Genetic Communities and the Lies we Buy Ourselves

With much aggravation taken as penance I have finally been able to put to rest a cluster of four supposed Ancestor Discoveries (Beta). Turns out the four were Grandparents of second cousin 3x named Jessie May Kelly, a grandchild of the Day family. I am fairly disappointed that they were none relatives to me and indeed come from a branch I was just pondering over regarding the percentage of shared DNA.

I have had a week recently where I have been contacted only by paternal relations to me, and those I think are outside of my x-inheritance. It makes me wonder then about the randomness of dna assignment and how much if any I can really trust Ancestry.com services. I am up to five genetic companies which have my dna sample and have rendered ethnicity lists. There is some major variation between them all, but yet also a seeming obvious underlying cause. Clustering populations together creates a wide variety. My initial thought was that where France goes so do I, but there is also a question of whether France itself is one unit. Northern France is flavored with Britain as much as east and south are peppered with other border countries. Ancestry.com is the only of five companies to declare any Irish, while FTDNA tells me I have recent Amerindian...on 23andMe my West African is disappearing by the minute.

The New Genetic Communities feature looks quite fun and I have wanted an aggregated list of birthplaces for a map for quite sometime. While I made my own by hand once or twice they never are very accurate when new data is arriving each day or even week. A major problem that seems to show up is first degree relatives getting drastically different communities. My Father for example, has at least four or five with many placed overseas or in the American south, think Confederacy. I on the other hand have only a single group for French settlers along the St. Lawrence, excluding regions relevant to my father. It seems quite odd to be sharing no groups with a parent and I have heard this from other users as well.

So what is the basis for communities? It would seem to be a macro version of dna circles, of which parents and children should share. Yet I am only seeing confusion and complaints. Given the differences in my parents ethnic background there should be more. There just isn't...

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?

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/

Third Party Confirmations!

As much as I work as a lone wolf so to speak in my genealogy work I do enjoy having others input. Recently I took the plunge and enrolled in a small tribal band of Metis-Cree people. As a help for others I explained the methods I had used so far in differentiating my own genetic markers for native blood. To my great surprise another member messaged me who was quite confident with using gedmatch himself. He is lucky enough to be a direct male descendant from Henri Membertou's band of Mi'kmaq. I was provided from him a three way match between him, myself and a even less diluted relation. The result was a positive match to the Mi'kmaq peoples. I would say to Henri himself but more likely it would be through one of his many contributing female relations.

Chr Start Location End Location Centimorgans (cM) SNPs
10 92446647 95958204 3.7 903
11 56368374 59769693 1.2 717
13 83990938 88896945 3.1 816
21 21293037 24043081 4.0 716
Largest segment = 4.0 cM
Total of segments > 1 cM = 12.0 cM
Estimated number of generations to MRCA = 7.1

Comparison took 0.05190 seconds.
Distant relation.


So this is a interesting factor in what I already know since I compose over four regions of native populations in the small sector I carry. Another cooperation comes from having limited access to my fathers genetic data. Being able to look at his smaller portion of native dna cleared up any possibility of my larger portion coming from him. Indeed my two largest portions of north amerindian and arctic do not come from him. My fathers tracers are for small portions of the south amerindian and mesoamerican. This I had already presumed but rather it is nice to have confirmed in mathematical calculation.

Another change from this last few weeks of research is discovering some depth to two of my fathers grandmothers lines. Along with that is some details on what was coined "Southern European" in earlier results. I now have confirmation through oracle population matching that my southern component is predominately Spanish with only a smattering of Italian. This follows at least the presence of late Italian ancestry in one portion of my tree but I have yet to connect the Spanish in genealogical records.

Wismer not so Wise...

Something I don't normally do is research areas of my family history that are already overly championed by dedicated people. This would probably include anywhere from 25-45% of my entire tree. That probably seems like a high range to some but these groups are fully vetted at least 5 generations back. Not much left then to research honestly. Recently GEDMatch.com had a server crash and so has been offline or with limited capability for sometime.

The cousins who were in contact with me broke off for the time being so while my inbox is empty I did not have much to do, (not counting graduate school!) It occurred to me after playing around with the repaired website that perhaps I did have something to say on the subject of one of my well researched surnames. I have also been a fan of the show "Lost Girl" for sometime particularly enjoying when Kenzi spoke slavic in a few episodes as I hadn't heard it before.

