Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 3

In Part Three of this series, I will be looking at Chromosomes 13-18 for my children and visually phasing them to the extent that I can.

Chromosome 13

Here, Heather gets a full dose of her Rathfelder Grandmother’s DNA:

I didn’t see any of the Jarek-matching DNA on the Fox Spreadsheet. I don’t have to open JJ’s FTDNA account each time for his Cavanaugh side match Martha as I aready downloaded JJ’s segments:

Here is where Heather matches Martha:

That takes care of the right half of Chromosome 13:

Heather has this maternal match with Pavel that JJ does not:

It is small, but likely to be real as it is a phased match. This appears to be the correct solution for Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 13:

Chromosome 14

Here is what Heather and JJ’s paternal side looks like:

Heather has a small DNA match with Robert that JJ doesn’t have on the Jarek side:

That is enough to map the left side of Chromosome 14:

The maternal side DNA can move over two lines as those are taken up by paternal crossovers.

Heather matches Peter, a Jarek-side matche, here:

Here is JJ’s match with Peter at FTDNA:

This indicates to me that JJ has a crossover to Jarek at about position 70:

Next, I need to get the position number for the right side of the green FIR.

This is at about 96.6.

JJ has a maternal match with Ashley that goes to about 98:

Heather’s matches do not go that far, so I would give the crossover to Heather:

Other than to JJ, Heather’s furthest out math is at 91.

Chromosome 15

Let’s see how Chromosome 15 shakes out for Heather and JJ:

This shows that Chromosome 15 only has two crossovers and one of those is on the paternal side. It also shows that JJ got a full dose of Rathfelder DNA on his paternal side. Heather and JJ’s match with Jarek-side match Robert shows where the other crossover is:

Here is the finished, simple Chromosome 15:

This tells me that if I was looking for Cavanaugh matches on this Chromosome, I should look at Heather’s match list and not JJ’s.

A Further Check on Chromosome 15

I show that Heather has a match with Jarek-side LeeAnne here:


I had assumed that LeeAnne was on the Jarek side, so something seems wrong. Perhaps LeeAnne is on the Cavanaugh side. When I check on LeeAnne’s tree at Ancestry, I assumed that the Dziura in her family was the Dziuria in my children’s family:

That could mean that LeeAnne could match on the Cavanaugh side? Very confusing. However, LeeAnne’s shared matches at AncestryDNA are clearly on the Jarek side. The only explanation that I can think of is that Heather and JJ have a crossover at nearly the same poine where (going from right to left) JJ goes from Jarek to Cavanaugh and Heather goes from Cavanaugh to Jarek.

Checking Martha on the Cavanaugh Side

I see that JJ matches Martha here:

This confirms that at some point on the left side of Chromosome 15, JJ needs to have Cavanaugh DNA and Heather has to have Jarek DNA, but I can’t figure out where that is.

One More Check

When I check on Heather compared to JJ at Gedmatch with a lower match limit of 3 cM, I get this:

These are just two small matches at the beginning of the Chromosome. These two small matches may or may not be important. I’m tempted to think that Heather and JJ had maternal crossovers at about the same point:

I don’t know where that point was, but it must have been after position 54.3. Here are Heather’s maternal matches:

The crossover is likely between 55 and 60.8. based on Heather’s maternal matches.

Chromosome 16

I hope that this Chromosome goes more smoothly than the last one:

I don’t see any uploaded Jarek matches on the spreadsheet. I have used Peter before as a Jarek side match:

That gets things started on the maternal side:

The 55 above is closer to 54.8. That is cutting it close, but JJ has this maternal match:

Heather’s match with KP ends slightly sooner:

So I will give Heather the crossover at 54.8:

JJ has many matches going through 82, so I will give the crossover to Heather again:

I couldn’t find a clear answer to the two segments on the left of Chromosome 16:

Chromosome 17

Here Heather gets a full dose of Hartley DNA from my father:

 

A match with Robert on the Jarek side shows that Heather has the first maternal crossover from Jarek to Cavanaugh:

 

JJ matches Cavanaugh side Martha here:

That means that Heather must match on the Jarek side in that area:

A Little Detective Work to Fill in the Last Part of Chromosome 17

I noticed that on Heather’s list of matches from FTDNA, she has one with a Polish sounding last name:

The match goes through positiion 72.7. I need to know if this is a paternal or maternal match for Heather. I checked Heather’s in common matches at FTDNA and did not see any paternal matches. That tells me that this match is likely on Heather’s maternal side. From what I can tell, this is the right answer for Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 17:

Chromosome 18

I’lll conclude this Blog with Chromosome 18:

This project would have been much more difficult without my mother’s Rathfelder DNA.

Jarek Cousin Robert has a match that goes to position 53:

The match looks like it goes over the crossover line, but I don’t trust the accuracy of it.

Cavanaugh Cousin Martha matches Heather here:

There were no obvious snags in Chromosome 18:

This would be a good Chromosome to look for Cavanaugh side matches – especially on Heather’s side.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It looks like I was able to finish the visual phasing for each of Chromosomes 13-18
  • The smaller higher number chromosomes are generally considered easier to visually phase compared to the longer chromosomes
  • I find it interesting that when I passed my DNA on to my children, I was really passing down my parents DNA to them and combined my children recieved the DNA from their four grandparents.

Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 2

In my previous Blog, I started working on visually phasing the first 6 chromosomes of my two children. Normally, visual phasing is done with three or more siblings. However, it should not be too difficult to visually phase Heather and JJ’s chromosomes. I have tested their paternal grandmother. Because of that, their paternal side is basically phased.

Chromosome 1

Here is how far I got previously:

It would be helpful to put a few position numbers in at the end of the Chromosome. Specifically, the beginning and the end of the last green HIR would be helpful. The end should be around 216.6M where the last black non-matching area starts:

I’ll call that 215.5. Here is the beginnning of the FIR:

I’ll call that 203.6M.

Segment Search for Maternally Phased Kits of Heather and JJ

Here are some of the results for segment details for the maternal part of JJ’s DNA:

Near the bottom, JJ matches Heather from 237.5M. However, his match with *sly goes past that match to 238.9M. This is a likely indication that Heather has a crossover at 237.5M. Unfortunately, we first need to find out who has the crossover at 203.6.

Heather has this match which I don’t see on JJ’s match list:

Betty likely matches Heather on the Cavanaugh side. Gedmatch indicates that Betty tested at Ancestry, but I am having trouble identifying her test. So it looks like I am stuck, unless I download more match information from FTDNA and MyHeritage for Heather and JJ.

Chromosome 2

Here, I’ve added a few position numbers:

Let’s see what Heather and JJ show around positions 115 and 231M. I couldn’t find anything obvious, so I need to find the end of the first green FIR:

I’ll call that 20.7M. Heather has many maternal matches that pass through 20.7M:

So, I’ll give the crossover to JJ:

Next, I’ll add two more positions:

 

However, when I do that, I notice a problem with the segment map. I see that this is the result of a missplaced paternal crossover:

It’s a good thing I am checking this. The crossover from Rathfelder to Hartley should be at 83:

JJ shows a match going through 47.7 which is the beginning of the second green HIR:

That means that Heather gets the crossover there:

This is an improvement over what I had. In this case, it helped to check.

Chromosome 3 Check

Here I added some easy position numbers:

I’ll look at Heather and JJ’s maternal matches around position 2 and 168.3M. Heather’s first match goes beyond 3M:

The first position above should have been a 3:

So I am giving the crossover to JJ.

JJ has many matches that go through 168.3:

So I give this crossover to Heather:

Heather and JJ do not have many maternal matches around 183.1, so I will leave this Chromosome as is.

Chromosome 7

Chromosomes 4-6 are in good shape, so let’s check on Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 7:

Here, JJ’s match with his paternal grandmother didn’t quite match up with his crossover point, so I put his grandmother’s match at the closest crossover.

Here, I’ll add Leeanne’s match on the left side of Chromosome 7:

Here is Heather’s match with Cavanaugh side Martha:

This match fills in 2 Cavanaugh segments for Heather:

Due to the HIR and FIR, JJ is Jarek and Cavanaugh below Heather. JJ’s match with Martha brings his Cavanaugh DNA to the end of his Chromosome 7:

Next, it would be nice if JJ or Heather had some maternal matches going through position 80. Heather’s maternal match Charles meets that requirement:

Next, I am focusing in on 56.1:

JJ’s match with the same Charles appears to go through 56.1:

That leaves the very left of Heather and JJ’s maternal side. The next position I am interested in is at 5.7:

JJ has two matches going through that position. That should finish Chromosome 7:

However, it doesn’t. Two segments after the red one above should be red and not green. If there is no match there, then the two Hartley segments cannot be right there. Remember when I guessed on JJ and Heather’s grandmother’s ambiguous match position? I guessed wrong.

Here is the easiest, though perhaps non-scientific way to fix the problem:

I moved JJ’s Rathfelder segment right to 80. I then moved JJ’s Jarek segment left from 80 to 76.3. This is the intuitive, logical solution. By non-scientific, I mean that I didn’t look at all of Heather’s and JJ’s matches in that region to double check the crossovers. The yellow/green/red segment map checks out.

Chromosome 8

Things have been going fairly smoothly so far. Let’s hope they continue that way.

Here are two complications. The first situation has a FIR going into a region with no matches. In order for that to happen there has to be two crossovers. The second arrow points to a region where there appear to be two crossovers fairly close to each other, but the match to Heather and JJ’s paternal grandmother shows as being between the two crossovers.

The start of the FIR is at 101.6:

Using the closest rule, I’ll go with the 99.2 crossover.

I left the little paternal segment blank on JJ’s side as there are two very close changes there. The segment is so small, it doesn’t matter. I will just need to have a HIR there when I am done.

Mat1’s matches give some Jarek segments to Heather and JJ:

This seems to be what the match with Jarek relative Mat1 is telling me:

The next step is to find some more crossover locations for this Chromosome.

Next, I’ll check Heather and JJ to see what their matches look like in the vivinity of 12.9, 72.1, 106 and 137.5.

Downloading Heather and JJ’s Segments

However, instead of looking at each chromosome, I will download Heather and JJ’s segment information for their top 1,000 maternal matches at Gedmatch. I did this, but could not find any easy clues as to their crossovers on this chromosome.

