DNA survey - please respond

[peter]

I'm trying to develop a technique that would help people figure out where in England their ancestors came from by analysing the trees of their Ancestry matches.

The attached spreadsheet lists the English counties in the first column; the population in 1801 is shown in the second column. In the third column is the number of pages of results you get when you search your DNA matches for birthplaces in each county - the numbers currently shown are my own DNA results, just replace them with your own numbers (these are the only numbers you need to enter).

Note: you must select the county from Ancestry's dropdown menu, which appears as you type

In the 4th column 0.5 is deducted from the figures in the 3rd column - because the last page of results will, on average, be only half full.

Finally, the 5th column shows the population of the county divided by the adjusted number of pages.

After inserting your own numbers in the 3rd column sort the table according to the final column from low to high. Now highlight the names of the counties where you know you have ancestors - if your results are anything like mine they will tend to be nearer the top of the list.

Either send me the resulting spreadsheet or post it in this discussion, whichever you prefer.

Tip: you don't need to step through page by page to find out how many pages of results there are - you can jump.

UPDATE - you will find a newer version of the spreadsheet here

 

[Pauline]

I'm not convinced my results are that meaningful, but here they are anyway.

 

[PhilGee]

The highlighted counties seem to have a "Cousin" level related order, probably peaking at 4th/5th. That's a "first glance" impression.

 

[peter]

Thanks to both of you. Interesting that all three of us have Beds and Bucks near the top of our lists even though none of us admit to having ancestors from those counties.

I'd like to see some more examples.... it's early to assess how useful it might be, and whether there is any scope for improving the (very basic) algorithm.

 

[jorghes]

Not sure how much help this would be considering large portions of my ancestry are also Scottish, Welsh and European Jewish.

I did it for me, if you like I can do it for the results I have for both my parents and my grandmother if you'd like to see the correlation with my own results.

I'm not sure what it shows at the moment other than my family kept moving!

 

[Pauline]

I did it for me, if you like I can do it for the results I have for both my parents and my grandmother if you'd like to see the correlation with my own results.

I could do likewise with my sister's results if that would be helpful.

 

[Rhian]

I remain unconvinced by the value of DNA tests.
As an experiment I tried the test on someone I know does not have any UK, let alone English, ancestors for at least 300 years, probably a lot longer as the main lines then were in the Balkans. They have at least one page for each county, up to 6 in Northumberland.
Further checking shows that all the matches, at least those checked so far, are through US families. It is known that several waves of relatives of the person tested did go to the US and it seems descendants of these had married into UK lines, their children carrying East Europe and UK genes may be the matches shown by ancestry. This implies that many of the DNA matches are not DNA matches but are relatives of DNA matches a few generations later.
These flawed result seem to feed back into the pointless ethnicity estimates as someone with no known UK heritage and 60% East European and Balkan is shown by ancestry as being 25% English.
I cannot supply test results for myself as two ancestry kits have now been lost and I do not intend to waste any more time or money on the useless testing.

 

[PhilGee]

....
This implies that many of the DNA matches are not DNA matches but are relatives of DNA matches a few generations later.
....

I disagree - they are still DNA matches. Their Direct Ancestors include branches within the UK as well and, therefore, the results are still valid with respect to the Ancestry filters. That is why I have matches with Direct Ancestors in counties where I have no known ancestors.
Phil

 

[Bob Spiers]

Yes interesting and certainly the major counties are indeed at the top.

 

[peter]

Not sure how much help this would be considering large portions of my ancestry are also Scottish, Welsh and European Jewish.

I did it for me, if you like I can do it for the results I have for both my parents and my grandmother if you'd like to see the correlation with my own results.

I'm not sure what it shows at the moment other than my family kept moving!

You've sorted it round the other way from everyone else - could you possibly resort and upload again? Interestingly your results seem to make more sense the wrong way up - but it may be for the reasons you mention. It looks as if you have many more matches than I do.

