jan 2023 Stocktake

Firstly, a big thank you to all of you have humoured me over the years by testing your DNA, and those who help this Genealogy & DNA obsessive - yes I'm still obsessed!

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2023.

Time for the snapshots.

Progress over the last couple of years?

Have I actually made any progress on my main goals?

Progress is never as much as hoped but this one takes my prize as most unexpected:
Unexpected half 2nd cousins were added to my rather sparse Davidson tree from the Scottish Borders, and sort of as a result, along with previously unplaced DNA matches, my tree gained some ancestors.

Lurking in (almost) plain sight.

Tree Completeness stats snapshot

Now (Jan 2023) compared with Jan 2021 (left) and March 2020 (right) (from DNAPainter Ancestry Trees).

Brickwall status?

With half of the John Davidson brickwall being demolished, the closest brickwalls are, or remain:

3*great grandparent "holes" or questions

1. Who was John Davidson's father

2. Who were Amelia Millar's parents?

3. Is (Amelia's husband) James Henderson's father really Archibald Henderson?

4* great grandparent "holes"

4. Where did William Clinton spring from?

5. Who was Jemima Parker's father?

6. Anything about John & Ann Robison, parents of the Agnes Robison who married John Fairbairn.

7. Eleanor Scott's parents.

  

LivingDNA update

 I don't pay that much attention to the "ethnicity", aka Bio-geographical, estimates from the assorted companies I and many cousins have tested with as I'm having way too much fun comparing trees and mapping chromosomes to ancestral lines in order to focus on those matches that just have to be from somewhere on one or other of my brickwalls.

But a recent question on the DNA-Newbies list at Groups.IO prompted me to review if LivingDNA had added anything new into the equation with their update (about a year ago)

My original results may be found here although the link to the share within that post only seems to partially work now.

Now they look like this:

ie rather harder to distinguish visually which regions are strongest in my ancestry by their calculations.

Clicking on a region brings up a potted history of the region from the Ice Age to medieval times

The detailed breakdown by region comparison is

2017

              :

Feb 2020 

So I'm even more of a mongrel with less idea than before of where in particular to look to solve my brickwalls!

The Scottish groups are now more combined than they were.

I've been mining the shared matches between pairs of 2nd and 3rd cousins in our match lists for clues.

This amorphous mess of "Scottish" is well supported by practically all of these shared matches showing up as personal pile-up regions where there are an absolute heap of triangulating matches and the likely common ancestor back beyond our paper trails spreading out from the known ancestry in Perthshire / Stirlingshire to  include Argyll, Dumfriesshire and down to Lanarkshire.

And then there's that persistent percentage of Irish all companies give us - only 4% on LivingDNA 18 on Ancestry.

Every so often however I do manage to link trees of matches together and still hope that one day, I'll have some answers, or at least clues on which branch to target for yDNA or mtDNA to support my findings.

Anyone got a stray Archibald Henderson or Amelia Millar they want a home for?

Or a yDNA Jenkins or Buchanan to see where that might lead? ( yDNA testers wanted refers)

Progress on y_mt_DNA haplogroups?

 This post was written back in March 2020.  Six months down the track, having explored many many related, and un-related rabbit holes it is time I actually published it. Not a lot of progress has been made since then!

Tree completeness/genetic confirmation

Covid-19 has a lot to answer for but one good thing is that we can work around the unexpected limitations imposed.
The DNA Discovery 2020 tour of New Zealand by Blaine Bettinger and Angie Bush could no longer take place, but thanks to the organisers, and of course the presenters, who are in widely different timezones from us, and each other, the 2 day set of lectures were changed to online sessions.
From a participant viewpoint, everything worked smoothly and well - thank you all, Blaine, Angie, Michelle, Fiona and Paul.

Blaine's talk on new tools for DNA analysis, reminded me I was going to check out the new DNAPainter haplogroup functionality (see eight ways you can use ancestral trees at DNAPainter) and also to see if I'd made any progress on both my tree completeness, particularly which levels had now been validated by genetic matches.

