X Chromosome – Hartley DNA & Genealogy

October 12, 2019

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

January 12, 2017January 12, 2017

My First 1st Cousin DNA Results: Part 3 – The X Chromosome

In my first Blog about Cousin Rusty’s DNA matches, I discussed some maternal matches. I also looked at how first cousin DNA matches worked. In my second Blog about Rusty, I looked at the more complicated matching of nephew to aunt. In this Blog, I would like to look at the X Chromosome.

Here is how Rusty matches my family on the X Chromosome as shown in the Gedmatch Browser:

These are his matches with:

Mom
Sister Heidi
Me (Joel)
Sister Sharon
Brother Jonathan

Here is an X Chromosome Map produced by M MacNeill before my brother Jonathan’s DNA results were in. He made this using our raw DNA results.

The blue is the maternal side where there are matches with Rusty. The red is what my sisters inherited on the Hartley side. MacNeill did not designate the blue by grandparent. The choices for maternal grandparents here are Alexander Rathfelder and Emma Lentz. Let’s try to figure out which is which.

Speaking of Emma and Alexander, here they are with their five children:

Rusty’s mom is the girl on the left and my mom is the girl on the right.

The X Path

The X Chromosome follows a particular path from our ancestors. The rule is that the X DNA never travels from male to male. So that means that two males in a path will break the X chain. Here are my top picks for X Chromosome matches:

The matches in the browser were through the green people up to Rathfelder and Lentz. Judy has the potential to match on the Lentz/Nicholson side. Joshua could also have shared X, though he is further down the ladder. Carolyn could match on the Nicholson side.

Carolyn’s Nicholson X DNA

I’ll look at Carolyn’s X DNA matches.

She matches:

My Mom
Sharon from 106672721 to 113198089 (7.056 cM)
Jonathan from 139830607 to 143171128 (11.542 cM)
Judith
Joan

Based on Sharon’s small match, I would initially say that the darker blue is Lentz and the lighter is Rathfelder on the MacNeill Map. However, the problem with that theory is that I should match Carolyn also in that area. If I reduce the match level, I do have a match there with Carolyn:

Mapping Jonathan’s X

In order to be sure, we need to map Jonathan’s X. He has a larger X match with Carolyn than Sharon does – even though it looks smaller on the browser. Here is some previous X Mapping I had done for my sister Sharon (S), me Joel (J) and my sister Heidi (H).

It looks like I had already guessed that orange would be Lentz. Recall that Sharon’s (S) match with Carolyn was 106-113 and mine was 109-113 within the orange segments. When I compare Jon to his siblings, it looks like he has 3 crossovers:

As we are only looking at Jon’s maternal Chromosome, we are looking at the blue areas on the Chromosome Browser where he matches his siblings and the non-blue areas where he does not match his siblings.

This was pretty easy. I started on the right. Jon matches all his siblings, so that has to be green. Going from right to left, the segments alternate between green and orange. The only ambiguous part is on the left hand side where Heidi has a small orange Lentz segment. However, if I lower the thresholds for Jon’s match with Heidi, I get this left side match which clears up the ambiguity:

Gedmatch normally has a SNP cutoff at 500, but apparently they have not lowered that for the X One to One match and must still have a 700 SNP cutoff.

Now back to Jon’s match with Carolyn. I had noted above that it was at position 140 to 143. That just fits in to Jon’s Lentz mapped orange segment as shown by the red arrow below:

This confirms that yellow should indeed be assigned to Lentz. That means that green has to be Rathfelder – the only other maternal grandparent.

Now I’ll bring Rusty back into the picture with his matches to my family:

Rusty’s match with my mom is line 1
Heidi is line 2. You can see her Lentz indent on the left of her match with Rusty.
Joel is line 3. You can see the space left by Lentz in the middle of my large match with Rusty
Sharon is 4. Her match with Rusty stops at her Lentz (orange) segment
The newly mapped Jonathan is 5. He matches Rusty on his green Rathfelder segments.

So would we be able to guess Rusty’s X Map?

Rusty’s X Chromosome is either mostly or all Rathfelder. The part I’m unsure of is between 120 and 140 cM. The reason that I think that it might be Rathfelder is because Carolyn matches Judith and Joan in that segment and Rusty does not match any of those three by the X Chromosome. However, as Carolyn’s Nicholson matches go back at least another generation, that is not proof.

Looking at the ??????? Gap

I’m curious as to what is happening where Rusty and my mom don’t match. The answer to this goes back a generation. Alexander Rathfelder’s parents were Rathfelder and Gangnus. My mom and Rusty’s mom had two different X Chromosome maps showing how they got their X DNA from their grandparents. However, on their paternal side, their Rathfelder father gave them a full X Chromosome unchanged from his mother Maria Gangnus.

