General info

Using LivingDNA

Miss W. General info, Using DNA , , , , ,

Because my ethnicity is basically British and Irish, I thought it would be interesting to find out exactly where in these countries my ancestors came from.

Here are the top results for my parents, my brother and myself. I had to pay extra to get the results for my parents and brother as they hadn’t tested with LivingDNA, instead I uploaded their raw data from Ancestry instead.

Mum

  • North Yorkshire 15.5%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 14.9%
  • Cumbria 13.2%
  • Devon 11.6%
  • South Central England 10.7%
  • South East England 9.5%
  • South England 8.6%

Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Somerset (South Central England)

Kent, Sussex, Essex (South East England)

Hampshire, Dorset (South England)

Dad

  • Devon 29.8%
  • Ireland 24.8%
  • South Central England 11.9%
  • South England 11.5%
  • Northumbria 8%

The rest are 3% or lower including Orkney and Shetland Islands at 1.5%

Philip

  • South East England 20.6%
  • Ireland 17.2%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 15.1%
  • Central England 12.5%
  • North Yorkshire 9%
  • Northumbria 7.1%
  • South Central England 7%

But Devon only 1.8% and Orkney Shetland 1.7%

Sue

  • Devon 32.8%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 13.5%
  • Northwest England 12.8%
  • Ireland 6.3%
  • Lincolnshire 6.3%
  • Northumbria 6%

So looking at these results:

  • I got the Devon genes from dad while Philip got the Irish genes.
  • Philip got the North Yorkshire genes from mum while I got the Devon genes.
  • Interesting the difference one generation can make with all the movement in England and Ireland.

We also have shared matches now on LivingDNA.

Mum  274,  Dad 179,  Philip 218 ,  Sue 209

So another job for me to do is work out where these matches connect within our family. The LivingDNA website is gradually adding other useful tools and will be great once you can add to a tree and look at a chromosome browser to triangulate matches.

Readers: Have you uploaded your raw DNA to this website? It is especially useful if you have a lot of British heritage and have paid the fee to unlock the county ethnicity.

Check your tree!

Miss W. General info, Using DNA , ,

Was reading the feed in my Facebook groups and came across an interesting post in Louise Coakley’s private group about Using DNA for Genealogy in Australia and New Zealand. PS Remember to answer questions if requesting to join.

As I have many trees on Ancestry.com, I thought I would check out some of these posts about an in depth guide to Ancestry. There are 11 parts to this guide so far and the first one was about trees.

My trees

I have 7 trees I am owner of on Ancestry. My main tree is Wyatt family tree and that is where I add in all my matches as I work out where they are in my tree. So I use matches from myself, but also my mother, father and brother.

Because I had no idea of my father’s side of the tree until recently, I also began one labelled DNA Wyatt Dad Kevin. This is a lot of mirror trees based on dad and his half brother Kevin’s common matches to try and work out where they all intercept. But I wont be using this much now as I have now got dad’s side of the tree back a few more generations since a new close DNA match appeared a few weeks ago. This tree is private and not searchable.

When I was trying to work on dad’s DNA and whether he had Samoan ancestry, I asked a couple of his Smith cousins to test and I created trees to match them as well. I don’t add to these unless DNA matches ask for information through the messaging system. By the way, no Samoan and these are now half cousins as well.

I have done the same for a few of mum’s cousins who have tested at my request, so I have 3 trees created for them. Two are public and linked to DNA tests, one has now been made private but searchable as the person has now died who did the test for me.

Next step

So I went into my DNA matches list to see what the trees were like for my matches. I only looked at those up to and including 4th-6th cousin.

