Genetic Genealogy

So, while I was gone I picked up a new hobby. I'm currently a member at both Family Tree DNA and 23andMe.

I've always had an interest in genealogy, but genetic genealogy takes research a flying leap further. The idea is to provide your DNA to their lab, they analyze it and match you with their database of members, whom presumably all share an interest in finding distant relations, then we contact each other to compare family trees while hopefully finding our common ancestors (i.e. how we are related - 4th, 5th, 6th cousins, etc), breaking down brick walls and filling in the blanks.

For me genealogical research is not unlike playing detective to solve mysteries in my family history. When I started out I barely knew of anyone beyond my grandparents on both sides, and I had very little knowledge about them. I now have records of relations going back through British, French, Canadian, American and Finnish/Swedish history. In a few cases as far back as 700 to 800 AD. Thanks to Ancestry.com and many other resources in conjunction.

The bulk of my research though has simply enveloped the great grandparent range on all my lines - which I find very satisfying to know. As a result of doing this work I've re-discovered a new appreciation for history that I didn't have before, simply because I used to perceive history as an distinctly separate and 'unrelated' dimension of life to my understanding of it. In short, I didn't have an interest in history because I didn't understand how I was intimately connected to it. I didn't understand or have the simplest grasp of how I came to be, and came to be part of history's grand narrative. My appreciation of past people who were responsible for the present to some degree at least.

There are a few mysteries and brick walls I wish to solve in my own research. I have no idea who my mother's father was, for one. I still don't - hence my foray into genetic genealogy. I now have a collection of genetic matches (abt 200 or so) on both my mother's and my, match lists, whom must be related to us. We now need to figure out how exactly.

One very intriguing discovery is that my mother and I appear to have many distant cousins from the southern/eastern U.S. states (N & S Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, etc.) I'm trying to figure out if these distant relations are linked to us by our British common ancestry, or if perhaps my mother's mysterious father was a U.S. serviceman with U.S. ancestry, which has been a suspicion of mine for a while now. My mother you see was always under the impression she was 100% British. Certainly her mother was 100% Huddersfield english. However, when my mother was conceived in England during the height of WW2, it is not improbable that a U.S. serviceman was stationed here during that turbulent period and met my grandmother; they having a lovechild together. It's very difficult to say at this point. But I'm inching closer to some answers... thanks to genetics. It's very exciting.

The research continues.

I remember, Jenni, a few years ago your revealing to us on the old boards that you had a huge quilt of some kind with all your family history recorded on it. That is such a treasure. I hope you still have that and will consider digitizing all its valuable information for posterity. It may hold hidden knowledge not just for your history, but for many other researchers who are looking for their connections to the past too.

My mother did a huge genealogy project 20 years ago. I bought her a computer program to get her into computers. The result is a 10-foot long scroll with relatives going back to the pilgrims. Not every relative is identified of couse, but there's probably a hundred names on there, with just basic sketchy details.

Unlike the "for profit" genealogy which (like past life regression) somehow always finds you related to princes and queens, the story of my ancestors was dirt poor farmers, many dead children, and short lives.

Thanks for starting this thread, SAI. Makes me want to get back to doing the same.

A couple of years ago I began researching my family history on the internet. I have only been able to trace my maternal grandmother's family history. The other three grandparents have led me nowhere on the internet so far. But sometimes all it takes it one lucky find and it just opens up; that's what happened with my grandmother. Got back to the 12th century in Scotland.

I had traced back from my grandmother's father. Just for grins, I decided to see what I could find on her mother's side. In less than ten minutes I stumbled across this picture, which is a great-great-grandfather's headstone.

Just remembered a detail from our family scroll. One ancestor was kidnapped by Indians in the 1820s and held for ransom. She was returned to her family, a couple years later, in return for some pots and pans and a rug.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Unlike the "for profit" genealogy which (like past life regression) somehow always finds you related to princes and queens, the story of my ancestors was dirt poor farmers, many dead children, and short lives.

Likewise. Much of my maternal side prior to both world wars worked in factories during the industrial revolution, or were farmers, for many generations. Most worked in the manufacture of textiles. My paternal side were mostly farmers or ranchers, both in the U.S. and Canada.

It was disturbing, but eye-opening to find out just how many dead children on average, per generation there used to be in an average family. Must have been incredibly emotionally taxing. In a few cases some distant families had the misfortune of maybe a few surviving children out of close to a dozen attempts...

The other eye opener was just how many 2nd and 3rd cousin marriages occurred along totally distinct and separate lines many generations into the past. I have 3 separate instances of this along my paternal lines, all separated by at least 100 or more years each. I was disturbed by this until I was discussing this with another researcher and she claimed that the further back you go in time, depending on cultural factors and degree of isolation of the family from others, or sparseness of population in certain regions, cousin marriages could be quite common - even despite religious or cultural prohibitions against it.