Here is Maria:

So due to the fact that Rusty’s mom and my mom both have the same paternal grandmother DNA on the entire length of their X Chromosome, that means that Rusty cannot have Rathfelder aka Gangnus DNA from 120 to 140. If he did, then he would have to show a match to my mother.

The result of our little thought experiment is that Rusty has to have Lentz DNA. Here is a possible scenario of what could have happened. This shows Rusty with his maternal grandparents. Then we see Rusty’s mom and my mom with their X Chromosome grandparents. Maria Gangnus is Alexander Rathfelder’s mother and Emma Lentz’s parents are George Jacob Lentz and Annie Nicholson.

What we know for sure is that Rusty’s mom and my mom both had a full X Chromosome from their paternal grandmother, Maria Gangnus. The only place for there to be difference is on my mom’s and Rusty’s mom’s maternal X Chromosome. Suppose that Rusty’s mom got her DNA from her maternal Nicholson grandmother and my mom got her DNA from her maternal Lentz grandfather. That would be why Rusty’s Lentz DNA would not match my Lentz DNA or my sibling’s Lentz DNA. We only got the X DNA that we received from our mothers and these mothers got DNA from different maternal grandparents in this location. We now know what Rusty’s X Chromosome map looks like. We don’t know what our mother’s maternal X DNA looks like. We only know they had DNA from different maternal grandparents from 120M to 140M.

August 11, 2016April 13, 2017

More Hartley DNA – Patricia’s DNA

This blog is a follow-up on my last Blog: My Hartley Autosomal DNA. I was inspired to write that blog following this year’s Hartley reunion in Rochester, Massachusetts. I intended to send around a little poster I made up about Hartley DNA and get a DNA sample from my father’s cousin Martha, but didn’t get a chance to. Instead I wrote a blog. I did talk to Patricia though. She is my second cousin and the sister of my childhood best friend, Warren. She had taken an AncestryDNA test. I think her daughter bought it for her. I asked if she could upload her DNA to gedmatch.com and she said that her daughter would be good at doing that.

Here are Patricia’s 2 brothers and Patricia. The one in the middle was my best friend in my first 6 years of school. I remember seeing home movies of Curtis, Warren’s older brother. He came to one of my older siblings’ birthday party when he was about this age.

In my last blog, I wrote about the Hartley DNA matches my father’s first cousin Jim had with me and my 2 sisters. I was surprised to find out that every match that we had represented one of my four 2nd Great Grandparents. They were all born around the 1830’s. It turns out that Patricia’s matches with cousin Jim represent the same four 2nd great grandparents. In addition Patricia’s DNA matches with my 2 sisters and me represent the same four old timers.

Here is what my DNA match to Patricia looks like at AncestryDNA:

Here, AncestryDNA has it right that we are 2nd cousins. They show we match for a total of 206 cM (centimorgans) across 14 DNA segments. That is about all you can get out of ancestry. They won’t tell you which chromosomes we match on or how much we match on each chromosome. That is why people upload their results to gedmatch.com. Ancestry does show other people that match DNA to both Patricia and me. These are my 2 sisters and 5 others. All these people also descend from the same Rochester Hartley ancestors, but none of them have uploaded their results to gedmatch.com, so we don’t know their detailed DNA matching information.

Here is the same match between Patricia and me at Gedmatch:

Ancestry has 14 segments vs. the 8 at Gedmatch. But at Gedmatch we know on which chromosome we match, how much on each chromosome and the exact start and stop location on the Chromosome. However, even with Ancestry’s 14 segments, their total is a bit smaller. Here is how I match Patricia on Chromosome 15 in the Gedmatch Chromosome Browser:

The blue areas represent the two DNA matches Patricia and I have on Chromosome 15.

Patricia on the Hartley Family Tree

Growing up, Patricia’s grandmother was my great aunt and also one of my neighbors, my Aunt Mary.

The bottom box in each row are the people that have tested their DNA and uploaded to gedmatch.com. I now show 3 of the 13 children of James Hartley and Annie Louisa Snell (James, Mary and Annie). I now can check how my sisters and I match Patricia’s DNA as well as how Patricia matches Jim’s DNA.

Here are my great grandparents and three of their older children.

It is in interesting photo. Two of the children are looking away. I think that one is my grandfather James. The mother, Annie, is looking at something in her hands. The older son Dan is looking at a book and the father James doesn’t look comfortable being dressed up.

Patricia’s DNA at Gedmatch

One of the basic functions at gedmatch is called ‘One to Many’. In this case, I took Patricia’s DNA and compared them to everyone else that has ever uploaded their DNA results to gedmatch. Here are her 1st 4 matches:

Not surprisingly, her top matches are her 1st cousin, once removed, Jim, me and my sister’s Sharon and Heidi. The Gen column lists how far away gedmatch thinks Patricia’s matches are to a common ancestor. Patricia and I are 3 generations to James Hartley and Annie Snell, so that is right. Patricia shows 2.6 generations to a common ancestor with her match to Jim. A first cousin once removed would typically be 2.5 generations, so she shares a little less DNA than average here with Jim. Patricia also shares 19.3 cM of the X Chromosome with cousin Jim which I find interesting.