Chromosome 9

Chromosome 9 looks interesting:

For one thing, the Heather and JJ’s matches with their grandmother do not line up with the first crossover I have. I went back and compared Heather with JJ at a resolution of 3 cM:

3 cM is the smallest increment allowed. It is good that the smallest is not 4 as I would have missed two crossovers at 10.2 and 13M. Now this makes more sense:

Matches with Robert point out two maternal crossovers:

It seems like JJ should have a crossover to Jarek at 98.1.  When I lower the threshold for JJ’s match with Robert, I get this:

This is what I expected, so JJ does have a crossover at 98:

That leaves only 4 maternal segments. Here is a match that Heather has with Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

Next, I’ll look at Heather and JJ’s maternal match list at around 133.6M. Heather has a lot of maternal matches that go through that crossover. That means that the crossover must belong to JJ:

Here is what I end up with:

Chromosome 10

Here is my initial interpretation:

Chromosome 9 had to HIRs. Chromosome 10 has a small one shown in green above.

Robert has a small match with JJ:

Robert is on the Jarek side, so Heather must have Cavanaugh DNA in her corresponding maternal segment. Heather’s match with Martha on the Cavanaugh confirms that:

 

Heather also matches Martha at the right hand side of Chromosome 10.

Next, I am looking for the position number for the beginning of the HIR:

I’ll call that 114.6.

Heather and JJ’s maternal matches at Gedmatch are primarily between 13.8 and 79.2 for Chromosome 10, so I am stuck for now:

Chromosome 11

Here is my start:

JJ’s matches don’t align perfectly with his paternal grandmother. Robert matches Heather and JJ on the Jarek side:

When I put this in, I notice that there is a Fully Identical Region (FIR) going to a non-match. That means that there needs to be an extra crossover there.

Leanne matches JJ and not Heather on the right hand side:

Here is the beginning of the first FIR in green:

I’ll ignore the three yellow lines and call the start of the FIR 57.4M.

Heather has maternal matches that go through 123.6:

 

Because there is already a paternal crossover at 115.8, I can also move the two Cavanaugh segments to the left.

JJ has two matches that go through 102.5:

Heather would not have a super small Cavanaugh segment at 95.8:

Checking around FTDNA, I see that JJ has a match with Peter, who is in common with Robert and Leeanne from the Jarek side on my spreadsheet:

Thanks to Peter, I can finish Chromosome 11:

Other matches at FTDNA and MyHeritage would also help in completing chromosomes.

Chromosome 12

Here is my starting point with my children’s Rathfelder grandmother added:

I was suspicious of the segment at the right hand side, so I looked at the match between Heather and Gladys at a lower resolution:

Here we see Heather has a small amount of Rathfelder at the end of her paternal side. I don’t see any standard Jarek matches, so I’ll check on Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

JJ has two good matches with Martha:JJ

JJ’s other match with Martha appears to extend to the left of 96.1, but I’m not sure:

Heather’s maternal match with Bryan at Gedmatch clarifies this:

JJ also has matches that go through position 15.3:

In order to get more match information, I will download Heather and JJ’s segment data from FTDNA. The problem with this is that it takes a little work to figure out whether the matches are paternal or maternal.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I have now looked at about half of my childrens’ chromosomes and have done an initial mapping out of their segments, sorting them out to where they got their DNA from their four grandparents where I could figure that out.
  • I found an additional Jarek side match named Peter at FTDNA which helped out on one chromosome
  • I downloaded additional segment information from Gedmatch and FTDNA. The Gedmatch segments are more helpful as I can download just the maternal side segment imformation
  • So far, the detailed segment information from FTDNA has not been helpful as many matches are on the paternal side or small and I can’t be sure on which side they are (or perhaps they could be false matches).

 

 

 

Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 1

I have made a few isolated attempts at Visual Phasing for my two children. However, I have not used the Fox Spreadsheet up to this point. This spreadsheet is not supposed to work well with the online version of Excel, but I am trying it nonetheless.

Getting Started

I downloaded my two children’s information from Gedmatch in addition to three “cousins” matches. One cousin is my mother. She is the secret weapon as her matches should automatically phase my children’s patermal side. The other two matches were two second cousins once removed. One was on the Hartley side and one was on their Jarek side. I don’t think that I have cousin matches on the Cavanaugh side. If I do, I don’t think that there is a good match at Gedmatch.

I looked at Steven Fox’s intstructions. In order to get a download from Gedmatch, it required my pushing a ‘compare’ button from time to time to get around the Captcha feature at Gedmatch.

Chromosome 1

Here is my start at Chromosome 1:

I’m sure that there could be more hidden crossovers, but I started with what seemed to make sense. I already know that G2 is Rathfelder for my mom, Gladys. Where my children do not match my mom, I assume that they match my dad who I have as G1. There may be a way to go directly to a known grandparent, but I couldn’t figure that out. [I figured it out later by typing the surname into the cell.]

Robert on the Jarek Side

Robert matches JJ here:

As the match appears to go beyond the two crossovers, I will assume that three areas on JJ’s side are Jarek and the same three areas are Cavanaugh for Heather as she does not match Robert there. I’ll use G3 as Jarek and G4 as Cavanaugh. Unfortunately, that has caused a problem:

This mapping created a red region that has gone too far to the left. That means that either:

  1. The crossover should be further to the right, or
  2. Heather may have a small match with Robert in that large red section

If #1 is correct, JJ should be G4 (Cavanaugh) in the larger red section. If #2 is true, then Heather should be G3 (Jarek) in the large red section. I’ll check option #2 at Gedmatch. I can lower the threshold as far as 3 cM. I think I used to be able to go lower:

Now I need to look at the position numbers. Crossover #3 should be a 113M:

Heather has a match with Robert from 110 to 113M. That means that Option #2 is in play and Heather has a maternal crossover at that point.

Problem solved.

More Maternal Side Matches Needed

I added 4 more matches on Heather and JJ’s maternal side and deleted the Hartley cousin:

This added some information for Chromosome 1:

However, because I had not deleted the extra columns to the right of the phasing part, the new matches stretched way out. Mat2 shows a match with JJ and Heather in HIR which cannot be right. When I check where the first FIR goes to HIR it is  just before 15M:

That is about where the match ends between Mat2 and Heather and JJ. Actually Heather’s match with Mat2 ends slightly further than JJ’s, so I’ll assume that Heather has more Jarek (G3) DNA there. However, I see that Robert has a match there also, which may be more accurate:

I guess the more matches, the better. I think that is as far as I can get with Chromosome 1. I just need to change the G’s to real grandparents.

I have one more trick up my sleeve. By searching my old Blogs, I did find a Cavanaugh side match at FTDNA. I have used DNA Painter to represent the matches for Heather:

This shows that my guess for Heather’s first Cavanaugh segment was correct. I just need to figure out how to find JJ’s matches at FTDNA. By going through a bunch of ID’s, I was able to find JJ at FTDNA. I couldn’t find Marti, but found a Martha:

More importantly, here is Heather and Martha using the FTDNA Chromosome Browser:

I would say that Martha and Marti are the same person. As it turns out, the match does not help any further with Chromosme 1.

Chromosome 2

The bottom match is with my mother, so the Rathfelder side.

LeeAnne Match on the Jarek Side

Here, I need to make an assumption. My assumption is that the right side of LeeAnne’s match with JJ and the right side of LeeAnne’s match with Heather represent crossovers. This is due to the fact that these end match positions are so close to the crossover positiions. There is a chance that these could be a coincidence, but I’ll take that chance.

In additions, I see that Heather and JJ match Martha on the Cavanaugh side beginning at 7M. That is where JJ’s match with LeeAnne ends. That ices that crossover for me.

This seems to be as far as I get right now:

The fact that there are so few crossovers on the Paternal side, means that almost all the crossovers are on the maternal side. This makes this Chromosome more difficult to map.

Chromosome 3

Just 21 more to go.

This looks fairly simple unless I am missing something. On the paternal side, it seems like there should be mostly Hartley. The blue match on the bottom represents Rathfelder. I see if I type in the names, I can skip the G1 and G2:

My next problem is that I don’t see any maternal side matches. I was ready to move on, but then checked MyHeritage. JJ matches Richard who has Polish ancestry:

Richard has an Anna Dziura. JJ has a Weronica Dziura:

These two could be sisters. Richard matches JJ on Chromosome 3:

All is not lost. Here is Richard and Heather:

They seem to match on Chromosome 3 in the same way.

Thanks to Robert, Chromosome 3 looks better for my children. This appears to be a mostly Hartley/Jarek Chromosome.

Chromosome 4

Here is what I get using my mother’s match and a Mat1 Jarek match:

Based on the the match of Mat1 with Heather and JJ, I would say that there is a maternal crossover to Cavanaugh to the left of the lowest Jarek on the map:

Also, note that there appear to be close crossovers between JJ and Heather indicated by the small black spaces in the comparison between JJ and Heather at the top of the chart. Heather shares DNA with Martha at the beginning of the Chromosome where JJ does not. This would indicate Cavanaugh DNA:

Also, JJ has a match with Martha here:

A Fully Phased Chromosome 4?

This is what I think is right:

However, one thing I would like to look at is the black break between 40 and 42M. I have no crossover there. I need to check that out more closely. Above, I note that JJ starts a match with Martha at 42M. That could be a crossover. Here is how Heather matches Martha:

Here is a corrected Chromosome 4:

The bottom red, yellow and green bar is helpful in checking to make sure the visual phasing matches with the comparison between Heather and JJ in the first bar above. Heather and JJ’s match with Martha was helpful in mapping Chromosome 4.

Chromosome 5

As usual, the paternal side is easy:

When I compare Robert’s matches with Heather and JJ, it points out a maternal crossover for JJ:

Here is Heather’s match with Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

JJ’s match goes further, so 160M is about the point of Heather’s crossover:

Next, I see that Mat3 has a match with JJ that doesn’t show with Heather:

This is at about 126 to 136M.

