Category: Chromosome Mapping

Showing which ancestors correspond to which Chromosomes on a map.

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More Painting of My Wife’s DNA

I call this painting my wife’s DNA because I use a program called DNA Painter. But really, it is a DNA map of my wife’s identified DNA matches. Here is what I have so far for Marie:

The top row of every one of Marie’s chromosomes is what she got from her father and the bottom row is what she got from her mother. Likewise on the key to the bottom right of the image, the top part shows the shared paternal ancestors represented in different colors on Marie’s map. The bottom part of the key has Marie’s maternal ancestors represented as colors that she got from her DNA matches.

Marie is About One Third Painted

Actually a little less:

Marie is actually doing the best as far as DNA matches go, on her paternal side:

Now that I think of it, that makes sense as there a lot of French Canadian matches on that side. That must mean that Marie is less painted on her maternal side:

Marie only has 57 DNA segments painted on her maternal side. My goal in this Blog is to get Marie’s numbers up somehow. It is not easy as there has to be a link to a common ancestor and they have to have had their DNA tested at a place that gives detailed DNA match information. AncestryDNA is the biggest tester and they don’t give detailed information on their DNA matches.

Searching for More DNA Matches for Marie

The easiest place to search would be at MyHeritage. They have an option called Theories of Relativity where they match up DNA matches and common ancestors. One of the first matches I see at MyHeritage that I haven’t mapped yet is with Ivan:

Ivan has two paths to Marie and Ivan’s proposed common ancestors of Peter Upshall and Margaret Burton.

Here is the DNA that Marie and Ivan share:

By default, I don’t think that DNA Painter will map Chromosome 11 as the match is 6.9 cM and DNA Painter has a 7.0 cutoff. That is sort of too bad because here is Marie’s Chromosome 11:

Marie’s matches with Esther, Anne and Edward are with ancestors on the Upshall side. But I don’t want to change the default either. Here is what the data looks like that will go into DNA Painter:

Unfortunately, Ivan’s areas of matches were already taken up with others for the most part. There was a small exception on Chromosome 1:

Here Ivan’s match with Marie in green was a little longer than Marie’s match with her half great Aunt Esther.

Marie’s Theory with James

Here is what MyHeritage shows:

James Ellis and Marion (with variations) MacArthur (or McArthur) are Marie’s third great-grandparents. Marion MacArthur was James Ellis’ second wife:

I show Thomas Birch Ellis as James Heny Ellis’ brother so that is good.

I’ll paint this match onto Marie’s map:

The parts of James’ DNA matches that were over 7 cM were on Chromosomes 1 and 2. They are in Ellis regions. There is no overlap, so they constitute new unmapped areas for Marie. This gets Marie up a percent overall from 31% to 32% mapped. On Marie’s Maternal side, she went from 24% to 25% mapped. Progress. I see that Marie also matches Stephen who may be James’ brother. However, Stephen does not appear to add any more DNA than James added.

Marie and Glenys

Glenys shows as a third cousin to Marie:

MyHeritage has her descended from Alexander Upshall. The record I have for him says he died at a lunatic assylum:

Let’s map this match out using DNA Painter. DNA Painter gives a hint:

I’m not sure if this is helpful or not, but it seems like the bottom hint is right. Glenys’ matches with Marie on Chromosomes 9 and 11 are already taken up:

The match on Chromosome 22 is Marie’s first on her maternal side:

This small match is not enough to increase Marie’s percantages, but it helps.

Keep Going with Marie’s DNA Match Caroline?

Caroline is supposed to match Marie on the LeFevre/LeFebre Line:

The connection looks legit. LeFebvre is the older way of spelling LeFevre. Someone left out the b along the way. Hopefully the 1891 for the Charles in Caroline’s line isn’t for his birth as that would to make sense. 1841 would make more sense. At this point, I can either assume that Caroline has the right tree or check on it myself. As I’m feeling lazy today, I’ll just check the DNA to see if it is in the right vicinity.

Turns out I already have Caroline mapped. Here is her bigger connection to Marie on Chromosome 12:

That match is solidly in LeFevre territory, so the connection is likely right.

Marie and Alan

This time I’ll go right to the DNA:

Alan overlaps other DNA Matches except for Chromosome 13:

Alan also adds a new French Canadian common ancestor to Marie’s DNA match who are Joseph Methot and Marguerite Anger.

Marie and Edna

This could be a long Blog. I see that Marie has at least five pages of Theories of Relativity. Edna is Marie’s first Theory on Page 2.

Edna adds some old Christopher Dicks DNA from 1784 on Chromosomes 1, 9 and 12. Here is the connection:

I’m not sure if Planter is the right last name for Margaret. One problem is a DNA overlap on the Ellis side at the end of Chromosome 1:

It could be that Edna’s small match with Marie there is a false positive.

Marie and Marilyn

I think that I have been in touch with Marilyn before as I have done some work on the Dick’s Line:

Marilyn doesn’t add new DNA, but shows that the match Marie has with Esther and Anne goes further back than the 1870’s or 1812. I’m still trying to get Marie’s painted DNA up to 33% but I’m not there yet.

Marie and Andre

Now we are up the 5th cousin level for Marie. As you might expect, the match levels are smaller:

Andre adds a little DNA to Chromosome 15 at the end and gives older DNA bac to 1773 on the LeFevre Line. I’m still not up to 33% painted for Marie:

However, we have 200 segments painted.

Marie and David

This match goes back to Gorrill:

As I don’t see this couple in my DNA Painter Key, this must be a non-painted match.

David provided Marie’s first maternal mapped DNA match on Chromosome 14:

This match got Marie up to 1/3 painted or 33% overall:

That got Marie from 25% to 27% painted on her maternal side.

Reorganizing Marie’s Key

At this point, it would make sense to reorganize the Key in Marie’s DNA Painter Map. Right now I have a line separating Marie’s paternal and maternal matches. Marie’s four grandparents are Butler, LeFevre, Ellis and Upshall. I can organize Marie’s key that way. Unfortunately, I only see one Butler match right now.

The LeFevre matches I just organized by date.

Marie’s Ellis and Upshall matches split out more evenly:

I see a mistake as I left Richard Gorrill up with the LeFevre’s.

Marie’s match with Robert on the Ellis Line

 

Robert adds some new DNA on Chromosome 3 and gives corroborating evidence on Chromosome 4.

Nathalie: A Fifth Cousin Match on the LeFevre Line

I’ll paint in Nathalie’s DNA as I don’t want to take the time to check every tree:

Nathalie provides new DNA mapping for Marie on her Chromosomes 14 and 19. Now Marie is 40% mapped paternally:

Marie’s Progress Update

Marie has DNA mapped on every chromosome. However, she is missing paternal DNA on Chromosome 5 and 17 and she is missing maternal DNA mapped on Chromosome 16.

Marie and Charolette

I am a little suspicious of this match as there may be a connection on Charolette’s MacArthur side also.

So whether Marie and Charolette connect on the William Ellis Line, MacArthur line or both is a fine point. This could be resolved possibly by further looking into Charolette’s ancestry. Marie is now 34% mapped or painted overall.

Marie and Agnes

Marie and Agnes have several potential connections:

This is the closest theory, so I would go with this one. The other theories are further out:

I don’t show an Edward Rayner in my tree, but I do show that the John Rayner at the top of the tree was the son of Edward John Rayner, so it would make sense if he named a son after his father. Here is where Agnes sorts out on Marie’s map:

 

Marie and Barbara – Still at MyHeritage

I made a mistake with Barbara at DNA Painter. I put down that she descended from Ellis/MacArthur:

She actually descends from Ellis/Ramsay. That should be easy to fix in DNA Painter. I can edit Barbara in DNA Painter:

I thought that I had an entry for just James Ellis 1801, but I don’t. So I’ll create a new group.

I’m getting there, but it says that James Ellis is not a known ancestor. I need to change that. I go back to the edit section for Barbara and check the known ancestor box:

Barbara fills in some new areas on three chromosomes:

This is turniing out to be a long Blog, but I am getting a lot of mapping done.

Marie and Gilles

As expected, Gilles matches Marie on her French Canadian side. This is on her Fortin/Tremblay side where Nathalie matched earlier in the Blog:

Under Nathalie, the common ancestors were Eustache Jacquies and Marie Judith, but these must be the same ancestors. Gilles adds some more DNA on Chromosome 1. His matches on other segments were below the 7 cM threshold.

I changed the Fortin/Tremblay mapped color to light blue as the previous color was too close to the pink LeFevre color. This match with Gilles maps some older DNA from the latter part of the 1700’s.

Two Possibilities for Jason

I am leaning away from Theory 1:

My tree shows that Marie descends from John Rayner, not James Rayner. However, Jason and Agnes triangulate on Chromosome 4:

I had mapped Agnes to Rayner. I think I’ll skip Jason for now.

