DNA survey - please respond

[jorghes]

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.

I mention my non-conformist ancestors simply because that family had a habit of marrying their own cousins (both first and second and I think occasionally third). There are a lot of husbands and wives who share the same surname within that side of the family, although not in my direct line, there are also a number of repeating surnames as the family also intermarried within a small group of other families.

Perhaps what really affects my results is that my paternal side immigrated earlier and further than my maternal side - and a lot of those immigrants found their way to North America, both the USA and Canada. Thus the likelihood that my paternal side has more links within a database which would likely to be dominated (at the moment certainly) by results from those in the US and Canada would not be all that surprising?

I have yet to find any ancestors on my maternal line that were early immigrants to North America - I only have a small number of sisters emigrating in the late 1800s. Ancestry's results are insisting that my mother has two relatives that I don't have on my tree, both born in North America long before I know of any of my ancestors doing so! I also, so far, have the least number of "hits" in my maternal line that I can identify where the DNA link comes from. I have well over 20 "hits" on my paternal line (with or without help!)

 

[Pauline]

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.

Based on how my spreadsheet came out, I'm not really sure I could agree with that. I've done another spreadsheet using my sister's results (attached), and the counties where our ancestors came from are a little bit more weighted towards the top in hers, but some still appear much lower than I feel they should.

I see that Bob has found that his 'major counties' do appear close to the top of his list but he has only 3 counties in this category. I think I would have to put at least 12 counties in my 'major' list. Does this make a difference to the overall outcome? Or to put it another way, does the degree of diversity and/or mobility of our English ancestry affect our results?

 

[Bob Spiers]

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?

Not really a theory but intriguing because both counties (in my opinion) feature correctly in my wife's Tree as they both border Northamptonshire and I know only too well she has ancestors originating from both counties.

But then if viewed from my own perspective, I had the same the thoughts about Beds & Bucks until it dawned on me that my own children (from a first marriage) were born on the borders of Northamptonshire (an area which today comes under Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire) and her family heavily features in my Tree. So, perhaps not too surprisingly, I could expect cousin matches tied to my first wife's family from these counties. In fact I should have highlighted both counties to reflect this.

But that aside, perhaps it is something to do with both counties being part of London's 'Home Counties' which, according to Wikipedia, are -Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surry & Sussex- but also often included because of their proximity to London and its regional economy - Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire & Oxfordshire. So their frequency (and perhaps the others) may have something to do with ancestral migrations?

I realise that will not be a bit of use if researching family based far north if the same two counties also appear top of the list , but I will leave others to offer an explanation of why this might be so.

 

[peter]

I see that Bob has found that his 'major counties' do appear close to the top of his list but he has only 3 counties in this category. I think I would have to put at least 12 counties in my 'major' list. Does this make a difference to the overall outcome? Or to put it another way, does the degree of diversity and/or mobility of our English ancestry affect our results?

It depends what you regard as 'major'. I'd suggest looking at your 3G grandparents - of which you'll have 32 - and allocating each of them to counties (~or splitting them between counties) based on what you know about their ancestry.

What it's tempting to do is look at how many direct ancestors you have from each county - this doesn't take into account where they are on your tree. For example, I tend to think that Devon is important in my tree, because I've traced my great-grandmother's surname line back to 1600 and been quite successful on Devon lines, but in reality only one of my 3G grandparents was born in Devon, so only about 3% of my DNA.

Similarly, I did an enormous amount of work on my grandmother's surname line in Hertfordshire, but again it's only 3% of my DNA. Not major.

 

[peter]

But that aside, perhaps it is something to do with both counties being part of London's 'Home Counties' which, according to Wikipedia, are -Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surry & Sussex- but also often included because of their proximity to London and its regional economy - Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire & Oxfordshire. So their frequency (and perhaps the others) may have something to do with ancestral migrations?

You could be right - a quarter of my tree is accounted for by ancestors who showed up in London without any clues to their origins.

 

[peter]

some still appear much lower than I feel they should

Middlesex is a special case for two reasons.

One is because it includes London, but when you search birthplaces at Ancestry London isn't part of Middlesex; however you can't do both searches and add the numbers together, because many of your matches will have ancestors from both places.

The second reason is because most people living in London didn't have ancestors from London. In fact, all of my ancestral lines passed through London in the 19th century, but so far all those I've managed to trace in the 18th century came from outside London, and it wouldn't surprise me if the same was true of all the others.

