Archives

Ancestry Composition Comparisons: a Case Study

Apr16

Discovering where your ancestors came from is one of the more popular reasons to do a DNA test but the current ancestry composition algorithms have a long way to go. Sometimes East Asian ancestry is actually American Indian and South Asian might be gypsy or Indian Indian. Scandinavian might be British or North German and British and Irish might be Scandinavian.

Most efforts to analyze the deeper roots of your ancestry are based on samples of modern populations who self report four grandparents of a single ethnicity plus some public databases and a few ancient samples. Since each company relies greatly on their own databases of tested people, it is not surprising to see differences in their predictions.

My brother's Ancestry as shown at DNA.land

My brother’s Ancestry as shown at DNA.land

Since my brother is tested at all three companies I thought I would post the images of what each company sees in his DNA as well show the new report from DNA.land and a few from GEDmatch (both using his uploaded Ancestry.com DNA data). We are confident of our recent ancestry: 50% Southern Norwegian, 25% Bavarian German and 25% Ashkenazi.

The new DNA.land report is shown above, Hmmm, only 16% Ashkenazi.

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Another Triangulation Success, Another Etne Cousin

Mar4

So what is the opposite of the saying when it rains it pours? How about the sun is not only shining but there are rainbows!

When you keep extensive spreadsheets that include the common ancestor for segments of DNA that triangulate, you sometimes have quick success with a new DNA relative.

I recently shared my Norwegian 3rd cousin’s kit with Shelley on 23andme. She has a large X match with him that I am still working on. His maternal side from Rogaland is not related to me that I know of.

Naturally I always compare a new DNA relative to everyone else possible. I was surprised to discover that she shares a small bit of DNA with my Dad and my brother that triangulates with a known fourth cousin and her sister. Synchronicity … these are the same cousins mentioned in my previous post about my X segment from Ve and Fatland.

Etne Fjord, VE farm at distant left

Etne Fjord, Ve farm at very distant left hand side

So I emailed Shelley and told her that she shares a small (6cM) segment that we know comes to us from our ancestor Aamund Bjørnson Tvedten (Ve) 1772-1842 so perhaps we share one of his ancestors. She replied back, all excited, wow my great-grandmother is Anna Wee (Ve).

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DNA testing finds some more Skjold cousins

Feb1
Hans Martin Gunderson

Hans Martin Gunderson

The randomness of DNA inheritance always amazes me. My Norwegian-American father seems to have inherited more DNA from his Skjold grandad, “Dada,” than his Wold grandma, “Mormor.” Dad shares more than the expected amount of DNA with 3rd and 4th and double 4th cousins on his Skjold line. Of course this could also be explained by the slight endogamy in the area they come from, Etne, Hordaland. By comparison, Dad shares no DNA with a Wold 3rd cousin once removed and only a small amount with her mother. He shares more with a few other Wold cousins but it tends to be less than the expected amount with the more distant cousins on that line.

Recently I found two new Skjold cousins via DNA testing, Maria and Irene.

On Ancestry.com, a 3rd cousin match appeared for my brother which turned out to be a real 3rd cousin, a Gundersen relative who is descended from Dada’s sister Margareta. Her son who immigrated to Brooklyn, Hans Martin Gundersen, is pictured on the left.

On 23andme.com, I found a new 3rd-4th cousin on Dad’s list, who was found to be from another branch of our Holland relatives. The Hollands descend from Dada’s Aunt Mette (see my post with her portrait). My father’s newly found 3rd cousin twice removed shares 1.10% of her DNA with him: 4 segments totaling 84cM. This is on the high side, more like a second cousin once removed (click here for the article at ISOGG about the expected amounts of shared DNA).

So read on for the details of how I figured out the actual relationships with my new cousins.

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Mapping an Ancestral Couple: a Backwards Use of my Segment Mapper

Aug29

Sometimes I wonder if the interest in genetic genealogy runs in our DNA. I have found many more new cousins with autosomal testing that are descended from my WOLD line than in any other family. Yes they all had lots of children until recently, but so did the Munsons and the Skjolds.

So I decided to make a picture of the HIR (half identical region) DNA segments that I know come from my great-great-grandparents Jørgen and Anna Wold of Drammen, Norway. To do this I made a CSV file with a list of all the segments that are just from those ancestors. I put the first names of the group of matches in the column that would be the MRCA in the usual style segment map. I have to give credit to my distant DNA cousin (on the AJ side) Israel Pickholtz (he blogs too) for this wonderful idea of making a reverse segment map. Below is my picture of Wold DNA created with my DNA segment mapper tool. Click the image to go to the actual html page which will show the centimorgan values and names when you put your mouse on a colored block.

WoldDNAsmllThe use of two lines is arbitrary; I could have used three or four. The DNA segments shown are not separated into lines for Anna and those for Jorgen. Where that was possible, I had intended to do it with colors, but did not get to it, next version. Knut, OK, Nancy and Aaron are on Anna’s side while Susannah, her mother, and Lester are on Jorgen’s side only.
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Our Holland (Håland or Haaland) cousins are found via DNA!

Mar10

MetteHaalandSmllBack in the late 1800s our Norwegian ancestors and relatives came here in droves; about 80,000 Norwegians came before the Civil War and even more afterwards. Partially it was economic conditions in Norway but mainly it was due to the population pressures from improved medicine. The practice of dividing the farm among your boys does not work so well when you have ten children most of whom are now surviving to adulthood. So emigration to America was the solution for many.

Most of my relatives, like many Norwegian immigrants, settled out in the northern midwestern states: Illinois (Kendall County), Iowa (Story City), South Dakota and Wisconsin. However, my own ancestors stayed in New York. The ship’s carpenter Monsens and my g-grandfather Henry (Halvor Hans) Skjold settled in the Norwegian section of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, NY. Hans was known as Henry H. Lee in this country. He was the embodiment of the successful immigrant story (see this newspaper article ) making it big with his harbor businesses.

Two of his sisters, both named Anna, kept to more traditional endeavors and headed to Kendall County, Illinois with their husbands and children and farmed. We are in touch with the Stevenson descendants who have a yearly reunion in July in Illinois. We always wondered about the descendants of his aunt Mette Tvetden Haaland, his dead mother’s half sister. She went to Wisconsin with her eight children and her husband Sjur who tragically died soon after arrival along with the baby. My Stevenson genealogist cousin and I had long since given up on finding her descendants. But along came DNA testing and suddenly I had some good matches in Dad’s 23andme account with the surname Holland, could it be? Why yes!

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