Posts such as these encourage me to actually review progress, and what I'm trying to achieve.
It's good to have snapshots of where I was in a point in time when I get discouraged about lack of progress - which is, I admit, rare as this is all so much fun.

Spoiler alert:
I've apparently made some progress 😀

Before

After

The haplogroup progress will be a separate blogpost, as will the exploration of my supposed French-German ancestry (Yes Blaine, you inspired me to give biogeographical estimates another look and reminded me I was vaguely curious when I first looked at the segments 23andme identified years ago - it will be interesting to see what FTDNA comes up with in their promised equivalent).
On this page:

• Tree Completeness
• Genetic confirmation

Tree completeness

For reminders of why names on trees and a few DNA matches is just a small part of the store front window of tree completeness read Blaine's blog post https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2016/12/17/the-dna-era-of-genealogy/
Also Judy Russell's (thelegalgenealogist) on Filling in the Blanks

I've had a GEDCOM on DNAPainter since the beta tree functionality was announced, which means that two of my DNA-fuelled breakthroughs were already included in the tree.
The Lazy Vicar where the DNA leads/research had added parents and grandparents to my 2* great grandmother, so that was another branch complete to 4* greats.
I do so love a mystery or three likewise had added a whole 2 more ancestors to the level of 3* great grandparents, which of course only leaves more brickwalls to solve.

But what had not been included, given it only occurred in the last month was the review of my 3*great grandmother Jemima Parker's origins (Sarah not Charlotte; DNA strikes again refers).
So although she already had parents in my tree the tree has shrunk by one at that level (Jemima being the baseborn child of Sarah Parker) but grown by 4 more for her newfound mother's ancestry
Admittedly the link could still be somewhere back up from Jemima's husband, William Clinton about whom we know nothing beyond his marriage information and name on the baptismal records for their children.
Checking which is where the haplogroup confirmation can come to the fore - IF I can find a mitochondrial DNA descendant of Sarah Parker. There's only one found to date on paper, but not yet in person, and his surname is rather difficult for web searching - Wedding. But that's for the forthcoming haplogroup functionality post.

So with those added into my tree clicking on the highlighted Tree completeness link

gave me this table of how many ancestors I had at each level, and tells me about any ancestors who appear more than once (Pedigree collapse)

as you can see my tree completeness starts falling apart at the 4* great grandparent level and rapidly drops off after that.
One assumption at the 4th great level, not included here, would add 1 more at 4th, and 2 more at each of 5th and 6th great grandparent levels, all of which have interesting clusters of atDNA matches under active investigation - but given the stats on DNA inheritance at these levels the odds are fairly slim for making quick progress. I have however included the names in the surname hints/clues spot on DNAPainter.

The average amount of atDNA an individual can inherit from a specific ancestor halves as each generation passes, which does not necessarily mean that you will have inherited any from your btickwall one - but another cousin might have.
Encourage cousins to test, particularly those in the older generations still around on any of the lines of active investigation.
They beat your odds of not inheriting the crucial bit of DNA that will demolish the brickwall.

Check out the tables on the ISOGG WIki for the stats
- https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics and
- the theoretical probabilities https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics
So it could take me some time to confirm the above assumption given the clusters of matches share a couple who married in 1738 and are, hopefully, my 5*great grandparents.
That's 8 generations (starting with me as the 1st) from whom, anyone in my generation can only expect to inherit 0.024% from one of those 5*great grandparents.
The likelihood of sharing significant matches with a 6th cousin is small, but possible.
Take comfort from the reported relationships with detectable matches at 6C and beyond in the Shared cMs project v4 also on DNAPainter.

Genetic confirmation

My first attempt at documenting which ancestors I'd confirmed at the time I started to pop this in DNAPainter resulted in the full fan tree view:

 shrinking to only this many being confirmed genetic ancestors:

which rather reflects my getting side-tracked rather than lack of confirmations, or I hope it does.