So you really need to ignore London and Middlesex altogether. As far as Rutland is concerned, it's such a small county that the ancestral lines concerned could have origins in an adjoining county - so Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, or Northamptonshire.

But this apreadsheet is a work-in-progress - it's an idea I had which, if it works, will be phenomenally useful.

 

[peter]

This is my Living DNA results. They tally fairly well with what I know about my ancestors (except that they didn't pick up the fact that I'm 6% German).

Here's what I know about the ancestry of my 32 x 3G grandparents:

Suffolk 8 and possibly 2 more
Essex 5
London 5
Germany 2
Kent 1.5
Walthamstow (Essex/Middlesex border) 1
Devon 1
Hertfordshire 1
Oxfordshire 1
Berkshire 1
Bristol (Gloucestershire/Somerset border) 1
Surrey 0.5
Unknown 2

 

[CarolB08]

I hope I have done this right, its been very interesting to me to see the spread of my dna ancestors across the Country.

 

[Pauline]

Middlesex is a special case for two reasons.

Yes, I agree, and with what you say about Rutland. And I also agree with what you say about defining “major” counties. But that still leaves me thinking some of my highlighted counties are not where they should be in my list, with Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire (and probably Berkshire) being too high, and Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire being too low.

 

[Heather]

Hi Peter, I hope that I speak not only for myself but for others on this forum that are not as tech savvy as some. I have tested with Ancestry DNA and I do have lots of English ancestors and know which counties they are from BUT how do I get the information you require to do the survey? I have looked on my DNA page on Ancestry and do not understand how to get the results that other forum members have worked out. Maybe a step by step explanation would help, I'm willing to do the survey but am at a loss on how to do it, plus I have never used a spreadsheet. I know unbelievable but true.

 

[Pauline]

how do I get the information you require to do the survey?

Go to your DNA page at Ancestry
Click on the big green button "View All DNA Matches"
Click on the big blue button at the top right "Search Matches"
Using the "search by birth location" field, starting typing in the first county. You should then get a drop down list of options, and you then select the county from that list. (Eg. if I type "berksh" then "Berkshire, England" pops up 4th in the list.)
Click search and wait for the selected county matches to appear
Then you need to find out how many pages of matches you have. If there is more than one page, then at the top and bottom of the page you will see a box with a "1" in it and arrows either side. You can either click through the pages one by one until you get to the last page with any matches listed, or you can enter a number into the box to navigate, say, 5 or 10 pages at a time.
For each county, the information you need is the page number of the last page containing any matches.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I see that Bob has found that his 'major counties' do appear close to the top of his list but he has only 3 counties in this category

Without recourse to examining my 32 x 3G Grandparents as Peter has done (but will do soon), I am pretty sure that the 3 main counties I list -Warwickshire, Worcestershire & Staffordshire will show as the only counties entitled to be called MAIN; although it is possible Staffordshire might get a downgrade to being sub-major and rate only a pale-yellow highlight.

In fact had today's 'West Midlands' been in existence at that time, that would certainly qualify for an Orange highlight, although I suspect there remain enough villages and hamlets outside of this qualifying Metropolitan area to cause Warwickshire & Worcestershire (in particular) to remain yellow.

 

[Tim]

I've attached my results. I'm also surprised that my ancestors counties aren't at the top of the list. But I understand why.

But I think that this is the flaw with this analysis. The descendants of my ancestors and then their descendants etc, will start to swamp the counties of my actual ancestors.

The fact that Beds and Bucks also feature very high in my results, even though I have no known ancestors from there, maybe points to how the descendants have migrated to or through this area, maybe because of jobs?

But I think we should also better understand what we've just done? This search location has searched for a county in the whole tree of a person with a DNA match.
So, if I matched with a cousin of my 32 x 3G grandparents, the other 30 grandparents data have nothing to do with me but their data (and their descendants) has just been counted.

It's been an interesting analysis and discussion though.

 

[peter]

But I think we should also better understand what we've just done? This search location has searched for a county in the whole tree of a person with a DNA match.
So, if I matched with a cousin of my 32 x 3G grandparents, the other 30 grandparents data have nothing to do with me but their data (and their descendants) has just been counted.

That's true, but it's how DNA works - we're looking for inferences based on small differences. So far the results are quite promising.

