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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: lilybd on Saturday 16 January 21 11:08 GMT (UK)
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I am a little confused having got back my dad’s ancestry DNA. I thought you got DNA from both parents even though the amount may not be exactly 50/50. However my grandfather was english and my grandmother was welsh but they predict my dad is 98% Welsh! And 2% Irish.
Is this normal to have no english or does it throw his parentage into dispute?
Sara
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Were your grandfather's parents Welsh?
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No none of my grandfathers relatives were welsh which is why it seems so confusing.
Sara
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Non paternal event OR a far event that has picked up specific Welsh gene marker
I have Welsh matches which I assume came from my GGGgrandmother (as a brickwall) or the borders were not as lineal as today
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Surely, a decision about whether there may have been a NPE and its impact on ethnicity results ( which so many think are disputable, though mine seems very explanatory of family history, and the paper trail), is the DNA matches! If the DNA matches link into known family tree ancestors on both sides, moving back then the explanation will be something else. So the important thing is to go check your matches, are they what you would expect.
Working out why your ethnicity is askew can be for later query!
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Celtic confusion? Mine claims I am part Welsh, Irish and Scottish. I am well aware of the Scottish but the Welsh and Irish I have no idea on. The estimate seems to get shuffled around these groups, I believe people have complained that their Irish or Welsh has disappeared at some point and been replaced with Scottish also.
Likewise with Germanic group and England. They can get mixed a little too.
Best thing to remember is its an estimate, there is various things they take into account work out the ethnicity.
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To my knowledge, I had one Welsh Grandmother...
However, according to Ancestry I have 45% Welsh DNA!
It appears to me that DNA is assigned in a random manner. My sister has also tested, and she only has 17% Welsh DNA. Same parents.
Romilly.
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I do realise the ethnicity are estimates and I’m aware percentages can vary between family members. I just don’t understand why when my grandfather and his ancestors were English that my dad doesn’t even have 1% English in his estimate.
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The thing to remember is that the ethnicity estimate is based solely on present day comparisons.
Contrary to popular belief, or even the way the DNA ethnicity is described by eg Ancestry, it does NOT indicate the actual place your ancestors lived. What it indicates is that you share similar DNA with other living people whose known ancestors were Welsh, English, Scottish or whatever.
Remember also that the prediction is that using these similarities they are estimating where your ancestors lived between 1000 and 500 years ago. So all it is saying is that your father's dna is similar to the dna of people whose ancestors (probably) lived in Wales somewhere around the 1400s or so.
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Albufera32, you explained that much better than i could have! All I would add, as an example, is that my family history is Irish in Scotland for close to 200 years in most cases, and over that in a few. Like many immigrant communities, they married from within, for generations, and so even though I have branches in Scotland for a very long time, both my parents are from traditional Scottish/Irish communities, and my ethnicity estimates ( as they vary with company involved, and thru' 3 or four estimate updates in time too), are always between 75% and 100% Irish. And the other 25 or so percentages are Northern Irish/South West Scottish - because of intermingling over millennia in those areas! I can go back 4+ generations born in Scotland, but I am still genetically Irish!
Hope this helps.
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Thank you for everyone’s help but I still believe if my dads ancestry (via his dad) was 50% English then English should show up on his Ancestry DNA no matter what percentage that would be - so even 1%
Sara
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Sara,
In a while, weeks or months your ethnicity estimates will change - as others have suggested using the matches and seeing where they take you is much more useful.
I have used this example in other posts: Mum was, for a while, said to be 100% Swedish. She is now down to only 10%. ;D
Liz
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Yes those ancestry estimates are just that, estimates, I have thought of doing it myself but if it is just estimates, then I may stick to a paper trial, especially if the estimates are likely to change.
I discovered a ancestor recently whose ancestry goes from Essex to Bedfordshire, then to Wales, and then further back to Ireland and France. I managed to find a verified line of landed gentry going back to 1st Baron Hastings.
I have a 1765 born ancestor Susan Fradine who was born in England but her dad was French Huguenot (one of the last to come to the UK) and her mum was born in England (to a French father) as was her mum born in England (to French parents). So Susan was genetically French.
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Thank you I am aware they are estimates but I had traced the paper trail on my grandfather’s side back over 200 years and they are all English so for ancestry to say my dad has no connections to England is strange.
