The Tree of Me

I have just finished rereading Blaine T. Bettinger's book The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy. I decided to look carefully at my possible X-DNA inheritance. Females inherit X-DNA from both their parents, one X chromosome from each. Males inherit their X chromosome from their mother. This can be shown visually in the following charts. The first chart shows ancestors from whom I may have inherited my X-DNA. The next chart shows my husband's X-DNA inheritance. How will this be useful to me? When I use Gedmatch in conjunction with DNA Painter I may be able to be more specific in assigning matches to a specific ancestor. e.g. If I have an X-DNA match with another person and our Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) are William Dawson and Bridget Mylan, I can attribute the segment to Bridget Mylan or her parents John Mylan and Matilda Agnew as I know that it is impossible for me to inherit X-DNA from William Dawson. The 6 g...

Recently a DNA match of mine made contact with me.  It appeared that we were both descended from a William Harrison and his wife who lived in Liverpool, England. William and Ann are my ggg grandparents. Family members here in Australia had searched for years to discover the death of both William and Ann. The last record we could discover for them was the 1861 census where they were living at 3 Hornby Street in Liverpool with their daughter Ann Meacock, her husband and family. I was sent a link to a video from the Museum of Liverpool  which talks about Court Housing - small houses build off dark, narrow courtyards which provided cheap housing for the huge numbers of people moving moving to the city. Hornby Street is mentioned at the end of the video. Our conclusion was that William and Ann both died sometime between the 1861 and 1871 censuses. Our only clue to his death was a story told by my nanna that her great grandfather had died after being kicked by his horse. Of co...

It's been twelve months since I first received my DNA results from Ancestry. Since then five more members of my immediate family have tested. Many close results have been people I have met or corresponded with over the years. Another has provided me with evidence that we may have found a descendants from a sibling missing in the late 1800s. However, there are some close matches who we can't accurately place in our family. After a couple of months I decided I needed to work out a system to visualise these results for myself.  (I can't remember if I got this idea from someone or not). I decided to enter details in a spreadsheet with columns headed Match Name, Relationship, MCRA, My ancestor in the next generation, Match's ancestor next generation, Shared CM, Segments and a contact address if I had one. I then had pages for each of my grandparents and their ancestors. As further members of my family tested I also started pages for them. It got very messy! I needed anothe...

This morning I received an email from Ancestry saying that my DNA results were ready to view. I was surprised at the speed as I had expected to be waiting for a few more weeks. Were there any surprises? Well I was hoping to be a little more Irish! However, considering that some of my Irish came from Waterford and Vikings settled in the area in the 800s this may account for part of my previously unknown Scandinavian heritage. And of course a significant branch of my Irish ancestors were from England and were more than likely part of the Plantations of Ireland in Monaghan and Cavan in the 16th and 17th centuries. I don't have many trace regions - just 4% from the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) and 1% from Western Europe. I wonder where they fit in? In my DNA matches there are 2 extremely high confidence matches - one a possible 2nd-3rd cousin and the other a 4th -6th cousin. Unfortunately he has a private tree so at the moment I am none the wiser. However, I hav...

If you have any Scottish ancestors you might be interested in listening to The Scots: A Genetic Journey . In this series Alistair Moffat explores the history of Scotland. In the first episode he talks about the spread of population from Iberia to Scotland and the discovery of possibly the oldest house in Scotland build  around 7600 BCE.  At the end of the episode Alistair has a DNA sample taken to discover his genetic history. This first episode is available to listen to for another couple of days. Episode 2 is also online.