Looking at Eurogenes w/oracle today and having already recognized much to my father's horror that I have no central European (more than 45% of his composite) it was odd to see a component of projected populations owing to that area. Immediately I was thinking of a small research I did on the Wismer family, my grandmother Lucienna's maiden name, regarding the orientation of that name. Commonly it is assumed to be a amalgamation of anglicized Germanic words meaning "wise-person". I haven't had a reason to doubt this presumption until DNA became available. The two interesting results were, Ukrainian_West 15.33%, Erzya 8.18%, Russian 5.80%, three populations not previously attributed to my admixture. I'll continue here with my previous research...
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"Wismer Family Morphology"

Two interpretations of the origion of the Wismer clan have existed. Anglo saxonry dictates that the name is a germancised account of a trait name "wise-man". Recent admixture however points to a genetic source outside of the North Sea. The term Wismer is a placename given to the inhabitants of the port town called Wismar in the german state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The small historical town is formed by a natural harbor to its north from the baltic sea. While Wismar was under Norwegian control for some time and rests in northcenteral germany is was origionally colonized by Palobian Slavs from the eastern Baltic region.

Palobian Slavs are unfortunate to be extinct in language. As a group of Lechtite people their genetic heritage exists still in other members of the same cluster notablly the Polish. The Sorbs of Lusatia remain the only unique cultural descendants of Palobian Slavs still maintaining those language and physical cultural traits such as dress. As a coastal region the town of Wismar was prone to genetic drift from resulting neighbor groups as well as bleed through from its closest relation Poland. Notably Poland itself is a conglomeration of the Lechite tribes assembled under the Duke of Poland, Mieszko I. Therefore the Wismer family heritage represents a north eastern slavic peoples and more recently german adjunct influence not that of Britain.
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...More onto the recent identity of the Wismer descendants as German that is a over simplified fact. Only three of the men born before the immigrant ancestor came from  Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. Hidden inside the older generations is a large amount of Austro-Bavarian, Swedish, and Danish. It is a important reminder to the genealogist, especially any amateurs reading my blog, that birthplace doesn't always convene with genetic population. Obviously this might be the case of African american individuals researching there family who are surprised to find relatives in Spain or the like which was simply a host nation to many generations. A subject I'd love to breech is that of a African cousin in my ancestry.com match maker I did not know I had. Upon my last visit reviewing genealogy with my father he conveyed to me this was not news to him. A great uncle of his had returned to Europe and as a sailor had taken a wife from the north African coast. Somethings are just beautiful discoveries of the amazing global culture we all share.

The Curious Trail of Catharine Dufour

It’s always great to hear from people interested in family history, at least that’s what I tell myself. I let my website go stale for some time now as I was finishing undergraduate school and wasting my free time on video gaming. I gather that at some point Google updated its service protocols making my page live in Web searches. Suddenly I have people who were wholly uninterested to help seeing my document list and deciding they have loud opinions to share. I ranted some posts ago about people not understanding the organic nature of self publishing versus professional works. No doubt the comments and demands would eventually fall onto my favorite topic, Catharine Dufour. I was lucky that the third party relation who wanted my work indeed contacted Mr. Charpentier of my post “midnights are not for making friends”. He was kind enough to look into the information our family has especially as he is in my opinion a specialist in French river region history. The work has come out most fruitful this time, a majority of that owning to Mr. Charpentier’s access not mine.

Catharine’s birth date has always been passed down since her sons based on the interview she gave in 1905. While her husband was alive however documents including her in his household indicated an 1813 birth year. The summative works of French genealogy do not have an individual born in 1805 to any of the Dufour, Deveaux couples. The death certificate that I was provided an image copy of by a 3^rd cousin does state Mr. Duforse as Catharine’s father. Nay, the Duforse name is nonexistent in records of that period. Adjusting her birth date uncovers a slew of records due the family most especially while they lived in Canada for some years. Three of the known children now have French catholic baptism statements. One of these children was of the missing portion of eleven that did not survive to adulthood. Marie- Agathe Jones died the same year that Edward Junior’s baptism took place. Indeed it was Catharine’s grandmother, Josephe Garand, who sponsored his baptism as Edouard Jones at her local parish. The same parish had baptized Henry John earlier as Honoré Jones. As French culture in that area was dying out it is not surprising that the children simply lost sight of their heritage.