I admit I tend to work more on documenting the confirmations on WikiTree which pops dinky little symbols against each ancestor marked as "confirmed by DNA" (see WikiTree help for the WikiTree definition of / requirements for Confirmed by DNA status).
But the presentation there is by no means as compact - nor as colourful :)
eg

is just a portion of my WikiTree "compact" tree view (see https://www.WikiTree.com/treewidget/Henderson-2297/5 for all lines of the 8 generations available.)
This portion shows the newly changed parentage for Jemima Parker and reminds me I've not documented the confirmation back to Sarah Parker a fully triangulated DNA match thanks to my maternal aunts, a 2nd cousin, and a 4th cousin who all share with several descendants of Sarah Parker's later marriage.
Additional shared match networks exist with other descendants and also corroborate that another family is also connected somehow which research is yet to unearth - see my Clinton - Parker brickwall page on WkiTree

So what does the genetic tree look like after some quick work?

My use of confirmation differs between the two sites (DNAPainter and WikiTree).
On the DNAPainter tree I use "Genetic ancestor" check box

to show the Ancestral Couple that a match and I share out to 4th cousins, even where I may not have fully confirmed which of the couple any DNA segments come from.
This differs from WikiTree confirmation in that the latter is strict on identification only of the individual relationship that has been "proven", particularly once you get beyond 3rd cousins.
The same quandary of which to show exists when painting your chromosome maps.
You have to decide whether to show the ancestral couple you share, or the person one generation below that the DNA match has now confirmed gave you that bit of DNA.
Depending on whose map I'm working on, I tend to use which specific ancestor gave me/them that bit of DNA - but it sometimes gives me the feeling I'm not making much progress back up the generations given it stops one earlier. 😒


Thank you to Jonny Perl for DNAPainter, and the DNA Discovery 2020 team for making me actually stop exploring matches and do an overdue stock take.

I do so love a mystery or three....

... particularly when it looks like a new lead may have appeared.
 
My one remaining brickwall mystery at the 2* great grandparent level is William Austin (this page will get updated hopefully soon as it reflects an old theory that is looking to be supplanted by the following, even though the mother's suggested name of Caroline is still possible, just not the one currently shown.

Courtesy of DNA matching it is looking rather like that mystery may now have some chinks in it.
Which all look to have some fairly stubborn brickwalls behind them!

On this page:

• The DNA
• The Research
• The Theory
• The Update

The DNA

I have to caution myself that as yet I do NOT know that the match is definitely from the line of my match's paternal grandmother's ancestry that appears to be "of interest", but it is looking increasingly possible.

I've ruled out it being from her maternal side thanks to an overlapping sizable segment of DNA she has with a known maternal 1st cousin and my aunt who does not match the 1st cousin, so different ancestral sides for that bit of DNA (thank you GEDMatch for the ability to compare across sites for those uploaded to there).

Her closest match on MyHeritage looks to be from her paternal grandfather's side and none of my kits there match him/her.
But nor does their DNA overlap "ours" at any point, so inconclusive.
Added circumstantial evidence however is that it appears my match may have a crossover point between paternal grandparents on chromosome 10, as one of our matches abuts a segment from the above closest match.

(chr 10 DNA Painter segment to be inserted here, but seems a bit reluctant to do so)

Regardless of where the DNA eventually proves to be on her ancestry it is still a new clue to someone on mine as this is our closest unidentified match and we are all very near the top of her match list, so there is definitely a connection somewhere yet to be identified.

The research

Enough of the DNA, what about the research that has to go hand in hand with it?

As mysterious families go the family of William AUSTIN and Emma Parker CLINTON have thrown a few curlies into my research over the years.

Daughter Caroline Emma AUSTIN's name and origins being the first one.

I've used her as a case study in a study session or two as to the traps official records may set us.

My first official cert. purchased was for her marriage in 1882 to Matthias ROWE, reasoning that as the first she would be the source of the info for, and should know her parents.
She didn't even know her name (or age), let alone her father!
Caroline Emma Austin GIBSON, daughter of William Austin GIBSON, laborer, and Emma CLINTON.
By the time she died, the informant for her barely legible death cert. provided the information that Emma ROWE was the daughter of __ AUSTIN, labourer, (step father John GIBSON) and mother Emma GIBSON maiden name unknown.

