Journals of a Time Traveller

First a disclaimer.  I'm very new to the whole world of genetic genealogy.  I'm not new however, to traditional genealogy, and I do have a pretty good amateur understanding of relative archaeological and anthropological discussions over the past fifty years.  The following is not meant as a critique of genetic genealogy, so much as a review, or my experience, of ancestry composition based on autosomal DNA analysis.

Let's start with my paper trail.

Traditional Genealogy

I am English by ethnicity, British by nationality, and a subject of Queen Elizabeth II (often now referred to as a UK Citizen).

My paper recorded ancestry consists of the genealogical records of:

• Generation 1 has 1 individual. (100.00%)
• Generation 2 has 2 individuals. (100.00%)
• Generation 3 has 4 individuals. (100.00%)
• Generation 4 has 8 individuals. (100.00%)
• Generation 5 has 16 individuals. (100.00%)
• Generation 6 has 29 individuals. (90.62%)
• Generation 7 has 49 individuals. (76.56%)
• Generation 8 has 35 individuals. (27.34%)
• Generation 9 has 24 individuals. (10.16%)
• Generation 10 has 10 individuals. (2.34%)
• Generation 11 has 4 individuals. (0.39%)
• Total ancestors in generations 2 to 11 is 181. (9.04%)

All 181 ancestors, reaching back to the 1690's, appear to be English born, of English ethnicity, with English surnames.  The majority of them (100% on my mother's side, and 81% on my father's side) were East Anglian, with the vast majority of that percentage being born in the county of Norfolk.  Religions recorded or indicated were CofE Anglican or non-conformist Christian.  No sign of any Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism.

Therefore it would look pretty likely, that I can claim English heritage, wouldn't you agree?

Genetic Genealogy and Ancestry Prediction

There are three aspects or avenues of inquiry, available for genetic genealogy.  First of all, the two sex haplogroups; the y-DNA, and the mt-DNA. These two "signals" are referred to as haplogroups.

1. The y-DNA.  This follows the Y chromosome.  It is only carried by men.  It is passed along the paternal line, and only by that line, from grandfather, down to father, down to son, until the line is broken.  What a lot of people do often misunderstand, is that it does not represent 50% of your ancestry.  It does not represent all of your biological father's ancestry.  For example, his mother's father, and her brothers, although on your father's side, would most likely carry a different y-DNA haplogroup.  It only comes down an uninterrupted strictly paternal line.  Even at Generation 7 (g.g.g.g grandparents) above, it would have been carried by one out of my sixty four biological ancestors at that generation.  The other thirty one g.g.g.g grandfathers for that generation may have carried different Y haplogroups.
2. The mt-DNA.  Although a very different type of DNA, this one works as the opposite sex haplogroup.  It is a signal that is passed down the strictly maternal line, from grandmother, to mother, to her children.  Yes, we men do inherit our mother's mt_DNA, but we can't pass it down.  Only our sisters can.
3. The au-DNA, better known as Autosomal DNA.  Whereas the former two sex haplogroups are handy, because we can measure their mutations, and track their formation and movement across thousands of years, au-DNA really is the stuff that we are made of - all of the SNPs on our chromosomes that personalise us within the human genome.  We inherit our au-DNA from all of our recent ancestors.  Roughly 50% from our biological mother, and 50% from our biological father.  Equally, we could say on average, 25% from each grandparent, or 12.5% from each great grandparent.  However, it is messy.  At every reproduction (meiosis), it gets messed up by recombination.  Not only that, but go back much more than six generations, and it becomes more and more likely that you can lose entire lineages.  You can have no surviving trace of any DNA from for example, a particular g.g.g.g.g grandparent.

Autosomal DNA is what makes us individuals, gives us our hereditary traits.  It is passed down from many ancestors, via our parents.  However, the sex haplogroups are of interest because they can be traced across the globe, and the millennia.  As we gain more and more data - both from living populations, and ancient DNA from archaeological finds, so we will be able to track the STR and SNP mutation data more precisely.