Let’s Try Richard

Richard is on Marie’s MacArthur/MacDougall Line.

Richard added DNA to Marie’s map in previously unmapped areas on Chromosome 1, 9 andd 17:

This finally gets Marie mapped overall up to 35%. If I mapped this right, Richard’s match to Marie on Chromosome 17 points out a crossover. The green and light blue are from Marie’s Upshall side and the dark blue is from Marie’s Ellis side. This shows about where Marie’s maternal DNA went from Upshall, then to Ellis and Back to Upshall.

Marie’s X Chromosome

I don’t think that MyHeritage covers the X Chromosome. That is covered at Gedmatch and FTDNA. Here are Marie’s X Chromosome matches at Gedmatch:

Marie’s top two matches are her Aunts. They would be too closely related to map. The third match has a large X Chromosome match, but no autosomal match, so I would not be able to locate that match at Ancestry.

Marie and Lise

The fourth match is with Lise at Ancestry. Perhaps I can find her. I found someone who looks like Lise at Ancestry, but she does not have a maternal line given.

Marie and Muriel

After some dead ends, I came across Muriel. She is at Ancestry and Gedmatch and shows a common ancestor:

Here is where Gedmatch shows the X Chromosome (or 23) match:

This mapping was in a previously mapped area with Marie’s 2nd cousin. It does show that this is old DNA going back to the early 1700’s if Ancestry is right:

I also added Muriel’s matches on Chromosome 14:

Although I didn’t add much new information, I did show that I could add X Chromosome information.

Marie’s New Chromosome Mapped Update

 

Summary and Conclusions

  • My primary goal for this Blog was to update Marie’s Chromosome Map which I did.
  • The secondary goal was to get Marie at least 33% mapped and I did that also. I was able to get Marie mapped overall from 31% up to 35%
  • I also looked into Marie’s X Chromosome but that was more difficult as MyHeritage does not include information on the X Chromosome.
  • I also improved Marie’s Key and changed some of the colors on Marie’s map
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A 23andMe DNA Match with My Daughter’s Namesake

I recently was contacted by a DNA match at 23andMe and she had the same name as my daughter. As 23andMe gives birth dates, I knew it was not my daughter but a second cousin of mine who was born before my daughter. As my great grandparents had 13 surviving children, I have a lot of 2nd cousins.

Heather’s DNA Match

Heather and I have a large DNA match. Heather shot to the top of my 23andMe match list:

Heather shares more than twice the amount of DNA with me compared to my other 2nd cousins at 23andMe. This had me concerned at first as I originally thought that Heather was a 2nd cousin once removed. At that level, her DNA match with me would have been off the scale. This had me going back to my online genealogy to check where Heather was on the family tree:

This tree shows my Hartley second cousins who have tested for DNA at different companies. I am missing some testers. I know there are more under Grace Hartley and I didn’t include my children or nieces and nephews. There are also other lines I have missed, so I should update this tree.

Heather is on the Greenwood line:

That brings me to a match with Heather who is two generations closer to Greenwood Hartley compared to Charles.

Heather Shares About as Much as DNA with Me as Possible:

The 7.84% DNA that we share is 584 cM. Blaine Bettinger has a shared DNA project. He gets people to tell him how much DNA they share with each relationship and he puts that in a chart:

When I thought that Heather was my 2nd cousin, once removed, I thought that something was wrong as our match would be off that chart. As it is, our match of 584 cM is very near the top reported 2nd cousin match.

23andMe Thought That Heather and I Were 1st Cousins

That was a bit of surprise. I suppose that was based on average shared DNA. But your mileage may vary as the saying goes. Here are some more numbers from the Shared cM Project:

Based on that study, our DNA match would indicate that we would be closer to 1st cousins once removed. Here are my two first cousins and three first cousins once removed at Gedmatch.com:

The first two in the orange box are 1st cousins on my mother’s side. The second three are 1st cousins once removed on my father’s (Hartley) side. The last is the highest 2nd cousin match at Gedmatch. That means that Heather at 584 cM has a higher match than my three 1st Hartley cousins once removed. These are my father’s cousins. I find that interesting.

The DNA that Heather and I share is from our two great grandparents. They are James Hartley and Annie Snell. Here they are with some of their children:

In fact, roughly half  of Heather and my shared DNA is from James Hartley and half is from Annie Snell. It is possible to figure out exactly which is which, but it takes matches with descendants of older common ancestors to figure that out. I’ll give a few examples later in the Blog.

23andMe Family Tree

23andMe has a Family Tree. They try to figure out your tree by the DNA, but that isn’t always precise. So they want you to add known relatives to that tree. Here is my tree:

Normally a family tree would have the paternal ancestors on the left, but this one does not. My Hartley ancestors are in blue on the right. Here is more of a close-up of the Hartley side:

One, person, DL, I don’t have matched up to a named line. Heather is on the Greenwood line and her father is Sonny’s brother. You don’t know the players without a program. My line goes off to the left where it matches up with my mother’s ancestors. It took a bit of trial and error to get Heather into the tree correctly at 23andMe, but I have her now:

This shows that Heather is 1st cousin to my 2nd cousin Woody.

DNA Painter

I have my Chromosomes painted or mapped by my various matches. I’d like to see if Heather adds any new information to that map. I already have a lot of Hartley 2nd cousins mapped. Here is what I have mapped so far:

My paternal DNA is on the top row of every chromosome and my maternal DNA is on the bottom row of each chromosome. The predominant green is where I would match Heather as that color represents James Hartley and Annie Snell our common 2nd great grandparents.

This shows up better when I choose my paternal-only side on the Painter:

It would be easier to say which chromosomes that Heather and I share no Hartley matches on. Those are Chromosomes:

  • 6
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 21
  • 22
  • X

Part of the reason that I may not have Hartley on a chromosome is that my chromosomes may have recombined or not recombined more likely to exclude Hartley on a certain Chromosome. The only two choices on my paternal side are Hartley or my father’s mother who was a Frazer. So if I got all Frazer DNA on a particular Chromosome, I will not have any Hartley matches on that Chromosome. I would not match Heather on the X Chromosome because men only recieve one copy of that Chromosome from their mother. That means I have no Hartley X Chromosome DNA. Heather doesn’t really have any Hartley X Chromosome DNA either. She did get an X Chromosome from her father, but that X Chromosome was the same that he got from his Gifford mother. So she got Gifford DNA from her father on the X Chromosome, not Hartley.

Right now I am 45% painted overall and 53% painted on my paternal side. I’ll see if Heather adds anything or if I am already maxed out. Here is the data I need for DNA Painter:

One interesting thing I see already is that my match with Heather starts at position 1 for Chromosomes 2, 4, 13 and 15. That would be right at the start of these chromosomes. I already have a match painted at or close to the beginning of Chromosome 2, but not at the beginnings of Chromosome 4, 13, and 15. That is encouraging.

I choose, “Paint a New Match”.

I refreshed my percent painted:

This shows that I am up to 47% painted now overall or an increase of 2%. I also added 17 segments from my match with Heather. However, I’m sure a lot of those segements are overlapping other Hartley/Snell matches.

On my paternal side I am now at 56%. That is a increase of 3 percentage points or quite a bit at this point in my mapping.

Here is my new green Hartley/Snell mapped DNA:

One interesting thing is that the Hartley side is filled up now on Chromosome 13. Here are my second cousin matches on Chromosome 13:

I kept the names out for privacy, but Heather is the match at the top. I have also mapped my DNA to my 4 grandparents. My guess is that my Chromosome 13 is all Hartley. I need to find my Blog on Chromosome 13. Back in November 2018, I mapped out my Chromosome 13 and that of my 5 siblings:

This was one of the easiest chromosomes to map because there were not many crossovers. The crossovers are when you change in your chromosome from the DNA you got from one grandparent to the spouse of that grandparent. I am in the third row above and I have all the same paternal grandparent (Hartley) and the same maternal grandparent (Rathfelder). That means that it was not unexpected to have my Chromosome filled in with green Hartley DNA on the DNA Painter that I mentioned earllier.

So in the example above, if Heather uploaded her DNA to gedmatch where I have my siblings’ DNA, she would not match my brother Jim on Chromosome 13. That is because Jim got Frazer DNA in the first part of his Chromosome 13 where Heather matched me. Heather would match Jon and Heidi as much as she matches me. For Lori and Sharon, Heather would match on Chromosome 13, but not as much as she matches me as she would be matching in different/fewer regions.