The Hartley X Chromosome

I’m taking the X Chromosome out of order because I find it interesting. There is one most important thing to know about the X Chromosome. If you are a male, you get one from your mother. If you are a female, you get one from your mother and one from your father. My father only got an X chromosome from his Frazer mother, so he doesn’t match anyone further up on the Hartley line by the X Chromosome. However Patricia and Jim both have maternal matches that carry up the line.

Here is how Jim got his X Chromosome from his mother and her ancestors:

Jim only inherited his X Chromosome from those ancestors in pink or blue. So, for example, he got no X Chromosome from any Bradford before Harvey Bradford.

We need to compare Jim’s chart with Patricia’s X Inheritance Chart:

Here I didn’t show the X Chromosome that Patricia got from her father as this won’t match Jim. Then of what I show, only the bottom half will match Jim. This means that going back 4 generations from Patricia, she could match Jim by the X Chromosome on the Emmet, Snell or Bradford Line. One other difference between Jim and Patricia is that Jim got 100% of his total X Chromosome from his mother and Patricia only got 50%. However, that is a confusing way to put it because Patricia did get 2 X Chromosomes. So her one 50% must be similar to Jim’s 100% if that makes sense.

Here is what the X Chromosome match looks like between Patricia and Jim at gedmatch.com on their browser:

The yellow part with the blue under it is where they match at the end of the X Chromosome. That is enough on my X diversion for now.

Back to the Hartley DNA Matches on the Other 22 Chromsomes

At gedmatch, I go to the Jim’s ‘One to Many’ matches to see how he matches my family and Patricia. Here are Jim’s top 4 matches. You may have already guessed who they are:

Above, I said that Patricia matched Jim a little less than expected. My sister Heidi at the top of the list matches him a little more than average.

Here are Jim’s DNA matches on Chromosome 1

Me
Heidi
Sharon
Patricia

Here Patricia has identified a new piece of DNA in green that is a Hartley ancestor that we didn’t know about before. Again, this “Hartley” ancestor may be Hartley, Emmet, Snell or Bradford.

Here is another new Hartley segment on Chromosome 2:

Patricia matched Jim on Chromosome 2. My sisters and I had no match with Jim on that Chromosome.

It looks like Patricia got a double segment of Hartley DNA on Chromosome 5:

Patricia is #1 above. Where the color changes from orange to yellow likely represents a change from Greenwood Hartley to Ann Emmet DNA or Isaiah Snell to Hannah Bradford DNA.

Patricia Helping Me Map My Chromosome 7

I’ve tried to map all my chromosomes as well as my 2 sisters’ to my 4 grandparents. I got a little stuck on Chromosome 7:

My chromosome 7 depiction is the one with the J to the left of it. On my paternal side (which is the blue (FRAZER) and red bar), I have the DNA I got from my dad’s mother in blue and my dad’s Hartley dad in red. Above that is the gedmatch depiction of how I match my 2 sisters by DNA and how they match each other. The bright green bar is called the Fully Identical Region or FIR. This means wherever that occurs a sibling matches the other sibling by getting the same DNA from the same 2 grandparents (one maternal and the other paternal). So in comparing Sharon to Heidi, they have that FIR from 0 to 25. It turns out that their 2 grandparents were their mother’s mother (Lentz) and their father’s father (Hartley). In the tiny section between 0 and 4, I have what is called a Half Identical Region or HIR. That means that I shared one grandparent’s DNA with my sisters and the other grandparent I didn’t get any of their DNA. In this case I had to share either the Lentz or Hartley grandparent with my 2 sisters, but I didn’t know which.

That is where Patricia’s results came in handy. Here is how she matches Sharon, Heidi and me:

Patricia has 3 good matches with Sharon and Heidi and one tiny one with me (#3 on the Chromosome Browser). However, the tiny one is the one I need. The pink match shows that my Chromosome 7 from 0-4 (in millions) is where I got my DNA from my Hartley grandfather and not my Frazer grandmother.

Here is my completed Chromosome 7 thanks to Patricia. I extended the Rathfelder on my Chromosome 7 all the way to the left or beginning and added a small chunk of red Hartley from my grandfather.

Another Type of Chromosome Mapping

There’s is another type of Chromosome Mapping developed by Kitty Munson. The way the Munson Mapping is generally used is to map out your relatives’ common ancestors. In the case of Patricia and Jim our common ancestors are James Hartley and Annie Louisa Snell. Here is what my new Chromosome Map looks like with the addition of Patricia’s DNA matches with me shown in blue.

Well, that’s about enough for Patricia’s DNA for now.