Going right on Heather’s bar, I can extend the matches:

This Chromosome is mostly completed except for the left side. There is a way to predict that side also. I just need to look at JJ or Heather’s matches to see which ones stop at the crossover and which ones do not. First, I need to find out where the crossover is. For that I go to the full resolution comparison between JJ and Heather at Gedmatch:

I’ll call that 32.5 M.

I have a list of Heather’s maternal matches that I downloaded in 2019:

The two maternal matches I have highlighted above appear to go through 32.5 M. However, I should also check with JJ’s results. I don’t see that JJ matches the same person. That makes me think that it is JJ who has the crossover at 32.5 M.

So, as I go along, I am remembering some of othe tricks of visual phasing. Here is the merged version:

Also, I have some position numbers as they are useful in mapping. Normally, there are not small isolated segments like Heather has on the right hand side (green Cavanaugh). This might be something to check.

Here is a maternal side match that Heather has:

This appears to pass through 149.7. I don’t see that JJ has a match with this person.

A Corrected Chromosome 5 for Heather and JJ

Chromosome 6

First I adjust the vertical lines and add in some of the position numbers:

Next, I check Heather and JJ’s match with their grandmother:

I see their matches do not line up well with the segment lines I have drawn. I suspect that the place where Heather and JJ both do not match with their grandmother should coincide with the green fully identical region between Heather and JJ. I’ll do a full resolution comparison between JJ and Heather to see where the green area is:

It starts at about 91.4M and:

ends at about 128.2M. These should correspond with these two match with Heather and JJ’s grandmother:

There is a bit of discrepancy between 126.6M and 128.2M.

That phases the paternal side for Heather and JJ:

However, I have no matches for Heather and JJ’s maternal side that were pre-loaded to the Fox Spreadsheet.

Let’s try Martha who matched at FTDNA on the Cavanaugh side;

Martha has two matches with JJ.  The first is roughly 7M to 42M. The second is:

The area above JJ’s green Cavanaugh must be Jarek for Heather as they don’t match at all in that region. The area above JJ’s second green Cavanaugh match must be Cavanaugh for Heather as this is an HIR or Half Identical Region. But first, let’s check on any match Heather has with Martha:

This points out a problem with my original mapping. Where JJ matchd from 7-42M, Heather matches from 4-14M. That means that I missed a segment here:

However, even that does not seem right. When I check at Gedmatch at a resolution of 3cM, I get this:

It’s odd how the comparison changes. [I explain my mistake further below.] Without any Jarek side matches, this is how Chromosome 6 is emerging:

At this point, I could look at Heather’s maternal match list to see where her likely crossovers are.

This 2019 list is a bit outdated. The last two matches are interesting. The last is with JJ and the next to the last goes through that match with JJ. That could indicate that JJ has a crossover at about 149. Here is JJ’s current match with that same person:

Here I added that crossover at 148.7 for JJ:

Using the same logic, I see this on Heather’s maternal match list:

Heather matches JJ from 72 to 135, but matches Sa from 68 to 92. That appears to give JJ a crosover at 72:

Unfortunately, this information is not helpful yet as I need to assign crossovers at 42.7M and 135M first.

Maternal Matches for JJ

I will check on JJ’s maternal matches to see if I can find some crossovers for Heather:

I didn’t realize I had this already and signed up for Tier I at Gedmatch. Oops.

Here I see two matches JJ has starting at 134.7M:

This could indicate a crossover for him at that point. Now that I have Tier I, I will use a utility called segment search and use Heather’s maternally phased kit:

 

Here Heather has an important match with Jayne that is between 130 and 147M. I’m not sure why the match did not show up on Heather’s spreadsheet as it is 2399 days old. That clinches JJ’s crossover at 134.7:

I can move the Cavanaugh segments to the left as there are already paternal crossovers there. This gives JJ a small Jarek segment which we don’t like to see, but it seems to fit as of now.

That leaves crossovers needed to be assigned at 42.7 and about 72M.

Above, Heather has a match that goes through 72M, so JJ must have a crossover there.

Above, Heather’s match with Sara goes through 68.7 also. Plus JJ would not have such a small Jarek segment. Unfortunately, this has resulted in an extra unwanted crossover here:

Under my original configuration, this was not as much a problem, but when I added the crossover at 14, it is now a problem.

Lastly, I would like to know what is going on at position 167M:

JJ has a lot of matches going through 167, so I will give the crossover to Heather:

Here I tried taking the crossover out at 14, but the segment checker at the bottom was off. Part of the problem was that I forgot to give Heather a crossover at 68.7.

This solution appears to work out. I had made another mistake in that I had the spreadsheet scrolled over so that I couldn’t see the first HIR. Then I added a second crossover that I didn’t need at 14M.

This version looks good, but may need some future adjusting:

There were fewer and smaller Jarek segments compared to Cavanaugh which could explain why there were not many Jarek matches on this Chromosome. It appears that this Chromosome could be a good one for looking for Cavanaugh side matches.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I had some fun brushing up on my visual phasing skills
  • Having JJ and Heather’s paternal grandmother tested made it easy to phase the paternal side
  • Most matches on JJ and Heather’ maternal side are on the Jarek side
  • There was one important maternal Cavanaugh side match at FTDNA
  • It should be possible in most cases to find who gets the maternal side crossovers by looking at JJ and Heather’s maternal match list or by doing a Segment Search on Heather and JJ’s maternally phased kits at Gedmatch.
  • I didn’t utilize this trick for the earlier chromosomes, so I will need to go back and do that at some point.

Painting My Brother Jim’s DNA

For some reason, I have not gotten around to ‘painting’ my brother Jim’s DNA. This is what I have so far for Jim:

I’ve only gotten Jim up to 2% painted overall and that is just on the paternal Frazer side. It would be fairly easy to improve that.

Jim’s X Chromosome

For fun, I’ll start with Jim’s X Chromosome. This is just inherited from his mother. Jim matches our two Latvian cousins Inese and Anita. That DNA had to come from his great-grandmother Maria Elisabeth Laura Gangnus:

That is because Alexander Rathfelder only got X DNA from his mother Maria. I only painted Inese, because I believe that her sister’s match is very similar.

Jim and Cindy

Cindy is Jim’s first cousin. Normally I would not map 1st cousins as it would just give the maternal side. However, Cindy’s father is Bob and he just got his X Chromsome from his mother, who was Emma Rathfelder. It took me a little while to remember that trick. Here is the match between Jim and Cindy:

Jim is now 3% painted:

Back to Autosomal Matches

The fastest way to populate Jim’s chromosomes is by 2nd cousins. He has a lot of Hartley second cousins at Gedmatch. I’ll just go down Jim’s list of matches at Gedmatch.

Jim’s Hartley 1st Cousins Once Removed

Thes common ancestors between Jim and these older cousins go back to Jim’s great-grandparents: James Hartley and Annie Snell. First, I’ll paint in Joyce:

I picked a washed out color for Hartley/Snell as there will be so many of these. Jim is now up to 8% painted. Actually, Jim’s third Hartley match was with a second cousin. Beth brings Jim’s painted percent up to 12%:

2nd Cousin Catherine on the Rathfelder Side

So far, I have only added maternal DNA to Jim’s X Chromosome. That has Jim only 2% maternally painted. Here is the addition of Catherine in a sort of grey:

This has Jim 7% painted on his maternal side and 15% painted overall.

3 More on the Rathfelder Side

Jim is now up to 19% overall:

I haven’t used the grey color before, so this is new.

Kathy, Judy and Carolyn

I haven’t been able to figure out how I am related to Kathy. I’ll leave her out for now. She is likely a descendant of William Nicholson like Judy and Carolyn are:

However, Judy has closer common ancestors in Annie Nicholson and Jacob George Lentz.

Jim is getting more color and I have added a line between the paternal and maternal side in the key. Jim is now mapped at 21% overall.

Pat, Joan and Martin

Pat is a 2nd cousin on my Hartley side. Joan is on the Nicholson side and Martin is on the Rathfelder side. I know how Pat, Joan and Jim are related. I’ll have to look up Martin. I see that he knew little about his father due to the cold war.

Paul, Robert, Michael, Faye and Ken

Robert is on the Nicholson side, while Paul, Michael, Faye and Ken are on the Frazer side. Michael adds another Frazer ancestral couple:

This shows how Michael and I are related as Jim is not at Ancestry. Richard Frazer has an unknown wife. Ancestry has a guess at Mary Patterson. These matches bring Jim up to 25% painted using the online DNA Painter Program:

Here, I’ve sorted Jim’s key into his four grandparent groups:

Summary

With not too much effort, I have gotten Jim’s DNA Painter Map from 2% to 25%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting Some French Canadian DNA for My Wife’s Side

MyHeritage’s Theories of Relativity are a good way to check genealogies. They come with ready made DNA connections and genealogical connections. This lends itself to the DNA Painter Program which I use.

My Wife’s Aunt Virginia

These Theories are sortable by newest, so I will do that for Aunt Virginia (also known as Aunt Suzy). I tend to reject the Theories that don’t go along with my previous research as I tend to think my research has been done pretty well.

Denise

One of the first Theories (from newer to older) that I found that has prospects is with Denise:

Denise shows as 5th cousin to Virginia. This is on the LeFevre side. First, I check my tree at ancestry:

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have siblings listed for Angelique Delisle. I aslo do not have her birth information. I see that Ancestry has Angelique’s Baptismal record:

 

This tree at Ancestry has other siblings for Angelique:

Joachim is a logical name for the son of Joachim Delisle. I’ll go ahead and add a lot of information from this tree to mine. Next, all I need is a baptismal record for Joachim born 1783. I did not find his baptism as a hint, but his marriage record will do:

This record gives his parents’ names. That tells me that the tree at least from the top connecting Virginia and Denis is accurate. Next, I will add the DNA match to see if it makes sense. Unfortunately, the first match is just below the cutoff of 7.0 cM:

I would like to add the match on Chromosome 5 as it overlaps with other LeFevre DNA:

Denis’ match is from 28 to 46 M and represents:

Lazare LeFevre.