The paper trail is only as good as the person who provided the information at the time. Whilst I would not judge anyone, people for various reasons may choose to lie / hide the truth when giving information on documents.
So unfortunately the DNA is not backing up my paper trail.
Feeling very confused
Sara
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So unfortunately the DNA is not backing up my paper trail.
You need to be looking at your closest matches & their places of birth/parentage etc. rather than anything else.
Any of your ancestors' paper trail could be what you described..."lie / hide the truth" but that's what you have to try & find out for yourself through those matches using cMs & % shared DNA.
Annie
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If it helps .my mother is 22,percent English (& northern Europe,,)
but I am only 2,percent .
I'm definitely her daughter ;.match her paternal cousin and descendants of her welsh grandfather .
I also match her maternal half cousin which is frm her English grandmother
And distant relatives from her jewish grandfather .
statistics add closely ,she's 24percent jewish im 12 percent
I think my.English ethnicity has been re-assigned to.a little Irish ,& italian for me the mother has neither of these .
You do have to see your matches ....do any known cousins match your father and do matches come up
to other people with high welsh ethnicity .
Can you identify his closest matches ....are there any .where you have no idea how they link .?
What cm are these matches ,.?
*Modified
Just found my first ethnicity DNA amounts I was 42 percent english
That was before they redefined and classed Scotland into high and lowland now I'm 56 percent Scots makes perfect sense Father almost pure Scottish mother 13 percent from a great great grandmother who was Scottish
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Sara I too have found ethnicity confusing. I have traced back 200 years and more on some lines and cannot find Scottish links. According to my ethnicity I am 16% Scottish. I have traced my sons grandmothers side back four generations and they are all born in Scotland. His ethnicity? 16% Scottish. How can we be the same? Statistically he should be close to 25%, his grandfather was from Poland. This is why I take it with a grain of salt.
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Twinkle Do get your mother and brother to check every 6 months for Ancestry redefining ethnicity
Ditto nana
You have to press a button for update otherwise it will stay at first evaluation
I was sorry to see my 9 percent Scandinavian disappear when the Welsh Irish Scottish analysis became more specific .
Ethnicity has helped me help others find ancestors descendants and relatives the more I understand it the more useful a tool it is .
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Brigidmac we are on our fourth update so am aware of changes. That is partly why I don’t take much notice of it.
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Trying to explain this again.
Ancestry (and every other firm) assigns ethnicity by comparing your DNA with other, living people. In particular, they have "control" groups, which are made up of people whose established "known" ancestry is all from one country for several generations.
There is no such thing as "English DNA", or Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, Indian, Outer Mongolian or anywhere else, for that matter.
What there is, are particular strands which are very common amongst the population now living in England, Scotland, Ireland etc. One would assume that for example people living throughout the UK share a lot of common DNA, but Ancestry matches that with the part of the UK where it is most common, and in particular where it appears in the DNA of people whose families have lived in one area for a very long time.
Take my own DNA for example. Ancestry predicts that I am 87% Scottish and 13% Irish. That's it. Not a drop of English blood in me (though as a matter of fact I was born in Bristol). Perhaps more significantly, Ancestry doesn't suggest any Scandanavian ancestry either, yet the paternal side of my family are all from Ayrshire and Argyll, as far back as we can trace. Anyone who knows their Scottish history will be aware that at one stage the entire west coast of Scotland, especially the islands and places like the Cowal peninsula were settled by Norsemen, whose longships were by far the best form of transport between the settlements perched on islands and sea lochs from Sutherland right down to Dumfries and Galloway.
Those Norse settlers farmed the land, raised animals and raised their own families. Over time they married into "native" Scots families and Scots married into their families. The DNA of both groups became mixed. It seems inconceivable that my Argyll ancestors are "pureblood" Scots. There must be some Norse blood in their somewhere. I have no doubt that some of my Ancestry originates from the old Viking realms, and that I have some "Viking" DNA. But so does everyone else whose family have lived in Scotland for generations.
When Ancestry compare my DNA with the DNA samples they already have, mine most closely matches the DNA of other people whose known ancestry is Scottish. That's all.
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Great explanation Albu
Tho I believe there are such things as ethnic genes especially in groups like Jewish people who had long established enclaves and didn't intermix with other communities
Twinkle may I ask what year s your grandfather and great grandfather were born and names of town of birth