Yet what about Catharine’s account in the newspaper, does this all not invalidate it? Not exactly.  Catherine’s parents by document consensus were Pierre Louis Dufour and Archange Garand married in 1811 as St. Anne Cathedral. As a family they lived in Frenchtown, a small settlement south of Fort Detroit. While Catharine was born at the height of the war she could not have witnessed the surrender. However she may well have been mistaking the final abandonment of the Frenchtown settlement due to increasing raids and attacks. The emerging soldiers in uniform may well have been coming to protect the settlement. The direction as well that she describes her home from the Fort agrees with the assertion she is recalling Frenchtown. Now while I am ashamed of my third party relative’s reaction to this data I can also say that my own qualms regarding it are just as silly. Indeed this would seem to dismiss the assertion that Catharine was a Métis child. Yet not enough is known of her mother Archange Garand to me yet as well as Louis Dufour’s mother also being undiscovered. I look forward to finding more documents to uncover the Dufour/Dautour/ Garand connection. Meanwhile I have work to update my website to keep me busy!

DNA Updates and Forthcomings

Well GEDmatch has finally finished with the re-tokenizing of my DNA pack. It seems that some of the simulations had errors which were pinging mostly in unrelated ethnic results but nonetheless gedmatch decided to rerun new editions for errors. This changes my results to a small degree. The smallest changes are to do with my largest portions. My European percentages are now farther east with 47% a solid mix of Fennoscandia and the Slavic countries bordering Russia. At this time my Celtic/British strains are only 6%. I am still left unsure which country provides the dominant amount of my 34% Mediterranean. Northern Italian and Iberian are both cited. The near east populations matches continue to tantalize me if only because I cannot find their source genealogically.  Roughly 10% of my blood is still Persian which I find amazing.

The more drastic changes have come in the form of my smallest amounts. While initially HarappaWorld and MDLP both cited my mesoamerican DNA from the Muscogee it is now something else. In a sense it could be a more accurate result. About 5% of my result is from South Amerindian and Arctic Amerindian. The latter would correspond to my mother's Mi'kmaq heritage. From what I've gathered online the south is most likely representative of Cherokee. I rather guess that does make more sense since there were only small amounts of exogamy in my direct relations. As the Cherokee are fairly wide, the bands can simply interchange children without looking in another region. Eurogenes still says Mayan...Ugh! But it also indicates a southeast Asia portion as well as oceanic which are barely above threshold.

What I do still find strange is my Samoyed and Berinigan DNA. They are very small amounts but I'm not sure which region to classify them under in my processing of this. I gather for the most part I work on a three category system; European, Asiatic & American. If it doesn't fit those groups than it's wasteful knowledge.

I also took a look at the new ancestry ethnicity predictor. I do find it helpful that they separated my Irish and British blood apart. That makes me confused however about whether Scottish is really the same as British. According to their diagrams it is separate and I have none. My new ancestry numbers are: 52% Great Britain, 21% Scandinavian, 15% Irish, 8% Iberian, 2% Grecco-Italian, 1% Eastern European and <1% Western European. At least that is more interesting than my original pie of British, Scandinavian and unknown. Still I find it very odd that Ancestry states my British as high as 50% when all other groups dictate that it is <26%. Consider for one that as of currently all the calculators for gedmatch place me at 6%. I think it makes ancestry look stupid. I still hope however to upload to FTDNA for my maternal test and correspond my admixture there. My tight budget might make it a Christmas gift to myself.

Ancestry: Autosomnal versus MtDNA

DNA doesn't stop with the percentages you find in tests. Often it takes a further investigation into the history of the populations you represent. I have already found a state of questionablity regarding my amount of Middle eastern DNA. In hopes of diving into my alleles and chromosome results representing my aborigional american DNA I also came across the issue of similarity between Appalachian tribes and middle eastern sample groups specifically Berbers. Of special consideration was the Cherokee contribution on my father's side which is intermixed with Muskogee-Creek. The Creeks are known to carry Mayan DNA while the Cherokee often carry, at least autosomnally, markers that are indistinguishable from middle eastern composition to most calculators. The same can be said of other central Appalachian groups while north and south populations are either Beringian or Mesoamerican of some variety, respectively. Therefore for lack of genealogical evidence it is possible that a result as such is perhaps a false positive. 

That brings me to another interesting point regarding researching population groups. My high percentage groups contain the prefix paleolithic. It is important not to overlook this point because it places the history of those people much farther back in the human migration process (it can also indicate a period of isolation). The inclusion of the term beringian also points to a Asiatic admixture of the paleo-eskimo groups spanning from Russian Siberia through Greenland into Canada and Alaska. There is no consideration for any non Inuit first nations group in my results so far. Given my most recent addition of Indian blood I am wondering if perhaps that means the mother of my great grandma Catherine was also a Mi'maq woman along with a more removed grandmother from Nova Scotia. 

I have a favorite photo taken of myself after my parents divorce with a black and white camera. At the time I noticed that I appeared very Asiatic if not Eskimo due to the mongoloid feature of my eyes and wide face, these features are most notable in the mornings. 