Heather’s Older DNA

The DNA that Heather and I share came down from James Hartley born in 1862 and Annie Snell born in 1866. I mentioned earlier in the Blog that it should be possible to identify some older DNA. That can be seen at DNA Painter. The first example I see of this is in Chromosome 4:

On this Chromosome, Heather matches me at the beginning and end of the Chromosome. In the middle, I have some matches from my Frazer side. In yellow, I have a match with Anne whose ancestry goes all the way back to Abraham Howorth (or so we believe). This DNA goes all the way back to 1768. The Howorth family lived in Bacup, Lancahsire, England:

 

Beth, Jim and Joyce didn’t match Ann on Chromosome 4, but they did on Chromosome 8. When that happens, we call that triangulation which is a sort of check that the DNA really did come from where we think it did. In this case, Heather would extend that triangulation to Chromosome 4. If Heather  uploads her DNA to Gedmatch, she would likely match Ann through their common 4th great-grandparents.

Chromosome 9

An example of identified Snell DNA is on Chromosome 9:

I left out the names, but my match in blue is Celeste. Her ancestors were Otis Snell and Mary Parker. My match with Heather is right above the blue match. That means that Heather likely matches Celelste also.

Here are Mary and Otis:

Those are the only two examples I have right now of older DNA. I would like to find more examples. This would require getting some of my AncestryDNA matches to upload to Gedmatch. AncestryDNA has a lot of matches but they do not use a Chromosome Browser. That means I can tell how much DNA I share with a match there, but I cannot tell on what chromosomes I match them nor can I tell on what portion of the chromosome I match them.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I was glad to hear from Heather
  • I was surprised at how much DNA we shared with each other. The amount is right near the top of the scale of likely DNA matching
  • Because Heather and I share so much common DNA that came down from James Hartley and Annie Snell born in the 1860’s, I was able to add a lot of DNA to my DNA Map using DNA Painter.
  • I showed a few cases where I could identify older DNA matches that Heather and I shared going back to Howorth, Snell and Parker.
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Painting the DNA of My Irish Relatives Emily and Susan

In my previous Blog, I finished painting in my second cousin once removed Paul and painted my more distant third cousin once removed Gladys. Gladys’ ancestry does not share my McMaster ancestry, but does share my Frazer ancestry. Emily shares the same McMaster ancestry that Paul and I have. Susan does also with the twist that she has extra McMaster ancestry as her mother is a McMaster. Here are Susan and Emily:

As Susan has tested at MyHeritage and not uploaded her results to Gedmatch, her results will be limited to those who tested at MyHeritage or uploaded their DNA results there.

Painting Emily

I’ve already started painting Emily.

I only have two of her ancestral couples painted. I only have painted Paul and Gladys onto Emily’s profile. Emily’s Frazer matches are on her maternal side. Emily is 14% painted now, but I hope to get that number up.

Painting Me and My Siblings Onto Emily

These should be the blue segments. The interesting places are where the blue and red segments overlap:

Here Emily’s match with Gladys overlaps with her match with my brother James but not with Paul. As Gladys does not have McMaster ancestry, my guess is that the place where she overlaps with James indicates that the DNA that James and Emily got there was from George Frazer and not Margaret McMaster. The fact that Gladys’ match above stops short of Paul’s match could mean that Paul’s match is McMaster.

Doreen and Pat

Next on Emily’s Gedmatch list of DNA matches I see Gladys’ relatives, Doreen, Ken, Susan and Pat. Some information was added for Emily here:

However on the other chromosomes, their matches were the same as Gladys’.

Jean, a McMaster Match

At least I think she is.

Here Jean is a 4th cousin to Emily. The common ancestors are technically McMaster and Frazer, but due to the children taking on the McMaster name, we tend to think of this as a McMaster match.

This gets us back to the 1700’s and tells Paul and Emily where that bit of DNA came from. For Paul, this DNA would have come down through Fanny McMaster to Margaret McMaster.

Emily and Jane

Jane is Emily’s fourth cousin:

Jane is also a 5th cousin to Emily, but hopefully most of the DNA sharing is at the 4th cousin level.

In the key, I have put both possibilities in for Jane’s match. However, the most obvious is for Richard Frazer. In Chromosome 6, the DNA for Gladys, Jane, Ken, Susan and Doreen is probably from Richard (or his unknown wife).

Emily and McMaster Relatives

Keith has McMaster ancestry:

Keith adds some new information for Emily on Chromosomes 12 and 14, but no overlap with any of Emily’s matches.

Here is Stephen:

Here, if I have it right, Stephen shows that my siblings James and Lori,  as well as Emily,have old McMaster DNA on Chromosome 13.

Emily and the Philip Line

These matches to Emily are on the green side.

On Chromosome 18, Richard appears to fill in a blank for Emily. On Chromosome 21, Emily’s match with Martha tells me that Paul’s match is on his James vs his Violet Frazer side.

Emily and Marilee from the John Frazer Line

Marilee shows on this chart as a 5th cousin once removed to Emily:

I notice the birth date for Philip is earlier on this chart. These dates seem to make more sense based on the John Line in pink.

Here is how Marilee shows up on Emily’s painted DNA palette:

Emily is helping to show that Paul’s DNA in this area is very old. It comes down from either Archibald Frazer or Mary Lilly to Philip Frazer to Paul and Emily.

For some reason, I don’t get that same distinction in Paul’s view of his Chromosome 5:

Quality Check

As this doesn’t make sense, I need to check my information. So forget what I said about Paul. I need to correct his matches on Emily’s profile. I’ll delete Paul from Emily’s profile and then add the correct information back in for Emily’s matches with Paul. Here is what it should be:

Note that Paul has no match with Emily on Chromosome 5:

The takeaway from this corrected view is about James. James or Jim was the last of 6 siblings (including me) to be tested for DNA. Gladys is the other one who had already been painted to Emily. I checked her results and they seem right.

Any More Matches for Emily?

I’m sure there are plenty. I have written three Blogs about Emily. This Blog from 2018 mentions some more matches. Those matches are on the Archibald Frazer/Stinson Line and also go back to Archibald Frazer of 1720 who married Mary Lilly.

Here are a few examples from that Line:

Here is part of the Archibald/Stinson Line:

Fishing for a New Match for Emily

I used a facility at Gedmatch that will find people that match two people. In this case, I used Emily and Keith who matches on the McMaster Line. One of the better matches was Rainah:

Rainah matches Emily by about 46.7 cM and Keith by about 17.3 cM. Rainah tested at FTDNA where I have also tested and I also have a small match to Rainah. Maybe I can figure out how we are all related.

She has a blue tree icon which means she has a tree, so that is good. Unfortunately, I can’t make sense enough of her tree to bring it back to where we might match:

This is why it is difficult to figure out new matches. Everything has to align perfectly.

Painting Susan

The painting for Susan will be very basic as it will just include those kits that I administer at MyHeritage. Those are me and my siblings, my cousin Paul and Gladys. I’ll start with Paul as he should be her most important match. I expect Susan will only have two colors on her map. Paul and Susan don’t have DNA matches after Chromosome 15:

 

I’ll go with Gladys next. Actually, I don’t see Susan on Gladys’ DNA match list. Gladys and Susan are 3rd cousins. According to FTDNA, there is a 90% chance that these two should match by DNA. Unless I missed something, then Gladys and Susan are in the 10% range. That means that Susan’s DNA map will just be one colored for now.

Summary and Conclusions

I was able to get some interesting results looking at the painted DNA for Emily. I had painted Paul, my second cousin once removed and Emily is at the same relative distance to me that Paul is. Emily’s matches fit in as expected and helped pull in the relevant matches from the other Frazer and McMaster Branches.

I was hoping to make a basic DNA map for Susan also. Susan is at the same relative relationship with me as Paul and Emily with the twist that he mother is a McMaster, so she should have more McMaster DNA than Paul or Emily. If Susan decides to upload her DNA to Gedmatch, then I will be able to match her DNA with many other Frazer and McMaster descendants.

Continue reading “Painting the DNA of My Irish Relatives Emily and Susan”

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New DNA Results for My Frazer Cousin Susan

I recently heard via the Frazer Facebook Page that my cousin Susan had her DNA tested at MyHeritage. That was good news for me as I am interested in DNA – how it shows where we are related and how we share parts of our common ancestors.

How Susan Fits In On the Frazer DNA Tree

I create trees of people who have had their DNA tested. Here is a partial Frazer Tree:

Earlier this year I wrote a Blog about Brenda.  She, like Susan and Paul, is my second cousin once removed. She tested at 23andMe. Brenda is also Paul’s first cousin. Susan descends from William Frazer and James Robert Frazer. That section of the Frazer DNA tree is spreading out:

This part of the Frazer tree is interesting to me because I have met many of these people. They would be most familiar with the farm where my great-grandfather James Archibald was raised.

