Cousin Cindy’s DNA: Part Two

In my last Blog, I looked at some of Cindy’s Rathfelder matches and at her X Chromosome matches. In this Blog, I’ll look at some matches on Cindy’s Lentz and Nicholson Lines.

Another Classic Photo

Here is Cindy in profile inbetween my two sisters, ‘back in the day’:

More on Ethnicity

Here is what Gedmatch.com shows for Cindy’s ethnicity:

This should be more accurate than what Ancestry shows. The down side is that specific country names are not given. However, that is rectified by the two Oracle buttons. When I push the first button, I also get a list of Single Population Sharing. According to the Genalogical Musings Blogspot:

Single Population Sharing attempts to pinpoint a specific, single population that your DNA most closely matches, with a list of the top 20. The distance will tell you how closely you match each group, so the smaller the distance number is, the more closely you match. It is assuming your ancestors all came from the same area/population.

For Cindy, her top choice is West German:

Cindy wanted to know if she was German by genealogy, why didn’t her Ancestry results show that? Gedmatch Single Population Sharing does show that her first choice is German. The second guess is French. This makes sense considering how close the two coutries are. Or, this French part could be more from Cindy’s mom. There is also a Mixed Mode Population Sharing, but that is more complicated, so I won’t go there.

By comparison, here is how my mom’s admixture shows up at Gedmatch. These results should be comparable to Cindy’s dad:

The difference is that my mom has more North Atlantic and none of the small green wedges that Cindy has. I would expect that my mom should come out German also in the Single Population Sharing:

Good guess. However, look at the West German distance compared to Cindy. My mom Gladys’ distance to West German is a lot closer than Cindy’s distance to West German. I suppose that means that Cindy has more mixing of heritages than my mom. Also Cindy has Serbian as her #4 choice and my mom doesn’t have that on her list. That could be related to Cindy’s mom. That is not to say that Cindy’s mom is necessarily Serbian, but perhaps there is something in Cindy’s DNA that is similar to Serbian DNA. There are other Admixture toys to play with at Gedmatch such as the Oracle4 Button.

Now I’m curious to see how I show by comparison to Cindy and my mom.

This looks similar to my mom, except that I have some South Asian and Amerindian. How did that get these? From what I can tell, my mom is 3/4 German and 1/4 English. My dad is 1/2 English and 1/2 Scot from Ireland. That should make me roughly 3/8 German, 3/8 English and 1/4 Scot. How will Gedmatch figure that one out? It looks like a tie.

It has me as West German. The Scots gets lost in the Shuffle. I have Orcadian which is from the Orkney Islands at the very Northern part of Scotland at #7. Actually, my grandmother’s Irish mom was Clarke, so perhaps English and not Scots. The Germans came into England as the Anglo Saxons and England got its name from Anglo. Also come to find out from YDNA testing that my Scots ancestors the Frazers a few thousand years ago traveled from Scandinavia to Scotland. When you go back far enough, there is a lot that could have happened. I wa s a bit surprised that this showed me as closer in distance to West German than my mom.

Here I also have French where my mom does not. This could go back to my paternal Pilgrim heritage or it could be due to the fact that a lot of French DNA is similar to English DNA also.

As I alluded to above, there are a lot of other crazy things you can do with Gedmatch and Admixture such as a very detailed chromosome by chromosome comparison, including detailed chromosome painting. For example, I could track down the specific area of the specific chromosome where Gedmatch thinks I have Amerindian background. Using this, I could even make a guess as to which ancestor this segment came from.

Back to the DNA – Nicholson Matches

I drew a new tree for the Nicholsons:

These are some of the descendants of John Nicholson. The people in green have taken a DNA test. First, Cindy does not match Nigel. This is not surprising as they are 5th cousins once removed. Nigel had some surprising matches with my family considering the relationship.

Nicholson or Lentz DNA Matches?

One problem that I’ve had is finding good Lentz only matches. In situations where Cindy matches Judy or Joshua, the match could be either Lentz or Nicholson. When Cindy matches Sarah, Joan, Linda or Carolyn, those must be Nicholson only matches. When Cindy matches my family or Rusty, she could be matching also by Rathfelder.

Autosomal Matrix

First, I’ll put the Nicholson descendants into a matrix to see how they match each other in general:

Here I have the DNA tested Nicholson descendants sorted into the three sisters: Sarah Ann; Annie Eliza and; Nellie Nicholson. Then I have Nigel descending from John Nicholson from 100 years earlier than Annie. The places where Cindy match Sarah, Joan, Linda or Carolyn are matches of DNA that she got from the Nicholson only side. Where Cindy matches Judith or Joshua, those matches may be from the Lentz or Nicholson side. Where Cindy matches Gladys or her cousin Russell, those matches could be Rathfelder orLentz (including Nicholson).

Here is how Judith matches my mom, Cindy and Carolyn on Chromosome 18:

If this was just Judith matching Cindy and Russell, we wouldn’t know if this was a Lentz or a Nicholson match. However, the fact that Judith also matches Carolyn in the same area of Chromosome 18, makes it look like a Nicholson match. Just to make sure, I will look to see how Carolyn matches Gladys, Cindy, Judith and Russell:

This view shows more of Chromosome 18 than the previous one. What this shows is that:

• From about 14 to 38M, Carolyn, Gladys, Cindy and Judy share Nicholson DNA
• From anout 55-70M, Carolyn, Gladys, Cindy and Rusty share Nicholson DNA
• Between 38 and 55M, I am not sure. It could mean that this is Lentz DNA as Carolyn drops out. However, she may be dropping out for for another reason.