A next step I would like to take is ordering a mtdna test, most likely from familytreeDNA for price points sake. It's another consideration I have made regarding Ancestry.com's poor assessment of my little genetic rainbow that perhaps the exclusion of know admixture as "noise" is not the only way they pigeonhole people. While I have a beautiful plethora of source populations I also have very distinct Y-DNA and mtDNA strains from European origin. My father's y-dna is I1a, now called I-M253, which comes from Fennoscandia especially Denmark. This prehistoric movement of  Danish Vikings was apart of the early population of Anglo-Saxon regions in Great Britain. This haplogroup also asserts the fact that according to myth our branch of the Grant clan is a relation of Haakon Siggurdsson and his brood. Haakon's lineage is just one of the possible origins to the Grant clan. 

Maternal dna would be a new chapter into who and what I am. The genealogical record unfortunately stops short with Elizabeth Paterson my 8th maternal grandmother in Kirkgunzeon, Scotland. I would assume given her location and the families association with Ireland that my maternal line may be Pict. This could also be gross generalization based on birth location. Elizabeth is a 18th century woman giving plenty of time for known mass migrations including the historical banishments of eastern Jews who migrated west in 1300, 1400, 1600 and 1700 AD. Autsomnally and from rare alleles it is predicted that I have a middle eastern haplogroup though as I said above error is possible. I am hoping for a surprise but I would be happy with any result. Further research is always warranted.

Unzipping My Raw DNA, Part One

It's no secret that I was wholly unimpressed with the ethnicity finder on Ancestry.com and it's lack of features. So now that the voices of the many have been heard and my raw data is available I've tried to resist the urge to spread it around like jam on the internet. My first stop was GEDMatch who unfortunately are having server issues because of so many new Ancestry submissions. Moving on then I headed over to Interprenome that is headed by Stanford university science department staff/students.

This new emulator took me from too little data to quite substantially too much!

One of the questions that came about for me was the only unique factor on my AncestryDNA page was a small portion of unspecific southern european. I have been racking my brain and looking for any cooralation in my records that could account for that. The only match I made was to the obscure Italian women who married into the FitzAlan royalty quite far back in my tree's centuries. I am of the opinion that I also need a more specific study journal of my findings since I recall while working inside the Aleramici family in my tree I also came across some women of Spain. The non-specificity even lead too some uncomfortable considerations of probable NPE's and adoption excuses. Interprenome has provided me a unexpected answer in the pan-euro scale. I am quite well into Spanish distribution.

The issue remained of my Cryptozoic-Jewish history supposedly among the women of my father's father ancestry. So using the Asia logarithm I found myself well placed among the Pathan, Sindhi, and Hazara. My closest east/central asian is the Miao Zu people of southern china. To be honest I had no expectations of the Asia group so to find myself clearly defined as a Persian descendant I abesolutley had to know whether I placed on the Pan-Judica map.

Yet another surprise lay for me. I do not place close enough for an exact kinship among the Jewish sample studies. My personal opinion on this is then that I don't have actual Jewish ancestry except to such a minor degree. My Persian history however is echo'ed twice over by my closest match being Iranian and Turkish.

The accuracy of this information of course isn't proven until I run the raw data through GEDMatch. I am hoping to learn my MTDNA haplogroup which according to Interprenome is probably (N1 derivative), but that is just a random guess with very little knowledge behind it.

I look forward to my GEDMatch being finished...hopefully sooner than 4-6 weeks... in order to review these findings and demolish any errors or misgivings I have.

Metis On All Sides

Recently I've come across an interesting fact regarding Ancestry and family legends. As my Father's story goes, a grandmother accused his Father of having Jewish ancestry. I was searching for that angle so hard that I was genuinely surprised to find a different answer. My fathers paternal great grandmother did not carry Jewish ancestry but she did hide a branch of Muscogee (Creek). My father's Metis heritage is Anglo-Metis occurring first in Virginia and then travelling through North Carolina to Oaklahoma. Anna Dabney was the most recent ancestor who was considered a full tribal member. Her Children appear on the Rolls including the 1835 Trail of Tears. The boys of her family however all appear to have inherited their grandfathers status of "Cherokee by Blood". Tracking down the tribes to which I have a family history has been somewhat difficult considering the non-status of Metis here in America.