Here is a photo of the family in front of the old family house in Ballindoon. MyHeritage has a new program that colorizes old photos. My great-grandfather James Archibald, Susan’s grandfather William and another brother Richard were in Massachusetts at the time this photo was taken. Brenda’s grandfather Hubert is probably the first one in the back row in the photo above. The girl on the right is Susan Frazer. I wonder if the Susan of this Blog was named after her?

Here are five Frazer Brothers in Boston, Massachusetts:

Susan’s grandfather William is sitting on the right next to my great-grandfather James Archibald Frazer. James was a year and a month older than William.

My DNA Match with Susan

Here is where I match Susan:

I should note that MyHeritage has some matches that are under 7 cM. The first match on Chromosome 1 and the match on Chromosome 5 are in this category. Matches under 7 cM can have a lower probability of being actual matches.

Painting Susan’s DNA

I use an online program called DNA Painter to map out my DNA matches when I can identify the common ancestors. DNA Painter has a default of 7 cM for what it paints, so these two segments would not be painted under normal circumstances. Here is the paternal side of my existing Chromosome 1:

 

The green part is already taken up by Hartley matches. That means that the small match that I have with Susan on Chromosome 1 cannot be real. The maroon section is a match I have with Kat, so that represents Frazer/McMaster.

Here is my existing mapped Chromosome 5:

Again, my Chromosome map didn’t leave much room for Frazer matching. My siblings have different configurations, so they probably have better matches on Chromosomes 1 and 5. The small maroon match I have at the end of Chromosome 5 is with Brenda from position 173 M to 175 M. My match with Susan above is between 175 M and 177 M. I take that to mean that the match I have with Susan is real, but the reason that it is small is that it is clipped off on the end of the Chromosome. That means that I will want to add this match in.

In order to paint Susan’s results onto my tree, I first download the matches. They look like this:

The Location numbers are important. This shows what I was calling the position numbers above. So rounding off, Chromosome 5 starts off at 175 million and ends at 178 million.

At DNA Painter, I choose paint a new match. Then I am changing the default from 7 to 6 cM:

I copy the results into the blank space and save the information. I choose Frazer/McMaster for the common ancestors.

Next I have to delete the Chromosome 1 match as that doesn’t fit.

 

Percent Painted

One thing I like to look at is my percent painted. This is overall:

This is just my paternal side:

My numbers are creeping up. In my Blog about Brenda, my overall percent painted went up from 41% to 42%. Now I am at 43%. When I was mapping Kat, she brought be up from 50% paternally mapped to 51%. Now I am at 52%.

More About Susan’s DNA

There are a lot of different directions I could go from her. I could look at my siblings’ DNA matches to Susan. Or I could look at my cousin Paul’s matches to Susan. Or I could look at shared matches to Susan.

My Siblings and Susan

Here is how I matched Susan at MyHeritage:

This is a pretty good match for a second cousin once removed. Actually, there is a new report out:

122 cM is typical for a second cousin once removed. In my previous Blog, I mentioned my Frazer third cousin Karen. I didn’t match her at all which is within the possibilities but below the average of 73 cM.

Here are how my other siblings match Susan:

  • Heidi – 202 cM
  • Sharon – 143.5 cM
  • Jon – 113.0 cM
  • Lori – 154.0 cM
  • Jim – 139.7

These are all above average – except for Jon.

My Second Cousin Once Removed Paul

I manage my cousin Paul’s DNA also. He has a huge match with Susan:

This is about 200 cM above average. Susan is Paul’s top match at MyHeritage. As this is as good as it gets, let’s take a look:

All of Susan and Paul’s matches are between Chromosomes 1 and 15.

Painting Paul

Here is what I have for Paul so far:

I was only interested in Paul’s paternal side as that is where we match. Paul is about 12% painted on his paternal side. The key shows that George Frazer and Margaret McMaster DNA are in green. That is the DNA that Susan and Paul share.

After I paint Susan’s matches to Paul’s profile, this is what I get:

That is quite a jump.

Here is Paul’s new profile:

Some More DNA Detail

Susan and Paul have a huge match on Chromosome 7. Here is the detail:

There is another Susan who matches Paul there also, but a smaller match. Here is what happened:

Susan, Susan and Paul (sorry left out Paul in the diagram above), get their Chromosome 7 DNA from James and Violet Frazer. However, because Paul and the Susan of this Blog share overlapping Chromosome 7 DNA, that DNA must have come from George Frazer and not Margaret McMaster. The one catch is that the three must triangulate. That means that the Susan in the yellow box needs to match the Susan in the blue box. I assume that to be true, but because these two Susans tested at different companies, I don’t know for sure.

I’ll do that in DNA Painter:

A Complicated Chromosome 12 for Paul

On the left, Paul matches Emily and John. John has McMaster ancestry:

Paul and John from Australia show as 4th cousins.

MyHeritage shows that Paul, Emily and John triangulate:

The yellow match is between John and Paul. The red match is between Paul and Emily. The circle around the two indicates triangulation, so John must match Emily. That also means that the DNA match that Emily and Paul share must have come from the McMaster side:

Even more speificially, the DNA came from James McMaster as opposed to his wife Fanny McMaster.

Joanna, Susan and BV

Here is another case where it would be helpful if Susan was to upload her DNA results to Gedmatch:

I have written many Blogs about BV as the match is very interesting.

BV and Paul have the common ancestors of William McMaster and Margaret Frazer. This couple left Ireland for Canada with their children. Except for Fanny McMaster. She stayed back in Kilmactranny Parish, County Sligo and married James McMaster.

So where does Joanna fit in? It appears that she could triangulate with BV. Unfortunately, I don’t see BV at Gedmatch anymore, so she may not have re-signed when the ownership changed hands. My previous note says that Joanna does not triangulate with BV:

That would probably make sense as Joanna has no known McMaster ancestors.

John, Keith and Susan

Here is an even more confusing situation on Chromosome 12:

Susan overlaps with both John and Keith. John and Keith both have McMaster ancestry, but from different lines. The other problem is that I have never figured out how the two McMaster Lines fit together. I did make a guess here:

Probably the confusion is on the McMaster side. The matches John and Keith above are both McMaster matches.

Summary and Conclusion

  • I have been hoping for quite a while that one of my Irish Frazer relatives would have their tested. Susan did this and I am glad to see the results.
  • Susan matches most of my family above average as well as my cousin Paul. This may partly be due to the extra McMaster connections
  • I was able to narrow down from which of our ancestors our DNA matches come from based on matches with other Frazer or McMaster relatives.
  • Some aspects of the DNA matching was confusing. This is probably due to the fact that we don’t know who all our ancestors were and the ones that we do know tended to marry relatives in several cases.
  • If Susan uploads her DNA to Gedmatch, it would be possible to compare her matches with other Frazer relatives who tested at different companies.
  • I like seeing how the old Frazer photos look with added color.
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Finding My DNA Cousin Brenda at 23andMe

In my previous Blog, I figured out who my 23andMe cousin Kat was. I have another DNA cousin at 23andMe Brenda. I’d like to figure out where she fits in. 23andMe thinks that Brenda could be my third cousin:

Brenda and I share some DNA on 4 different chromosomes.

Here is another hint:

Brenda and I also have DNA matches with Kat and Stephen. The match with Kat is more important, because if it is right, then Brenda is a 2nd cousin to Kat. Here is a DNA matching Frazer tree that I have:

If I am a third cousin to Brenda and she is on the Frazer tree, then our common ancestors would be George Frazer and Margaret McMaster. If Brenda is a second cousin to Kat, then Kat and Brenda’s common ancestors should be William Frazer and Amanda Skoog. There are other possibilities, but that seems the most likely.

A Look at Stephen

Actually Stephen’s match is interesting also:

Stephen is on the lower left. If I’m right, Brenda is in the Frazer section in the middle. Steve and Brenda would be 5th cousins on the McMaster side. I am a closer match to Stephen on our Clarke side.

Painting Brenda

Using DNA Painter, an online utility, I can put Brenda’s matches next to my other matches. Here are some of Brenda’s details:

Here are a few possible surprises. I painted Brenda to George Frazer and Margaret McMaster based on Brenda’s match to Kat and me. However, DNA Painter has hints that Brenda is related further out at the level of James Frazer, Violet Frazer and Richard Frazer.

When I choose “show overlapping segments”, I get this:

When I look at my larger DNA map, I see this:

My cousin Paul and Brenda have a small overlap, but not enough to be picked up by DNA Painter as being significant.

Pro’s and Con’s of Putting Brenda on My DNA Tree Where I Did

I put Brenda as having the common ancestors with me of George Frazer and Margaret McMaster.

Pro’s:

  • At third cousin to me and 2nd cousin to Kat, it seems like Brenda should be a great-granddaughter of William Frazer.
  • William Frazer had three sons. Kat descends from James Robert Frazer. That means that Brenda could descend from Albert William Frazer or Walter Stanley Frazer. I don’t know much about Walter Stanley, so that is a possibility.

