Is English DNA different from German DNA?

A year ago I blogged about the paucity of identifiable German DNA in the current round of ethnicity estimates: Where Did All The German-Americans Come From? In that post I described the ethnicity reports of my wife who descends from 5 great-grandparents who have roots in what is today Northern Germany and Northwest Poland. The other 3 were from Ireland, Scotland and England. 

This past weekend I was struck with the similarity of the ethnicity estimates Debbie Kennett self reported and those predicted for my wife. The only problem is that all of Debbie's known ancestral lines appear to have been in the British Isles for at least the last few centuries and most of them have been in England. 

As I read Debbie's post, Comparing admixture results from AncestryDNA, 23andMe and Family Tree DNA, I speculated as to whether it would be obvious, to those shown the test reports for Debbie and those for my wife Denise, which woman had ancestry almost completely from the Isles and which had ancestry predominately from Germany/Prussia. I'll let you be the judge. 

Ethnicity Estimates		Debbie		Denise
AncestryDNA
	Europe	100%		100%
	Europe West	47%		15%
	Great Britain	21%		33%
	Ireland	20%		32%
	Iberian Peninsula	8%
	Europe East			12%
	Scandanavia			8%
	Trace	4%
myOrigins (FTDNA)
	European	100.00%		98.00%
	British Isles	57.00%		78.00%
	Western & Central Europe	22.00%
	Southern Europe	12.00%
	Scandanavia	5.00%		3.00%
	Finland & Northern Siberia	3.00%		6.00%
	Eastern Europe	1.00%		11.00%
	Asia Minor			2.00%
23andMe
	European	100.00%		99.80%
	British & Irish	56.10%		42.60%
	French & German	13.40%		5.90%
	Scandanavian	4.20%		8.80%
	Northern European	24.00%		36.80%
	Eastern European			3.20%
	Iberian	0.40%
	Southern European	0.20%		0.30%
	European	1.90%		2.20%
	Yakut			0.10%
	North African			0.10%

Where Did All The German-Americans Come From?

Although more Americans claim to have German ancestry than any other point of origin, we are not seeing this reflected in the various "ancestral" products from DNA testing companies. The map below shows the largest claimed ancestry in US counties in the 2000 census. Unfortunately for future genealogists, that data was not collected in 2010. 

Almost 50 million Americans claimed German ancestry. They were the largest ancestral grouping in the counties colored in baby blue above. The second largest group overall was African-Americans with about 40 million. 

In spite of this large Germanic presence, this grouping is hard to identify in test reports from Ancestry Composition (23andMe), DNAAncestry and now from myOrigins (FTDNA).

The individual whose test results and ancestral predictions are described below descends from 5 (of 8) great-grandparents who immigrated from Germany/Prussia to the Chicago area in the last half of the 19th century. Their points of origin were were in Northern Germany/Prussia from Ostfriesland in the west near The Netherlands to Westpreussen near Danzig. 

Note that the Germanic ancestry is not very prominently represented in any of them. DNAAncestry combines France and Germany into a category called Europe West.

DNAAncestry

Even if this segment is combined with Europe East, the two do not add up the even half of the expected 62.5%. However, Ancestry did note that the actual component for Europe West could range from 0% to 40% and that the component for Europe East could range from 3% to 20%. However, even if the most generous numbers from each range were taken, this would only begin to approach the expected amount.

Ancestry Composition (23andMe), even at its "Speculative" setting does not allocate much specifically to German and Eastern European. Even if all the Non specific European and Northern European were added, it would still be short of the amount suggested by paper trails. 

Ancestry Composition

With myOrigins (FTDNA in Beta) the predicted origins are also shown to be 78% from the British Isles rather than the continent.

myOrigins

I have noted with other individuals in my extended family that the predicted origins seem to overemphasize the Isles at the expense of the areas from whence German-Americans came. This seems to be true whether they originated from the Palatine or from more northern regions. What has been the experience with those in your families?

Another Adams Cousin

I have never had a shortage of cousins – particularly on my maternal side of the family. My mother was one of 14 Adams siblings who survived infancy. These included 10 girls and 4 boys. A 5^th boy died within a few days of birth. My mom was the last surviving sibling when she died in 1998. It was interesting that of the 39 offspring these 14 produced, 18 of them were from the two oldest children. I think the timing of the Great Depression may have had as much to do with this difference in productivity as birth order but that is just speculation on my part.  

When I logged in to AncestryDNA last month, I was surprised to find the following result on my DNA page:

1st Cousin         Possible range: 1st - 2nd cousins    Confidence: 99%

The pedigree chart posted by this individual did not help me place this cousin among the twenty-five thousand or so individuals I currently have in my family tree database. The DNA information did not tell me whether this match was on my maternal or paternal side. However, the geographic locations in the pedigree chart of the “new” cousin strongly suggested this match was on my mom’s side. 