Summary and Conclusions

Patricia shared the first Hartley X Chromosome match that I’ve seen.
The X tends to shy away from the male line, so Patricia and Jim’s match is more likely down somewhere in the Massachusetts colonial line rather than the English Line.
I would like to use Hartley DNA to break through the Hartley genealogical brick wall. Right now I’m stuck in the early 1800’s in Trawden, England. There were too many Hartleys there with the same first name to figure out who was who. Patricia’s DNA may help in finding matches to other Hartleys
Patricia’s DNA helped me in mapping my chromosomes in 2 different ways.

November 3, 2015November 19, 2015

Phasing the X Chromosome

This is my 3rd Blog on the X Chromosome. In my first blog, I wrote about a large match my sister Sharon had with a previously unknown woman named Karen and where it likely came from along the lines of my Irish Frazer ancestors. In the next Blog I wrote more about that match and how Charlotte who was already in the Frazer DNA project matched and triangulated with my sister Sharon and Karen. My earlier posts:

The Nexus of X’s

The X Factor – Part 2

What is DNA Phasing?

DNA phasing is determining which side your DNA matches are on. According to ISOGG which is generally my standard reference source:

…it is the process of trying to determine which DNA came from the mother, and which came from the father. The term is usually applied to types of DNA that recombine, such as autosomal DNA or the X-chromosome. The benefit of phasing is being able to identify which ancestor a segment was inherited from.

In this blog I’ll just be writing about the X-chromosome phasing.

My Easy Male X Phasing

For males, the phasing is easy. I got all my only X-chromosome from my mother. That means my X is already phased. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I have hardly any X matches. I have 8 X matches at Gedmatch above 10 cM. This is not counting my mom and 2 sisters. However 4 of those 8 have the same email address. That means that it is likely that they are related to each other. Here are my top 8 non-immediate family X matches from Gedmatch.com:

As I mentioned they are already phased as they are all from my mom. Here are a few observation on my few X matches (which Gedmatch labels Chr 23):

It appears that matches 3-7 match each other. This may be verified by performing a ‘one to one’ analysis at gedmatch. If they match each other, that would mean they triangulate and come from a common set of ancestors. When I checked match 3 against match 4, it appears that they are closely related as I expected. When I checked match 3 against the shorter match 7, I show a match. That means, as expected, I appear to be in a triangulation group with the 4 in the same family plus match #7.
From the details which are not shown, 7 of the 8 of these are from Ancestry. I am able to email these people and if they respond I may be able to see their Ancestry Trees and determine where these matches may be.
Matches 1, 2, and 8 show little to no overlap with each other and show no overlap with the larger group of matches.

Phasing My Sister’s DNA

In order to see any Paternal X matches, I will have to go to my sisters’ results. Each of my sisters got an X Chromosome from my dad. In fact, what they got from my dad was the same X that he got from his mom unchanged. But before, we get to my sisters’ paternal X, we’ll look at the maternal. My sisters also each received an X Chromosome from our mother.

My Sister’s X Maternally Phased

Wherever I match my sisters, this would also have to represent their maternal matches. So in a sense I am being used to maternally phase my sisters. Here is how I match them using the same gedmatch browser.

Here, my #1 and #2 matches are my sisters Heidi and Sharon. Matches 3-10 are the same as my old matches 1-8 above. A few notes:

The colored segments in #1 and #2 represent the maternal X matches I share with my 2 sisters.
This shows how my sisters match my numbers 8, 9, and 10 matches.
Remember my cluster of matches that I thought should triangulate? Heidi (#1) doesn’t clearly match that group, but my sister Sharon (#2) does.
On the top right, I match my sisters, but we match none of my other matches below. I suspect that has to do with my mother’s father. He immigrated to the U.S. from Latvia in the early 1900’s and has very few DNA matches that I have found so far. When I search for Rathfelder or Gangnus in my DNA matches, I haven’t found anything so far. Some of the more distant German ancestors names come up, but not these.
Just looking at the groupings with my sisters, there are 4 different groupings. These represent segments my mother inherited from some of her ancestors. I say some, because she inherited no X from her father’s father. X is never passed down from father to son.

How Is This Helpful?

It is always helpful to know whether a match is on the maternal or paternal side. This eliminates half of your matches. DNA analysis can be looked at as a narrowing down process. Narrowing down 1/2 of many thousand autosomal matches can save a lot of time. However X Chromosome matches narrow down further. If there is a maternal X match, I know that it has to be in the following blue or pink areas of my mother’s ancestors.

These matches are even narrowed down further. That is because in order to have a true X match you have to show that the person you are matching is also matching on the X Inheritance portion (pink or blue) of their own chart.

Finally, here are all my X matches from Gedmatch (except for my mom). There is a reason I’m showing you this.

Now I see 5 groupings.

