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  #1  
Old 21-04-22, 23:52
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Default How do you trace family back from DNA?

My DNA has 9% Sweden and Denmark. That seems like enough to be fairly true. How far back do I need to go to find who that came from?

I know my great great grandparents were from Germany, but southern Germany.

I only have 4% from Germany.

5% from Norway and 2% from Baltics.

Not concerned too much with the tiny amounts but interested in the 9%


Also my only English is from the east, mainly Essex. I do have Sussex but that isn’t mentioned.
However the really odd one is my Devon and Cornwall family. I can trace them back to the 1500s, thanks to the British Museum. Ancestry doesn’t mention Devon and Cornwall at all and I doubt it is considered eastern England.
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Old 22-04-22, 08:28
ElizabethHerts ElizabethHerts is offline
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Libby, in my experience ethnicity estimates are interesting but give an inaccurate overall impression. Mine reflect my northern heritage much more than my southern roots, which is misleading as on my mother's side I have ancestors from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Buckinghamshire.

I bet that before long your estimates will change yet again.
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Old 22-04-22, 09:33
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GIGO.

Most of us are mongrels. Most of us cannot take EVERY SINGLE line beyond civil registration. Most of us have few unique surnames in our trees. Most Ancestry trees have a few flaws in them. Most parish registers have the odd hiatus. Sometimes my ancestors laugh at my across a generation's divide, knowing that no records survive to prove the connection. But often they have just arrived in the interim.

Given all those factors, I don't have any faith in the current ethnicity estimates, and suspect it will require a good many more updates before they produce anything remotely convincing.

If I look at my "Scottish" ethnicity it is currently 17%.

No trace of a Scottish Ancestor so far, but when I drill down, the range is 0 - 30%.
I'd only trust an ethnicity where the bottom figure is at least above zero.

This, by the way, is my 2020 estimate:
Ireland & Scotland 5% (Range: 0%—8%)
Norway 3% (Range: 0%—8%)

Now, the Norweigan is Welsh. A few years back, it was French.
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Old 22-04-22, 13:40
Olde Crone Olde Crone is offline
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Agree with you both.

My DNA is half English, half Irish, according to Ancestry. In fact, it's half Scottish according to my paper research which goes back on one line to 7 x ggps, all Scottish, living and dying in Scotland. I know, from paper research, that there is a mt DNA connection with Iceland but Ancestry don't mark this.

I don't understand how Ancestry decides where DNA geographically comes from. Presumably from random research projects, matching one man's DNA in England with another found in Zululand or whatever - but you are born where you are born, you die where you die. I will die in Cornwall but that does not mean I have any DNA which would identify me as being Cornish. Equally, if some future researcher looks for me in Scotland they won't find me because apart from a couple of years as a child, I've always lived in England.

OC
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Old 23-04-22, 07:36
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Thanks guys. Seems silly they even have it in Ancestry. I really only wanted to do mine to sort one line, which I have, but not through my DNA but a cousin’s….lol

It was handy for my medical specialists though, so that’s something.
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Old 25-04-22, 07:13
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If you have no Devon and Cornwall ethnicity showing, could it be just be that none of the current Reference Panel share any of your DNA? or none of the Reference Panel have DNA which links to the specific areas of your ancestors.

My Dad has an amount of Scottish ethnicity, but that makes no sense as none of his traceable ancestors were born north of Shropshire and the Midlands. I can only surmise that although the Reference Panel for Scotland has largely Scottish DNA as their family has lived for a long time in one area, some of their ancestors came from further south and that's how they make an ethnicity match with my Dad.
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Old 25-04-22, 10:54
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I find this aspect infuriating. I am a quarter East Anglian, so would expect SOMETHING to show. It doesn't. It does for my cousin, so I clearly don't reach the bar for this.

Even when Ancestry decided Best Mate had 30% plus Scottish Ancestry (wrong!!) they didn't say where it might be located, so I assume that they probably only choose the two most distinctive areas, and anything below, say, 20% would not show.

These figures are all going to be entertaining rubbish for several years to come.
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Old 26-04-22, 10:15
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I think the Reference Panel is way too small for anything accurate to be concluded.

Just over 750 Welsh people on the panel - are they spread evenly over Wales, or concentrated in one or two areas? What are the chances they share DNA with my husbands one 3xg grandmother from Monmouthshire?
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Old 04-05-22, 18:33
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They change the percentages a lot. In my first DNA analysis I had 3% Swedish, which then disappeared. Now it's 11% Swedish & Danish and a surprising 23% Scottish. No idea where all that has come from. The 59% English, including Cornwall, East Anglia and Central England & Gloucestershire all makes sense.

Interestingly my son has a small amount of Norwegian appear, which presumably he gets from his dad, though I don't know how different Norwegian DNA is from Swedish.
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Chowns in Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire
Brewer, Broad, Eplett & Pope in Cornwall
Smoothy & Willsher/Wiltshire in Essex & Surrey
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Barnes, Dunt, Gray, Massingham, Saul/Seals/Sales in Norfolk
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Old 20-08-22, 23:51
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I’m up to 10% Sweden and Denmark and 9% Norway. My Germanic is 9%. I believe the German, but my paper trail has no Scandinavian until ( according the the British History Museum) my Hubands originally came as Vikings prior to 1066. I think probably quite a lot of British people have that ancestry. 16% from that area seems high.
Might explain why my three daughters are all blonde with blue eyes, when neither my husband or I have blue eyes or blond hair………lol. Yes, they are all his kids…lol
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