The curse of two John Smiths

Introduction

As a genealogist I spent much of my time looking at how my DNA results can enable me to build a more-complete picture of my ancestry. Recently I spotted a DNA relative that was a “Shared Match” to a known DNA relative AND had the same Surname in their family tree as myself and the known relative AND their shared Surname line connected back to the same small village as my ancestors. As Sherlock Holmes would have said, if he was a genealogist, “the game is afoot”.

200 “documented” DNA Matches and Rising

Recently I hit the count of 200 documented DNA matches. To celebrate this I though it worthwhile to write a little about this and how it has helped my genealogy research.

Firstly it’s important to understand what I consider an documented DNA match, after all if I look at Ancestry it shows that I have over 19,000 DNA matches on their site alone. So let me try and define this. These matches are people who are a DNA match on at least one of the main genealogy website (let’s not go into all the silliness of small matches on GEDMatch) AND there is a paper-trail path to a common ancestor/ancestors.

How do I know this number – well I keep a horrible and unruly Excel spreadsheet of these matches. It looks a lot like a Christmas Tree with a stem of Common Ancestors and branches leading to myself on one side and my matches on the other. The really great thing about Excel is that I can automate a lot of calculations on relationships and counting of my matches.

The Common Ancestors of the Bainbridges of Middleham

For genealogists with British ancestors the period before Civil Registration (in 1837) and useful Census (starting with the 1841 census) records can be a challenging period. There are, for most parts of the UK mainland, Parish Registrars. The brevity of the records (for example “John the son of John Smith, baptized on January 1st 1799″) can make it difficult to create a realistic scenario about your ancestors. It is only by “stitching together” the various sources can you make the various details fit into a convincing family tree. One of my favourite DNA tools that helps in this process is the Common Ancestors feature available at the Ancestry website

In this post I want to cover how this feature can help in revealing and supporting your own family history research, as well as a something about my Bainbridge family ancestors

Ancestry.com Sideview ™ Review

Introduction

In April this year genealogy giant Ancestry.com introduced “SideView ™” a key new feature to their DNA product offering. This technology aims to identify and use the DNA you received from each of your parents to further your genealogical research. This technology is only available thanks to the massive DNA database Ancestry has (over 22 million DNA samples according to the most recent data I have). The current iteration of SideView offers two insights for Ancestry customers.

Vikings ! Vikings ! Vikings ! – the LivingDNA Viking Test

Recently (April 2022), LivingDNA added an option to their DNA testing service to evaluate your DNA for “Viking”. Being a sucker for DNA tester and also having a soft-spot for LivingDNA I thought I would try the test. As a European the test cost me €20 to unlock, so I’m guessing the pricing in US dollars and British pounds is similar

What is the Viking Test ?

The test generates two pieces of information. Your “Viking Index” (a score between 0 and 100%) and a “Viking Population Match” which identifies which of four Viking populations you most closely match. The four choices are Norwegian Vikings, Swedish and Danish Vikings, British and North Atlantic Vikings, and Eastern European Vikings. It’s important to understand that the Viking Index is a relative score i.e. in “comparison to the whole range of Viking Indexes across the Living DNA user base”. It is similar to the Neanderthal results that other DNA tester, such as 23andMe, where I’m apparently “have more Neanderthal DNA than 45% of other customers”.

The DNA-Secret that went to the grave too early

Introduction

DNA testing for family history is reveling many secrets. Many of these relate to people still living such as adoptees, but some are reveling secrets that the people involved either didn’t know or took to the grave with them. This post is about an event almost 150 year ago that I don’t believe anyone now alive knew about.

The second aspect I want to show in this post is how combining DNA testing information with traditional genealogical research (and a little bit of common sense) can get us close to the truth.

Finally this post is also about the joy of sharing research work. As many genealogists will know, our hobby can be a lonely event, only brightened by the occasional family-history question at Christmas gatherings. For this work I was lucky to share the research load with Christine, a second cousin on my Stewart side.

The Unknown Match

I’ve always assumed my ancestors were relatively “un-remarkable” people. Almost all of them were Ag-Labs (Agricultural Labourers) who came from small rural communities, where most people knew most things. It was only the turbulence of the Industrial Revolution with its change in employment options and increased travel opportunities that made them leave these villages.