 

[peter]

I remain unconvinced by the value of DNA tests.
As an experiment I tried the test on someone I know does not have any UK, let alone English, ancestors for at least 300 years, probably a lot longer as the main lines then were in the Balkans. They have at least one page for each county, up to 6 in Northumberland.
Further checking shows that all the matches, at least those checked so far, are through US families. It is known that several waves of relatives of the person tested did go to the US and it seems descendants of these had married into UK lines, their children carrying East Europe and UK genes may be the matches shown by ancestry. This implies that many of the DNA matches are not DNA matches but are relatives of DNA matches a few generations later.
These flawed result seem to feed back into the pointless ethnicity estimates as someone with no known UK heritage and 60% East European and Balkan is shown by ancestry as being 25% English.
I cannot supply test results for myself as two ancestry kits have now been lost and I do not intend to waste any more time or money on the useless testing.

You know that I've always said that ethnicity estimates are rubbish (with the possible exception of Living DNA, where the jury is still out) - so what is the point you're making?

 

[jorghes]

You've sorted it round the other way from everyone else - could you possibly resort and upload again? Interestingly your results seem to make more sense the wrong way up - but it may be for the reasons you mention. It looks as if you have many more matches than I do.

Whoops. Resorted from smallest to largest now, please see attached.

As we have previously discussed, my ancestry does include a group of non-conformists with a habit of intermarriage, Ashkenazi Jews and Ulster Scots - which is why I would debated if you would like my paternal grandmother's results, as all of those groups are on her side of the family (!!) - along with pedigree collapse within the Ashkenazi Jewish side. I also have a large number of relatives on both sides of my family who I know have emigrated to the USA and Canada at various levels of my ancestry, even for a few after they first emigrated to Australia.

As for the numbers - currently mine shows "129 4th cousins or closer", I don't know how many pages of "distant" cousins, 23 hints (5 of which will be my close relatives) and 10 DNA circles.

My father's list 203 4th cousins or closer (28 hints, -4), his mother (my grandmother's) comes in at 595 (29 hints -4) and my mother's (the only one with no intermarriage circles I've found so far) at 246 4th cousins (with 8 hints -3).
All the DNA Circles (groups of people who share the same DNA and the same ancestors listed in their public trees) are on my paternal side, although I know of enough actual cousins on my mother's side who have done DNA tests for Ancestry to provide another circle, they just have either no trees or private trees.

Later today I'll do your survey for all of my DNA results, it might still be interesting to see the correlation between the results especially when taking into consideration my grandmother's limited English ancestry.

 

[peter]

My father's list 203 4th cousins or closer (28 hints, -4), his mother (my grandmother's) comes in at 595 (29 hints -4) and my mother's (the only one with no intermarriage circles I've found so far) at 246 4th cousins (with 8 hints -3).

You're clearly from a different generation from me (and the average LostCousins member) - my grandparents all died between 71 and 50 years ago. This difference could also help to explain why your results are so different.

It would be interesting to tally how many matches you have in total - my last page of matches is 307 which means I have between 15300 and 15350 matches (there are 50 matches per page).

 

[jorghes]

You're clearly from a different generation from me (and the average LostCousins member) - my grandparents all died between 71 and 50 years ago. This difference could also help to explain why your results are so different.

It would be interesting to tally how many matches you have in total - my last page of matches is 307 which means I have between 15300 and 15350 matches (there are 50 matches per page).

Oh I know, I'm only in my 30s and considerably younger than most people I've met who do family history - but I'm not going to wait around until I'm older to do it! I don't have as much time as other people to do it - I work full time, so I fit in what I can around my work commitments. No visiting of lots of registry offices for me, though I would love to be able to, pretty much all of my research has been done on the internet (except when I got to meet some of my cousins who lived in the UK, or on weekends when I occasionally get in to my local genealogical society.)
I do only have one grandparent left - she turned 95 this year and wasn't all that happy about doing a DNA test for me when I asked!

As for my other grandparents - one of them did die at least 20 years before I was born (my maternal grandmother), she would have been 103 this year if she had lived; her husband died when I was 5, he would have been 109 this year if he was still living and my paternal grandfather died when I was 12, and he would have been 99 this year had he still been alive.
I do often wish that my other grandparents were still living - my paternal grandfather collated a family tree and notes on his own searches into our history - and his brothers, all but one of whom have died, also wrote down notes about what they knew about my paternal line - some of it, I have since discovered, wasn't completely correct. But my grandfather added the last entry to his family tree the year he died, and gave a copy to each of his children. I have big plans to update that family tree with an updated version at some point.