Con’s

  • I would expect Brenda to have more overlap with other descendants of George Frazer and Margaret McMaster. Instead Brenda overlaps with more distant Frazer relatives.
  • With Margaret’s double McMaster parentage, I would have expected more matches with McMaster descendants – though she does match Stephen.

Walter Stanley Frazer 1924-1996

On October 10, 1937, Walter was 13 and sailing out of Galway – apparently on his own:

This stone at the National Cemetery in Culpepper, Virginia gives a very short summary of Walter’s life:

The affidavits for Walter’s Petition for US Naturalization were taken in London in 1944:

Here is some more personal information from the same document when Walter was 20:

Here is some information on Walter’s wife:

Julia was flying from Paris to New Jersey with her husband and three young children in 1959. They lived in Miami. If Brenda was part of this family, perhaps she was too young to take this trip.

I did find one of the daughters. I think that this is her school photo from Vienna Virginia, but I’m not sure. The other information would be right.

Findagrave.com mentions her two brothers but not a sister. So this may not be the family for Brenda.

One Other Possibility for Brenda

I have that my great-grandfather’s brother Hubert Alexander Frazer had a son named Calvin Coolidge Frazer and Calvin had a daughter named Brenda. I will try to get in touch with at least the most likely candidate I find on Facebook. The problem with this possibility is that Brenda should be a first cousin once removed to my second cousin once removed Paul. Brenda only shows a small overlap with Paul. That may be because I show a smaller than average match with my cousin Paul.

At some point Calvin Coolidge Frazer ended up living and dying in Sacramento. That is interesting as some Frazer’s from other branches ended up in that city also.

Summary and Conclusion

  • After figuring out one of my Frazer DNA matches at 23andMe (Kat), I tried to set out to figure out how I matched Brenda. Based on how Brenda matched Kat and me I guessed that Brenda might descend from a Great Uncle of Kat. There was one person who fit that category: Walter Stanley Frazer. I looked up some information on Walter, but I couldn’t find any record of Walter having a daughter named Brenda.
  • I painted Brenda’s match to me with DNA Painter and found that she did match me on my Frazer side. However, I was expecting some more matching on the McMaster side.
  • I looked into a Brenda Frazer who was the granddaughter of Hubert Alexander Frazer. She is a good  candidate as she has the right first name. I’ll give a shot a contacting her through Facebook. I’m pretty sure given the level of match Kat and I have with Brenda, that our common ancestors were George Frazer and Margaret McMaster. However, I am still interested in confirming that belief.
  • I thought this exercise would be easier than it was. Due to the randomness of DNA inheritance, matches do not always match up with each other at the same place.
  • Even if I don’t figure out who Brenda is, I have found out some more information about two branches of the Frazer Family.

Addendum

I did hear back from Brenda through 23andMe. She said I was right in my guess:

Brenda and I are at opposite ends of the tree. Brenda is also a first cousin to Paul. I had Paul’s DNA tested at FTDNA and uploaded his results to Gedmatch.com for analysis. Brenda got my painted chromosome up from 41% overall to 42%:

I changed my matches with Brenda to gold colored for those matches where DNA Painter showed we had an overlap with another Frazer match.

 

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A 23andMe DNA Match with Frazer Relative: Kat

It took me a while to figure who Katherine was at 23andMe. Here is how Katherine and I match by DNA at 23andMe:

Here is what 23andMe says:

Katherine and I should be in the range of third cousins. Fortunately, Katherine posted a photo at 23andMe. After looking at Facebook photos, I found some that were the same as Katherine’s photos at a Frazer Family Facebook page we are both on. The mystery is solved.

Here is how I show Kat on our Frazer tree:

I recently wrote a Blog on Rebecca and our match at AncestryDNA. So it has been good to find these Frazer DNA matches. My blog on Rebecca showed that I matched her more on the McMaster side than the Frazer side. This was not surprising as our common ancestor Margaret McMaster had two McMaster parents. Also Kat’s grandfather James Robert Frazer born 1927 married a McMaster. The advantage of Kat’s test compared to Rebecca’s DNA test is that I will be able to see how Kat and I match on specific chromosomes.

Painting Kat’s DNA Match

There is a web tool called DNA Painter that I use to show where my DNA matches are. Here is my current DNA Map:

This shows my paternal and maternal sides. My Frazer matches are on my paternal side. This shows I am 41% painted overall. I circled some of the areas that Kat could match me.

Here is just my paternal side where I am mapped at 50%:

I have a lot of green as I have a lot of Hartley 2nd cousins.

Adding Kat to the Mix

Kat got my DNA mapping up a percent from 50% to 51% on my paternal side. I mapped our DNA matches to “Frazer McMaster 1838” because that is where our shared DNA comes from.

Next, I’ll expand Chromosome 19 as that is where our largest match is:

Kat’s match with me in maroon overlaps with Keith’s match with me in blue. Keith has McMaster ancestry. That means that my match with Kat on Chromosome 19 is from the McMaster side. But which McMaster? For that we have to look at Keith’s genealogy.

Keith descends from Fanny and James McMaster. That means that the DNA that Kat and I share on Chromosome 19 must be from Margaret McMaster. For simplicity, I didn’t make a new box for Kat as Kat and Rebecca both have similar genealogy. Here is Margaret McMaster on the left who married George Frazer :

 

Because I know something more specific about this DNA, I’ll make a new category for Margaret McMaster’s DNA.

I added a dark green for Margaret McMaster’s DNA.

Emily’s McMaster DNA

The reasoning is the same for Emily who matches me on Chromosome 19, but the common ancestor goes back another generation:

This match with BV seems to indicate that the DNA is coming down from the McMaster side. BV also has Frazer ancestry, but that Frazer connection is too far back in time to consider.

My Chromosome 1 Match with Kat

Most of my paternal Chromosome 1 matches are on my Hartley side:

That explains why I don’t have room for a larger match with Kat. I can’t tell if my match with Kat is Frazer or McMaster, so I’ll leave it maroon which means it could be either.

Chromosome 7

Here I have a pink arrow pointing to my match with Kat. Right below Kat is a match with my cousin Paul and I have that as a George Frazer DNA segment in yellow. If I did that right, then my match with Kat also came from George Frazer. My reasoning is based on the two blue matches. They are from Susan and Ken:

Susan and Ken are related on the Frazer side. That means our overlapping segments came from the Frazer and not the McMaster side.

Here I have turned the match that I have with Kat from maroon to gold to indicate that it is a Frazer match. Right after that I have two blue matches. That represents a crossover that my father had from his mother. My dad’s mother had a Frazer father and a Clarke mother. Where I have the arrow pointing represents the change from Frazer to Clarke in the DNA that my father got from his mother and passed down to me.

Chromosome 10 – More Frazer DNA

I have a small match with Kat on Chromosome 10 that is right below a match I have with Michael in red:

Here is Michael:

This DNA comes down from Richard Frazer to his daughter Violet Frazer. I don’t want a new entry for Violet, so I’ll say that this DNA is from George Frazer. However, the DNA Kat and I share is actually from George’s mother Violet Frazer.

Chromosome 12

Chromosome 12 gets a little tricky, but it looks to be McMaster DNA for sure:

The first maroon match is with my cousin Paul. The second maroon match is my match with Kat. The purple match is with BV. BV had that small match with Emily on Chromosome 19 above. I have the other two pink matches going back to Abraham McMaster born in 1764. There is a lot of confusion about McMaster genealogy and how all lthe McMasters fit together. This cluster of matches may be a hint to unravel that confusion.

For right now, I’ll sign over to the two maroon segments to Margaret McMaster DNA (green segments):

I also showed some of the detail of my match with Warwick and our common ancestor of Abraham McMaster.

Here is Kat’s summary from DNA Painter:

  • The maroon is George Frazer or Margaret McMaster DNA
  • The yellow is George Frazer DNA
  • The green is Margaret McMaster DNA

Kat and I have a lot more McMaster and Frazer DNA, but this is just where our DNA intersects or matches.

Summary and Conclusions

  • The fact that Kat tested at 23andMe made it easy for me to see where we matched, and by how much on each chromosome
  • Once I added Kat’s matches to my other matches using DNA Painter, I could see whether our match was on the Frazer side or McMaster side for each segment where we matched.
  • One match that I had with Kat and descendants of Abraham McMaster may be a clue as to how Abraham McMaster fits in with the other McMaster genealogy.
  • If Kat uploads her DNA results to Gedmatch.com, she will be able to see how she matches other Frazer descendants by DNA.