I sent an inquiry through the Ancestry message system and got this response from a person I will call Joe:

I believe ancestry.com is correct, but the exact connection may be difficult to pin down.  I was born 27 September, 1932, and adopted at birth by the parents in my ancestry.com family tree.  The doctor who delivered me was Dr. G. W. Carpenter, who I believe had an office in Utica, MO, at the time. Most of the people who had first-hand knowledge of my birth are now gone. I was reluctant to make inquiries that might embarrass anyone. A neighbor who grew up near Breckenridge vaguely recalled that my father was an Adams employed in a grocery store in Breckenridge, and my birth mother was a young employee.  As time permits, I'll try to find out more.

Only one other family member has been tested to my knowledge. That is a first cousin -- once removed who agreed to be tested so that I could establish the paternal haplogroup of my maternal (Adams) grandfather. My DNA sample establishes my paternal (Dowell) grandfather's Y-chromosome. Merrill's DNA had also been processed through the FTDNA Family Finder test.

It occurred to me that my new cousin "Joe" would be Merrill's uncle if Merrill's grandfather, my Uncle Frank, was also Joe's father. If instead Joe's father was one of the other Adams brothers, Merrill would be Joe's first cousin -- once removed. That is the same relationship I have with Merrill.
  

Since Joe had tested at Ancestry and Merrill at FTDNA, they had to be placed in the same database in order to analyze the nature of their relationship. Therefore, Joe downloaded the raw data from his test at Ancestry and uploaded it to GedMatch.com a free site that among other features allows autosomal results from a variety of labs to be compared with each other. I downloaded Merrill's raw data from FTDNA and uploaded them to GedMatch.

When Joe's results were compared with Merrill's, they shared about the same amount of DNA as I shared with Merrill as a 1st cousin -- once removed. An uncle would have shared much more with a nephew. Therefore, my Uncle Frank is also Joe's Uncle Frank and is eliminated as a candidate to be Joe's father. 

I talked to a first cousin who would have been six when Joe was born. She said she "had a feeling" that she had heard Uncle Bud might have had a child with a woman other than his wife. Even if he did this does not prove the child was Joe. Actually, we need to remember that the DNA results viewed to date do not eliminate the possibility that it was Joe's mother (not his father) who was his Adams connection. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that we are looking for an Adams father.

Our search is now focused on the three Adams brothers other than Frank. A child of one of the three (who is also one of my previously known Adams 1st cousins) has agreed to test. We should know that result sometime in February.  

Of the remaining two possible fathers, one never married and has no known descendants. We will be tracing the descendants of the other to see if we can find one willing to test.

Stay tuned for future developments.

Is This My Line?

Could the eldest daughter of Jeremiah and Deborah (LANHAM) REEVES [“Unknown d Reeves 1813-” just above] be my granddad Cash Adams' paternal grandmother Patsey? I don’t have any proof, but her age and location in Madison County, Kentucky, certainly make her a candidate. Jeremiah is the dark shaded person next to the far right in the third row above.  The unnamed daughter is the second from the left in the bottom row.

I just got an autosomal DNA match from a man who is associated with this family. That match is reported to be “Possible range: 4th - 6th cousins” with a “Confidence: 96%”. My match is a descendant of Harvey REEVES the middle child in the bottom row above. There is no assurance that the REEVES line is where we share a common ancestor. However, my DNA match and I would be 4^th cousins if Harvey and Patsey were siblings. That is within the range projected by the lab (DNAAncestry).

I wish Ancestry provided us with a little more access to the details of our own information. It would help me evaluate the strength of the above match. Perhaps that is all coming as the autosomal service moves out of beta. 23andMe, in its "Relative Finder" tab, gives us a percentage of match and its "Family Inheritance" tab allows us to see the location(s) of any significant matching segments. FTDNA's "Family Finder" tells us the total amount of match, the number of significant segments, and allows us to overlay our results with those of matches to see if multiple matches may be sharing the same segments. Both of the other services allow us to download our own raw data for further comparisons. Ancestry earlier this month on the company blog announced that this latter feature would be coming in 2013. It was reassuring for a testing lab to acknowledge: 

AncestryDNA believes that our customers have the right to their own genetic data. It is your DNA, after all.

Patsey's husband,Isaac N. ADAMS, my third great-grandfather (about 1813 to after 1870), appeared in official records in the 1840 US Census for the Eastern District of Madison County, Kentucky. Patsey was named only in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Isaac's last appearance was in the 1870 Census for Peno Township, Pike County, Missouri. At that time he was a widower living in the household of his youngest son John Speed ADAMS. Coincidentally 1870 was the year of birth of my grandfather, Cash ADAMS. 

Does this prove that my Missouri ADAMS line descends from the above REEVES family? Not quite. However it is the best working hypothesis that I have found. I’ll be exploring it further when I spend a research week in Salt Lake City later this month.