Tree DNA archives your DNA sample vials for 25 years as a free benefit so that you (or your heirs should you pass away) can order additional products or upgrades. FamilyTreeDNA offers various levels of Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing along with autosomal (Family Finder) results – so there are several upgrade avenues.

This short article, 4 Kinds of DNA for Genetic Genealogy, explains the difference between various kinds of DNA tests.

It’s less obvious why a vendor who does not offer genealogical DNA products other than autosomal testing would retain a customer’s actual DNA sample. The other three vendors, while they don’t currently offer additional genealogy DNA products, do offer health upgrades and purchase options. They may be retaining samples so that their customers could potentially upgrade and they would have a sample on-hand to rerun, if necessary.

Both MyHeritage and 23andMe offer a combined ancestry/genealogy plus health product initially, or customers can purchase the health add-on later. FamilyTreeDNA offers a high-end comprehensive Exome health product for existing customers, the Tovana Genome Report, but it’s a different test altogether and requires a fresh DNA sample. (Update – this information is no longer valid in 2021. Both Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA have discontinued their health products.)

Furthermore, both Ancestry and 23andMe either conduct health/medical research internally and/or participate in research partnerships with outside entities and may be hoping that their customers will opt-in to research.

Regardless of the underlying reason why, keep in mind that your actual sample is likely being archived someplace, assuming there is any left after processing, unless you request that your sample be destroyed.

Refer to each vendor’s Terms and Conditions, their Privacy Policy along with any other linked documents to gain insight into how each vendor operates. Furthermore, one of those documents will provide instructions for how to request the destruction of your actual DNA sample, should you choose to do so.

All vendors change the contents of their Terms and Conditions along with other legal documents from time to time, so be sure to refer to the current version.

The DNA sample itself is NOT the same thing as the output from the processing, which is the DNA raw data results file.

DNA Raw Data Results File – The DNA results file contains only a small fraction of the three billion locations found in the human genome. Autosomal DNA tests include only about 700,000 (plus or minus) selected locations produced by the chip the vendor is utilizing. The output of the laboratory process is referred to as a raw data file or the DNA results file. People sometimes refer to this as the download file as well, because it’s the file you can download from each vendor.

The results in a raw data file look like this:

When you download and transfer your file from one vendor to another, the raw data file is what you are transferring. You can find instructions for downloading your data file from each vendor, here.

  • The DNA raw data or download file is NOT your actual DNA, which is what is extracted from the liquid in the vial.
  • The raw data or download file is NOT a list of your matches, which may or may not be a separate file available for downloading, depending on the vendor.

The raw data file only contains letters representing your two genotyped nucleotides (T, A, C or G) for the rsid (accession #) for each genetic address or position tested. Each genetic address contains two SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms. You don’t need to understand the details, just that one nucleotide at that address is received from your mother and one from your father.

The example above shows my first 4 locations in my raw data file. You can see that I received an A from both parents at the first two locations, and a G from both parents and the second two locations.

Match File

The values in your DNA results file are compared to other people in the vendor’s database. If enough contiguous locations match, typically more than 500 matching SNPs, plus additional cM (centiMorgan) threshold match criteria, shown below, you are determined to be a match with that other person. You will each be placed on the other person’s match list, and the vendor will then provide additional processing based on the signature features they offer to their clients.

Of the four main vendors, three, Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage and 23andMe allow customers to download a match file in spreadsheet format that provides additional information about each match. Ancestry, unfortunately, does not.

You cannot upload your match file to other vendors – only your raw data file gets uploaded which the vendor then processes in the same way they would if you had tested at their company.

If someone on your match list wants to be included in the database at another vendor, they will either need to test at that vendor or transfer their file to that vendor. Every vendor has people in their database that the other vendors don’t have, so it behooves all genealogists to be in each of the four databases either by testing directly or uploading their raw data files as a transfer.

Of the four main vendors, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage both accept transfers from other vendors and provide free matching, but 23andMe and Ancestry do not. Note that both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage do charge for advanced features, $19 and $29, respectively, but in both cases, it’s significantly less than the cost of a test.