 

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My Mom’s Lentz Family and Roberta Estes’ Lentz Family

Roberta Estes has blogged about her Lentz family. I have also blogged about my Lentz family. Roberta and I have checked to see if there was an autosomal DNA match between our two families, but we were unable to find any significant match. Recently, in checking my 23andMe results, it seems like there may be a way to see if we are related by YDNA.

My Mom’s Lentz Family YDNA

I have tested my DNA at 23andMe and have a few Lentz matches there. One good thing about 23andMe is that when you take an autosomal test, they also give you a rough estimate of your YDNA haplogroup. I have has two Lentz matches at 23andMe who are brothers. They both have this Haplogroup:

I’ve sent off messages to the two brothers. I don’t know exactly how we are related, but based on the size of the autosomal DNA match and where they live, my guess is that our common ancestors must be Jacob George Lentz and Annie Nicholson:

I don’t have record of William Lentz born 1892 as having any sons. William did have a brother named Stanley who had sons, so that may be where the two matches fit in. At any rate, their YDNA would go up through the Lentz side.

What is R-Y4355?

I would expect that 23andMe has an accurate haplogroup though not recent. Here is what YFull has on Y4355:

Above the tree, YFull gives the YDNA Line for this branch of Lentz back to Genetic Adam (listed as Home). This shows that Y4355 is about 4200 years old, so fairly old. I recognize R-U152 in that line as a major branch.

Roberta Estes’ Lentz YDNA

Here is what Roberta has in one of her Blogs:

Roberta has invested in the Big Y test for her Lentz relatives, so this is likely to be extremely accurate and fairly recent. YFull does not have BY39280, but has some information on KMS75:

Actually KMS75 is listed as +1SNPs above. The equivalent at YFull is Y20993 which was formed 4800 years ago. So this particular SNP is not that recent. BY39280 would be more recent but perhaps not by much.

The Short Answer

I would say that based on the 23andMe Haplogroup and the work that Roberta has done, these two families are not related. The common ancestor is R-L23 which was formed 6400 years before present. I’ll draw a tree for the two Lentz families:

I would have thought that Roberta’s Lentz Line would be longer, but it must be an older branch or a branch with less branching in it. So from the top of the tree to the bottom is about 2,000 years, but we still have about 4,000 years to get to the useful genealogical time.

Here is an R1b Tree:

I have an arrow pointing to where my Mom’s Lentz family and Roberta’s Lentz family split. The split goes to Western Altantic for my Mom’s Lentz family and Eastern for Roberta’s Lentz family. Interesting. U152 is a major branch. U152 begins below the ‘ic’ of Atlantic. Checking the YDNA was pretty easy. That concludes the YDNA part of the Blog. Next I’ll add my Lentz autosomal DNA to DNAPainter

Adding Lentz DNA to DNAPainter

I can add the autosomal DNA to DNA Painter for the two Lentz matches I have at 23andMe. Here is one match added to my Lentz/Nicholson common ancestors:

Jereme adds important DNA that I didn’t know about before. I didn’t have any DNA from these two common ancestors previously on Chromosomes 2, 3, 4 and 15. I have less of a match with Jereme’s brother Will:

I’ll paint in Will also even though he doesn’t add new information. Jereme matches me by 95 cM compared to Will’s 72 cM.

Jereme and Will upped my percentage of maternal mapped DNA from 30 to 32%. That is a significant jump at this stage of mapping:

Here is the maternal and paternal side:

I changed Lentz/Nicholson to a sort of pea green because it was the same blue as Clarke on my paternal side. I now have 41% DNA painted overall. I assume that this went up although I didn’t check to see what it was previously.

Summary and Conclusions

  • 23andMe has a useful feature that predicts your YDNA Haplogroup at no extra charge.
  • This feature can be used to see if you are related to male relatives of the same surname. In this case, I was related to two Lentz brothers with a predicted haplogroup. Roberta Estes had Lentz relatives tested for YDNA resulting in a known Haplogroup. I checked on Roberta’s Lentz relative’s YDNA haplogroup and it didn’t match up with my Lentz relative’s Haplogroup. I then found the common Haplogroup for the two Lentz families. The common haplogroup was over 6,000 years old.
  • It would be interesting to see if this could be used in other situations.
  • This Blog was short so I painted the autosomal DNA of my Lentz relatives using DNA Painter.

 

 

 

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Aunt Esther’s Newfoundland Ancestors, MyHeritage’s Theories of Relativity, and DNA Painter

I’m surprised that I have never written about my wife’s Aunt Esther’s Theories of Relativity (TOR). MyHeritage takes DNA matches and matches them up with ancestral trees. I’ll go through Esther’s Theories of Relativity.

Esther’s Top TOR – Wallace

I have Blogged about Wallace before. Here is how Wallace and Esther’s TOR looks like:

Esther and Wallace are 1st cousins once removed. I have already painted Wallace’s DNA onto Esther’s chromosome map.

Wallace accounts for some of the Esther’s green DNA above which represents DNA from either Henry Upshall or Catherine Dicks. The above map shows Esther’s paternal side which is 50% mapped.

TOR#2- Marilyn

Esther and Marilyn show as third cousins twice removed. The common ancestors are Christopher Dicks born about 1784 and Margaret. I don’t see Christopher Dicks on Esther’s Chromosome Painter Map. However, there is a problem with the match between Marilyn and Esther. The problem is that these two match by too much DNA for this relationship:

Marilyn and Esther share 151.5 cM. That puts them off the chart for 3C2R. However, there is a 0.46% chance of this being right. The more likely reason is that Marilyn and Esther match on more than one line. This is common with people who have Harbour Buffet genealogy. I’ll just ignore that for now and sort it out later, perhaps.

However, I see that Esther and Marilyn have this other match:

Marilyn descends from two of Christopher Dicks’ children: Robert and Rachel Dicks.

Here is how Marilyn and Esther match:

Here is the addition on Esther’s paternal side:

This brought up Esther’s paternally mapped DNA up 1% to 51% and her entire mapped DNA up 1% to 30%.

There is a utility at Gedmatch called ‘Are your parents related?’. Esther’s parents are related on several chromosomes. Here is one spot on Chromosome 2, where Esther matches Marilyn also:

I see that Wallace also matches Esther in this region.

TOR #3 – Annie

In the past, I have not looked much at Esther’s maternal side. That is because my mother-in-law is Esther’s half niece and is not related on Esther’s maternal side. However, I’ll look at Esther’s maternal side now.

I’ll just paint Annie’s match onto Esther. This is what Esther’s maternal side looks like so far at 8% painted:

The addition brings Esther’s maternal map back to the late 1700’s:

That gets Esther’s maternal side up to 10% painted.

I do see one problem at Chromosome 1 already:

Violet and Annie both match Esther on the right side of Chromosome 1. That segment cannot be for both shared ancestor couples. It could be that Violet has Shave and/or Parsons ancestors or some other similar explanation. This is another reason I haven’t looked into Esther’s maternal side!

TOR #4 – Josiah

Josiah looks like he could be Annie’s Uncle:

That also makes Josiah, Esther’s third cousin.

Josiah has a similar issue with Violet, but on a different segment of Chromosome 1:

I’ll file that under the category of ‘sort it out later’.

TOR #5 – Frederick

Frederick appears to be Annie’s brother. His Theory of Relativity is missing a generation, so I won’t show it. It turns out that Frederick didn’t add any new Shave/Parsons DNA to Esther’s map that his sister and uncle didn’t already have:

Frederick’s matches show up in grey cross-hatch above.

TOR #6 – Jacqueline

Esther also has Kirby ancestors, but this shows only the Shave/Parsons common ancestors.

I decided to change Shave/Parsons to yellow. Jacqueline adds quite a bit:

TOR #7 – David, Another Pafford Descendant

This could take a while as Esther has a lot of matches:

Stephen adds a large match to Esther’s Chromosome 1:

Esther’s maternal side is now 15% painted. Esher’s entire chromosomes are now 33% or one third painted:

As far as I know, MyHeritage does not show X Chromosome matches. That means that we have to go to Gedmatch to get X Chromosome matches.

Marilyn and Esther’s X Match

I mentioned Marilyn above. I know that her DNA has been uploaded to Gedmatch. The X Chromosome is a special case and follows a specific inheritance in that the X Chromosome is never passed down from father to son. That means that the X Chromosome match that Marilyn and Esther share was passed down from Margaret, the wife of Christopher Dicks. We can know that because of Esther’s tree:

Above, I had that Margaret may have been a Burton, but in looking at other trees, I don’t see that as much of an option.

Now Esther has a little color on her paternal side X Chromosome. That is the side that men don’t have. I could do much more, but I’ll get back to the Theories of Relativity.