Painting Denise

Here I lower the lime to 6 cM:

Here I added a new color for DeLisle and Matte which is dark green. As Denise overlaps on Chromosome 5, that means that the LeFevre DNA in yellow and orange is actually DeLisle DNA. The fact that there is no overlap on Chromosome 6 indicates that the yellow LeFevre DNA is probably older LeFevre DNA and that there is a crossover between the green and yellow DNA. The darker red DNA on Chromosme 6 may be misattributed or due to intermarriage as I have it attributed to Methot which is not an obvious ancestor of LeFevre.

Here is Virginia’s DNA map with added dark green:

Some of the yellow DNA got overwritten by the darker orange on Chromosome 5 when the DNA is not expanded.

Virginia and Annie

This is the relationship we are looking at:

Here is my Ancestry Tree for my wife’s side:

The J F as Eustache is for Jacques-Francois. I have some children, but not Joseph:

There is only one tree I see at Ancestry under hints which has a Joseph:

According to this, Marie Judith Tremblay had 20 children. Wow.

Here is part of Annie’s Tree:

Here is a record I found at Ancestry:

It would seem logical to look for a marriage for Joseph and Marie, though these are common names. One detail from the above is that Joseph was a Journalier:

Here is his marriage:

For some reason, I don’t see his parents listed. This marriage was in 1834. If he was 25 when he married, that would put his birth at about 1811. Here is a Jude born in 1812:

However, this appeaers to be a burial record.

At this point, I’ll just paint in the DNA match and see if it makes sense.

Painting Annie

Most of Annie’s DNA would make sense, though I don’t have a lot painted on the Pouliot side so far:

Again I kept the 6 cM cutoff:

I gave Fortin/Tremblay a periwinkle color. Before I refreshed the settings, Virginia was 36% painted on her maternal side and only 22% painted overall. Annie brought her up to 23% overall and 37% overall.

Suzy and Cecile

These two show as 5th cousins along Suzy’s Pouliot side. A few things seem irregular such as Virginia’s Girard being private and a deleted profile in Cecile’s ancestry. I can see from my tree who the missing person is on Virginia’s tree:

Cecile’s tree suppies some more detail:

I now need to figure out if Gregoire was the sister of Marie Genevieve. Based on this, it appears that there is a generation missing on Cecile’s side of the Theory of Relativity. What I need to do is prove that Elysee and Marie Genevieve were siblings.

More on Marie Genevieve

I need to spruce up my tree for Marie Genevieve. Here is a marriage record from 1804

This would put Marie Genevieve’s birth at around 1784. This appears to be her birth record:

The place and father is right, but the mother’s name is off:

I suppose the Marie part is right as I have the mother as Marie Josephte Tremblay. Here is the location:

Elysee Girard

I am having trouble tracking this person, so I will stop at this point.

Aunt Virginia and Lucien

The problem with Lucien is that his father shows as being born in 1860. Does that sound reasonable?

My Late Father-in-Law Richard

Richard matches with Annie aslo, so I don’t have to recreate the wheel with this connection. Annie matched on Fortin/Tremblay. This is on Richard’s Pouliot side:

In Richard’s Maternal side key, the Pouliot side is meant to be on the bottom. I don’t see Fortin/Tremblay there, so I can add that. Here are two Chromosomes where Annie shows up:

On Chromosome 1, Annie adds older DNA between Pouiot DNA. On Chromosome 10, Annie overlaps on even older DNA. This actually represents intermarriage as the connection is probably with an older Tremblay Line:

Annie fills in some blanks on Richard’s Chromosomes 12 and 17:

She also brings his maternal side painted percentage up to 45% from 44%:

Sylvain and Richard

Sylvain is #2 on Richard’s most recent Theory of Relativity after Annie:

Here I skipped a few generations at the bottom, but Richard and Sylvain show as 5th cousins. This is also on the Pouliot side. Here, it would be important to show that Alexis and Genevieve Gagne are siblings. Here my tree is a bit skimpy:

Here is a tree at Ancestry that implies that Genevieve died quite young:

At this time, I will attempt a shortcut. Richard has a cousin who shows at MyHeritage named Fred. Fred is also at Ancestry which means that Fred has ThruLines.

Fred is third from the right. Fred has ThruLines with 11 of these Gagne Children. Fred, like my father-in-law, descends from Alexis and has 33 DNA matches on that line. Here are the details for Marie-Genevieve:

Fred shows matches to daughters Olive and Marie-Euphrosine Gagnon. I was looking for Theophile Martel born 1790. Well that shortcut did not work. Time to abort this mission.

Richard and Jean-Francois

Let’s see if I have any better luck with Jean-Francois. First I check to see if I have already mapped or ‘painted’ Jean-Francois to Richard’s chromosomes and I have not. Here is the Theory:

Jean-Francois shows as a 4th cousin once removed to Richard, so a bit closer relationship. Here, I will check to see if Elisee and Judith are siblings. I’m going to use Fred’s ThruLines at Ancestry as a surrogate again:

Here I see that Fred has 16 DNA matches with descendants of Judith. I take that as a good sign. In fact, I have Judith in my Tree already. I’ll say that the proof is good enough to map Jean-Francois.

Here is how Richard and Jean-Francois match by DNA:

I recently added Fortin/Tremblay to Richard’s map, so time to map this new match:

On Chromosome 1, Jean-Francois overlaps with Annie mapped previously.

Above, Jean-Francois fills in some gaps.

Richard and Martin

This would be a Pouliot line that I have not mapped if the genealogy seems correct. I am tempted to again check on Fred’s ThruLines.

Fred has Antoine instead of Charles. That doesn’t mean the MyHeritage connection is wrong. I checked Richard’s two sisters’ ThruLines and no connection there either. Here is a detail from Martin’s tree:

If this is correct and Charly’s mother was born in 1844, then she would have been 62 when giving birth to Charly which doesn’t sound right. With some more work, I could probably make some of these connections, but I won’t right now. There is perhaps a generation missing.

Updating Aunt Lorraine

Here is Aunt Lorraine’s ‘painted’ Chromosome Map as 23% painted overall:

Most of the DNA identified is on Lorraine’s maternal French Canadian side. She is currently 23% painted overall and 38% painted on her maternal side.

Lorraine and Marjorie

This connection goes back to the 1700’s. This connection does not look right. I have a different mother at the top:

If this is right, then there must be a generation missing on Marjorie’s side. I’ll skip this for now. Lorriane also has a Theory with Myriam with the same issue.

Lorraine and Denise

I had painted Denise above with Aunt Suzy. The connection was with DeLisle and Matte:

Denise fills in some gaps on Lorraine’s Chromosomes 6 and 17. This brings Lorraine up to 39% painted maternally and 24% overall.

Lorraine and Paul

These two have a small DNA match. I already have a Michel in my tree, so I’ll say the connection is OK.

I didn’t hadd the smaller match as it was below 7 cM.

Lorraine and Jean-Francois

I mapped Jean-Francois to one of her siblings above, so I’ll map him to her profile also:

Jean-Francois supplies overlapping Pouliot DNA evidence on Chromosomes 3 and 4.

I decided to change this match color to blue for greater contrast:

Lorraine is up to 40% painted on her maternal side now.

Bernadette: 5th Cousin to Lorraine

This would take more work. How would Angelique Delisle be the daughter of a Lalonde?

Lorraine and a Different Martin

When I look up Girard/Tremblay trees, they all show a daughter Emerentienne born 1795. Likewise, Lorraine’s ThruLines show Emerentienne:

Here is where Martin shows up on Lorraine’s DNA Map:

Lorraine and Another Denise

I hope that these repeating names do not cause problems in the future:

I see at least one Ancestry tree with a Jean Francois Louis, so that is hopeful.

Here the DNA points out a problem as Denise is overlapping on LeFevre side and should be on the Pouliot side. That means that it is likely that Lorraine matches Denise on Lorraine’s LeFevre side and not her Pouliot side.

Lorraine and Douglas

I am going further with Lorraine than I went with Suzy or Richard:

We see again the name or Emerentienne. It helps to see unusual names. I’ll just go ahead and map Douglas based on the assumption that the tree is correct.

Douglas brings up another problem on Chromosome 6. By the genealogy, he should be on the Pouliot side, but he overlaps with DeLisle who is on the LeFevre side.

Check Lorraine’s Visual Phasing

I have done some work to figure out which part of Lorraine’s Chromosome 6 is Pouliot and which is LeFevre:

Lorriane is the top. The important part is where Pouliot goes to LeFevre or salmon to blue. If the scale on the bottom matches correctly, that should be at about 136M. So after 136M is LeFevre and before is Pouliot.

This shows Douglas’ match to be up to 135M. So that may actually be the inflection point, more typically called the crossover. That means that if I did my visual phasing correctly, then Douglas is mapped properly as Pouliot. That also means that Denise should be matching on the Pouliot side and has a connection there. I checked Denise’s match on Chromosome 17 and that should be in the region of Pouliot also.

Pouliot starts for Lorraine at 26M and Denise’s match starts at 39M.

Lorraine and Louise

This could go on forever, but I think I’ll end it here:

I see several trees at ancestry with a Marie Ann which I take to be Anne Marie above. She also shows on Lorraine’s ThruLines:

Again with reckless abandon, I will paint this match onto Lorraine’s map:

Here I made a mistake and created a new group. Then I merged it back with the old group and changed the color to purple for contrast. Louise’s matches overlap with Jean-Pierre. It turns out that Louise is related to Jean-Pierre in this way:

Summary and Conclusion

  • It seemed I got better at the mapping as I went along
  • I tried to skip any sketchy connections or situations where the MyHeritage Theories showed multiple common ancestors
  • One conflict was seemingly solved through Visual Phasing
  • It could take a while to map all the French Canadian Matches as these three siblings have so many matches

A New Hartley A16717 Branch

There is now a new Branch of Hartleys near my branch called A16717. I had made the case for an A16717 Branch here. Here is the L513 Hartley Branch from my perspective:

Smith is in the oldest Haplogroup above which is A11138. Next is Mawdsley at A11132. A11134 appears to be a Hartley-only Haplogroup. This group currently has John and Steve in it. Next is my group of Hartleys which for now just has my brother Jim and me. The name of this group is FT225247. Finally the last group is A16717 and consists of Michael and Lawrence. There are now 6 Hartleys in this branch of the YDNA tree who have taken the BigY test.

