I have an observation and a question.

[loyd]

I used 23andMe for my DNA research and that of my Son and his daughter. Aside from my son and granddaughter there are three other immediate family hits; a grandniece and her son, and a 1st cousin once removed. Everyone in the above mix are known relatives. The very next person of interest – i.e., based on strength of the match – is a 3rd to 4th cousin and not a very strong one at that. My ancestry is from the mid-west and north-east.
My son’s matches, aside from the matches on my DNA [above], include only one 2nd to 3rd cousin on his adopted mother’s side – this known since it doesn’t show on my DNA – is listed before the matches fall off to 2nd to 4th or higher.
The conclusion [right or wrong], from the above is that my DNA comes from more urban areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania while my son’s mother’s comes from a rural area of far northern Maine and nearby Canada.
In contrast to my family DNA, my wife’s DNA shows three 2nd cousins, seven 2nd to 3rd, and five 2nd to 4th cousins before dropping to the 4th cousin level. Her ancestors are primarily from Cannon and Warren counties in Tennessee.
Her son’s DNA shows weaker matches but still stronger than mine – five 2nd to 3rd cousins and two 2nd to 4th cousins before dropping to 3rd and deeper matches. There’s room of speculation that her son’s father’s ancestry is a mix of a later migration into Grundy county, TN and other people from other counties [Bedford, Coffee, and elsewhere].
When I find matches that seem too strong to fit I’m tempted to assume that the reason for the strength of the match is due to the endogenous relationships and not to nearness of the match [i.e., DNA coming from more than one ancestor tree].
Has anyone else come to this convoluted conclusion?

[sid_matheny]

In Ancestry mine shows 8 2nd cousins that show confidence: Extremely High. 25 3rd cousins that show confidence: Extremely High. And a lot of 4th cousins confidence: Extremely High and a few with confidence: Vert High. I don't have any DNA for my kids.

[loyd]

I tested the wife on Ancestry and she shows a lot of cousins there as well as on 23andMe. I've been tempted to test myself there as well. Maybe when they post the next discount sale I'll do that. They just finished a sale but I wasn't paying attention.

I transferred the wife's raw DNA to Family Tree DNA but I'm not too happy with their tools so I've held off on transferring mine. Lori may get to that set of tools soon in the meetings and I may change my mind.

Unfortunately, there's just not enough time in the 24 hour day for all that can be done with DNA and then there's the woodworking habit. Maybe Congress will declare a 26 hour day soon and fix my predicament.

[loyd]

We discussed the issue of cousinship in isolated rural areas today at the DNA meeting at Forest Mill CoC classroom. Interesting discussion ensued; I understood some of it.

[sid_matheny]

I am not real sure about the Ethnicity Estimates using DNA results. I downloaded my raw DNA from Ancestry and uploaded it to the My Heritage site and got different results.

Ancestry said:

Great Britain 46%
Europe West 23%
Scandinavia 18%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales 5%
Finland/Northwest Russia 3%
Iberian Peninsula 1%
Europe South <1%
Asia South <1%
Middle East <1%
Polynesia <1%

My Heritage said:


Irish, Scottish, and Welsh 45.1%
Scandinavian 29.1%
Finnish 1.7%
Iberian 19.8%
North African 3.3%
West Africa 1.0%
Nigerian 1.0%


????
 

[loyd]

I just pay no attention to it. I think that's becoming the attitude of most people. It's hard to argue with the comparison of one person's DNA segments with that of another, but to try to globalize it with varying segments of testers [e.g. a million from one region and a 1000 from another] seems to me a lost cause. The same goes for the native American connections. Probably a lot of Americans whose ancestors have been in the country have some amount of native American DNA that's so diluted it's totally missed by the sequencers. It doesn't help a lot in genealogy anyway. I don't think many of us are going into international travel to find our roots.

[loyd]

I got curious about this origin information. I uploaded my wife's raw data from 23andMe to FTDNA and looked at the data.

FTDNA origins
96 euro
4 middle eastern
West and Central Europe 30%
Scandinavia 29%
British Isles 18%
Iberia 16%
Southeast Europe 3%

23andMe origins
99.7 euro
0.2 middle eastern & North African
British and Irish 64.6
French and German 9.8
Scandinavian 2.3
Broadly NW Euro 20.5
Southern Euro 1.7
Iberian 1.1

Again, I don't know what to make of this other than it's not of much use in genealogy research.

The reason for the discrepancy between these two sources is likely migration. The British Isles [mainly Scotland and Ireland] were repeatedly conquered by the Vikings in the middle ages and the Vikings [Danes and Norwegians mostly] intermixed with the local British and Irish and were assimilated over time. Anyone from a Scot-Irish population likely has Scandinavian DNA mixed in and it would be difficult to write an analgorithm to sort all that out.