TOR #8 – Rowena

Rowena takes us back a generation on the Dicks side:

I don’t know when this Christopher was born, but I’ll say about 1750. I’ll paint this match and see what happens. I see a few potential problems. One is that these segment sizes are quite large for such an old match:

The other potential problem is that Rowena and MB have a match with Esther that overlap on Chromosome 2:

Rowena’s common ancestor with Esther is Christopher Dicks and MB’s common ancestors are Peter Upshall and Margaret.

TOR’s #9 and 10 – Another Wallace and Valetta

This is not the same as the earlier Wallace but seems to be another brother of Annie:

As such, he did not add any more Shave/Parsons DNA to Esther’s map. TOR #10, Valetta appears to be Wallace’s sister.

TOR #11 – Laurie

Here is someone with a more recent Shave ancestor:

However, MyHeritage also shows this possible match:

To make things more confusing, Laurie has a Joseph Dicks in her tree which may be the same Joseph I have on Esther’s maternal side:

It may be that further DNA analysis could sort this out, but I’ll skip Laurie for now.

TOR #12 – Janet

Janet also has two TOR’s – one on Esther’s paternal side and one on her maternal side, so I’ll skip her for now also.

TOR #12 – Harold

Harold is forging into new old territory:

I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m tempted to add the Pike name to Esther’s maternal side.

As a follow-up, I could check on Esther’s likely maternal Pike ancestors.

Summaries and Conclusions

  • MyHeritage’s Theories of Relativity lend themselves to the DNA Painter program.
  • I had some problem when the Theories of Relativity were on Esther’s Paternal and Maternal sides, so I chose to ignore those situations.
  • One shortcoming of MyHeritage is that they don’t show X Chromosome matches. Those are important for showing specific common ancestors.
  • I could follow up on Esther’s DNA painting by looking for more Gedmatch matches.
  • It appears that Esther has Pike ancestry on her maternal side based on one Theory of Relativity

 

 

 

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MyHeritage and the Theory of Family Relativity

First, MyHeritage gets credit for a catchy name for their new utility. That reminds me of this cartoon:

MyHeritage is doing what AncestryDNA does in matching up family history trees and DNA. In this Blog, I’ll look at my top three matches at MyHeritage that use this utility.

Melanie

I have blogged about this connection previously through Melanie’s mother Emily. Actually, it looks like I have written three Blogs on this connection. I was quite happy to come across Melanie and Emily. Here is Melanie and my shared tree at MyHeritage:

As a result of our connection, I shared a photo I had of Melanie’s great-grandmother Violet Frazer which appears on her tree. Melanie says this would have been taken on her wedding day. This was a very clear and clean match. Melanie and I share 19.9 cM of DNA.

Celeste: Theory of Family Relativity #2

I don’t recall Celeste. So this is a new find for me.

Celeste and I share 12.7 cM of DNA on Chromosome 9:

I have a web page on the Snell family and what I have matches what Celeste has. In fact, Norman was born in the same Town that I was. Here are our common ancestors:

Mary Ann was from Nantucket. Her father had a business repairing ships. Otis was on an early whaling voyage from New Bedford to Hawaii. He jumped ship, made his way to Nantucket and married Mary Ann in 1828.

Celeste and Snell/Parker at DNA Painter

I can paint Celeste’s DNA onto my chromosome map:

This takes up a small segment in dark blue on the top part of Chromosome 9 (the paternal part) that was already taken up by my great-grandparents’ DNA. However, this DNA goes further back in time and is more specific.

Here is the expanded view of the paternal side of my Chromosome 9:

The dark blue overlaps with Beth and Jim, so that means that Beth and Jim should have Snell/Parker DNA in that area of their Chromosome 9 also.

Marilee: Family #3

My match with Melanie was known and accurate. My match with Celeste was unknown and accurate. My match with Marilee is known, but I had a different connection shown than MyHeritage shows. This is what MyHeritage shows:

Here is how I had Marilee’s connection:

I show Marilee in a separate John Line in pink. MyHeritage shows us both in the Richard Frazer Line. I circled myself in the Philip Line, but I am also in the Richard line above. I left my family out of the yellow line to save room.

So how do I reconcile these trees? MyHeritage (MH) shows an expanded view that seems convincing:

There is a connection shown and percentage that I had not noticed before. When I click on the green percentage, it gives a comparison between my tree and a third tree. The same with Marilee’s comparison. It compares Mariee’s John Frazer with a John James Frazer in another tree and gives the match a 100% probability.

There is another thing that I didn’t notice. There is a tab called Path 2:

This path compares to another tree, which I recognize as Joanna’s – a Frazer researcher.

So, Who Is Right?

We may both be right. All I have to do is show two lines of Frazer descent for Marilee and that will reconcile the two trees.

Marilee and the Richard Line

If Marilee is from the Richard Line, it would support the earlier birth dates for Richard and his siblings. So, that in itself is interesting. Here is what I have now for the Richard Line:

I’m not sure about David on the left. Jane was added in. She has many matches and appears to belong in this line. Here is a detailed comparison between John James Frazer and John Frazer:

Marilee’s Tree

Next, I compare this with Marilee’s tree:

Here is the disconnect. Both trees cannot be right. MyHeritage ignored Marilee’s tree in favor of two other trees. Interesting.

Based On the Above, Marilee Cannot Descend from John and Richard Frazer

That means that there is more work to be done to figure out which tree is right. One might argue that John Frazer born 1825 was named for his father’s father John born 1755. It may be that DNA analysis could shed light on which line Marilee would most likely be in. There is a program called What Are the Odds? (WATO). However, I have not used this yet. It takes two scenarios and looks at the odds of one scenario being more likely than the other based on DNA matching. This could be the subject of a future Blog in addition to more genealogical analysis.

Match #4: Warwick from New Zealand

I’m having fun, so why stop at three? Warwick is my third Irish connection out of my top four Relativily Matches:

According to MH, Warwick is my 4th cousin, once removed and we share 17.8 cM on Chromosome 12:

For a reality check, I make sure that I have Frazer grandparent DNA in that part of my Chromosome 12:

I do. I expect that my siblings Sharon, Jon and Lori will also match Warwick. They do. In fact Emily, Paul and Stephen who are known McMaster descendants are shared DNA matches between Warwick and me.

Checking Warwick’s Tree

Warwick’s tree matches with what I have on my McMaster Web Page – at least down to Samuel:

Let’s Paint Warwick

Warwick represents some very old DNA:

The darker colored DNA next to Warwick’s is my 2nd cousin Paul:

I now know that Paul’s Chromosome match with me goes back to his McMaster side. MH shows it like this:

Paul, Warwick and I are in a Triangulation Group (TG). This TG goes back to Abraham McMaster or his wife Margery.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I took my first look at MyHeritage’s Theory of Family Relativity to see how it worked
  • Match #1 was no surprise
  • Match #2 was a surprise as I didn’t know about it. I’m sure this match was buried deep in my match list and the program nicely pulled it out. The matching trees were easily verifiable.
  • Match #3 , Marilee, was on my radar. However, the MH utility brought into question Marilee’s tree. The utility disregarded Marilee’s tree in favor of two other trees. Now I am not sure of either tree and will need to do some more analysis of the Marilee’s DNA matches.
  • I ended the Blog with Match #4. This match easily mapped new DNA and a new common ancestor onto my DNA Painter Chromosome Map.
  • Overall, I like the program and now see how it works. MH has an advantage over the AncestryDNA programs in that they show where on the chromosome the matches take place.
  • The down-side to the MH Relativity is that I only have 6 matches in the program. The two that I didn’t look at are related to the ones that I did look at.
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My Son’s AncestryDNA Results Are In

I recently got an email saying my son JJ’s DNA results were in. JJ shows this on his main AncestryDNA page:

There is a third box for DNA Circles, but those take a while to form after JJ’s DNA is linked to a tree. Here is how JJ compares to his sister Heather:

Both JJ and Heather come out as mostly England, Wales and Northwestern Europe. However, JJ’s #2 Ethnicity is Eastern Europe and Russia and Heather’s #2 is Germanic Europe. Another thing that stands out is that JJ has about 150 more 4th cousin or closer matches.

JJ and Heather’s Ethnicity

One would think that the ethnicity would come out the same for Heather and JJ as siblings, but it doesn’t. Here is what JJ shows:

JJ shows 3% Baltic within the larger Eastern Europe and Russia.

Heather doesn’t show the 3% Baltic but has 3% France instead:

The overall effect is the same.

JJ and Heather Each Have One SubRegion of England

These are subtle differences. JJ has Yorkshire & Pennines within Northern England and the Midlands:

Heather has the SubRegion of Northern England & the Midlands, but doesn’t have it broken down further like JJ has:

That means that while JJ and Heather both have the subregion: Northern England & the Midlands, JJ has the sub-sub region of Yorkshire & Pennines.