DNA matches tree types

 

Out of 340 matches I checked

  • nearly 50 % have a linked tree I can look at, but some of them may only have a few names of parents or grandparents or might even all be labelled ‘Living’.
  • nearly a quarter of my matches have no tree at all but if they are high up in my matches I might still be able to work out where they fit on my tree. In fact, I have worked out 9 of the 81 matches that have no tree.
  • an unlinked tree just means the owner of the tree hasn’t linked their DNA to the tree yet. I have 59 unlinked and 12 that are unlinked but also private. From those 71 matches, I have worked out how 6 of them link into my tree.
  • out of the 20 linked but private trees, I have 4 with common ancestor mentioned and I have proven these to be connected correctly to my tree.
  • I also have two that say the tree is unavailable but clicking on those words takes me to their page and a tree I can click on. One I have matched and is added on my tree, the other I have a good idea where it links but not proven yet.

As I mainly work on my parents DNA match lists, I probably have, in reality, a lot more matches added to my tree than I have from my match list. As I work out where the person fits in my tree, I add this in the note section of their profile page. As my parents are one further generation closer to the ancestors, I usually add these notes on their matches rather than mine.

From this image you can see I know where the person fits in my tree (the orange star), they fit into three family lines on my mother’s side and the ancestor couple we have in common is George and Martha Davey nee Colgrave.

Readers: If you have a tree on Ancestry, does it have your DNA linked to your name on the tree? Is your tree public, or private? If private is it also searchable? Do you use the notes section and the colour coding for your matches?

 

Ancestor fan tree update

Miss W. General info, Using DNA ,

Just before Christmas, I uploaded my tree as a GEDCOM to the website DNA Painter.

I used the tool called Ancestral Trees. This created a fan type tree, showing which of my grandparents I had found and added to my tree. Dad’s side of the tree was always very bare while mum’s was well covered up to 3x grandparents and even further out.

Make a comparison now on dad’s side.

November 2019

Visual showing where I need to research the ancestors

June 2020

 

So my tree is complete now up to 3x grandparents on both sides of my family. Next step, get the 4x grandparents sorted and add to the tree.

DNAPainter also has some other great tools which I often use: 

  1. WATO – What are the odds? Using DNA centimorgans to work out where you might match in a tree using the results of matches that you already know.
  2. Chromosome tool – allows you to build up your chromosomes and show which ancestor you received them from. Takes a bit of working out and can’t use results from Ancestry
  3. Shared cM tool – great for working out how a person is related to you by inputting their cM in the tool

 

Readers: How do you keep a record of how many of your direct ancestors you have found?

Nearly forgotten

Miss W. #52ancestors, General info

A few weeks ago one of Amy Johnson Crow’s posts for #52ancestors was the topic

Nearly Forgotten

I decided to do a count of those children who died under the age of five that I have listed in my database at home. This database is gathered from other people from family reunions and emails so not necessarily verified by proper sources.

Here are the results out of just over 7700 names.

  • Immediate or within two months of birth – 37
  • Under 3 years – 39
  • Under 5 years – 7

Most were from the 18th or 19th centuries but a few were from the 20th century. I don’t have birth or death dates for everyone in the database but these results are from those who had both dates included.

As most are not my immediate line back, I haven’t got records of cause of death. I am gradually adding that to my new database where everything has been verified with sources.

Readers: Do you have many deaths of infants in your tree? How are they remembered in your family?

No new posts for a while

Miss W. Colgrave, Davey, England, General info, Smith, Wyatt , , , , ,
Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay

Sorry I haven’t written any new posts, including #52ancestors, on this blog for the last couple of months. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing family history research.

One of the students who had recently completed the Diploma of Family History offered to run some sessions on using WordPress for creating a family history website. I decided to have a go even though Edublogs also uses WordPress but I am using blocks rather than the visual editor I am used to in Edublogs.

I started a new blog that is dedicated just to biographies of my direct grandparents. So far I have written about:

Maternal:

Working on great grandmother Julia Charlotte Chandler at the moment

Paternal:

Will be finding it difficult to write on further paternal grandparents as little is known about them. Trying to connect with relatives through DNA who might be able to give me more information.

I might eventually extend this new blog to biographies of other relatives but I still have quite a few of my maternal ancestors to write about yet.

Readers: How do you share information about your ancestors with your relatives?