There are other Hartleys which are unrelated genetically to our group of Hartleys. This is the largest group of Hartleys. I have read that there are roughly 80,000 Hartleys worldwide. I would guess that our branch accounts for at least 1/4 of those Hartleys or 20-25,000.

A16717 – The Genealogy

This is the tree I had come up with for Lawrence and Michael:

From this chart Lawrence and Michael are 7th cousins. Assuming that Lawrence and Michael were born around 1950, this shows that their common Hartley ancestor was born about 280 years before their birth. Michael and Lawrence show an average of two private variants between them, so that is about 140 years per variant. That is close to the 144 years that was used for the old BigY500 SNPs. Michael has taken the BigY500 test and Lawrence took the BigY 700. This also indicates that Michael and Lawrence may have fewer than the average Variants over that period of 280 years.

Dating the Smith/Mawdsley/Hartley Block Tree

Michael and Lawrence share a common ancestor who was born in 1666. I would place that date at this point on the YDNA Block Tree:

I would place the common ancestor for the other Hartley lines about 140 years before that for a few reasons:

  1. 140 years was what I used for the SNPs in the Michael/Lawrence Line
  2. Because Michael took the BigY500, he has fewer Private Variants than he would like have if he had taken the more comprehensive BigY700 test. Michael’s two Private Variants are verified in that Lawrence tested negatively for those two Private Variants. However, Lawrence has 6 Private Variants and Michael’s BigY500 did not cover any of the posiitions for Lawrence’s Private Variants. That means that that it is possible that Michael could share some of Lawrence’s Private Variants and that there could be more than one SNP under A16717

Basically, I’m guessing at the 140 years. That would make the common ancestor for the other Hartleys at 1526. Or roughly 1500.

I have the second arrow pointing to the white space above the three Hartley Branches. The white space represents the common ancestor for the three groups of BigY-testing Hartleys. I estimate that the white space could represent a time of 70-80 years. Jared Smith estimated that there were more than the average number of SNPs in our part of the Haplogtree making the frequency of our SNP more like every 70 years. If I use 76 years, that means that the period of our common ancestors could be between 1488 and 1564.

The reason I used 140 years per SNP for Lawrence and Michael was due to the fact that Michael had the older BigY500 test and that Michael’s test didn’t cover any of Lawrence’s Private Variants. The reason that I dropped back to 76 years after that was because then we were outside of Michael and Lawrence’s branch and everyone else had tested to BigY700.

Using 1526 for the above Block tree, I get:

  • 61 years per SNP for my branch of Hartleys (Joel and James)
  • 141 years per SNP for Steve and John’s branch of Hartleys
  • This averages to 101 years per SNP for these two BigY700 Hartley Branches

Interestingly, if I use 1950 as a baseline for the Michael and Lawrence Branch (as I have for the others) I get 142 years for each of the two Private Variants shown in that Branch.

A BigY 67 STR Tree

As all Hartley BigY testers have results for 67 STRs, it should be fairly easy to draw up a fairly accurate STR Tree. Here are the results for the 6 Hartley BigY testers:

The first row is the Mode for the Hartley BigY testers. This appears to tell me that:

  • My branch of Hartleys has a distinguishing value of 23 for DYS565
  • The Roger Hartley Branch of Quaker Hartleys have a distinguising signature of 25, 32, 39 and 16 for DYS448, DYS460, DYS537 and DYS572
  • John and Steve have no distinguishing signature separate from the group as a whole, but their lines have gone their own separate ways since A11134
  • Steve’s line appears to have had a double mutation from 40 to 38 at marker DYS537

Here is the basic tree from BigY testing:

Here A16717 is representative of Edward Hartley born 1666. The blank box above Steve and John is there to put them at the right level with everyone else. Steve and John actually branch separately up from A11134.  When I put it all together, I get this:

 

The Harltey Ancestor Mode for A11134 is in the top box. From this it is easy to see why these trees are so difficult to build. I put the parallel mutations in italics and there are many of them (7 out of 11 in the bottom row).

  • I (Joel) have a parallel mutation of DYS527=16 with the Ed Hartley A16717 Branch.
  • Michael and John have parallel mutations of DYS607=16
  • Lawrence and John have parallel mutations of DYS447=12
  • Larwence and Steve have parallel mutations of DYS578=18

That means that without the BigY testing, it would have been nearly impossible to come up with the correct STR tree for this branch of Hartleys. This tree may be helpful in creating a larger STR tree for this Branch of Hartleys.

A16717 and SNP Tracker

Here is the new SNP on SNP tracker:

I was confused at first as A16717 was already taken up in the J Haplogroup. I wrote to the creator of SNP Tracker and he said I needed to add the R designation to A16717 to get the right path. Rob Spencer also said:

About 4% of Y SNP mutations have occurred more than once.

Summary and Conclusions

  • My waiting and curiosity got the best of me and I wrote to FTDNA to see what was up with a new branch of A16717 that I had predicted for Michael and Lawrence
  • I had a most satisfying response from FTDNA saying that branch would be added
  • I looked at issues of dating and how A16717 could help the dating of all Hartley Branches. This is because we know that Edward Hartley born 1666 was A16717.
  • The naming of this new Branch of A16717 is of great importance for all American Hartleys who descend from Edward Hartley
  • I looked at the implications of this new branch for creating a more accurate STR tree for Hartleys. More work could be done in this area
  • Finally, I looked at the SNP Tracker visual which has A16717. Due to this SNP being shared the designation of R-A16717 must be used at SNP Tracker to get the proper SNP path. This path shows that our Hartleys have been in Great Britain for a very long time.

My Cousin Woody’s DNA

I saw recently that my 2nd cousin Woody tested at 23andMe. I wrote him and now I can see the DNA results. Woody is on my Hartley side. I already have him on my DNA/Hartley genealogy Tree:

It looks like I have his grandson’s results also, if I have drawn the tree correctly. Woody descends from Greenwood Hartley born 1897. Greenwood was one of about 13 children of James Hartley and Annie Snell. Actually, I have two trees, but neither are complete:

This shows that I have some DNA results from 8 of the 13 siblings. I don’t have specific information from LH who descends from Edwin Hartley as LH tested at Ancestry and Ancestry doesn’t give the specific information of how we match. When I checked back at Ancestry, it appears that LH should be JH:

Painting Hartley DNA

I have some of my DNA mapped out or ‘painted’. Below is just my paternal side:

52% of my Hartley side is mapped out. The green part are my Hartley 2nd cousins. I recently painted in some unknown Hartley DNA on Chromosome 10 which comes up blue and covers some of the green. These 2nd cousins should add up to a theoretical total of 25% overall or 50% of my paternal side. Woody may add some more green or just add DNA in places where our other 2nd cousins are already matching me.

Adding Woody’s DNA to the Mix

At 23andMe, Woody is the third match on my list:

Woody is also a 1st cousin to Heather above. Woody and I share 337 cM of DNA:

This is about what would be expected or slightly above average for a second cousin:

I share 584 cM with Woody’s 1st cousin Heather which is at about the top amount of the range:

Here is the DNA that I share with Woody, but not with Heather:

That would be the DNA in purple on Chromosomes 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Before I map Woody’s DNA, I note that I am 59% ‘painted’ on my paternal side. Here is my map now with Woody added:

It looks like Woody filled in some green. My paternal side is now 60% painted:

However, my overall painted DNA is still at 52%.

Woody’s YDNA

23andMe takes a look at the test and tries to figure out what the YDNA group is. To get a more specific read one would have to go to FTDNA for testing. Here is what Woody shows:

Technically, Woody and I should have the same YDNA. However, my results are more generic and Woody’s appear to be more specific. I have tested at FTDNA, so I have specific information on my YDNA:

So far, this branch of L21 Hartleys are all under R-A11134. My brother James and I are under R-FT225247 where Woody would be were he to test at FTDNA.

Where is Z16855?

Z16855 is an equivalent under Z16343. That is the SNP after Z16357 that got cut off in the image above:

I’m not sure why 23andMe chose this SNP as Z16343 is used by FTDNA to represent this block of SNPs.

Above I have highlighted where I tested long ago at 23andMe and where Woody tested. Woody is 6 steps below my L21. However, at FTDNA, Hartleys who have taken the BigY test are 4 steps below Z16343 at A11134. Woody would be in the white box if he were to take the BigY test. That would likely split the white box. We would probably match in all but one SNP and that one SNP would be the branch for my brother and me as separate from Woody. The common ancestor between Woody and me was James Hartley who was born in 1862. That means that if my brother and I formed a new branch then it would be new as of after 1862. My grandfather was born in 1891, so it would be as of 1891.

It is interesting that of all my cousins that have taken a DNA test, only Woody fits the criteria for matching me with a YDNA test. If Woody were to test and find any Private Variants, that Variant or Variants would represent the Greenwood YDNA Line of Hartleys.

Summary and Conclusions

  • My cousin Woody had his DNA tested at 23andMe. When I added his DNA matches to my Chromosome Map, his matchs filled in some areas that I did not have identified.
  • Of my many Hartley 2nd cousins that have had their DNA tested, it appears that only Woody has the unbroken Hartley line that is needed to compare YDNA.
  • Woody tested his YDNA as Z16855 which is further down the line from where I tested at L21. However, if Woody were to test at FTDNA, it would show him under FT225247. His test would likely show the YDNA split between his Greenwood Hartley Line and my James Hartley Line.

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with the AutoKinship Tool at Gedmatch

Gedmatch has a new Tier 1 tool called AutoKinship. This is an interesting tool that creates different trees from your DNA matches, based on AutoClusters. I put down the $10 to try this new tool at Gedmatch. Roberta Estes wrote a good article on how to use the tool. I used that when I was stuck, but preferred to try to play with it on my own.

Running, Downloading and Extracting

An important step that Roberta emphasizes is the extracting part. It is easy to run the tool at the suggested levels. It was easy for me to download the zipped file. However, opening the file doesn’t work correctly unless everything that you have downloaded is unzipped. Here is what I used:

After I extracted all the files, I opened a file that gave me AutoClusters:

This is the file minus the names. There were 19 Clusters. I recognized some of the names.

Upping the Matches to 250

I am now on my laptop and will try this again with 250 matches. This report is taking a little longer. Roberta says that there is a 10 minute limit on these reports. This time I have gone from 19 Clusters to 45. Yikes.

