In my last Blog, I visually mapped my father in law and his two sisters on their Chromosome 2. I was happy with the results as I got all their segments mapped on the maternal and paternal sides. I mentioned the difficulty in finding matches on the paternal side. The paternal match that I did have was not set in stone. It was somewhat inferred by email correspondence. I think of it as a construction job. The first few pieces of wood put in are a bit shaky until the rest of the structure is built around those first few pieces.
The Problem
The problem can be seen well at AncestryDNA. I have my Butler father in law tested at FTDNA, but his two sisters are tested at AncestryDNA. Here are Lorraine and Virginia’s Shared Ancestor Hints (SAHs):
Lorraine and Virginia Share 38 SAHs. I can tell this on my laptop that has Chrome as there is a icon for the shared Shared Ancestor Hints. All of Lorraine’s SAHs are on the maternal side (or locked). Of those maternal SAHs all but 2 or three matched on the Pouliot grandparent side. The other 2 or 3 were on the LeFevre grandparent side. An additional problem is linking those SAHs to gedmatch.
For Virginia, all her matches but one were maternal or locked. The one that was paternal was on the Kerivan side. No matches were found on the Butler side.
Following Virginia’s AncestryDNA Paternal SAH
Here is Virginia’s lone paternal SAH:
As can be seen above, this match is on Virginia’s Kerivan line.
the gedmatch connection: good and bad news
The good news is that Virginia matches someone at Gedmatch that seems to have a very similar name to the match at Ancestry.com. The bad news is that I have been unable to confirm that the two people are the same. However, I did think of an additional check. Lorraine did not match this AncestryDNA person. I opened up Gedmatch, found Virginia’s match. I ran the ‘One to Many’ utility for the match above who I will call Jeanette. On Jeanette’s ‘One to Many’ match list I saw Virginia and Richard but not Lorraine. That makes me feel 95% confident that I have the right person.
Jeanette’s matches with my butler in-laws
Here is the AncestryDNA match. It must be less than expected as the SAH shows third cousin once removed and the relationship predicted by the DNA is 5th to 8th cousin.
Jeanette and Virginia at Gedmatch:
Finally, Jeanette and Richard at Gedmatch:
Visual Phasing of Butler Chromosome 11
Based on the above results I would like to map Chromosome 11 for the Butlers using a method pioneered by Kathy Johnston. In the first step, I compare the three siblings, add approximate Chromosome locations for the crossovers and assign the crossovers to siblings:
I guessed at the 112 position as this was the border between a Fully Identical Region (FIR) shown in green and a Half Identical Region (HIR) shown in yellow. I can check this using the Full Resolution option at Gedmatch when comparing Lorraine to Virginia:
Each ^ is 1M, so the actual crossover from FIR to HIR is about 113. 4. It is close to the next crossover which is at 114.5M. For the assigned crossovers above, Virginia gets 6, Lorraine gets three and Richard gets one.
phasing strategy
While performing visual phasing, it is good to have a strategy. My strategy will be to include Richard in the first segment as he only has one crossover. By the way, one crossover means that Richard will have a complete unrecombined maternal or paternal Chromosome 11 from one of his grandparents. I could start where Richard and Virginia have their first FIR together, but instead I’ll choose the first place where Lorraine and Richard don’t match as there is more coverage in that lack of match stretch. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Rooney/Kerivan match is from 118 to 124M, so we will need to work our way to that side – likely by choosing a HIR in that area.
- It looks like I could have chosen the first FIR and gotten the same results. A FIR (green) with two ‘no matches’ (red areas) over it like we have here is a good combination for mapping.
- The Butlers have good coverage on this Chromosome.
- I can already see that in the area of 118 to 124M Virginia and Lorraine have opposite grandparent matches. This shows why Virginia matched Jeanette and Lorraine did not.
Maternal matches
Before I continue mapping, I would like to see what this Butler DNA-tested trio have for maternal matches. They have two 1st cousins and two 2nd cousins that have tested. I entered all the cousins into Gedmatch, sorted them and took out everything except for how Richard, Lorraine and Virginia matched the cousins:
John is a nephew, so could match on the maternal or paternal side. Patricia and Joseph are maternal 1st cousins. However, that would not identify a specific maternal grandparent segment. The three siblings did not have appreciable matches with either of their 2nd cousins.
More Mapping
As the paternal Kerivan match is on the right hand side of this Chromosome, I’ll add a HIR between Lorraine and Richard. I did that by moving the blue for Richard to the right for the match with Virginia and for the part that didn’t match I put in green (opposite of red).
Once I set the HIR on the right, that meant that the blue area had to be Kerivan. That is the only place that Virginia and Richard have a matching color in the area of the Jeanette Kerivan/Rooney match (118-124). That leaves the purple to be Butler – the only other paternal grandparent.
This map leaves me with that ‘Swiss Cheese’ feeling. Before I scrap this map, let’s look at the 1st cousin matches to see if they can help fill in anything. They are the pink matches – signifying maternal.
Lorraine and Patricia match from 2 to 91. I take that to be the green match. I also assume that as they are first cousins, that their match length also represents the same grandparent. I’ll go out on a limb and say that I can extend the green to position 92.
This makes sense because Patricia starts matching Virginia at 77M. Before that she doesn’t match Virginia, so the maternal segment must be red for Virginia there. Actually, Lorraine’s green should extend further (to 114M) as she has no crossover until that point.
Here I moved Virginia’s red maternal segment to the right. Because the crossover was not on the maternal side it had to be on the paternal side. That gave her a crossover from Kerivan (blue) to Butler (purple) at 27M. The Chromosome is starting to fill in. Next, in the are from 39 to 77, Lorraine and Virginia don’t match. That means that Lorraine must have a blue Kerivan segment filling in at the top. Once I fill in Lorraine’s blue Kerivan segment, Lorraine and Virginia have a FIR (from 92-112M). That means I can fill in Virginia.
Now I’m almost done. I just have the last ever-difficult HIR to complete. Here my inclination is to check Patricia and Virginia at a lower threshold. If Patricia doesn’t match Virginia at the beginning of the Chromosome, then the red must carry through to the beginning for Virginia.
I was a bit surprised that the two cousins fit a match in the beginning of the Chromosome. I shouldn’t be surprised, because small matches are typically at either end of the Chromosome. That means the half match of the HIR is on the maternal side between Virginia and Lorraine. And the crossover is also on the maternal side.
How do I identify the maternal segments for chromosome 11?
I thought of a few things. One would be ICW which is an “in common with” feature that FTDNA uses. Or I could use the feature at Gedmatch which takes two people and finds people that are in common with them. I would be more satisfied with triangulated matches. The best way I know of to find these would be to start a surname study. Pouliot would be a good choice based on all the AncestryDNA Pouliot Shared Ancestor Hints that I mentioned at the beginning of the Blog.