Non-Paternal Events

I haven't done much serious work on genealogy in a while. However recently I finally had some distant cousins and possibly great aunts/uncles inquire about a family group we share on ManitoulinRoots. It was a bit unhelpful to see someone else regurgitating photos of mine that they obviously took off my public tree however it definitely collided with the last work I did on the genetic side prior to 23andMe turning into a worthless piece of bunk. After comparing my father and I on a few of the direct tests such as Dodecad9, I took another crack at generating parental emulated files from my own sample. My father's emulated sample perfectly matched his real data so I can only assume that my mothers is more than 75% correct even without her test to confirm it.

Part of the fun on spreadsheeting my results versus my fathers in Dodecad was that I discovered I inherited his older DNA contribution. When run against my mother's 'sample' I inherited her more recent groups. Something glaringly obvious is that the south european, which I had tracked down to primarily Portuguese, is actually from my mother. It's also the most recent population addition for her estimated at two generations above her. That generation just happens to be within the Bryants who everyone is suddenly so interested in.

Ironically in this case the infidelity was entirely well known to the family. What no one ever seems to discuss is the time gaps between children and the fact that only half or less look related to each other. Something more strange is the appearance of a unique firstname for the youngest child. While the story is that the mother chose it because she admired a foreigner her brother had dated once I find that a bit odd. To add flame to this fire in researching the origin of the name I discovered that it is actually of Portuguese origin despite the Italian spelling.

So how does one really confirm a highly likely NPE? I seem to have two avenues, one to compare the male line of my great grandmother's three brothers. This could be supplemented with their sons tests but of course that means a confirmation for a non paternity could also be a illegitimacy in that younger generation. The other would be to compare the autosomnal records of the sister's children for glaring different builds. No one of course wants to confirm a non paternity for the family who raised them and who they believe is apart of their personal identity. In that sense I would require either a science and truth driven youngblood like myself or one of the closer generations who doesn't care. As of yet I have not located either.

I imagine if I was local and a bit more skilled at hard copy research I could probably discover names and dates for the unfaithful spouse after the separation. It is likely that the man who took her in as a live-in maid was also her lover. Perhaps he was Portuguese?

Reuse, Recycle & Revision

Some of you may have noticed a recent post of mine entitled "most recent african ancestor". No doubt it came across as incredibly odd coming from someone so interested in their north american heritage. I haven't perhaps given enough time to the downside of genealogy, especially genetics, and how it can affect family and even your emotional health. We all here the warnings about NPE's and homespun fairy tales such as the cherokee-princess-grandmother. It isn't always however items such as those which really tug on your heartstrings.

Personally I think it is the unknown and the unsaid which are most painful discoveries. A recent genealogy thread I looked at had a entire section dedicated to the family-finder complications. That is to say an only child finding out she has three half siblings from her fathers double life or even just the child who was told the wrong person was her father. Ethnicity prediction is also a big problem for those expecting a certain result. A family of reservation Indians for example finding out they are anything but native though that is the families identity for generations. The MRAA was a push to the limits for me prompted by a small fluke I saw on a single test. The sub Saharan result was possible only as noise or a legitimate marker. As I previously stated:

Most recent intermixed cites percentages, in example from JTest, like Mozabite-Berber, Moroccan, and Algerian. Each is roughly a 2.9-3.2 in distance inside of my intermix. As for Sub-Saharan I had a test the other day ping for both Morocco and Tanzania. I also seem to have a surprising amount of Egyptian hidden around 1.7-1.9 genetic distance in decently large amounts.

Now since I am talking about broken heartstrings you have probably guess right that new testing has rocked my boat. I paid for 23andMe this summer for both the husband and myself in hopes of the mtdna which comes free giving me my subgroup. At the moment it is impossible to classify me though I am somewhere within H1. I won't give out information on my husbands details but needless to say it was a shock on all fronts. Furthermore up came a percentage of African in recent genealogy for myself. Roughly 3-4% as half western Africa and half south African. I am assuming that this may be a sensitivity issue and that what I am really seeing is the African ancestry of my own middle eastern and eurasian predecessors.

Only recently have I come to accept the amount of old world Hispanic I carry. Perhaps the Moorish invasion explains where that might also come from since between ancestry, ftdna and 23andMe my Hispanic percentage dropped. Aggravating to have paid two companies now and no one can give me my mtdna line in exact. But all of this as of late with other changes in my life I find splintering my self identity not strengthening it. Always good to take a break now and then.

Simple Geographic Projects

I have discovered in running raw data analysis that I love making maps. The heat map in the previous post was overlayed on a known births versus population matching chart. Having found yet another cool map making method I wanted to share it with you all! The goal is to find a common origin based on your largest matching populations. I had to run it twice myself because the first time came out some strange collapsing triangle.

1. Visit GEDmatch (presuming you already have genomic raw data and have an account, otherwise, acquire these) 

2. Select Admixture on the main menu.  

3. Insert your ID and select any of the open-source projects (MDLP, Eurogenes, Dodecad, HarappaWorld) and then any of the calculators. 