 

[Tim]

I've reloaded my tree to match the initial requirements, apologies everyone.

That's true, but it's how DNA works - we're looking for inferences based on small differences. So far the results are quite promising.

I must admit that I'm still learning about the whole DNA, but I don't follow this logic.

The point I was making is that 30 of 3x grandparents of this cousin, are not DNA relatives to me. But all of their locations are in my dataset, the further back our common DNA match is, the worse this will be?

In my results, all my English County ancestors come from Lancashire, apart from 1 who comes from Surrey and who then moved to Lancashire!
But Lancashire is only 24th on my list.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Without recourse to examining my 32 x 3G Grandparents as Peter has done (but will do soon), I am pretty sure that the 3 main counties I list -Warwickshire, Worcestershire & Staffordshire will show as the only counties entitled to be called MAIN; although it is possible Staffordshire might get a downgrade to being sub-major and rate only a pale-yellow highlight.

Rather pleasingly having now isolated my 32 x 3G Grandparent locations, the results are more or less as expected, with Worcestershire & Warwickshire topping the list and Staffordshire relegated. The main change is Ireland now showing 3rd and Wales just creeping in.

Here is the breakdown:
Worcestershire 13.5
Warwickshire 8
Ireland 4
Staffordshire 2
Cheshire 1.5
Herefordshire 1
Gloucestershire 0.5
Shropshire 0.5
Lancashire 0.5
Wales 0.5

The counties missing ( based on my original highlighting) Northants,Wilts, Notts, Lincs, Oxon clearly relate to 2xG migrations and Lancashire gets in by the skin of its teeth because an ancestor born in Liverpool married someone from Cheshire before their 2G descendants moved to Worcestershire.

The only other observation I would make to all this is that some of my 2xG descendants and many of my 1xG had moved to Birmingham to seek work and so Warwickshire won out in the long run, although my Market Gardener & Builder ancestors ensured Worcestershire was not far behind.

 

[peter]

The point I was making is that 30 of 3x grandparents of this cousin, are not DNA relatives to me. But all of their locations are in my dataset, the further back our common DNA match is, the worse this will be?

What you have to remember is that DNA matches are based on those small overlaps - typically you'll share less than 1% of your DNA with your genetic cousins, and mostly itll be far less. It would be great if we could weight the data according to how close the matches are, but I can't think of any easy way of doing that.

In my results, all my English County ancestors come from Lancashire, apart from 1 who comes from Surrey and who then moved to Lancashire!
But Lancashire is only 24th on my list.

I've never before come across a tree where the ancestry is so concentrated in a single county. Comparing your spreadsheet against mine, almost all of your counties have figure in the final column which is within a factor of 2 - whereas mine are more spread out. This in itself might be an interesting finding if it turns out to be replicated in the spreadsheets of others who have similar spread of ancestors to you.

Lancashire might be 24th on your list, but you have 40 pages of matches. I can only get as high as 40 pages by searching for matches with ancestors born in England! It would be useful to know how many matches you - and other contributors - get when searching for England.

Dividing the population of the county by the number of pages is a very rough and ready approach - this is a first iteration in the process. I suspect from the beginning that large counties would be disadvantaged by their size - as a simple example, if you were able to search for the three Ridings of Yorkshire separately, the total of the three results would be significantly greater than when you searched for Yorkshire.

Finally, I notice that some of the counties towards the top of your list are adjacent to Lancashire - Cheshire, Cumberland, and Westmorleand are all in your top 4. Yorkshire is way down the list, it's true, but you do have 40 pages of Yorkshire matches.

 

[peter]

Just to let everyone know, I've set this forum as only visible to logged-in users.

 

[Tim]

Hmmm When I just search for England I only get 40 pages. I think the search is completely literal, searching for England only searches for the word England and not where England exists in the format, county, England

 

[Pauline]

I've never before come across a tree where the ancestry is so concentrated in a single county

Following on from that, I thought you might be interested in my husband's results. One of his grandparents was half Irish and half Scottish, but the rest of his ancestry is English, and overwhelmingly in Yorkshire, with a small contingent in Durham. All of his English 3G grandparents were born in Yorkshire, but 2 of those had their roots in Durham.

As you will see, Yorkshire has come well down in his list while Durham is much higher.

(The faint highlighting of Middlesex relates to a 4G grandparent born there, but whose roots are unknown.)