Ancestral DNA Advances

I thought I knew somewhat of ancestral DNA testing until I attended RootsTech 2014 in early February. What I know is a drop in the proverbial bucket. Ancestry is only one of several marketers of DNA genealogical products, but the only one in which I am dipping my toe so far. Each collects, analyzes and distributes information in a different way so it's likely that someday I will try another provider.

The latest update to Ancestry DNA upgraded my possible ethnic connections:

From 53% Central European to 56% Europe West
From 34% British Isles to 25% Ireland & 6% Great Britain
From 9% Scandinavian to 7% Scandinavian
From 4% Uncertain to 6% Trace

While I could have roughly predicted the results of the original and update to the ethnicity estimate based on my meager knowledge of my heritage, it was the Uncertain/Trace parts of my ancestry that were the most enlightening:
Finland/Northwest Russia 2%
European Jewish 1%
Iberian Peninsula <1%
Europe East <1%
Does the Jewish portion come from the Sheckles/Shackles line or does the Jewish ancestry rumor come from a misspelling of the name and the ethnicity is actually another long-lost ancestor? From which line comes the Iberian, perhaps Spanish, DNA? Did the Jew convert to Christianity during the Inquisitions? I'm sure the Russian connection is through the same Viking line, some of whom went to Russia and others who went to France and then invaded England with the Conquerer in 1066. Oh, the possibilities! The romantic daydreams!

Is the Western European bit from my Algonquin Indian grandmother? The National Geographic Daily News from November 20, 2013, states in the article "GreatSurprise" -- Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins that "Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome." The FIRM Foundation recently commented in an email newsletter regarding the National Geographic genome project, "Not surprisingly, the one-third of Native Americans having the Middle Eastern DNA are primarily those of the Algonquian tribes of North America, just as Joseph Smith indicated through his revelations, writings and actions." Those Ten Tribes seem to have gotten around! Great-grandfather Frederick's varied Patriarchal blessings may give a hint.

 http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/2013/10/x-dna-inheritance-charts.html

Because it is wise to collect DNA samples from the oldest living members of one's direct line, Mom and Dad have sent in their DNA. I learned at RootsTech that after only 10 generations a mere 12% of one's ancestors actually contribute to your genome. My parents gave exactly 50% of my DNA, but my grandparents are not guaranteed to contribute an exact 25%. Their contribution could be 1-2% off and beyond 10 generations some ancestors' DNA has dropped off entirely. Quoting from Blaine Bettinger writing on The Genetic Genealogist:

"At each generation, only 50% of a person’s DNA is passed to their children.  That 50% is almost completely random. Further, at about 5-9 generations, ancestors start to completely fall off your Genetic Family Tree.  This means that your Genetic Family Tree is a small subset of your Genealogical Family Tree, and without DNA testing you have no idea what subset that is." - posted February 16, 2014. The Ancestry DNA Witch Hunt.

Oh the possibilities of my hidden descent! The imagination runs wild!

Family Reunions

Today we're packing up for a Foy Cousins family reunion and just yesterday we received the invitation to the Barker Cousins party - another word for reunion - held in the backyards of my aunts. While always a lot of work in planning and preparation, the rewards are worth it. Like childbirth, looking back one mostly just thinks of the blessings and not so much the hard work. A few years retrospective helps as well. Still, there is a lot of work involved so I wondered if the call to reunions was just a fun idea or has there been any instruction on the matter. Indeed, I found holding family reunions is an eternal principle.

Enjoying the rewards of an old fashioned cake walk.

 One website dedicated to the principle has this to say: 

An eternity of sons and daughters! Family reunion is an eternal concept in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the blessings of being together forever are based on what we do here and now. One of the greatest aspirations of the family reunion is to cement that sacred sense of eternal family, which seems so lost to the fractured world. (http://ldsfamilyreunion.blogspot.com/)

Don't take their word on it, however. Some leaders of great wisdom have given us their example and direction.   

Gotta have a jet pack if you're going to be a superhero!

From the Life of Lorenzo Snow

Anticipating his 70th birthday, Lorenzo Snow invited all his children and their families to gather in Brigham City, Utah, for a “grand re-union and anniversary celebration.” He arranged for their lodging and food and for programs that all, including the young children, would enjoy. “The more I reflect upon this subject [of a family reunion],” he wrote, “the greater are my anxieties and desires for a family gathering, that I may see you all once in my life, and give you a father’s blessing.” He urged them to let nothing prevent their attendance “except the most serious and insurmountable obstacles. The Snow family gathered from May 7 to 9, 1884, and enjoyed music, theatrical productions, speeches, poetry, games, food, and friendly conversation. (“Sacred Family Relationships.”Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow)

  

Grandfather of Joseph Smith

"Wherefore, my dear children, I pray, beseech, and adjure you by all the relations and dearness that hath ever been betwixt us and by the heartrending pangs of dying father whose soul hath been ever bound in the bundle of life with yours, that you know one another. Visit as you may each one another... if possible, once every year...or if you cannot meet, send to and hear from each other yearly and oftener if you can; and when you have neither father nor mother left be so many fathers and mothers to each other, so you shall understand the blessings mentioned in the 133 Psalms."                           - Asael Smith

President Benson

Again, I emphasize that every family in the Church should belong to an immediate and, insofar as possible, a grandparent family organization. ( Ezra Taft Benson, “Worthy of All Acceptation”, November 1978. Ensign.)

Boyd K. Packer

There are several basic component parts to family history and temple work. Over the years, they may be rearranged somewhat in emphasis, or the approach in programming Church participation may change somewhat. But the responsibilities stay about the same.

1. Each of us is to compile his or her own life history.

2. Each of us is to keep a book of remembrance.   

3. As individuals and families we are each to seek out our kindred dead, beginning first with the four most recent generations on each line, and then going back as far as we can.