Here is the Triangulation Group (TG) between Judy, Gladys, Cindy and Carolyn between 14 and 38M:

In the second TG, Cindy jumps out of the group and Rusty joins in.

Cindy’s Top Unknown Match at Gedmatch

Cindy’s top unknown match at Gedmatch is Dorothy. Let’s see if we can figure out how Dorothy fits in. Here is how Dorothy matches Cindy and my mom:

Dorothy tested at FTDNA where my mom tested. Maybe there is some more information there. Dorothy has a tree there, but I don’t see any shared surnames.

Here is some more information:

Dorothy has two additional matches: Lori and Jon. I know from previous Chromosme mapping that Lori and Jon map to their grandmother Lentz in this area of Chromosome 5. One of Dorothy’s ‘In Common With’ (or ICW) matches at Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) seemed to be on the Nicholson side by DNA. So we would give Dorothy more of a chance of being related on the NIcholson side than on the Lentz side. However, at this point, it would take too much work to figure out the match, so I’m giving up for now.

Cindy’s Other Gedmatch Top Matches

Cindy’s match after Barbara is DD. I don’t see DD on my mom’s match list, so I’ll guess that DD may be a match on Cindy’s mom’s side. After that is Derek. Perhaps I will have better luck with Derek than I did with Barbara. Derek matches my mom, Cindy, me and Lori in a pretty unified block of DNA on Chromosome 3:

 

This looks interesting. The match goes from about 18-41M. I have a map for my Chromosome 3:

This shows that I have Rathfelder grandparent DNA in this area (darker blue). Carolyn (our Nicholson cousin) matched my mom, Heidi and Sharon in this same area. So how can my mom match both Carolyn and a Rathfelder in this spot? My mom matches Carolyn on her materal side and Derek on her paternal (Rathfelder) side. The interesting part is that I don’t get too many good matches on the Rathfelder side.

I didn’t find much on Derek on Ancestry. I added Derek to my match spreadsheet and noted that he also matched a Carol – a nearby match on the spreadsheet. I did find Carol at AncestryDNA and she has a tree there:

For some strange reason when I select ‘view full tree’ it goes to a different tree. When I choose shared matches for Carol, I get an AncestryDNA match with this tree:

That means that Carol’s maternal grandfather is the same as this tester’s father. This also appears to show that I should be looking at the Eurich/Kraft part of the tree.  I have been in touch with the son of the above-tested woman. He says Eurich and Kraft were from a German Colony in Russia called Saratov. I had thoiught that I had written a Blog on this, but maybe not.

Saratov and Hirschenhof

The Rathfelder and Gangnus families were from Hirschenhof, Latvia. The Eurich and Kraft families were from Saratov, Russia. Other than these both being German colonies in then Russia, I am not sure of the connection.

I have a pin by Saratov. Hirshchenhof is to the SE of Riga. They are both quite a way from Germany. I would say the distance would be in the range of 1,000 miles.

I did begin a Eurich Family Tree:

I just added the couple in the lower right today. The problem is, that if my mother is a 4th cousin to this person, I will have to move the tree out three more generations. That would be out to 32 thrid great grandparents.

It looks like this is a dead end right now also, unless I hear from some of the researchers working on these lines. It appears that getting genealogical informaiton from Russia is quite difficult.  It is interesting that the Rathfelders who were from a German Colony in Latvia have a connection in some way with this family that is from a German Colony in Saratov, Russia. Perhaps the connection goes back to before the time these people were in their colonies.

Another Thought on the X Chromosome

In my last Blog on Cindy, I mentioned her X Chromosome. Her X Chromosome pattern is different than mine and cousin Rusty’s in that her Rathfelder parent was a male. That means that Cindy’s dad only passed on Lentz X Chromosome to Cindy. I mentioned, that as a result, wherever I match Cindy, I would match her on the Lentz and not the Rathfelder side for my X Chromosome. I used that information to update my X Chromosome Map.

This mapping program was developed by Kitty Munson Cooper and is available on her web site. On the bottom line (the X Chromosome), I have the places I match Cindy in yellow. I left the matches with Rusty as purple indicating Rathfelder. The bottom part of each chromosome represents my maternal (Rathfelder) side. I had already mapped my X Chromosome using two other methods, but Cindy’s X Chromosome matches with me confirms that work.

Summary and Conclusions

• I had not planned on looking into the admixture or heredity of Cindy, my mom and myself. However, when I did, I had a good time doing it and came up with good results.
• It is fairly easy to find Nicholson relatives. However, it is difficult to find DNA – tested Lentz relatives. The closer Lentz relatives we know about also descend from the Nicholson family, so that makes it difficult to know if we are matching on the Lentz or Nicholson side.
• I didn’t get very far trying to identify some of Cindy’s unknown matches. I did at least figure out if they were on the Rathfelder or Lentz side.
• I noted how Cindy’s actual X Chromosome matches with me mapped to the segments that were created using Visual Phasing and Raw Data Phasing
• Working on Cindy’s DNA reminds me of the family connections we have and the times the families have spent time with each other