My working list so far consists of the following:

• Metis of the 3rd Generation
  None in USA; Michigan, USA
• Mi'kmaq of the 9th Generation
  Bear River First Nation; Annapolis, NS
• Muskogee of 8th generation
  Muscogee Creek Nation; Tulsa, OK
• Cherokee of 6th Generation
  Appalachian Cherokee Nation, Montross, VA 

     This revelation is not lost on me considering the finding of Metis ancestry on both sides of my maternal grandfather's parentage. The Mi'kmaq is documented however to far removed for a tribal membership and I assume Pottawatomie for my Metis grandmother but recentness hasn't met me with much paper evidence. This is due in part no doubt to her birth shortly after the fire that consumed Detroit in 1805. Another aspect would be the probability of a "country marriage". After all her father not only flees the area when the British take the fort, he also marries again after her mother in a legal fashion sometime around 1834. Peter never returns to Michigan by all accounts. Two generations now in order to create me and my sister, peoples of varying degree of native blood but all Metis have found each other. That has to be meaningful considering I now find myself near marriage to a half-blood Ojibwae.

The feeling that I was different and more alike a different people than those I encountered been a lifelong occurrence. This is something I have been discussing with my Native Studies teacher at University. She is absolutely thrilled to learn what traditions bled through all the years of lost identity for my families. Small things like aboriginal art (Mi'kmaq) and hand-me-downs no one could assertain too. For me however it was personal and spiritual experiences, including reciprocity that is unlike modern sensibility.

...and that's why I like Highland Cows!

A while before I got heavy into genealogy itself I had stumbled upon physical anthropology. While it has been debunked for quite sometime there is a certain level of accuracy it portrays. Most people would remember it from it's use for eugenics during the Nazi regime but that is truly not it's purpose. Today shows like "Bones" still use it to determine ethnic range for deceased and often facial reconstruction has to incorporate some of it to give a accurate result. It is simple fact that Asian's have higher and more delicate nasal cavities whereas African peoples tend to have a wider ridge across the nose. These facts have really no purpose at all except for being used as a tool themselves.

So after learning what I was looking for in the sub-race characteristics I began the process of taking profile pictures and head measurements. For the most part I came up with the generic Dinaric group which is most profound accross europe itself. Upon asking some other intrested students to also look at my findings they came up with East-Baltid and I simply laughed it off as a result of my weight. After all the majority of my research has led me to geographic populations that would have the Dinaric classification or even a Nordic trait. However I should not have overlooked it so quickly I think.

A while back I discovered a cousin on ancestry named Jane Storm. Until then I hadn't focused on the German grandmother of my own french line at all, Lezelie Brunner. However Lezelie's parentage leads straight back to the Sturm (Storm) family that I share with Jane. Today i have come across an interesting fact regarding the couple at which I join Jane's heritage. Johann Jacob Brunner who married Maria Barbra Sturm, had parents that both came from the Kingdom of Bavaria. This would be close enough to the edge of Germany that it would fall within the range of the East-Baltic characteristic type. So perhaps I was not only a bit to quick to judge but also a bit biased against Germany itself. After all it is quite put down in American classrooms as the mastermind of both World Wars. Obviously I have more to learn.

My genetic profile on Ancestry however leans towards a Nordic and British heritage at least in my active DNA. British however brings up the Borreby group trait which is in someways mistakable with East Baltic because of the wide face. Being over 86% north European though makes me more inclined to believe that my hybridization of types is within those groups. My mother, for example, is naturally blue eyed and dark blonde yet my Dad is a obvious Borreby with Mediterranean hints. Speaking of disparity my Ancestry DNA match to my father was unlocked recently and I see that my 8% southern European does not come from him! This was a bit of a shock but it is interesting since I have yet to match my mother to anything except it's neighbors Germany and France. If I am a Borreby at my core however that explains why I think Highland cows are the most adorable barn animals I've ever seen.

Merry Christmas from Brittania

The time has come that my long awaited DNA testing results are in. As mentioned before my Father didn't like his results but I've been reading more about that. As the Genetic Genealogist puts it "Everybody has two tree's!" So I expected the unexpected but also held fast to the fact that I probablly inherited the more obvious traits from my French line in my mother's tree and now a suspected grouping in my Father's. Much to my surprise I came up with results more like what my Father had expected for himself.

To the left is the snippet from my results placing me well into the Welsh/Irish and English inheritance both my parents carry. It was also looking at this that I realized some of the birth locations for my relatives in France must be formatted wrong because they aren't even on the map here. I assumed that I inherited the Scandinavian from my Dad but in relative finder we don't match there which is odd since he has a high percentage as well.


So this has led me into a bit of a History lesson. Having just watched the "Monarchy: UK" show on Netflix I was rather refreshed on some of the Norman conquest details from my supposed 'Stewart' connection. I used this to explain to my Father why his Central European was probably so high since Norman soldiers settled mostly in that area taking indigenous wives as did there sons for generations.