The murk didn't clear much further with her mother's 31st Dec 1855 marriage cert. to Capt John GIBSON in Melbourne.
Emma CLINTON obligingly stated she was single and had no children from any former marriage (Caroline Emma was already 1 by this point).
Back in Feb 1853 before emigrating to Victoria Australia on the "Roxburgh Castle", Emma CLINTON of full age, daughter of William CLINTON had married William AUSTIN, porter, no father shown.
Beyond this cert. and the baptism of Caroline Emma in Feb 1854, Parish of St James, Melbourne to William and Emma AUSTIN, I have no further sightings of William AUSTIN.
No 1841, no 1851 census, no death.

Perhaps that's a "had", no further sightings?

Keep an eye on the developing thread on RootsChat re
William Edward Sinclair Fitz AUSTEN b. 1869 Mile End Old Town
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=808750.msg6682101#msg6682101
son of William Mallars Fitz AUSTEN / AUSTIN (and looking increasingly to be aka William Mallars FITZAUSTEN) and wife Sarah BIGGS formerly BLAKE
(historical RootsChat thread continued in the above)

The main mysteries here being William Mallars Fitz AUSTEN / AUSTIN / FITZAUSTIN's whereabouts prior to the 1869 marriage and birth of son William Edward Sinclair Fitz AUSTEN and his parents.

See also the matching family being developed /summarized on WikiTree
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Austin-1468
Also on the FamilySearch tree
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G9QT-L4F

Both of these latter two are collaborative, free to use trees.
Feel free to add any research you have to either, with sources.

The Theory

My current theory from all of this is that William, like Emma, had re-married, but William put a bit more distance between his old and new lives by heading back to England, whereas Emma merely crossed the ditch to New Zealand.

If true and can be proven this makes the DNA match that prompted all this a half 3rd cousin to myself (and 1st cousins), and half 2nd cousin once removed to my aunts, and the amounts of DNA shared fits well with the observed stats on the DNAPainter interface to the shared cMs project

Given I'd never found a death for William AUSTIN I've always called Emma my bigamous 2xgreats granny, much to my father's disgust.
This makes it look like what was sauce for the goose was also sauce for the gander.

When I rang home many years ago to update my parents with the above find re Emma's marriage cert. to Capt John GIBSON saying she was single, with no children, my Dad tut tutted
"oh, you don't want to find out that sort of thing" he said.
"That's half the fun Dad why would you care?
It was back in 1855 - and Mum's side of the family"

The Update (Jun 2019)

Additional weight for my above theory is developing in the form of a new match to all of us on MyHeritage.
A 2nd cousin once removed to our initial match, so shared common ancestors are William Edward AUSTEN and Alice Maud CARTER.
With a fully triangulated segment on chromosome 10 for my family and theirs so we all still have a common ancestor who gave us that bit of DNA at least.
Now to rule out the CARTER ancestry and avoid confirmation bias!
We await a test from Ancestry which should show patterns for this latter.

Aug 2019

Ancestry results now in do not show any shared CARTER ancestry matches with the few kits we are able to compare on Ancestry. In addition, the sole close-ish CARTER cousin that is easily identifiable as also being on GEDmatch, and has no matches to any of the relevant AUSTIN kits, so AUSTIN is looking even better.

Not a lot of tested cousins on these lines for any of us makes it harder to draw solid conclusions here but I think I'm now convinced I know what happened to my 2*great grandfather William AUSTIN, after his arrival in Melbourne, so that's my last brickwall at the 2*great level declared demolished.

Mapped chromosomes down to 12cMs

Here's my 2018 end of year snapshot overall chromosome map, down to 12cM segments, by assigned Grandparent to give me as good a picture as I can as at now - both for ease of reference and as a measure of progress at the end of 2019.

It was a bit easier than I thought it might be to update the chromosome maps from yesterday down from the 15cMs used for those to the 12cMs minimum segment size used for the below. I had apparently been keeping up with the new smaller matches after all.

Gained a whole 6% more mapped DNA but it took over 450 more segments (from 12 to 15cMs) to add that 6%.