JJ and Heather At Gedmatch Genesis

As siblings, JJ and Heather match each other in a way that they match no one else. Here is how JJ and Heather compare to each other on Chromosomes 19-21:

We each have a male and female copy of our chromosomes. However the results don’t distinguish which is which and combine the two. On the bottom of each chromosome above is a blue or black region. Blue is where JJ and Heather match each other and black is where they don’t match. On the top part, there is either green, red or yellow. Red is where there is no match. The yellow above the blue is called a half match also known as an HIR. The green is called a Fully Identical Region (or FIR).

What Do These Three Regions Mean?

No match means no match. However, a good way to look at this is in terms of grandparents. JJ and Heather got their DNA from their four grandparents: Hartley, Rathfelder, Jarek and Cavanaugh.

  • No Match – An example would be if JJ got his paternal DNA From Hartley and maternal DNA from Jarek in a no match region, that would mean that Heather must have gotten her paternal DNA from Rathfelder and her maternal DNA from Cavanaugh
  • HIR – These regions are a little trickier. This means that if JJ and Heather both got their paternal DNA from Hartley and JJ got his from Jarek, then Heather got her maternal DNA from Cavanaugh in that half matching region.
  • FIR – This means that if JJ got his DNA in this region from Hartley and Jarek, then Heather also would have to have gotten her DNA from Hartley and Jarek.

Visual Phasing for JJ and Heather

Visual Phasing is more difficult for two siblings than for three or more, but let’s try it on Chromosome 19. First I put some information onto a spreadsheet, but it is just a place for phasing:

In the middle no match, I represented the four grandparents as four different colors:

There looks like there may be a tiny match in the middle of the non-match, but I am ignoring that for now.

Cheating on the Rathfelder Side

JJ and Heather’s Rathfelder grandmother has been tested so this should be a big clue. Here is how JJ and Heather match their paternal grandmother:

What does this mean? This means that Heather matches her paternal grandmother on the whole length of the Chromosome. Again, I’m ignoring the non-match in the pink area (called the centromere).

In the chart above, I had Heather’s paternal as blue in the middle region. Let’s call blue Rathfelder.

 

The places where I have the vertical lines in the spreadsheet above correspond the changes in the ways that JJ and Heather match each other. These are called crossovers. That means that at these spots the DNA that they got from one grandparent will cross over to the DNA that they got from another one. These crossovers are either maternal or paternal.

Already, I also know that JJ’s Yellow will be Hartley. That is his only other choice for a paternal grandparent. Next I put the JJ’s Rathfelder DNA in:

Now JJ has two paternal crossovers. His paternal DNA goes from Rathfelder to Hartley and then back to Rathfelder. JJ’s crossover is at 7 Million, because that is where the DNA match with is Rathfelder grandmother stops.

Next, because JJ has a paternal crossover at position 46, that means that he probably doesn’t have a maternal crossover at the same spot. Because of that, I’ll move JJ’s green DNA a little to the left and all the way to the right:

On the right hand side there is a half match. That half match is blue, so the orange can extend to the right on Heather’s maternal side:

Using the same logic for the small segment on the left, I can move the orange a little way to the left:

 

Now I am stuck on the left HIR segment. I don’t know if the maternal crossover goes to Heather or to JJ. If it goes to Heather, then that means that the left maternal segment for JJ will be green. If JJ has the crossover, it will be orange. A maternal cousin match could solve this.

Painting JJ’s Chromosomes

I’ll come back to visual phasing later. Now I’d like to paint JJ’s chromosomes. I had painted Heather’s previously. This shows Heather’s known maternal matches on her Jarek side:

These appear to be four siblings or close relatives. They are not relatives that Heather knows, but relatives with known Jarek ancestors. I could use this information for visual phasing as these chromosomes should be easier to visually phase.

The Same Matches But Matched To JJ

Back To Visual Phasing

JJ has a pretty good match on Chromosome 18, so I’ll try that one next:

Here we have almost the same scenario as in Chromosome 19, except that there is one more crossover on the right. I put in numbers at 9.8 and 53 to give a general idea of where we are. These correspond to where JJ and Heather match each other.

Here is how JJ and Heather’s paternal Rathfelder grandmother match them on Chromosome 18:

This time JJ gets a full dose of Rathfelder DNA.

 

I put in Heather’s Rathfelder DNA also.

Next, I want to visually phase Heather and JJ’s first maternal side DNA. Actually, I phased it on Chromosome 19, but I couldn’t identify it due to lack of DNA matches with known ancestry. Now we can do that. My guess is that green will be Jarek and orange will be Cavanaugh. By eye it looks that way.

JJ’s match with one Jarek descendant goes from 33 to 53.8, so that is the case.

I filled in the yellow Hartley for Heather as it should go up to where Heather matches her Rathfelder grandmother. Now I am stuck, but I have identified a Cavanaugh segment for Heather based on JJ’s Jareck DNA.

Chromosome 4 – Some Cavanaugh DNA for JJ

From DNA Painter, here are JJ’s Jarek DNA matches:

Here are Heather’s Jarek DNA matches:

Heather has extra Jarek matches that JJ doens’t have. That means that JJ probably has Cavanaugh DNA where Heather has her first two Jarek DNA matches.

Unfortunately, Chromosome 4 is longer and will have more crossovers:

This time I’ll start at the FIR. That means that JJ and Heather have the match on the same two grandparents on their paternal and maternal sides. I’ll have to switch the colors to keep them consistent. I said that JJ should be going from Cavanaugh to Jarek:

Here is JJ’s first identified maternal crossover.

Next, I’d like to add in the Rathfelder DNA:

The blue is Rathfelder. The matching segments information is how Heather and JJ match their grandmother. This is the same as the blue Rathfelder segments above. Where there isn’t blue Rathfelder DNA, I have put in yellow Hartley DNA.

Heather’s first Jarek descendant match goes from 85M to 109M:

At this point, I am stuck again:

There is a maternal crossover at 85, but I can’t tell if it belongs to JJ or Heather.

A Spreadsheet For JJ and Heather Using Gedmatch Genesis

At Genesis, I used JJ’s and my own DNA to make two more kits for JJ. One has an M1 designation and one is P1 for maternal and paternal. Genesis has a utility called Segment Search. I’ll use this once for JJ’s maternal matches and once for his paternal matches.

JJ’s Maternal Matches

Here are some of JJ’s maternal matches. I downloaded about 1,000 of them:

I made them pink for maternal. The green matches are the ones over 15 cM. JJ’s largest match above is with Heather. Note that JJ has maternal matches on Chromosome 4 between 80 and 89M. That means that he should not have a maternal crossover at 85M. That means that Heather should have the maternal crossover at 85M. Let’s look at Heather’s maternal results next.

Heather’s Maternal Matches at Genesis

Here are Heather’s Chromosome 4 maternal matches:

Notice that Heather has no matches going through position 85. Actually, Heather has matches going up to 84.3 and then starting again at about the same spot or at 85M. This tells me that Heather has a maternal crossover where I thought.

If I did this right, I should find Cavanaugh ancestor matches for Heather and JJ in their orange areas and Jarek ancestor matches in their green areas of Chromosome 4. Unfortunately, Heather and JJ have small matches in their orange areas which means that the relationships represented by those matches could be quite distant.

Near position 14, there aren’t a lot of matches, so I would be guessing more than usual there as to where the crossover goes. What about the right side of Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 4? First I need to figure out where the crossover is. For that I need to look at how JJ and Heather match each other at full resolution:

Each  ^ is 1M, so the change from all green to more yellow is at about 167.6M. Again, neither JJ nor Heather have good matches in that area, so I can’t tell where their maternal crossover is using that method.

Summary and Conclustions

  • I started looking at JJ’s AncestryDNA test results. I first compared JJ’s ethnicity with what his sister Heather showed. JJ shows a more detailed sub-region in England compared to Heather. JJ shows a Baltic region that Heather doesn’t show and Heather shows a France Region that JJ doesn’t have. The overall effect is the same, but the smaller details vary a bit.
  • I looked at how JJ and Heather compare to eatch other with HIRs, FIRs and no-match areas. Using these, I was able to start to visually phase Heather and JJ. I haven’t been able to identify matches along JJ and Heather’s Cavanaugh maternal grandparent side, so that made the phasing a little more difficult. JJ and Heather’s paternal side is already phased by comparing their results to their Rathfelder grandmother.
  • I downloaded JJ and Heather’s maternal matches from Gedmatch Genesis. Some of these matches were helpful in assigning maternal crossovers for their visual phasing maps.
  • Some other things that I could do would be AutoClustering JJ’s AncestryDNA results, more DNA Painting and more match identification. I would still like to figure out at least one match on JJ or Heather’s Cavanaugh side.