In the second grouping under my longest match with #1 (Heidi), there are 2 subgroupings. These likely represent older families beneath the more recent family above them.
The 4th group (of one) #25 only matches me and no one else – not even my sisters.
Now look at my mother’s pink and blue chart above. At her great grandparent level, there are 5 people she could have gotten her X Chromosomes from. These are Gangnus, Lütke, Baker, Nicholson, and Ellis. It is possible that these 5 segments represent those families.
As I mentioned above, I have not come up with the surname Gangnus in any of my DNA searches so far. That tells me that Group 5 or the top right match with only my 2 sisters and no one else could represent the X Chromosome portion that we received from my mother’s great grandfather. He was Johann Philipp Gangnus born on 22 May 1829 at Hirschenhof, Latvia.

One of the reasons that I’m looking at my X results in such detail is that I don’t have many of them. The male X matches can be more significant that the female X matches. This is because the male’s matches are already phased. At a lower cM level, they are more likely to be real matches.

A Second Look: Phasing by Ancestry Composition

In my 5 grouping theory above, I guessed that I may have inherited all 5 of my mother’s possible X match families. Unfortunately, I have reason to doubt that. One reason is, that in my limited reading on the subject, the X Chromosome can be quirky and come down as an all or nothing thing. In other words, it would be unlikely that I would inherit all of these families’ X Chromosomes.

Not many companies look at the ancestry composition of the X Chromosome. I’m not sure why. I’ve tested at 23andme and they do. 23andme shows me as the following, taking into consideration all Chromosomes (1-22) and the X Chromosome:

This information is put on a chromosome browser. Note that there is a maternal and paternal section of the browser. Unfortunately, not having my mom tested at 23andme, I can’t tell which half is maternal and which is paternal. Also note there is just one line for the X Chromosome which for me is the only possible maternally matched X Chromosome.

It is difficult to make out the differences in the blues, but when I look at the French and German side, I get the entire X Chromosome as well as some other chromosomes. As far as I know, my Nicholson and Ellis ancestors were from deep within England. If 23andme is right, it seems to indicate that I didn’t get any Nicholson or Ellis X Chromosome or it would show some X Ancestry as being British & Irish. My mother’s other X ancestors were German – either of late or from around colonial Philadelphia.

This means that I would have to go back another generation on the pink and blue chart above. This represents my mother’s 2nd great grandparents. When I take out the Nicholson and Ellis families, that still leaves me with 5 German families: Biedermann, Luetke, Fuhrmann, Baker and Faunce. My suspicions seem to be confirmed by my second cousin. Judy has tested at 23andme.

Judy, Where’s Our X Match?

Judy and I have many matches, but none on the X Chromosome. Based on the X Chromosome inheritance, I’m in line to share an X with her from our Nicholson ancestors. There are 3 possible reasons we may not share an X match: 1) my Nicholson X dropped out; 2) her Nicholson X dropped out; or 3) both of our Nicholson X’s dropped out! Perhaps Judy will upload her results to Gedmatch.com and we will be able to figure out more on how we match or don’t match based on my 2 sisters’ matches with her.

Above is the chart showing that Judy and I could share an X, but according to 23andme, we don’t. A few notes on this chart:

Judy and I have the potential to share Annie Nicholson’s X chromosome.
Jacob Lentz’ X makes it down to me (through Emma), but not down to Judy.
Wm Nicholson Lentz got his only X from his Nicholson mother
My grandmother Emma had a recombined X from her parents. Likewise my mom had a recombined X from her parents.
Likewise Judy’s mother had recombined X from her grandparents, and Judy had recombined X from her parents.
That means between Judy and me, Annie Nicholson’s X chromosome could have recombined at total of 4 times (2 on each side).
When I say recombined, I mean potentially recombined. The X sometimes ‘decides’ not to combine. Apparently that happened on one or both sides as Judy and I don’t share any or Annie’s red X Chromosome.

On To the Male Phasing of the X Chromosome

This is where I drop out. As a male I’m pretty useless. (I left that one wide open.) I’ll have to switch to my sisters’ matches now. One way to find out my sisters’ male phased X Chromosomes would be to compare their matches to a cousin. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my paternal cousin to test. I emailed, but got no response. Here’s how it would’ve worked out:

The red shows that my sister and her paternal 1st cousin would share my father’s mother’s X Chromosome inheritance. But how would we ever find the X for my father’s father? The answer is that we couldn’t for my sisters because they only got my father’s X that he got from his mother which is unrecombined Frazer DNA. However, I have had my father’s 1st male cousin tested. He inherited an X from his mother who was a Hartley (my grandfather’s sister). So his X Chromosome should match with my paternal first cousin’s X Chromosome. This is because my Aunt got her Hartley X Chromosome from her father. And he got his from his mother who was a Snell. So it still doesn’t get at the Hartley Chromosome so much but gets closer to that side.

I think this is what ISOGG means when it simply says:

To phase your X-chromosome, all you need is knowledge of your ancestry.

It seems you need knowledge of your ancestry plus a lot of testing.

Any Other Ideas?