Dec 2018 Chromosome Map, by Grandparent, of 12+cM segments - DNAPainter

Still way too many yellow/orange/brown mysteries in there, hopefully disguising good clues to the brickwalls.

FWIW a table of the numbers of mapped segments per Side and Grandparent, split by 12-15cMs and over 15cMs is thrown in for contemplation.


-->

Side	GrdParent	12-15	GT15	Total Result
A	Paternal? or Maternal? Side A	4	6	10
B	Paternal? or Maternal? Side B	1	6	7
M	Ern ANDREWS b. 1881 (TNK)	60	103	163
	Ern ANDREWS b. 1881 (TNK) assumed	25	24	49
	Honor ROWE b. 1886 (TNK)	43	144	187
	Honor ROWE b. 1886 (TNK) assumed	6	8	14
	Maternal - branch unknown	86	143	229
	Maternal assumed - branch unknown	6	15	21
P	Agnes Manson DAVIDSON b. 1885 (OTG)	49	64	113
	Agnes Manson DAVIDSON b. 1885 (OTG) assumed	7	3	10
	Archibald HENDERSON b. 1883 (OTG)	106	176	282
	Archibald HENDERSON b. 1883 (OTG) assumed	20	22	42
	Paternal - branch unknown	51	29	80
	Paternal assumed - branch unknown	12	12	24
Total Result		476	755	1231
		39%	61%	100%

The data comes from the main testing companies, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, 23andme, ie the ones who actually supply the segment level detail necessary (ie excludes Ancestry who refuses too). With many testers only on their original company it is not always possible to compare matches with known relatives at the right spots for accurate assignments, hence the "assumed" and "unknown" categories.
Do please consider transferring your DNA file to GEDMatch where cross company comparisons may be made!

And now for the Paternal Chromosome Map

That didn't take as long as I thought to produce!
I've obviously kept up with my mapping down to 15cM segments reasonably well, with only one to assign, although it has been a couple of years since I last did one of these.

Reducing the segment size included down to 12cMs looks like I've not much work needed to redo both the Maternal and Paternal maps to see what increased coverage of my chromosomes that gives me - later.

For now, adding the Paternal down to 15cMs increased coverage to 58% mapped from 749 segments painted to the guilty grandparent (an increase from 30% from 443 segments with just the Maternal allocations painted)

Dec 2018 Paternal - to 15cMs (Segment Mapper)

Dec 2018 Paternal - to 15cMs (DNA Painter)

and for the two years ago Paternal version, down to 10cMs (Segment Mapper)

Apples and oranges

I'm really concentrating on my (paternal) Amelia MILLAR's brickwall's matches, honest.

But I'm also trying to snapshot my chromosome mapping "progress".

Which appears to be woeful.
Must try harder.
Here are two snapshots approximately about 18 months apart of the Maternal segments I've allocated to a grandparent.  (Unlike last time I posted a chromosome map update, this time a paternal map will follow, shortly.)

The apples/oranges title of this post being because the more recent map only shows segments over 15cMs, so I haven't necessarily really regressed with fewer mapped segments over all.

The data comes from my matches on all the testing companies who provide the required level of detail (segment level matches by chromosome), so excludes any matches found on Ancestry unless the matches have also transferred to GEDMatch, or tested at another company, or transferred their Ancestry file to MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA. (Some links/thoughts about testing/transferring here)
It is using extracted segment data from my (private) DNA database of matches run through Kitty Cooper's Segment mapper, aggregating it up to the allocated grandparent.

The equivalent (Dec 2018) data mapped in DNAPainter follows, adding the information that the 443 segments mapped cover about 30% of my DNA.
Can definitely to better.
Wonder if adding in the Paternal will add an equivalent amount of data?
See next post, which may take a while checking out the Paternal / Suspected Paternal, but as yet unmapped to Grandparent/MRCA* segments.
* MRCA = Most Recent Common Ancestor

Dec 2018: over 15cMs

Jun 2017: over12cMs

DNAPainter Maternal by Grandparent Dec 2018 : over 15cMs