This time I got a more interesting analysis:

Now I have 3 AutoTrees, Common Locations and about 20 of my clusters with AutoKinship. I’ll start with a known quantity. Pink Cluster 16 has some of my well known and documented Frazer relatives:

This is near the start of the gray squares. The gray squares indicate that these clusters are inter-related. That is due to my Protestant minority ancestors in Catholic Ireland. They tended to marry others from the Church of Ireland. I have three known Frazer Lines and two known McMaster Lines in my ancestry.

The AutoKinship Tree looks like this for Cluster 16:

Things are a little mixed up, but are within the right ball park. For example, Paul is my 2nd cousin once removed, but I should be more removed than he is. Paul is actually 2nd cousin with Emily, not 1st cousin once removed as shown. Here are some of the relationships shown differently from one of my Blogs from 2018:

I’m not sure why Bill was not included. I was never sure how Shelly fit in. She has no tree at Ancestry.

I’ll use Cluster 16 as a springboard to jump to Cluster 20:

This is still in my Irish Region:

I note that the probability for this tree has an E-6 which I take to be better than the previous tree which was in the vicinity of E-12. The only person I am aware of in this AutoKinship Tree is Mel who is Emily’s daughter from the previous AutoKinship Tree. I looked for Deborah at AncestryDNA, but could not find her. I found Annette at FTDNA, but my match with her is on Chromsome 20 which on my paternal side has been out of control in that there have been so many matches on that Chromosome.

Some More Known Rathfelder Relatives on Cluster 44

Cluster 44 also has an AutoKinship Tree:

Here is the DNA tree that I have for Rathfelder:

The AutoKinship Tree is off a bit. Catherine and I should be on the same level. Anita and Inese should be a generation after me. Donna is a special case. Donna is my 2nd cousin once removed. Even my chart does not show things perfectly. That is because Donna and Iain are 1/2 second cousins with Anita and Inese. Donna and Iain are also half 1st cousin once removed with Catherine. AH shows as 4th cousin once removed to me on the AutoKinship Tree and in my DNA/Genealogy Tree.

How Does Otis Fit In?

I have Otis in this Tree:

Otis is actually in this tree twice. However, I don’t think I have a tree in it with both AH and Otis. Donna and Iain should be in this tree also under Leonhard Rathfelder. If the AutoKinship Tree is correct, then I may suspect a Schwechheimer connection for AH or a Rathfelder connection for Otis.

My Cluster 1 AutoKinship Tree

So far, I am liking the AutoKinship Trees because they give context to the AutoClusters. Also there appears to be an element of triangulation in making these Trees which gives me an additional sense that these trees are based on science. However, I after reading Roberta Estes Blog, I am not sure that the trees are based on trianulation.

This is an interesting tree. I know that my 1st cousin once removed and 2nd cousin have the correct relationships. That leaves Deb. I was able to find her on AncestryDNA. Debra and I have a shared DNA match with Rebeka:

It is difficult to figure out where the common ancestor is between Debra and myself. One pair of common ancestors is Jonathan Hatch b 1621 and Sarah Rowley. There may also be a Palmer connection in Rhode Island.

For fun, I will paint in Debra’s DNA using DNA Painter:

Debra’s DNA does not fill in any blank spots on my Chromosome 14. However, it does identify the right-hand part of Chromosome 14 in that it is Massachusetts Colonial DNA and not English Hartley DNA. I have a lot of green Hartley-Snell DNA identified, but not a lot of it is identified as to whether it is on the Hartley side or Snell side. This DNA is most assuredly on the Snell side. The top two choices for the identity of this DNA are Hatch and Palmer. Both of these connections go back to the 1600’s which is also interesting. Maury in my painted Chromosome 14 is mmg in the AutoKinship Tree and Pat is also there.

Cluster 3 AutoKinship Tree

Lee in the second row is a person that I have been following. Lee has ancestry in Colne. This is the area where my Hartleys came from. Lee also has Hartley ancestry which is not uncommon in Colne as Hartley has been one of the most popular name in that Parish over the last several centuries. The AutoKinship Tree connects myself with Lee, Geoff and Heather.

Heather tested at 23andMe.  I have written to Heather and Geoff to see if they would share their Ancestry trees with me. Now, one report at the AutoKinship Utility has Lee matching Audrey:

Audrey tested at FTDNA and has a shared match with Tracey at FTDNA. Tracey at least has a partial tree with some ancestors from Brampton, Ontario:

However, it appears that this tree only covers one side of Tracey’s ancestry. However, Tracey has a shared match at FTDNA with Amy. Amy also has Parr ancestry. Here is how Amy in blue and Tracey in red match me on Chromosome 11:

Here is part of Amy’s tree:

Amy and Tracey have the common ancestors of Joseph Parr and Calra Morrison. That means that I may have shared ancestors going back from one of these two.

Creating a Tree – But it Leads to the Wrong Line

I haven’t had much luck with these trees in the past, but I will create another tree. It turns out that this connection is on a different line:

Loughead is from County Sligo where my grandmothers Frazer and Clarke families were from. That means that either my connection with Lee is through Sligo. I do notice that Lee has Clark ancestors, but as Clark is a common name, could this be a coincidence? Lee doesn’t show any ancestors in Sligo. Lee also matches my father’s 1st cousin who has no Clarke ancestry, so I tend to think that the Lee connection is on my Hartley side.

I have heard back from Heather, so there may be a lead there.

Cluster 4 AutoKinship Tree

This is also on my Hartley side, but whereas I believe the previous tree goes back to my English Hartleys, I believe that this tree goes back to my Snell side and Colonial Massachusetts. I show a close match as a 1st cousin twice removed to two people. These are actually my second cousins. That means that I should be roughly 4th cousins with the other matches. Of course, that is based on typical matching amounts. It could be that others who matched less are not showing and that these matches could go back further in time – perhaps like the 1600’s match I mentioned above.

It helps showing these trees as it gives me hope that I may find a common ancestor or ancestors. Ned has a pretty good tree at Ancestry:

I find the Shared Surname List useful. Here is one connection:

Here we are in the early 1600’s again. Ned descends from Mary Hathaway and I descend from John Hathaway. In my previous DNA/Genealogy tree, I have gone as far back as Simon Hathaway from 1711. This is at Simon’s great-grandparent level, so back another three generations.

Adding Ned to DNA Painter

This is an interesting possibility, because Sarah Cooke’s father was on the Mayflower. Here is how Ned shows up:

This is interesting because Ned shares more DNA in this area of my paternal side Chromosome 16 than my 1st cousin once removed Maury. I didn’t paint in Jed, but he would be in about the same area.

Adding Ned to My DNA/Genealogy Tree

This should be interesting. Here is my existing Hathaway DNA matching Tree:

All I have to do is go up three generations to Arthur and Sarah Cooke and then down to Ned. Here is the connection by itself:

Of course, the connection is a bit dubious, but it is what I have. I notice that there is a Mayhew in the line which may be another connection going way back.

Cluster 6 AutoKinship Tree

This tree has an E-23 probability which seems incredibly small to me. However, of some interest to me is that there re two siblings near the top of the tree and two siblings at the bottom. If correct, then I at the 3rd cousin once removed level with Kimmy and mostly 3rd cousin level with the other DNA matches.

I found Carl at Ancestry. He has a Hannah Pontus Churchill born in Virginia in 1651. I have a Hannah Churchill in my tree born 1649 apparently in Plymouth, MA as the daughter of John Churchill and Hannah Pontus. So if my information is right John Churchill born perhaps in 1620 and Hannah Pontus would be our common ancestors. However, from above, I had that my Audrey connection was on an entirely different line going back to Ireland. Time to move on to Cluster 8

Cluster 8 Tree

Here at least I have Beth, my second cousin and the probability on this tree is not as low as the previous tree. Beth and I descend from James Hartley and Annie Snell. James Hartley had one sister. Annie was from a larger family, so my guess is that this tree could be on the Snell side. I note that GPR is a new match at Gedmatch, but I was unable to make the connection to Ancestry.

Cluster 37 Tree

This is a tree that I am familiar with:

Let’s see how accurate the AutoKinship Tree is:

 

This shows that, at least in this case, AutoKinship had each relationship closer by one-half step. The one exception is between me and Judy. The program then guesses at different possibilities:

Tree 4 seems to get it right:

The problem here is that Robert shows as a 2C2R to me where he is a 2C1R. However, the structure of the tree is more or less right. I don’t know that any of the trees got it perfect. There were just better trees and worse ones. Although this AutoKinship Tree does not give me any new information, it gives me an idea of how the Tree works.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It seems that the AutoKinship Trees help give some context to at least some of the AutoClusters
  • Looking at the AutoClusters in this way gives some hope that a common ancestor could be found some some of the unidentified clusters
  • Looking at the AutoClusters in terms of trees gives a fresh look at some old matches while also picking up some new matches that have been added to Gedmatch.
  • The real help is also in the reaching out to those I haven’t reached out to yet to try to make genealogical connections.

Nicholson 4th Cousin Nancy at Ancestry

When I was looking at my sister’s DNA matches at Ancestry, I came across Nancy. She also matches me and we show common ancestors:

Ancestry want me to evaluate the tree. I suppose I can start with mary Ellen Nicholson. Here are the basics that Nancy has on Mary Ellen:

The thing I find interesting about Nancy is that she descends from Henry Nicholson who shows as the brother of my 2nd great-grandfather’s brother William. William was from a large family. Here are his siblings:

I also have my own DNA Matching Genealogy Tree:

This is part of the tree. I see I already have Michelle on the Henry Nicholson Branch. I suppose that is a good sign. I wrote a Blog including Michelle here.

My genealogy-only Tree doesn’t have Walter:

Doing the Genealogy to Try to Connect to Nancy

The best way to make the connection is not from the top down but from the present to the past. I’ll start a tree for Nancy:

Based on Arie’s Naturalization papers, Arie and Mary Ellen married in Sheffield, England and Mary Ellen was also born in Sheffield:

Based on this, I take this to be the Nicholson family in 1911:

All family members were born in Sheffield according to this Census.