As I look at my spreadsheet for Heidi, her results from gedmatch are phased. How did this happen? Here is a portion of the chart:

Here the blue would be paternal X and the pink is maternal for Heidi’s matches. The large 56.2 match was discussed in my previous blogs and was believed to be from the Frazer side (which is my family’s paternal side). When I got my sister’s raw DNA results and uploaded them to gedmatch, I had them phased. Gedmatch has a program that takes your results and one of your parents and based on those results puts your results into a paternal file and a maternal file. I took the maternal side and ran all the matches at gedmatch. Then I took the paternal side of Heidi’s matches and ran all the matches. I combined the 2 and voilà got one file showing paternal and maternal matches for Heidi. This worked for Chromosomes 1-22 as well as the X Chromosome.

Sharon’s X Matches

Here the matches to my sister Sharon with a Kit # are from Gedmatch. The other matches are from FTDNA. For some reason I didn’t get around to adding Heidi’s FTDNA matches. The 96.4 cM match is between Sharon and our mom. Blue shaded matches are Paternal and pink are Maternal.

Check Your Work

When I was in school, I was told to ‘check your work’. Here under Sharon’s match with A111074, I have a note on my spreadsheet that something doesn’t seem to add up. In this case, there are 2 ways to check if a particular match should be a paternal or maternal match.

If I have the same match, as a male, that would have to be a maternal match for Sharon.
I have Sharon phased. I can check Sharon’s maternal and paternal phased kits and see which one matches A111074.

From my spreadsheet, here is my X match with A111074

Oops, A111074 matches me. That means she has to match Sharon on my mom’s side. When I check A111074 against Sharon’s phased kits, she matches Sharon’s maternal phased kit and not the paternal phased kit. So I need to correct this match of Sharon from paternal to maternal.

What If You Don’t Have a Parent to Test?

Having a parent to test can make the phasing part easy. If you don’t have a parent to test there are some other options:

Test cousins that would have shared X matches as mentioned above
Women may test a brother to find maternal only X matches
Triangulate to find groups. These groups will be either maternal or paternal – however your won’t know which. If you determine on maternal or paternal match in the group, the others will be the same.
If your parents are from different backgrounds the paternal or maternal aspect may sort out by matching others of those backgrounds. The fact that my X Chromosome seems to be all German as shown above is one example of how to do this. Another example would be my mother in law. Her mother’s side of the family was from Newfoundland. Her father’s side was from Prince Edward Island. She has a lot of matches with people with ancestors from these 2 places. In most cases that sorts out her matches into maternal or paternal – depending from which island they were from.

In summary:

All autosomal DNA has a maternal and paternal side. The one exception is the male tester’s X Chromosome. His is all maternal.
Knowing if your matches are maternal or paternal takes away a lot of guesswork in your matches.
Knowing your own X inheritance pattern as well as your match’s X inheritance pattern will give clues to where that match could be.

September 22, 2015January 18, 2017

The X Factor – Part 2

In the last Blog, I marveled at the amount of X chromosome my sister Sharon shared with karen. Part of my amazement was that I have not had one X Chromosome match at FTDNA out of over 1,000 matches until recently. One of the reasons for that is that FTDNA doesn’t report your X matches unless you also have an autosomal match. At any rate, women tend to have more of these X Chromosome matches with other people. One obvious reason is that they have twice as many X Chromosomes to start with.

Karen has uploaded her FTDNA results to Gedmatch. Here are my sister’s top matches on the X Chromosome.

To put into perspective the size of Sharon and karen’s match, the entire X Chromosome has a size of 196 cM. 56.2 cM appears to be over 25% of that amount. This is the X Inheritance Chart for my father. My sister got one of her X Chromosomes from him and I suspect this is the source of karen and Sharon’s match. Also note that Sharon shares more of the X Chromosome with karen than she shares with her brother (me). Karen also shares more of her X with Sharon than her own brother. And as we’ll see below, this large X Chromosome segment has stayed intact and traveled down through 2 different families from at least the last part of the 1700’s!

My guess was that this X match went through my ancestor Fanny McMaster b. 1829 (in pink above) to Margaret Frazer. Margaret was born around 1800. Margaret is my father’s 3rd great grandmother and my 4th great grandmother.

What I did today was to look at Karen’s tree at FTDNA.

For some reason, FTDNA trees use a very large font for last names. This doesn’t work out well for longer last names. At any rate, karen’s father is Walter Wanama(ker) I believe. Karen got one of her X Chromosomes from her dad, like my sister got from my dad. Karen’s dad had to get his X from his mom Agnes Higgins. She got one of her X’es from Maryann McPartland. She got one of her X’es from Ann Fraizer of Derreenargan, Boyle, Ireland. Now Boyle is in the heart of my Frazer research area where I have my Frazer DNA project. These 2 graphics above appear to show that a large chunk of X Chromosome has traveled from the late 1700’s from a Frazer family through at least 2 other fairly distantly related families to today.