Deleting Results and Closing Accounts

Again, I am NOT advocating that anyone should close accounts at any vendor. In fact, I would discourage DNA deletion. Some people delete their DNA or close their accounts when other options would better serve their purposes. However, if you decide to do so, you need to be aware of the following:

  • If you have a genealogical tree/records research account at Ancestry or MyHeritage, you can delete your DNA results but maintain your genealogy research account, if you desire. You will lose the benefits of having a DNA test at that vendor if you delete your DNA test.
  • At those two vendors, if you delete your DNA, that does not automatically affect the genealogy side of your account except for combined features like ThruLines at Ancestry and Theories of Family Relativity at MyHeritage.
  • If you DOWNLOAD your DNA file, that does NOT delete the file at the original testing vendor unless you do so separately. Downloading only means that you download a copy of the file. Your original raw data results file is still at the vendor, UNLESS YOU CHOOSE TO DELETE YOUR RESULTS. Do not delete your results file unless you want to lose your matches and no longer participate in DNA testing or DNA-related features at that vendor.
  • If you are planning to delete your DNA results at a particular vendor, download a raw data file first, and verify that the file works correctly by uploading the file to one of the vendors that accepts transfers. Save the raw data file permanently on your computer. This preserves at least some of your testing investment and allows you to utilize your DNA results file elsewhere.
  • If you delete your DNA results at any of the major vendors, you cannot restore the results file at that vendor without repurchasing and resubmitting a new DNA test. For vendors who accept transfers, you could potentially re-upload your file as a transfer, but you would need to pay for advanced features.
  • If you delete your DNA results at vendors who do NOT offer additional genealogical research services, meaning at 23andMe and Family Tree DNA, there is no reason to maintain an account at that vendor.

If you delete your results or close your account at any vendor, it DOES mean that:

  • The DNA result you’ve deleted along with corresponding matches and other features are permanently gone. You cannot change your mind. Delete=permanent.
  • At FamilyTreeDNA, you can delete one kind of DNA test without deleting all types of DNA tests for a particular individual. For example, you could delete a Y DNA result but not delete mitochondrial or the autosomal Family Finder test.
  • You will have to pay to retest should you change your mind.

If you delete your results or close the DNA portion of your account, it DOES NOT necessarily mean that:

  • Your DNA sample is destroyed.
  • You’ve revoked any permissions previously given for participation in research.

You will need to perform both of these tasks separately and independently of deleting your DNA file at a vendor and/or closing your account.

Every Vendor is Different

The process of requesting sample destruction and revoking research permissions is different at each vendor, with or without closing your account.

Every vendor’s terms and conditions are separate and different. Some vendors may automatically close your account if you request sample destruction, and others won’t. Some may automatically delete your sample if you close your account, but I know for certain that’s not uniformly true.

Terms and conditions, as well as standard procedures, change over time as well.

I’m not telling you which vendors operate in which ways, because this article will someday be dated and vendor policies change. I don’t want to take the chance of leading someone astray in the future.

Therefore, if you wish to have your sample destroyed and/or revoke any research permissions previously granted, I strongly suggest that you call the vendor’s customer support and convey specifically what you want, and why. The vendor may offer alternatives to achieve what you desire without deleting your sample and account.

To delete your sample and/or account, you may need to provide your request in writing.

Request verification in writing that your sample has been destroyed and that any previously granted research authority/permission has been rescinded.

Research Permission

Please note that you can rescind previously granted research permission WITHOUT affecting your account in any other way. However, the reverse is not true – deleting your sample and closing your account does not automatically rescind previously-granted research permission.

You can only rescind permission for future research, not research already underway or completed that includes your DNA and corresponding answers to research questions.

Extra Steps

I hope you will continue to enjoy the results of your DNA tests for years to come. New features and benefits are added regularly, as are new matches – any one of which has the potential to break down that pesky brick wall. Equally as important, at least to me, is the legacy I’m leaving with my combined tree, DNA, and research work for future generations.

However, what’s right for me may not be right for you. If you make a different decision, be sure that you fully understand the different parts of DNA testing along with the various options and steps you may need to take to achieve your goal.

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Products and Services

Genealogy Research