As for pages in DNA results, I have 546 pages of results, I'm not completely sure how to extrapolate that out to possible results. (all numbers need to be -5 for my direct family which are also in my results).

 

[Bob Spiers]

I thought I would check out my wife's DNA matches in the same way which as a girl from Northamptonshire confirms her highest concentration of matches is in this and surround counties. I attach the results

Repeating the exercise for a different set of DNA results was good as I nearly fell in the trap I had made when doing my own i.e. searching for the county town rather than the County; Examples being Cambridge,Cambridgeshire/Lincoln, Lincolnshire in stead of Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire. I will check over my results again and amend the spreadsheet and see what difference this makes. I will repost the results in due course.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Repeating the exercise for a different set of DNA results was good as I nearly fell in the trap I had made when doing my own i.e. searching for the county town rather than the County; Examples being Cambridge,Cambridgeshire/Lincoln, Lincolnshire in stead of Cambridgeshire/Lincolnshire. I will check over my results again and amend the spreadsheet and see what difference this makes. I will repost the results in due course.

​

As I thought I did fall into the County town trap on Bedford, Oxford, Gloucester & Cambridge, not funnily enough with Lincoln(shire) which is what alerted me when doing my wife's matches. What pleases me is that it puts Bedfordshire & Oxfordshire up where they belong, towards the top and resurrects Gloucestershire to a better placing (based on conventional research). I asterisk the Counties that change position and show the previous results alongside. (The highlighting remains as before)

 

[peter]

As for pages in DNA results, I have 546 pages of results, I'm not completely sure how to extrapolate that out to possible results.

Between 27251 and 27300 (there are 50 results per page). It's interesting that though you have nearly twice as many matches as I do, the number of close matches is very similar. Again I suspect this is a result of the difference in generations.

As for starting researches at an early age, my first reaction was that I wished I'd started at the same time as you. On the other hand, when I consider how time-consuming research was when I started in 2002 - although even then there was some information online - I realise that I couldn't actually have achieved very much if I had begun in the 1970s. or 1980s. I certainly couldn't have knocked down any of the 'brick walls' that have only come tumbling down now thanks to DNA, and I might well have wasted lot of time following up leads based on incorrect family stories.

 

[peter]

I don't know what others think, but my initial impression is that my simple spreadsheet produces more useful results about English ancestry than any of the ethnicity estimates, even, perhaps those from Living DNA.

But there's still a mystery regarding Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire which often creep to the top of the list even though there are no (known) ancestors from those counties - any theories? Is it a flaw in the method, or is it telling me that some of my ancestors who turned up in London in the early 19th century and inconveniently died before the 1851 Census originated in those counties (which seems plausible, but I have no other evidence to support it).

 

[jorghes]

Between 27251 and 27300 (there are 50 results per page). It's interesting that though you have nearly twice as many matches as I do, the number of close matches is very similar. Again I suspect this is a result of the difference in generations.

As for starting researches at an early age, my first reaction was that I wished I'd started at the same time as you. On the other hand, when I consider how time-consuming research was when I started in 2002 - although even then there was some information online - I realise that I couldn't actually have achieved very much if I had begun in the 1970s. or 1980s. I certainly couldn't have knocked down any of the 'brick walls' that have only come tumbling down now thanks to DNA, and I might well have wasted lot of time following up leads based on incorrect family stories.

Not sure - I have the lowest number of pages in the DNA tests that I have done - the others have page totals as follows: 550 (my father), 623 (my mother), 653 (my younger brother), 767 (my older brother) and 1215 (my paternal grandmother).

Remembering that my paternal grandmother's results would be heavily influenced by the portion of her ancestry which are Ulster Scots, English non-conformists and Ashkenazi Jews. (I was almost freaked out by the number of pages I was finding for her!)

 

[peter]

I'm not sure that English non-conformists are going to affect the numbers (I have some in my tree - most people do, as in the religious census of 1851 there were almost as many non-conformists who attended church as there were conformists). But Ulster Scots and Ashkenazi Jews are certainly endogamous.

None of my family or my wife's family (6 tests including mine) who have tested at Ancestry have as many matches as you. But all 5 of the others have more than me.