Karen’s family tree showed that her Ann Fraizer married a McPartland. Our Australian Frazer DNA project member Ros pointed out this entry from the Irish Court of Petty Sessions showing the interaction between one Frazer and one McPartland:

Archibald Frazer of Ballyfarnon Defendant Feb 1883: That on 16 Oct 1882 at Aughnafinigan, a nuisance took place on the defendant’s premises occupied by James McPartland to wit the dwelling house so dilapidated and dirty as to be unfit for human habitation and that said nuisance is caused by the act or default of the defendant. “Nuisance to be abated by the 8th March and house put in proper repair and to pay costs 3/6”. The Complainants were the Guardians of the Poor of Boyle Union as Sanitary Authority.

Where Did the X Come From?

From correspondence with Karen’s family, I see they have their Ann Fraizer b. about 1823. Here’s where I get into a bit of educated guesswork. 1823 is probably the generation of my ancestor Fanny McMaster, daughter of Margaret Frazer. It is possible that Margaret had a brother who had Ann Fraizer in 1829 or so. Now Margaret’s brother would have only had one X Chromosome from his mother. That means that under my educated guess scenario, the X Chromosome match between karen and Sharon would be from Margaret Frazer’s mother. This would be the pink box in my father’s X Inheritance Chart to the right of Margaret Frazer. That would be my 5th great grandmother. She would’ve been born in the latter part of the 1700’s.

By the way, Karen is the about the 3rd person that has been found to be related to the Frazers of North Roscommon. They have all been found to be related by DNA. Each of their ancestors has been a single Frazer that is the end of that person’s research line.

Triangulation, Anyone?

Another person in the Frazer DNA Research Project, Kathy, was quick to note that her mom also matched Karen on the X. Here is Sharon’s match with karen (in pink and orange) and Sharon’s match with Kathy’s mom in blue, pink and yellow.

As these three people overlap on their matches and all match each other, this closes the loop on triangulation. So this gives us double proof of a common ancestor between karen, Sharon and Kathy. One is by the X triangulation and second is through the X Inheritance Pattern. This is another case where the DNA is clearer than our paper research!

Kathy’s X Match Ancestor

So now that we have narrowed down karen’s and Sharon’s X match ancestors, where is Kathy’s? She should have the same ancestor as the same X Chromosome segment was passed down to her mom. Here is Kathy’s mom’s X Inheritance chart but it won’t be pretty. It was supplied by Kathy starting with Kathy’s mother’s mother:

Who the X Match Cannot Be

As vague as this chart is, it tells us who the X match cannot be. We may rule out the top half of the chart (not shown). This is Kathy’s mother’s father’s X Chromosome. This is ruled out due lack of Frazer ancestry. For the same reason, we can rule out the top part of the chart that is shown. That is the Emmet family which was not even known to be from Ireland. Then we can rule out any of the people in the white boxes. This includes the male Frazer line and ancestors before Edward Wynn Frazer.

Now look in the right hand column. Under the pink and blue which is the only place where the X match could be I don’t see a lot of entries. Even in the next to the last column there is maybe a Bonis. I’m ending with this example, because this is what most people see in their own genealogy. Karen and Sharon were fortunate to both have good family trees showing where a likely match would be. Even with our better than average paper trail, my educated guess was that the our X Chromosome was coming from the mother of an unknown Frazer. That means we don’t even know the surname of this person. So the X match could be anybody – though likely limited to the North Roscommon area. I suppose this is why many people don’t use the X Chromosome much. It is fascinating and gives clues, but is difficult to use.

September 21, 2015April 13, 2017

The Nexus of X’s

This post is about the X Chromosome. As you likely know, we all have 2 sets of Chromosomes – one from each of our parents. These Chromosomes are numbered 1 though 23. 1 though 22 are the Autosomal Chromosomes. The 23rd is sometimes called the sex chromosome. Women get 2 X chromosomes: one from their mother and one from their father. Men get an X chromosome from their mother and an Y from their father. And it is important to note that the man does not pass down any X chromosome to his son.

There is some good information out there on the X Chromosome. One blog is called That Unruly X by Roberta Estes at DNAExplained.

I have had questions on what the X chromosome matches mean. In one way, the matches are like any other autosomal match. In another way, they are different. The way they are the same is that they should indicate a common ancestor at some point.

A Real Life Situation with My Sister Sharon

Let’s look at a real life situation. My sister Sharon tested recently. If I go to Gedmatch.com, I can run her DNA in a utility called ‘One to many’ matches.