The southern European is my big surprise which also led to some historical research. I came across two theories besides of course a recent 'npe' (Non Paternity Event). The first is that recent studies have shown that Scottish stock was descended from a paleohispanic peoples called Iberians. Their fisherman it said crossed the bay of Biscay about 6,000 years ago into the Isles.

As an after thought it is also possible that a portion of my southern French families could have actually been Italians living abroad. The Boissil's (Boussey) and Grossejambe's both dead end about 1600.

Now more intresting is a more recent migration via conquest before the Normans. When Rome was at it's end as an empire around 300 AD it had just worked it's way into the British Isles. As the war period broke down the Military men settled in Britain, however it was for 200 years (since the winning of Britain), illegal for Roman men to marry local women. This meant that they shipped in women from other countries in the roman empire like Spain, Italy and France. So by the time the law was lifted there was a strong genetic group of Romans within the confines of Britain. This is why a distinct level of Roman survives today in people of British descent despite their lack of knowledge to it. I look forward to more detail being added to the algorithms in the future especially to uncover my 6% unknown which is twice the amount of my fathers. For now I will plug away trying to find this Italian or Hispanic connection I have.

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Read More about Iberians: Independent News/ Wikipedia
Rome in Britain: Surprising DNA

Habits and Coincidences

There is something funny about following family legends through quantitative data and that funny thing is seeing the unreported legacies we leave behind. My ancestry-DNA sample was finally received at the laboratory within the last week. I pray it hasn't decayed to much since it took about a month to be shipped thanks to the holiday seasons.  Hearing that I have 6-8 weeks before a major surprise I couldn't help but ponder once again over my Father's results of dominantly central European despite the family stories that he was distinctly Nordic-Celt. There are of course some holes within the maternal lines for him which I believe might fill many percentage gaps. Adding to the mystery is my hematologist's discovery that I have yet another inherited condition that is distinctly of Mediterranean descent lines. I just find it so darn humorous since genetics obviously does not lie. Thalassemia, my newest suspected diagnosis, does confirms my Fathers genetic testing results however.

My DNA results will most likely not match my Fathers at all, at least in percentage. Now I do know that within my maternal grandfather's line there is a influence from southern France. Most men of the Welsh and English descent chose French wives. In reverse of this having just worked on some of my more recent German ancestors I see that they favored English wives. In fact while they remain so proud of being German they carry almost no cultural influence from it in recent generations and no one speaks the language naturally. I might say this has something to do with the influx of English wives since they ran the household. There is also the matter of joining a culturally deficient religion in the recent years.

The French left their Catholicism and the Germans left Mennonite beliefs to join the Joseph Smith fad. My families on both sides are proud of being so involved generationaly with RLDS (Community of Christ), though its not as many as they assume. I however feel that its stolen away a lot of the traditions that are unique to earlier generations who practiced more classical religions. For the most part my family doesn't see their descent lines anymore. We divide ourselves as American or Canadian at this point. It's a shame to let go of so much yet with each generation we gain a lot. I gather at this point I've torn the threads of my history apart so far that's it hard to enjoy the fabric now as a unit. I have a feeling that my results from DNA sampling might inspire me to look elsewhere. As an example my Father thinks that our history might be boggled by assumptions past three generations above him. This brings up the possibility of a different heritage line stemming back to Italy and France...I can't help but see that it is reminiscent of his DNA results. What a coincidence..?!

Always Check Your Sources

For Thanksgiving I had initially created a post following the Swan family of Plymouth  Massachusetts back to the 11th Great Grand parents, Sarah Allerton and Degory Priest. This was quite a exciting find and I immediately started a blog post for the Thanksgiving Holiday about pilgrims. By happy accident when I was editing it with a disclaimer last night it was deleted.

While the initial research led the correct direction there was a oversight regarding the Swan and Swaine families that settled in Massachusetts  Both had daughters named Sarah born about 1665/70 with similar brood of children after marriage. The real key to discovering my unfortunate oversight was the marriage record of Sarah and her husband Joseph Norton which indicates the Swaine surname not swan as is seen for the Plymouth county records. Unfortunately the Swan woman from the Pratt(Priest/Allerton) and Swain  family convergence is often misspelled in her records as Swain.

Of course Pilgrim history is more exciting still this true family line seems to lead to fairly respectable people who immigrated to the US in roughly 1635 in the New Hampshire and Nantucket Bay area of Massachusetts. Nantucket had been sold by the Wompanoag people to Thomas Mayhew, one of the Plymouth Company owners, and it was not until he lost interest in the area and sold it that real colonization began there in earnest about 1659. Richard Swaine, of the correct line, was one of the purchasers who bought the land for "30 pounds and a beaver hat for Mayhew and his wife".