However, what about poor old messed up autosomal DNA?  It represents our entire biological heritage over many generations. It is what we are. However, making sense of it is less easy, less precise.  Genetic genealogists are making progress, but it is far less of a precise science than either of the haplogroups.  They use calculators, that measure the segments of DNA cross the chromosomes, looking for patterns that they recognise from a number of known reference populations.  From that, these calculators predict an ancestry.  Exactly what and when that ancestry refers to, does seem to vary from one calculator to another.  There is an argument that the precision can be improved if you also test close known relatives including at least one parent.  The results can then be phased.  I'm actually waiting for the results for my mother, so that I can see my own au-DNA ancestry results phased and corrected.

So lets have a bit of fun, and see what some of the calculators suggest for my autosomal DNA, at least before any phasing with my mother's DNA.  What do they make of my 100% English paper ancestry?

23andMe.com Ancestry Composition Standard Mode

99.9% European.

Broken into:

83% NW European

17% Broadly (unassigned) European

I think that's pretty cool.  As I'm getting to know au-DNA predictions, so as I'm learning to appreciate it when they get the right continent, and the right corner of that continent.  That is more than they could do a decade or two ago.  The prediction is correct, I am a NW European.  I'm not a West African, a South Asian, or a East Siberian.

23andMe.com Ancestry Composition Speculative Mode

100% European

Broken into:

94% NW European

3% S European

3% Broadly (unassigned) European.

Whoa, where did that South European come from?  It could just be a stray incorrectly identified signal, or it could be telling me that one of my ancestors, maybe around Generation 6, were from down south!  Lets break down the prediction further.  First, the NW European:

32% British & Irish

27% French & German

7% Scandinavian

But surely I should be 100% British & Irish?  Not only 32%.  I have my own ideas about this.  I think that although 23andMe claims that Ancestry Composition only represents the ancestry of the past 300 to 500 years (the so-called migration period, as sold to USA customers), that it gets confused by earlier migrations across their reference populations, including those during the early medieval period, and perhaps even some of those during late prehistory.  I've noticed that across Ireland and Britain, the further to the east, the more diluted the 23andMe British & Irish assignment.  People of solid Irish ancestry get between 85% and 98% British & Irish.  My East Anglian results, mixed between British & Irish, French & German, and Scandinavian, are actually rather more like those received by Dutch customers of 23andMe.

As for that Southern European prediction, how does that break down?

0.5% Iberian

2.4% Broadly (unassigned) South European.

Which if taken seriously, might suggest that I have an unknown Spanish or Portuguese ancestor around Generation 6.  If I did take it seriously that is.  I wonder what my mother's test will reveal?

DNA.Land.com Ancestry Composition

This is a third party site, that you can upload your 23andMe V4 raw data to, and see what their calculators predict for your ancestry.  It has recently had it's ancestry composition revised.  What did that make of my 100% English au-DNA?

West Eurasian 100%.

I like that designation, the amateur anthropologist in me prefers that broad designation over "European".  Broken down:

77% North/Central European

19% South European

2.4% Finnish

1.3% unassigned.

What?  Why not 100% North/Central European?  Finnish?  Did some early medieval Scandinavian settlers of East Anglia bring it?  Or is it a false signal?  Misidentified au-DNA?

That darned South European kicked in again.  I'm here looking at a biological cuckoo NPE (non-parental event) at around Generation 5 or even more recent!  Did a great grandmother secretly have a South European lover?  But this South European breaks down further:

13% Balkan

6% Italian.

Oh my goodness, whereas 23andMe speculative mode suggested SW Europe - this one suggests SE Europe!  Do I have a secret Albanian great grandfather?  Or is it all nonsense?

WeGene.com

This is a cracking new third party DNA analyser.  It is based in China, and it's predictors appear to calculate mainly for a Chinese market.  It not only predicts your ancestry composition, but also your two sex haplogroups, and lots of traits and health predictions to compliment those of 23andMe.  It even tries to predict your genetic disposition to sexuality!

It will allow you to send your 23andMe V4 raw data direct to it's own calculators.  However, at the moment the website is almost entirely in Chinese (Mandarin?).  There are two options.  1) At the bottom of the webpages is a hyperlink to English, which gives, in English, a basic ancestry composition, and your haplogroups.  It does not include English versions of the health and trait results.  2) use an online translator, such as the one built into the Google Chrome browser.  It actually serves pretty well.