I entered Sharon’s kit # and checked the X radio button so I would get her largest X match. This gave me Sharon’s matches at Gedmatch. Unfortunately, these are sorted by ‘Gen’

Gen is the number of Generations that Gedmatch thinks your match is from you. I can tell this by the red arrow (triangle) pointing up under Autosomal. This means the smallest number of Generations are sorted first, which are the closest or most important matches. I want to sort by by X-DNA ‘largest cM’. I did that and got this for my sister’s top 4 matches:

Karen and Sharon’s Big X Match

3 of the 4 people I know. Heidi is my other sister and Gladys is my mom. They share all their X Chromosome with Sharon. Joel is me. But who is karen? And why does she share more X Chromosome with my sister than I do? Let’s figure it out together. On discussion groups I have been challenged by the fact that it is impossible to tell where a match comes from by an X Chromosome match and no other autosomal match. Let’s assume that this is true. However, in this case, karen matches Sharon on an autosomal Chromosome also. These 2 matches may represent different ancestors shared by karen and Sharon. However, these 2 matches should both be on Sharon’s maternal side or paternal side.

Which Side are You On?

As with all matches it is important to know if these matches are Maternal or Paternal. All of your autosomal matches will be one of the 2. For example, my father’s mother is a Frazer. That means I should be looking for Frazers on my paternal matches. If I find someone who matches my mother and has a Frazer in their ancestry, that match is likely coincidental and not where the DNA match is. So is karen a paternal match or maternal? If these were my matches, my guess right away would be that karen would be a maternal match. How would I know? I only have the X Chromosome from my mother. Sharon on the other hand has 2 X Chromosomes: one from our mom and one from our dad.

Here is how karen and I look on Sharon’s FTDNA Chromosome browser.

The orange is my match with Sharon. The blue is karen’s 56 cM match with Sharon. There is a chunk of orange overlap above the blue. Does this mean that Sharon, karen and I match on the X Chromosome? No. Remember that I only got my X Chromosome from my mother. Karen is related on my father’s side where I didn’t get any X Chromosome. So while it may look like a match on the browser, it is not, as the orange represents my Maternal match with my sister and the blue represents my sister’s Paternal match with karen.

Where Does Karen Fit In?

In some of my other blogs, I have been able to fit in people into the Frazer Project I have been working on. Let see if karen also fits in. First, I’ll look at her autosomal match with Sharon. To do this, I click on the ‘A’ to get the details of the autosomal match between karen and Sharon. When I do that, I get this:

Fortunately I have had my mom tested for DNA. With these results, I was able to phase her DNA using a gedmatch utility. This results in Sharon having 2 additional kits: a paternal and a maternal kit. I ran Sharon’s Paternal Phased Kit against karen and got a match slightly smaller than the one above. This proves that the match is on the paternal side.

Then I checked karen against other testers in the Frazer project. She matches Jane and Prudence who are both known Frazer descendants. Interestingly, Jane had been in touch with this person prior to DNA testing concerning karen’s genealogy through more traditional methods. Jane and Prudence represent 2 different old related Frazer lines going back to the early 1700’s. In addition, I noted that karen had an ancestral tree at FTDNA with an Ann ‘Fraizer’ in it. Now there is no triangulation between karen, Jane and Prudence meaning no proof by the DNA that there is a common Frazer. However, the evidence of karen matching 3 Frazer descendants from by DNA and having a Fraizer in the same general area of Ireland is good circumstantial evidence.

Back to the X

All of this is interesting, but what does it tell us about the X match? To me, it says that the X match is in the same general area as the autosomal match. That means in the area of Frazers – so this could be from a Frazer or Frazer spouse. We know that the X Match is from the Sharon’s Paternal Side. I also double checked that by running an X ‘one to one’ match with Sharon’s paternally phased kit and got the same X match with karen. Sharon’s maternally phased kit did not match karen.

Here is what my dad’s X inheritance looks like:

Here the pink and blue areas are the only areas Sharon could have an X match through my dad who is James Frazer Hartley. Unfortunately, these pink and blue areas go to places where it is difficult to find ancestors. In general, that would be on the maternal sides of lines where historically not as much information is not always available. Some notes from the above X Inheritance chart:

Sharon’s X match with karen could not be through our 2nd Great Grandfather George William Frazer.
The match could be through George Frazer’s wife who was Margaret McMaster
Margaret McMaster had a Frazer grandmother. It is possible that an X match could be through her.
The X chromosome does not recombine as much as autosomal DNA. This means a larger intact segment can travel down through the ages. This helps explain the large X match between karen and Sharon.
The percentages shown above are theoretical averages. The real amounts could be much larger or much smaller. In our example, Sharon got 25% of her X Chromosome from a part of the chart that shows that the theoretical amount she would’ve gotten would be perhaps 6-12% or less.
Also, the X Chromosome that my sisters got from my dad was the same that he got from his mom. It doesn’t even have a chance to recombine.
The match could be through the Clarke line as they were in the same general part of Ireland, but I would tend to think that it is more likely that the match would be on the McMaster/Frazer part of the chart.
My guess is that the autosomal portion of the match would be in the same general area as the X Chromosome match. Even though the shared ancestors represented by the autosomal match are probably not the same as the shared ancestors represented by the X Chromosome match, it would make sense to me that they would be nearby each other on the chart.