But things are always a little more complicated. A couple of years ago I discovered a new second cousin, whose grand-father had been born outside of a marriage and was quickly passed on for adoption.

Even before this, in 2018, I had another unusual match. It was a lady, we’ll call her Sally, who I matched with 174 Centimorgans of my DNA. The Ancestry website suggests that this means we are somewhere between second cousins or equivalent (60% probability) and third cousins (3% probability), with there being a less than 1% change of a more distant relationship. The thing is, I had no idea who Sally was and which ancestors we shared. It was time to do some research.

The last Will and Testament of Marmaduke Wetherell, in the Parish of Croft, Gentleman in manner

Introduction

Before 1837, when Civil Registration in England began, my ancestors didn’t leave to history much of a paper-trail of documents. They were, for the most part, either farmers or agricultural workers. In addition they were mostly illiterate. The few records that exist were written about them in Parish Registers. Their sole contribution was to sign their names, or more commonly make their Mark as part of a married couple or as a witness to such an event. It’s therefore being quite exciting to find an ancestor who is literate, has left documentary evidence and has pushed my family-tree back one generation further. It’s perhaps even a little more exciting that this ancestor is along the branch of my direct maternal line that has given me my Mitochondrial DNA.

Villa Ascenti Gin Review – building the Diageo Portfolio

Up until about a year ago I had neither seen nor heard of Villa Ascenti gin. There was a good reason for this. The “brand” was only launched in 2019. as you may have guessed from the review title this gin is actually part of the, ahem, Gin-portfolio of drinks giant Diageo. If you have not being following Diageo, let me give you a brief summary. Diageo was formed in 1997 by the merger of the Guiness Brewery and leisure conglomerate “Grand Metropolitan”. Since then the group has morphed into one of the world’s leading beer and spirits group and is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is part of the FTSE100 index. In other words it’s a big-fish in the world of alcoholic drinks. It’s gin portfolio includes covers The Good (Tanquerey), The Bad (Gordon’s) and the Ugly (Gilbey’s).

How to improve your DNA matches with your German relatives at Ancestry.com

Use these two simple tricks to help connect with your DNA relatives back in the “homeland”.

I’m sorry, I just got carried away with writing click-bait titles. I have just got my wife’s DNA test results back from Ancestry. Her ancestors come from “Germanic Europe” so provides a good preview of what to expect from connecting with “German” relatives. Based on this experience and my understanding of her family tree I hope that this post will help you can get “better” matches with family back in Germany. The truth is these suggestions apply to helping reconnect with relatives from anywhere, but are particularly important in the context of matching the relatively small number of Germans in the Ancestry database. So, without further ado, here are my suggestions.

DNA Outliers – How do I interpret a match with no shared Ethnicity ?

As a genealogist I, spend a significant amount of my research-time using my DNA results. DNA can reveal a lot about your ancestors, particularly those that lived before the advent of proper civil records.
As part of this research I look at my DNA Matches: those people with whom I share DNA and presumably ancestors. The largest and most useful pool of my DNA matches are on the ancestry.com website. When I look at the matches I normally look at two key things. Their family tree and the “Shared Matches”. What I don’t normally look at is people’s “Ethnicity Estimates”. There is a reason for this. My ancestors, for at least the last couple of hundred years, are all from small communities within the British Isles. Anyone I match, even those North American cousins whose families were living in the United States since long before the American Revolution, is likely to have some distant ancestor from the British Isles. As a result their Ethnicity Estimates will, most likely, include a chunk of British Isles heritage. This even applies for those people with mostly African-American heritage where our shared DNA bears witness to the brutal sexual slavery that their ancestors had to endure.

This week I was rather thrown by a relative with whom I share no common Ethnicity. Now I realise that Ethnicity Estimates are both “only Estimates” and a very broad brush stroke pictures, but in this case the Ethnicity Estimate ties up with the family tree. My matches’ ancestry is all Mexican. Their four grandparents were all born in Mexico in the early part of the twentieth century. All of their more-distant ancestors they know about are also Mexican. Their Ethnicity Estimate is exactly how I would expect – a mix of Native American and colonial Spanish with trace amounts of other Continental European heritage and even a pinch of European Jewish.