4. Once the calculator has finished, click the Oracle button (not Oracle-4) underneath your generated component scores. 

 5. Scroll down to the bottom and inspect the "Mixed Mode Population Sharing:" results. Pick one, preferably one with the lowest genetic difference (GD) to ensure better accuracy and one which includes non-diaspora/recently non-admixed populations (localising Ashkenazi Jewish or African Americans as a donor population on a map will be difficult due to subjective guidance regarding their placement on a map). 

6. Repeat the above with at least two other calculators and keep note of the results. For a minimalist approach, Europeans are better off using Eurogenes, Dodecad and MDLP. South Asians are recommended to have HarappaWorld included. Those from elsewhere in the world are free to use any combination, as none of these are specific for other regions. 

7. Download this map (from Wikipedia) or the map below (for McDonald BGA version) and Paint.Net (open-source image editor). Feel free to use another editing software. I prefer Paint.Net because it indicates the 1/3 increments along any line drawn. 

8. Open the map with Paint.Net/another image editor. Pinpoint your McDonald BGA average spot or physical ancestral location if desired. 

9. With a colour specific to the open-source calculator you're going to use, pinpoint the location where each donor population for your selected Oracle result comes from. If uncertain, look up roughly where they're from (e.g. Pakistani Pashtuns will be around NW Pakistan close to the Afghan border). If a national average (e.g. German_Dodecad), place in the middle of the country. 

10. Draw a line between both donor populations. Estimate where on the line you'll fall. Note the numbers are flipped round in practice; for instance, if the Oracle is 70% German + 30% Ukrainian, the spot will end up around the 30% mark on the German end. Make a spot on the line wherever this may be. 

11. Repeat steps 9+10 for all the other Oracle runs, remembering to use different colours for the calculators to keep track. 

12. Join these spots together with a different coloured line, forming the "bounded area" where your ancestry can be narrowed down from.  

13. Completed. Make all the relevant inferences from the results, compare to the additional data in step 8 if present.

My sample using Google Maps

Disadvantages of Generalized Consumer Information

Recently I was introduced to two sources: Snpedia.com and James Licks haplogroup reader. Originally I began an excel chart looking for a map/result of correlating my major rcrs differences to known markers of each subclade. When I completed my cursory search and had found only some related to the in typed mutation I was quite disappointed. Through a happy coincidence I searched that marker coming across a blog post which indicated James Licks haplogroup reader using phylotree data. Indeed I had found what I was looking for! When I third party transferred and took my mtDNA test with Family Tree DNA they had not yet differentiated the basic and full sequence test so while I thought I was getting a awesome deal I was indeed being short changed. For most people knowing your major haplogroup is probably very helpful. The general information will no doubt apply to at least part of your research and you may choose to look no further. In researching H I began to try and guess which subclade I might be. I began to notice that much of the research on Haplogroup H was inconsistent. When I first looked it up I was told H stood for Helena featuring most women found in the area of Greece and Turkey. More recent clippings will tell you it is actually a young line found in Norway and Scotland....the inconsistency being an east or west haplogroup. 

Running the James Lick emulator for my true subclade has been invaluable to discerning not only my origins but also understanding why information is so distorted suddenly on the topic of line H. The result from inputting my hrv1 and hrv2 differences was H2a2a1g. Major research has been done recently in recovering that haplogroup from the eurocentric viewpoint and possible selection biases. My own upper subclade of H2 is perhaps one of the least European of all the H derivatives with H2a2a1 represented in highest amount among Saudi Arabian women. H2a is also the only of the H2 subclade to have integrated back into Asian phylogeography after initial migration towards Europe. [Correction: As of Fall 2015 that build was replaced for giving false positives related to H2a2a. That is not my haplogroup.]

On advisory from a more seasoned genetic genealogist than I was the idea of charting matches to the most recent common female ancestor in the States. Of course for me this actually means Canada. Indeed my female immigrant ancestor of the mtdna line is Elizabeth 'Betty' Beck (1814-1874) who came from Dumfries-shire, Scotland to settle in Grey, Ontario, Canada with her husband John Swanston (1808-1891). From there I am to work backwards into Europe but I have a feeling the separation between North America and Europe might be better served by a more popular female such as Sebithy Ann Coultis (1857-1951) of Manitoulin Island who married William Henry Bryant (1864-1939).

Conversing on Ancestry.com has become even more limited without a subscription much to my annoyance so it will be hard work to find people matching my MRCA to compare mtdna results. Incidentally I noticed that the interactive genealogy map I made sometime ago has a strange overlay with the known path for the development of the H haplogroup both the predominant Eurasian and European subclades. Heatmaping the sources of my major subclade H2a2a has also been helpful though I intend to revise it further with matching recent populations excluding deep ancestry.

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http://dna.jameslick.com/mthap/