More on Joseph Nicholson

I can get back to the 1901 Census before Mary Ellen was born:

Here is some more information from the 1901 Census:

Here is what I have for Joseph and Mary Ellen’s children:

Mary Ellen should be Boothroyd. I think that one of the record transcriptions was off. I have Joseph at least later associated with Brightside Bierlow:

In 1891, there are two Josephs associated with Ecclesall Bierlow.

Mary Ellen Boothroyd

Here is Mary Ellen in 1881:

Mary Ellen’s father was a Carter as was her later husband Joseph Nicholson. She also lived in Brightside Bierlow, so perhaps Joseph went to live near where she was from.

Back to Joseph Nicholson

FamilySearch has these two Josephs born in Sheffield:

Neither of these two have the father Walter as suggested by Ancestry. The one with the fathe Henry is promising as Joseph’s first son was named Henry. However, I’m ruling him out as he appears in the 1901 Census:

Here is a Joseph in the 1881 Census:

He appears to be the son of George and Mary Ann Nicholson and the grandson of Mitalda(?) Nicholson. I was looking in the Ecclesall Bierlow area, so that meets that criteria.

The 1891 Census Gives a Clue

Here Joseph is a Carter:

That is too much of a coincidence for me to overlook in an area that was known for the metal industry. Time to deviate from the Ancestry Common Ancestry Tree to see where this leads us:

Ancestry wants me to put in William Nicholson for the father of Joseph Nicholson. Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with this line. Perhaps the connection is on another line.

Trying the Top Down Method

This is the less preferrred method, but perhaps I can test out the Ancestry model this way. Here are two records for Henry Nicholson:

As these are both bachelors, they must be two different people. Interestingly, one is the son of Joseph and one is the son of Matthew. Matthew is my 3rd great-grandfather. I have Henry married to Ann Bainbridge:

I’m not sure where I got that so I’ll change her to Elizabeth Bradshaw. That could mean that the work I had done on a previous Blog on Michelle (mentioned above in the Blog) could be wrong.

Henry and Elizabeth in the Census

Here is a Henry and Elizabeth listed as visitors. They also have a son Walter. However, how did Henry and Elizabeth get three sons if they just married in 1850? Nothing seems to add up.

Back to Michelle

I mentioned Michelle near the top of this Blog. It appears now that I have drawn her connection incorrectly and too hastily. Now it is back to the drawing board or in this case, Nicholson Tree. Here is part of Michele’s tree:

Here is 4 year old Francis Emily in 1861:

10 years earlier, this couple had no children:

This is likely the Ann Nixon that I mentioned above.

This is where things get complicated again. I found an Ann Nixon who died in Worcester, MA:

Unfortunately, Henry’s death record is missing his parent’s information:

However, from the marriage record, we know that the Henry Nicholson who married Ann Nixon had as his father Joseph Nicholson. I will go with this for Henry’s birth:

This is the closest I could find in the 1841 Census:

Here, there are many possibilities:

  • I may have the wrong family
  • Joseph may have died, but then who is John
  • Joseph may have been a John Joseph or Joseph John
  • The Census taker may have gotten the name wrong

Assuming that Joseph and Sarah are the right names, here is a wedding transcription:

I assume that this is the same family in 1851 and that the husband is correctly named now:

Henry married a local girl as the Nixon family is on the same page. I also see that Joseph was born in Thorne.

The red marker is where Thorne is.

Will the Real Nicholson Relative Please Stand Up?

I have taken Michele off of my DNA relative chart. I believe she is related, but I haven’t figured out how or where right now. Both these lines end up in the Thorne area. From my early genealogical Nicholson guesswork, I did have a Joseph Nicholson in the mix:

Concerning the Walter in the Ancestry connection shown at the top of the Blog, I coudln’t find that he had a son named Joseph. This is what one Ancestry tree shows for Walter which appears to be accurate:

Summary and Conclusions

  • Sometimes it is difficult to figure out how DNA matches match by genealogy
  • When I took Michele’s genealogy back it ended with someone who died in Thorne
  • When I took Nancy’s genealogy back, the Nicholson side also ended up in Thorne
  • These DNA matches may hark back to an earlier Nicholson connection or they may connect with an associated line to the Nicholsons.
  • At very least, I was able to correct a past mistake. I had William Nicholson’s brother Henry married to an Ann where he was apparently married to Elizabeth Bradshaw.
  • I would like to give credit to the Sheffield Indexer Website where I was able to find important Nicholson baptismal and marriage records

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nine Years of My Hartley Branch YDNA Testing

According to my FTDNA Order History, I ordered my first DNA kit on 02/24/2013. This was about 9 years ago. I took the YDNA 12 marker kit. Those results came in on 03/18/2013. At that time, I would have had many matches. A few of these would have been Hartley matches. Most were other matches with ancestry mostly in England, Scotland and Ireland. I ordered the 37 STR test on April 25, 2013.

My understanding was at this point was that I was R1b which was a pretty generic Northwestern European Haplogroup. The Hartley YDNA Project had me as R-P311:

I think that P311 is equivalent to L151.

As I  recall, the STR results were ambiguous and it was suggested that I should take the U152 test:

U152 was an important distinction. U152 as I understood it represented the Anglo Saxon portion of England. These were people that came to England after the Roman period:

For reasons I cannot explain, I did not want to be positive for U152. I wanted to be part of the earlier Celtic Britons shown in the above map. The map explained to me the confusion of names. For example why was there a Great Britain and England? I was relieved to find out in June 2013 that I was negative for U152.

My Hartley YDNA 2014 – S5668

2013 and 2014 was a time for me to learn about the world of YDNA. At this time the stress was on YDNA. Autosomal testing was not as popular. I did my first SNP testing in 2014 with a company called Briton’s DNA. This company cost less than FTDNA. I got the results in about August of 2014. As I recall, I was listed as S5668. I believe that Briton’s DNA gave a name to this group and even had a fanciful drawing of what they believed a person from this Haplogroup may have looked like.

Here was the Chromo2 version of where I was:

Chromo SNPs tended to use an S designation. I should have used FTDNA, but used BritainsDNA as an interim measure to find out where I belonged. Even though the drawing of my ancestral tribe was laughable, I was happy to know where I fit in on the tree of mankind. I had traced my Hartley ancestry back to a certain point in time and place in Trawden, Lancashire. Now I was able to tracke my lineage down from genetic Adam more towards modern times. However, there was still a big gap between S5668 and my Trawden Hartleys.

Later in the year 2014, FTNDA and Mike Walsh were developing this L513 Tree:

I did get honorable mention in this tree, but my name was listed below the line for individual SNP testing as I had not taken the BigY test.

67 STR Test

Meanwhile, I had ordered the 67 STR test. My analysis of my 67 STR data lead me to believe that I should also be positive for Z17911. I tested positive for this SNP at YSEQ, but that made no difference at FTDNA, so then I tested positive for an equivalent to Z17911 which was Z17912 – also at FTDNA:

That means that in 2014, I went (in the eyes of FTDNA) from R-P311 (or L151) to Z17911. That was a big jump.

Here is a closeup of the L513 Tree from October 2014:

I was not on this tree because I had not paid for the more expensive BigY test. However, I now saw that if I did, I would be most closely related to Merrick and Thomas. I also kept up with an enthusiastic group on an L513 newsgroup.

My Hartley BigY500 in 2016

I had no further YDNA testing in 2015. I kept up with updates on L513. I became increasingly frustrated that others were being added to the L513 Tree, but I was not allowed as I had not done BigY testing – even though I knew where I should belong on that tree. I ordered the BigY in April 2016. At that time, the Hartley part of the L513 had not changed much:

there was now a Smith, two Haplogroups up from Z17911. The Yahoo L513 group was trying to figure out who should be in the Z17911 group by STRs. The initial June 2016 BigY results got me onto the L513 Tree:

Of course, it discovered my variants which would be useful in future branching. Now a Goff had also joined our group. At this time, I also uploaded my BigY results to YFull.

Mike Walsh pointed out that my BigY test would result in a new branch. Not for me, but for Merrick and Thomas:

The last line shows that I was red for that SNP location (Column 4), but that Thomas and Merrick have green showing that they are positive.

In September 2016, a new L513 tree came out:

As predicted, Merrick formed a new branch, though notice that it was not yet named.

2017 and SmithPlanet

In 2017, Jared Smith got more involved with SNP testing. He also created a website and his own tree for R-Z16357:

The interesting part of this tree that Jared built is that it included estimates for the dates of the SNPs. Now the Branch for Merrick, Thomas and Bennett have the name of BY11573. These dates were for the most part before the time of surnames.

Here is my Hartley section of the L513 Tree dated January 2016 but it must be from January 2017:

The new branch is now named BY11573 and includes Bennett. I believe that the Smith at the top of this section of the tree at Z16357 is different than Jared.

More Detail from Jared

Jared looked at the individual SNPs or Variants and came up with this portion of the Hartley Tree:

Here, based on A11130, Jared shows Hartley branching off. This was true for my branch of Hartleys. However, future testing would show that A11130 was not a SNP that Hartleys other than in my specific branch tested positive for. FTDNA’s practice is to not name a branch unless more than one person tests positive for it. However I appreciated Jared’s tree that went ahead and created a branch for me. This branch would later be called A111132. It seemed like I had been at Z17911 for a long time. This was my first change in over two years since 2014 when I discovered that I was Z17911.

At this time, I was also trying to build STR trees for my branch of Hartleys but found that they were difficult to build and often in opposition to the non-ambiguous SNPs.

More Updates

We are now up to about 5 years ago. Here is what Jared has near the end of February 2017:

This put everyone on the left side of the Z17911 tree and Hartley on the right side of the tree.

A New Hartley Tester in 2017

My May 2017 Blog notes the results from a new Hartley tester. This was what was needed to create a new Haplogroup for the Hartleys:

This tree is dated March 25, 2017. I noted in that Blog that the new tester moved us down the tree past A11138 to A11132.  So after a long time at Z17911, I had a double change.  This was due to two major changes. The new tester and I are now at A11132 and Jared is now at A11138. That means that Jared’s BigY results and the new Hartley’s test results must have come out at about the same time. Here Jared also has a dotted line to two boxes that are in lighter green. I assume that these are people who tested STRs but not SNPs.