4. We are each to participate in other programs such as name extraction [indexing] when asked to do so.

5. We are to organize our families and hold meetings and reunions.

5. If we have access to a temple, each of us should go to the temple as often as possible to do ordinance work—first for ourselves, then for our progenitors, then for all the names that have been gathered by means other than our own. (Boyd. K. Packer. “Your Family History: Getting Started,” August 2003 Ensign.)

The Past

"We are people to whom the past is forever speaking. We listen to it because we cannot help ourselves, for the past speaks to us with many voices. Far out of that dark nowhere which is the time before we were born, men who were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone went through fire and storm to break a path to the future. We are part of the future they died for; they are part of the past that brought the future. What they did--the lives they lived, the sacrifices they made, the stories they told and the songs they sang and, finally, the deaths they died--make up a part of our own experience. We cannot cut ourselves off from it. It is as real to us as something that happened last week. It is a basic part of our heritage as Americans".    Bruce Catton

Source: Quote from the book America Goes to War, page 68.

DNA Genealogy

My Ethnic DNA Make-up

My DNA reports show that my maternal ancient ancestry haplogroup or deep DNA genealogy is U and the subgroup is U2e. Haplogroup U are known as The Travelers who probably lived and migrated throughout western Europe, Mongolia, India and north and northwest Africa. In the subgroup U2e the "e" means European but has been found as far as Mongolia, China and India.

My brother's paternal DNA report show our haplogroup is I-M170 with no subgroup listed. Haplogroup I accounts for approximately 20% of Europe's overall population with higher incidence found in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions (GeneTree).

Check - that makes sense from all available genealogical data kept or found by the family. How deep, though, is deep? Where did they come from prior to Europe?
 
Autosomal testing predicts that my deep ethnicity in the following percentages:
53% Central European
34% British Isles
9%   Scandinavian
4%   Uncertain

For some reason I was surprised by the high percentage of Central European. I guess that was because my more recent ancestors have been proven to have been Native American or from New England and England. Upon further digging into my Hyde-Simmons and Foy-Bingham lines, I realized that those from New England mostly came from Old England and those from Old England ultimately came mostly from France, Belgium, German, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The old sort came from Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Turkey, Prussia, Ukraine, Serbia and Hungary. While it took centuries for them to move that distance, and, well, maybe even some of them aren't really proven - a story for another day, an overview of the pedigree charts shows that my deep ethnicity is just what the DNA predicts. That doesn't include, however, the genes that were not passed on, that dropped off the list during the mixing.

There are more secrets to come as science and family history make more information available. We may have to wait for the Millennium for some records especially for that Uncertain portion. Algonquin Indian accounts for a fraction of that 4% but not all.


DNA Testing

A dozen years ago a DNA genealogy project was announced from the church pulpit. Intrigued, I rounded up a brother and son-in-law to have a sample taken and included in the database. I like to think we were at the forefront of a project known as SMGF which later grew into a massive collection that even later merged with and became the foundation for what is now Ancestry DNA. The Sorenson Database contained more than 100,000 DNA samples and familial pedigrees from more than 170 countries, encompassing 2.8 million genealogical records and 2.4 million genotypes before being acquired by Ancestry.com about a year ago.

We showed up at the church house with pedigree charts in hand early one evening to participate in the project which began with BYU students directed by Professor Scott Woodward and then quickly moved outside Utah to remote areas of the world. Several years went by before I heard about the online availability of DNA reports through SMGF. My data was now available. An SMGF's subsidiary, GeneTree, was developed and began producing reports and allowing participants to place their family trees online. My brother, John, and I activated our accounts and posted partial pedigree charts for a price, I recall. We found some connections but no new information. So many people like us had either partial charts posted or none at all. The only DNA connections I could see were those on my mother's Howard line. John's DNA data was only for the YDNA and mine only for the mtDNA. It was cool but I couldn't see any real research benefits as of then.

Musical Genes on Display: Johnny Kent and Fawnie about 1957

Midway through 2012 Ancestry began promoting its new DNA product but because GeneTree was still online I didn't rise to the bait. GeneTree eventually announced its closure so I was forced to download my reports and data. I still didn't purchased a new testing kit because although the data was transferred, I wouldn't be able to access it without paying. That was a bit annoying because we had been told initially that our participation was free. Unfortunately the acquisition didn't come with free benefits. Remember when the Internet was touted as free access to information? As a school librarian, I know that the good stuff is often only found in subscription databases. The good news, however, was that Ancestry now had an Autosomal DNA test so that only one test would be needed to receive the data for both YDNA and mtDNA. No more tests - or so I thought!

While a member of Ancestry for several years, and a participant in the Ancestry DNA project for over a year, I still don't have more than a handful of generations on my tree. I have found three close cousins and dozens of possible more distant connections. Without the tree online, however, I won't be able to make good use of the information. Move this up the to-do list! With sufficient information on the tree such as locations and dates, helpful tips can be added to evidence in searching for more genealogical clues.

I did find this really helpful Ancestry tutorial online with a visual explanation of how our ancestors' DNA drops off my own collection. SMGF still has an explanation of autosomal DNA available online as well.

So why do I need to get my mom and dad both to get their DNA tested as well? The tutorial explains that each sibling only gets a random mixture of each parent's DNA, but each sibling can, and will, get a different mixture. I had never really processed that before apparently. By testing the parents, all available DNA is recorded. If grandparents are alive that would be even better, but I am too old to have them still alive. Move that item up the to-do list as well!! Notice the double exclamation marks. With those clues we may be able to flesh out the Uncertain portion of my ethnicity report.

Note: Graphic found at Myriad Genetics