The DNA company 23andme I mentioned above actually will provide you with a list of possible traits/inherited diseases and your personal likelihood of your contracting such diseases too. For instance, there is a history of Parkinson's disease in my family. We have long been suspicious that it was inherited amoungst the women in the maternal line (i.e. mother's mother's mother's mother's line, etc).

My maternal grandmother, and two of her siblings, and her mother, all died of Parkinsons. 23andme has articles on many diseases and conditions and does say that Parkinson's is not always inherited, but can be by certain families dependent on a variety of factors. As it turns out, since my mother has not shown signs of Parkinson's, I have only a 2.1% probability of getting it. If she did contract Parkinsons, my percentages would have been much higher. 23andme were able to determine these probabilities from having knowledge of my family medical history and our health habits, which I answered on questionairres they provided voluntarily. Of course, if you don't want to know these probabilities for disease, inherited or otherwise, you can opt out.

The funny thing about finding out ones ancestry has royalty, that many people don't realize, is if you happen to have some European ancestry at all on either side of your tree, you have a very great likelihood of being descended from some kind of royalty or important historical figure. Myself, I am supposedly a distant cousin of Benjamin Franklin. I may also be descended from a sibling of Sir Thomas Mallory. ... and there are a few duchesses and barons to boot. The further one goes back in the generations, the greater the number of relations, increasing exponentially as you go further back in time. It only stands to reason that most if not all people of European descent have some form of royalty connection even if it happens to be with some duke or duchess or baron or other. Its very common.

Genealogical companies like to make a big deal out of it, but once you realize just how common it is, and how the further you go back, the more interconnected we are by those distant ancestors, the more you realize its really not all that unique.

You mention 4th 5th 6th cousins in the o.p. I read somewhere that if you get as far as 10th cousin, you basically include everybody. We're all related, if you go far enough.

I haven't run across any royalty in my minimal searches. Maybe when I find an access point into my father's family something will turn up. His father was born in Illinois, for whatever difference that may make, while my mother's maternal side were all from the south for many years. In fact, the first person on her side of the family that I have been able to verify was not born in the south since 1640 is me.

The only celebrity I have run into as a n-th cousin is Faye Dunaway. Remember the Bonny and Clyde movie?

NoCoPilot wrote:

Just remembered a detail from our family scroll.  One ancestor was kidnapped by Indians in the 1820s and held for ransom.  She was returned to her family, a couple years later, in return for some pots and pans and a rug.

That's a very cool anecdote. I haven't run across anything like that, but I did find an ancient grandfather who died "of natural causes" while in British custody during the Revolution. He escaped the first time they nabbed him, but didn't do so well the second time. But before the Revolution, he was given a large part of one of the Carolinas by King George for his service in the last of the French and Indian Wars. I guess old George was one of those "Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?" types.

What software do you guys use to save all the info you find? Some kind of family tree program?
It would be an easy - but time-consuming - program to write, and I'm a really, really lazy man these days.

My mother used a program we bought called "FamilyTree" -- dunno if it's still around or not.

richard09 wrote:

You mention 4th 5th 6th cousins in the o.p. I read somewhere that if you get as far as 10th cousin, you basically include everybody. We're all related, if you go far enough.

Seems like a reasonable claim. 1st cousins share the grandparents. 2nd cousins the great grandparents. So then...

I have...

2 parents (each born abt 1940's)
4 grandparents (b. 1910-1920's) 1st cousin range
8 great grandparents (b. 1870 - 1880's) 2nd cousin range
16 gg grandparents (b. b. 1840 - 1850's) 3rd cousin range
32 ggg grandparents (b. 1800 - 1820's) 4th cousin range
64 ggg grandparents (b. 1760 - 1780's) 5th cousin range

... and so on. Now consider the average number of surviving children per set of parents, say a rough estimate of between 5 and 12... at starting at about the great grandparents generation...

We have 32 potential families in the late 1700's of say approximately 160 to 384 potential children, if all survived, married and had children based on this average we have 80 to 192 families with potentially 400 to 2304 potential children in early 1800's.

By the mid-20th century, using the same formula, I should have approximately 40,000 to , oh crap, 100's of thousands of 5th cousins.

And that's only going as far back as late 1700's. By 10th cousin range, we are talking, what century? 1400's? 1300's roughly?

So yeah, it makes perfect sense that all of us with some European descent have some royal ancestry if we go back far enough. And yes, I suspect you are correct, Richard - we are all related beyond a certain generation in history.

_Howard wrote:

What software do you guys use to save all the info you find? Some kind of family tree program?
It would be an easy - but time-consuming - program to write, and I'm a really, really lazy man these days.

Family Tree Maker. You can also, if you are not aware, begin your tree for free at Ancestry. Costs nothing and they will keep it for you. You can add as much as you want but won't be able to research through their website without a subscription. But you will always be able to modify and have access to your tree regardless, without paying a dime.

FTM also has the advantage of connecting to Ancestry;s website and updating directly from there so you don't have to be online to work on your tree if you have the software.