Ancestor Assumptions
Growing up we learned a bit about where our family originated. On my mother’s side, my great grandparents immigrated to the USA around 1880 — one set (Ehrsam & Oswald-Shmidt) from Switzerland, and one set (Willvonseder & Stein) from Austria. On my father’s mother’s side, the family was largely “American” (at least for several generations), while my father’s father’s side were immigrants from what we assumed was England (because of the name Dudley). We also learned that my mother’s maiden name, Ehrsam, was my great, great grandmothers maiden name, because her husband (Giuseppe Di Boselli from Cremona, Italy) died in wars in Italy. So, growing up, we assumed we were Swiss, Austrian, Italian on one side, and mostly “American” and English origin immigrant on the other.
Cousin Bill’s Investigations
My cousin, William F. Dudley (from a long line of William F. Dudleys) researched the Dudley line and created a nice genealogy web site (http://django.casano.com:2317/dudley) a few years ago. He found that our Dudleys came from Ireland, not England, and that much of the family emigrated from Ireland in the 1850s and 60s with some going to New York, some to California, and some to Australia, although some had lived in Staffordshire, England prior to moving overseas. So, the Dudley side had come from Ireland rather than England.
So, at this point my heritage seemed to be Swiss/Austrian/Italian and American/Irish. Growing up I had no idea that I was Irish and the Italian was, by my generation, by our simple math, diluted to 1/16 Italian.
DNA Stuff Confuses Everything
Ancestry.com
Just a few years ago, late 2017, I decided to send my DNA to a genealogy service. I thought it would be fun to see what this revealed about my “ethnicity”. I started with Ancestry.com and sent off my spit in a DNA test kit.
Interestingly, Ancestry.com occasionally updates your DNA results as they gain information from a larger sample of participants. That is, every year or so they revise your ethnicity estimates.
My first (2018) estimate from ancestry.com is shown on the left side of the table below. Although those results seem reasonable compared to what I know about my ancestry, it was disappointingly generic. Overall, 98% European … well I assumed that much. Ireland, Scotland, Wales lumped together, but listed separately from Great Britain… does that make sense? Aren’t Scotland and Wales part of Great Britain? My Italian part was included in southern Europe, I assume. Scandinavia, Iberian Peninsula and Middle East (surprising) were low probability, at this point.
A 2020 DNA analysis update from ancestry.com represented quite a change. Now my ethnicity appeared more like what I would have expected. Western Europe had become more specific, and Germanic Europe became the major component, probably reflecting the connection to my Swiss and Austrian relatives. Ireland, and Scotland, appeared, and Northern Italy also fit in with what I knew. A bit of France also seemed reasonable.
An update in April 2022 erased my Irish connection (maybe they were originally from England after all), added Spain and Sardinia which certainly seem possible. Also, Norway now appeared at 3% of my genetic makeup.
At this point Ancestry.com also started showing an ethnicity breakdown inherited from each parent. This is quite interesting, and it agrees with what I know from other sources.
Another update in September 2022 erased the 3% Norwegian which was on my fathers side but added 2% from Sweden and Denmark on my mothers side! That was the only oddity. I still have the large proportion of Germanic Europe (proportionally more maternal side), the link to England and Scotland (mostly paternal side) with no Irish remaining, and the Italy connection (northern Italy plus Sardinia) remained.
TABLE 1. Ethnicity estimate summaries from: ancestry.com (showing updates), MyHeritage, and 23andMe.
Figure 1. The image above gives the most recent ethnicity breakdown from Ancestry.com which also shows the breakdown by parent.
More Tests: 23andMe and MyHeritage
Most people only use one DNA testing service, but I was curious. In 2020 or so I decided to send a DNA sample to two other DNA services 23andMe and MyHeritage. The results of these tests are shown in the table above (in the middle and on the right).
Both estimates produced surprises for me that were not detected by Ancestry.com. Actually the different results from different companies is not unusual… since different companies use different reference groups.
The MyHeritage estimate indicated that I am 4% North African. Although this is possible, the other tests did not detect this connection at any level.
The 23andMe test detected that I am 0.3% Ashkenazi Jewish, again certainly possible, but also not detected by other tests. 23andMe also reports 1% Eastern Europe, not very surprising since my Austrian great grandmother was born in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. 23andMe also tells me that I am only 1.5% English and Irish… significantly less than the other sites.
Other Ancestry Stuff
I should point out that these ancestry sites all offer other tools to investigate one’s ancestry. Learning about distant, and not so distant, relatives is a primary service of these web sites. They all have tools for building family trees, usually assisted by links to appropriate sources of information (birth records, lists of ship passengers, census data) and also links to other people’s family trees. Some link the DNA matched relatives to information in your family tree to reveal, more specifically, how you are related to these DNA relatives. That is, not just a fourth cousin once removed… but more specifically a fourth cousin once removed descended from your great great great uncle Bob on you father’s mother’s side 😊.
Obviously, there are a lot of distant relatives out there. My own most recent generations are fairly sparse. I had only one uncle, have two children and two grandchildren (plus, of course step children and their children) and only one niece, who has four children. Earlier generations had bigger families, however. Most of my detected DNA relatives are linked back to those earlier generations.
According to ancestry.com I have 15,000 DNA matches (among people who sent samples to them), of which 464 are 4th cousin or closer (but I know only one). Apparently, to date, about 15 million people have sent DNA samples to ancestry.com. So of these 15 million my 15,000 relatives constitute about 0.001 of the total. Since most people do not send in DNA kits we might say that I am really related to 0.001 of the world’s population which would be 0.001 x 9 billion or 9,000,000 DNA matches worldwide! Well, I suppose that is a bit high. More appropriately I might assume my relatives are mostly from the USA, western Europe, and maybe Australia and New Zealand. So roughly “European” people in these areas might be on the order of 700 million. So I might have 0.001 x 700,000,000 or 700,000 DNA relatives worldwide. [By the way, according to her ancestry.com DNA test, my wife has 44,000 DNA matches with 2,000 4th cousin or closer (on their database).]
I don’t even want to think about a family reunion…
From the smaller samples via MyHeritage, I have 6,300 DNA matches, and from 23andMe 1,500 DNA relatives (I actually know one of them).
One problem with these sites is that they are subscription based… you pay every year to keep the connection. I suspect that most people use only one site. Nevertheless, I will probably completely quit this hobby sometime in the near future, but it has been interesting, and time consuming.
For more information see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test