The FTDNA Block Tree in 2019

In a Blog I wrote in September 2019, I have this early Hartley Block Tree from FTDNA:

According to Roberta Estes, this Block Tree came out in January of 2019. At this time, A11132 had 7 SNPs in it. This was later to change to 10 and then go down to 8 when it split. Also, Jared now has 11 Private Variants (down from his then 13 Private Variants.

In that same Blog, I posted an analysis Dave Vance did with dates:

Vance has the common ancestor for Smith and Hartley at 900 AD and the common ancestor between the two Hartleys at 1400 AD. The analysis was based on STRs. Based on SNPs, I made an estimate that our common Hartley ancestors may be in the year 1500 AD.

In November 2019, I posted a Blog trying to triangulate the genealogy of the Hartleys who either tested as A11132 or likely were due to STR testing. Here is a portion of the L513 Tree from that Blog:

 

At this time the FTDNA L513 Administrator was trying to show by colors where the ancestors of the SNP groups came from.

In December of 2019, I noted that there was a new Hartley tester named Steve. I had convinced him to take the BigY test. At this point, only the 111 STR portion of his test had come in, but he was my closest match at 111 STRs:

This screen shot was from December 2019, but it shows that I lost a Private Variant somehow. Perhaps it was decided that these this Variant was in a location that was not reliable:

 

My Hartley YDNA Updates for 2020

The first big news of 2020 was Steve and his new BigY. I ordered an upgrade for myself also at this time to make sure that our results were compatible. In January, I noticed that the L513 tree had changed. Now there were two pages of tree and the country of origin designation was removed. I was on the S5668 side.

Recall, that when I firsted tested at BritainsDNA S5668 was the extent of my testing. The test went down deeper but not on my Z16357 branch of S5668 which is a smaller branch.

Here is SNP Tracker at that time:

In the proceses of Steve’s BigY, he is now my closest match at 111 STRs. Michael did not upgrade to 111 STRs in his BigY500 test:

The Start of Two Hartley BigY Tests – January 2020

My test was an upgrade from BigY500 to BigY700. Steve’s was new.

The obvious difference other than I now match Steve is that we share 12 Private Variants between the three of us. Michael and I previously shared 2 Private Variants. It seems that I had 17 Private Variants and Steve had 19 Private Variants. I found this confusing, because I had some named SNPs from previous testing which were also Private, that is, not shared. I didn’t ask Michael how many Private Variants he had.

February 2020

In my Blog from this Month, I mention the Rule of Three as recommended by Bill Wood at the Facebook BigY Page. I realized that I should have tested my brother instead of upgrading my own BigY. That would have saved me some money. At this time, I also posted my BigY upgrade results to Alex Williamson’s Big Tree. I noted that my Private Variants went down from 10 to six:

That means that the 17 Private Variants I mentioned above could have included named SNPs. At this point, I still assumed that Steve and I would form a new Hartley Branch.

April 2020 – More Changes in the Hartley Block Tree

Here is what the Block Tree looks like now:

The Private Variants have gone from an average of 12 to an average of 4. Two new SNPs have been added to the A11132 Block based on Steve’s testing and my upgrade. I contacted FTDNA and they said that all reviews were done. That means that Steve and I did not form a new branch. That also means that the common ancestor between Steve, Michael and myself is within a specific range of years.

The Rule of Three mentioned above recommends you test yourself of course for the BigY. One of the 2 others is a close relative that needs testing. I ordered a test for my brother, Jim later in April. I was curious to see our Private Variants named and have a branch for our own particular tribe of Hartleys. Here is what I was expecting:

I had six Private Variants which I assumed would be named when my brother tested and that block of newly named SNPs would form a new Hartley Branch.

May and June 2020 – Jim’s New BigY Results

The first part of the BigY results is the 111 STR test results. I wrote about those in May 2020. The news from this test was that I had a one STR difference from my brother Jim. It turned out that I had a mutation at DYS534 that the other Hartleys did not have:

At this time, I wrote out a genealogy chart connecting three YDNA testers:

 

Michael tested for BigY500 and Lawrence and Ross tested STRs. I find these trees to be useful for reference during YDNA testing. Based on this tree, it would seem that if Lawrence or Ross were to test the BigY, they would form a new branch of Hartleys.

June 2020

When Jim’s BigY results were first posted, he was listed as A11132. I also found a new STR on the extended testing where Jim and I did not match:

I didn’t know if I had the mutation at DYS548 or if Jim did. I could now probably figure that out, but have not done this yet. New tester Lawrence has a value of 12 for DYS548. For some reason, when I check my results, I don’t show a value for DYS548:

So I can’t explain this discrepancy right now.

My June 8, 2020 Blog showed this new Hartley Branch and Block Tree:

I noted that this was my first change from A11132 since 2017. The new R-FT225247 branch has 7 SNPs. After Jim and I split off from A11132, Michael and Lawrence now have an average of 2 Private Variants. This created a discrepancy between the new FT225247 Branch and the A11132 Branch. Part of this was due to the fact that Michael took the older BigY500 test.

My Hartley YDNA Branches in 2021

My next Hartley YDNA Blog was not until March 2021. At that time, there were a few changes in the Block Tree:

Some time between June 2020 and March 2021, A11132 went from 9 SNPs to 10 and the Smith Branch went from 13 Private Variants to 11. It looks like the new SNP for A11132 was FT22040. This is something I did not look at previously.

FT22040

Here is what YBrowse shows:

This SNP was discovered in 2019. Here is what the Big Tree Page shows:

For some mutations, their exact position on the tree is uncertain. The mutation may belong further upstream or all downstream branches may not be positive for it. This is often the case for SNPs/INDELs found in FGC kits or 1kG kits in regions not covered by BigY tests.

This note indicates that FT22040 has an uncertain position. Here are my results for this SNP:

I suppose that explains FT22040, but not the timing of when it was added. Also, I cannot explain Smith’s Private Variant drop from 13 to 11.

December 2021

I wrote a Blog which mentions John who agreed to take the BigY test. I am hoping to find a new Hartley Branch and get listed on the R1b Hall of Fame:

To do this requires our Hartley group to have three of more descendant subclades and we had only two (A11132 and FT225247). John was my closest match by STRs, so seemed a good candidate. In that Blog, I estimated that there should be at least 10,000 A11132 Hartley descendants in the World.

I also triangulated the earliest known ancestors for the four BigY testers plus the new BigY tester.

I gave a weighted score. My family and the Quaker family were from Trawden. So they got a 5. The Roger Hartley family is widely believed to be from Marsden. However, my understanding of the genealogy is that the Quaker place of meeting was in Marsden and his death record from there shows that he was from the “Forest of Trawden”. This is an older or fuller name for Trawden. Steve’s ancestors were below that in the Todmorden area. The new BigY tester John’s ancestors were from Healaugh near Tadcaster in Yorkshire County to the East. My analysis favored Trawden, but I am predisposed to that area as that is where my Hartleys were from (though about 175 years after the Roger Hartley Family).

Michael’s Private Variants

I had assumed that Michael had no Private Variants. I found out that this was not true. I had assumed that based on the average and number of Variants that Steve and Michael had, that Michael would have no Private Variants. I discoverd that the average was not based on the total list of Private Variants, but only the Private Variants that FTDNA deemed to be in reliable areas. Michael actually had two Private Variants. I compared the Variants of those who had tested and got this table:

At this point, I was reinforced in my feeling that someone else on the Roger Hartley Line needed to be tested to make up for deficiencies in Michael’s BigY500 test.

SNP Tracker is now tracking my new SNP family SNP of FT225247:

This brings our SNP from Medieval to Modern times.

2022 and Three Important BigY Tests: John, Lawrence and Mawdsley

John’s 111 STR results came in at the first of the year. They showed that John was more closely related to my brother and me at 111 STRs than to other Hartleys. However, the STR results can be misleading. In this Month also Robert Casey did a STR study for the Z16343 Group. This is important in finding other STR testers who may be part of the Z16343 Group. Dating was also included, but some of the dating seemed to go against the more consistant dating by using SNPs and SNP structure.

Here is an updated Z16343 Tree from the SmithPlanet web site:

It also includes the SNP above which is Z16357.

Lawrence and Mawdsley

I asked Lawrence from the Roger Hartley Line if he would take the BigY test and he agreed to take it. When Lawrence’s 111 STR test came in a new tester named Mawdsley also took the BigY test and his 111 STR test came in. Both Lawrence’s and Mawdsley’s BigY results were finalized (minus the manual review) at the end of January 2022.

A New Hartley Haplogroup – A11134

I got Steve, John and Lawrence to test for BigY hoping for a new Harltey Haplogroup. It took the testing of a non-Hartley (Mawdsley) to split up the existing A11132 Haplogroup and form a new Hartley A11134 Haplogroup.

February 2022 Lawrence’s BigY Results

I was disappointed to see that Lawrence’s 6 Private Variants did not produce a new Branch with Michael. This could be because Michael’s BigY500 test did not cover the positions where Lawrence’s Private Variants were located.

A16717

However, I was encouraged by the fact that both Lawrence and Michael tested positive for A16717 and the other Hartleys tested negative. The only problem is that this SNP is also used in the J Haplogroup. After 2 weeks from when Lawrence’s BigY results came in, I wrote to the FTDNA Help Desk to see if they would create a branch of A16717 for Michael and Lawrence.

Here is the new Block Tree as of the end of February 2022:

Here is the branching that I was hoping for:

Summary and Conclusions

  • It has been a wild ride looking into the YDNA of my Hartley Line
  • I have gone with STR testing, Chromo2 testing (BritainsDNA), single SNP testing at FTDNA and YSEQ and finally BigY testing.
  • Along the way I have learned a lot about YDNA ‘deep ancestry’.
  • Recently, two Hartley only surname branches have been discovered. These are A11134 and FT225247
  • I have also discovered the closest name to our Hartley Surname which is Mawdsley
  • I am now awaiting to see if FTDNA will create a A16717 Branch of Hartleys. This would be an important branch as it includes genealogy back to the early 1600s. Also many US Hartleys descend from this branch of early immigrants to Pennsylvania.