I normally look at ancestry composition, DNA origins and ethnicity estimates as a guessing game. More for entertainment than for specific work in genealogy and that is mainly because you can get some dramatically different results depending on the company you test with and the version of the estimates you’re using. As testing companies add …
Continue reading ‘Ancestry Composition, Origins, Ethnicity Estimates…Oh My’ »
Posts from 2020: https://wanderingtrees.com/2020/ DNA and Genealogy This year started off where last year ended. I had my own Big Y results back (before a human review) and tried to make sense of those results and the new FTDNA block tree. I had my MTDNA results back with the deepest testing I could do and …
I was able to get big Y results for the direct descendants of Levi Thompson. This will likely be the last best test I can do for posterity. Few Y DNA matches have tested to this level. At Y 111, we have a single match with a person descended from Francis Ireland b. 1787. The …
With the dust settled a little bit from my big Y 700 test and the Big Y 700 results from an Elmer cousin, I thought it would be good to revisit my place in the tree and compare that to my spot in the family tree. FTDNA Big Y Block Tree a Good Place to …
My previous post followed the big Y block tree back to about 500 BC. In comparison to the older Big Y 500 results and even previous FTDNA block tree iterations, I’m seeing a finer-grained map with new SNPs not necessarily at the family level, but up in the tree defining and connecting branches that may …
In my last post, I left off at the ZP124 block that currently defines three families of English colonists who arrived in a few different locations in North America within maybe 100 years of each other. The ZP124 block gets us back to roughly 800AD covering about 1000 years for these three families. Right now, …
I ordered a Big Y 700 test for myself, taking advantage of a sale on upgrades. I’ve tested into the twigs and leaves of the Elmers at YSEQ, so I don’t expect anything earth-shattering from my own Big Y. It’s just been something I wanted to do and it will allow me to catch up …
There are generally two fronts in my Elmore genealogy work, one front is identifying branches of the Elmores in the U.S. and getting people tested to try to place them. The second front is getting out of the U.S. by any means. Specifically getting out of Connecticut. That is what is on my mind today. …
Image of the Mud Maid from Heligan in Cornwall lovingly borrowed. As I’ve become estranged from my mother as an adult and have become removed from my maternal family in the process, researching my mitochondrial DNA links is a somewhat painful process. Even now, while I write this, inside I’m concerned about what the implications …
Everybody’s existence depends on the actions, interactions and decision trees of the people who came before them. That isn’t unique. What I think is unique is the perspective on existence available to the family historian. My aunt Cheryl died at the end of August. Her visitation (she didn’t want a funeral) was on the 8th …