Grace Swaine, Daughter of Richard would later be accused of Witchcraft during the famous Salem Trials, along with her daughter eldest Mary Boulter. This finger pointing came after the death of a small child of John Godfrey died in 1680. Rachel Fuller originally accused of the crime gave many names under diress of questioning including Grace and Mary's. John Godfrey was apart of the Swan family from Plymouth by marriage. One of the motivations for accusing Grace and Mary is that they were the majority property holders of the Swain estate from Richard.

Ironically most of the Swaine family men went on to have thier hands in law and court. Further research will no doubt provide better details of the more current generations. Judgement errors like this both prove that I shouldn't mass record dive at night and that it is always important to check sources no matter how polished/legitimate the material looks.

Spitoons and Silver Spurs

The Ancestry DNA test arrived last week for me. I was expecting a cotton swab but unfortunately they need a larger sample. My father is excited to see the results which I must say makes me laugh to imagine it not connecting us as relations. What I'm really looking for is unknown's such as perhaps more Boussey relatives like Alyce or perhaps even a accidental finding of my mystery aunt who was adopted out of the Morford family.

I mentioned in a earlier post that a lot of my cousins I've been able to contact all specialize in a certain corner of the family. I was hoping to fill this niche by focusing on my part of the Jones's. I was able to get a freepage with Roots web for my own use. After framing it up it occurred to me that I may not truly have time to deal with this all considering I already have 3 blogs and am still going strong in school. I may reduce the page to something more direct such as the generational family listing I began in PDF.

Endless Discovery

Today I am off to Amherstburg, Canada to visit my Grandmother Lucienna. I intended to have many questions to ask her but the Wismer family is fairly well researched already so I have little need except to enjoy humorous tales. I do of course have some hope that she may have pictures of her maternal grandparents, the Mills, who don't seem to be researched anywhere else. This may be due to the fact that like my Grandfather Harvey Jones's family most of the generations have since passed on and what little grandchildren my age remain have no interest. I thoroughly enjoy collecting images on my family especially since I don't particularly match any living relatives that closely.

Yesterday I considered the idea of tracking down a history course on Canada that I could take. It seems most colleges do not offer it so I settled into a quick reading of the Wikipedia page. The word Acadian came up and I was curious enough to read through it wondering what background this cultural group had. It seems Acadian could be in both of my parents tree's with my Paternal lines in Maine and now it seems through so quick luck today I have my answer in my mother's tree.

It is no new knowledge that I greatly honor my grandfather's Metis heritage from his father and as it turns out his mother also had a metis heritage of her own. Within a maternal offshoot from the Boussey's to the LaPierre's I came across my 9th Great Grandmother, Anne Marie Fauconnier Dit Metisse, born between 1616-1631 at the Metis settlement in Port Royal, Nova Scotia. She had married a Acadian man named Rene Raimbault, whose daughter Jeanne married Francois LaPierre. Jeanne's grand daughter Angelique married Nicholas Boissy (Boussey) my 6th Great Grandfather. All of this is such an amazing find since I so recently stumbled upon the new knowledge of the Acadian's perhaps it is serendipitous.  It appears that Anne Marie may have been Micmac Indian and luckily she has more records than most Indian women of that time. Further research into both the Acadian's and the life of Anne Marie will of course be a new focus for me.

Importance of DNA

The consolidation is going well for those that read me regularly. At this time I am about 200 people short (mostly in the Day family) of incorporating all of my Father's currently discovered ancestors. The other day I received a surprising message on Ancestry.com from a professional Genealogist (Dee Dee King) looking to find the family of my 1st cousin thrice removed on the Jones side. Within a few minutes search I verified the identity of cousin Freddie and had expanded my general knowledge of him. In fact his name had only shown up on a single census so far when I researched his parents and had been referred to as Fred.

Dee Dee did not present a very pleasant picture at first since she did not tell me why she wanted to contact next of kin or if perhaps she was a "lazy genealogist" going to let me do all the research for her. My Grandfather experienced a bit of this when working with a 'professional' on our published family history, at least she sourced him. After a message back and forth I finally opened the link that Dee Dee gave me and discovered her purpose for researching Freddie was much more noble than just getting paid. Ms. King is under contract it seems with the US Navy to research the men who died aboard the USS Oklahoma that was sunk in Pearl Harbor. The Navy it seems is still hoping to identify the remains through DNA sampling from living relatives.

Freddie Jones, (MM1c) is not the first war hero that has been in my tree. Most of the men born at the turn of the century served in WWI and in fact one of them was even willing to serve in both WW's despite his old age. Unfortunately I am a hop and skip relation to Freddie myself and could only have at best a 3-5% match on the M-DNA. The grand-kids of Freddie's sister Grace Jones seem unwilling to help or at best haven't had time to respond to Ms. King. I'm sure within the week or so they will have gotten back to her since the female relations would match well.

Speaking of DNA, last week I talked a bit about the Street family. It seems that the Mental defects are X-linked for the most part. The men not having a second X to counteract the deletion/mutations suffer the worst. It seems my grandfather's family all suffered a degenerative condition; Dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinsons, respectively by age. My father has made comments to my sister and I that we must get our bad health from his Mother's side because of a Uncle who suffers depression yet the evidence of inheritance says other words. Discovering Dementia and Alzhiemers so close to my generation is a recent development and no doubt a conversation I will have to have with my own Neurologist. This is especially pertinent since the degenerative diseases have shown up in at least 1 child each generation and my Aunt Debbie is the carrier in my Father's generation thus moreover proving the likelihood of a X-mutation.

Echoing the Past

A while back I decided to make separate ancestry trees for my parents respectively. I did this because I did not believe I could safely navigate anymore a populous list of over 4,000 relatives. I wanted to have details for each person and truly discover them as a form of respect.
Unfortunately I have not given my fathers lineage the attention it deserves. I updated my own file the other day only to realize that his tree needed duplicate entries that I would have to hand type again. This I feel takes away from valuable time I have to review censuses and data mine for long lost fellows.
Perhaps I have not mentioned them before but my fathers Grandmother was of the Street family in Missouri. After a horrible tragedy in the family involving a murder suicide they withdrew themselves from each other and in fact little records remain. I am having a similar experience in current time where I am both lacking resources to find data and have to deal with my fathers reluctance to share information. Geneology had been a hobby he shared with my grandfather and I don't think he could ever part with his many boxes of hand written notes.

Most recently he entrusted me with the published book following our Grant lines from the original Scottish ancestor who settled King George, Virginia. That data however has holes and many misgivings. My Grandfather Joseph was only interested in following his paternal line so any information gathered otherwise is most likely unsorted sitting in the boxes on my fathers attic floor. The crypto-Judaism line is also amoung that neglected work. While I do praise my dad's willingness to share stories by word of mouth I would love to see pictures and letters that I consider a real way to organically and emotionally connect. I of course cannot blame my fathers since I too have fallen pray to favoritism within my mothers tree, the Fillies du roi line and the Metis Dufour. I believe a rebinding is called for if only to realign my focus.

Finding Cousins

My sister Heather has been commenting that I spend too much of my research time on dead sources when we have plenty of living cousins to find. She is right of course that I have almost no focus on living relatives. This is mostly due to how proliferative my 'Wismer' family has been up in Canada. Cousins upon cousins.

After the Leitzke, Neitzke debacle last week I am slightly more interested in living relatives than I have been in the past. As a change I ended up diving into the Boussey (Boissy) line of my Maternal Grandfather's tree. This would be the famous 'Fillies du Roi' decendency for which I have considered putting in a application to the society. A lot of my data has come from a user named 'AlyceBoussy' on Ancestry and I was curious enough to track her line from our common ancestor down.

It was fairly exciting to see that for the most part she was in a similar family design as I was with one or two families marrying siblings doubling our genetic comparisons. Closer however to recent I find that while her Father was predominantly french he married a lovely Italian woman. Following my own tree you have a predominately French woman marrying a Welshman. The difference that these  derivatives might make was tantalizing. I began to wonder whether she would have a interest in conversing with me.

So as I found Alyce's information I found that she had unfortunately passed away about 4 years ago and the family had not taken down her work. Four years is when I began doing research and so I missed a chance to reach out to a cousin I didn't know I had and find a connection that I am missing to French culture. This is especially disheartening since it is my Grandfather's family that I have little to no knowledge of.  His mother had been a Boussey and so I am grateful to Alyce's family for not taking down her work. Yet here I sit still missing my contacts as well from the Jones family line for most of my Grandfather's brothers: Murray, Floyd, Henry, & Ralph all predeceased him. After my grandfather's death the families separated and the 'Jones & Sons, LTD' was dissolved.

As of now I have placed in over 1700 unique people into my tree and most of those in the past week are cousins that I am no longer willing to miss out on. Perhaps I will find the secret to the Jones' in the old reunion papers that my Grandmother Lucienna has sent to me through my mother.