On sex haplogroups they give my Y-DNA as

L1.  Not bad, but they didn't make it to L1b or L-M317.

My mtDNA?

H6a1a8.  Very good.  Better than 23andMe's H6a1, and the same as the mthap program.

But this is about au-DNA, how did they do, what did they make of my 100% English ancestry?

81% French

19% English/Briton

Now, that sounds pretty awful, but on closer inspection, I'm impressed.  No South European great grandfather.  Okay, so most of my DNA has been placed on the wrong side of the Channel.  However, I know that French and English DNA is actually very close.  Recent surveys even suggest that the English have inherited a lot of common ancestry with the French during unknown migration late in prehistory.  So again - they very much got the right corner of the right Continent.  Well done WeGene.

GEDmatch.com Eurogenes K13

GEDmatch is a website that you can upload raw data not only from 23andMe, but from a range of testers, and from V3 chips as well as V4.  It hosts a number of tools and predictors - some Open Source.  Some of these predictors are for Admixture or ancestry composition.  They measure your ancestry in terms of distance from known reference populations.  The lower the number, the closer you are to their reference.  They use calculators known as oracles to predict ancestry, including mixed ancestry or admixture.

The oracles on the Eurogenes K13 and K15 calculator models have a good reputation at working with West Eurasian ancestry.  So how does K13 first, score my 100% English ancestry?

On Single Population Sharing, it rates my DNA against the closest references.  In order of closest to not so close, the top five are:

GEDmatch.com Eurogenes EU test V2 K15

• Don't expect DNA Ancestry tests to pin point an actual country of ancestry.  They're not no where near that good yet.  The populations of West Eurasia, and elsewhere, are actually all mixed up, or share a lot of recent admixture.  In addition, many European nation-states are quite recent inventions.  I've seen the borders of Europe change in my short lifetime.
• Don't expect precision.  If for example, you are an American, and a 23andMe AC test suggests only 32% British & Irish, then you could actually have 100% English ancestry over the past 300 years!  We're so mixed up, that these tests are struggling to part and identify us by nationality.
• If you are willing to share your raw data (there are privacy issues), then have fun trying out all of these third party calculators.  It's a lot of fun as you can see.  They rarely agree.  There are other tools on GEDmatch for example, where you can compare DNA along with .gedcom genealogical files with other users - and look for shared segments on the chromosomes.  You can also compare your DNA to that of ancient populations.
• Treat au-DNA differently to haplogroup results.  au-DNA is very interesting, and represents so much of our ancestry, if we could just sort some of the mess out.  You can partially do this by phasing your results with those of close relatives.  It is worthwhile phasing with at least one biological parent, if you can.  However, haplogroup results, provide by their mutations incredible stories over much longer periods - thousands of years.  A different kind of genealogy.  As we gather more data, and reference it also to ancient-DNA, so it will tell us more and more about two lines of descent.  Perhaps even into historical times.

I don't have to give these two up. My great grandfather Fred Smith, holding the hand of his daughter and my late grandmother Doris Smith around about 100 years ago in Norwich.

Trimming the branches

I make mistakes.  Genealogy is rarely perfect.  A part of the fun of the pastime, is in validating, verifying, and proving descent.  Sometimes though, the desire to simply add branches and histories, overtakes the quality control.  I'm guilty of that.  I've recently made a number of mistakes in my genealogical research.  A very good researcher would not make those mistakes in the first place.  They would research methodically and carefully, recording every data, looking for correlations - before they accept descent.  I on the other hand, still have a lot to learn.  However, I am willing to sometimes go back, check, check again, and if I'm not happy, remove ancestors, remove branches, remove histories.

With my recent return to genealogy, and my baptism into internet genealogical resources, I've witnessed the pitfall of the new age of research.  Family History websites push other people's trees and research at you.  However, so, so many of those that I've looked at, are erroneous, poorly sourced, and copied around like a mutated gene.  I want to create an ancestral record and history that is better than that.  I have an awful lot of work to do.

My recent mistakes have been shameful.  I made the above mistake - allowing MyHeritage.com to add branches to a couple of lines.  On checking their sources, and researching for myself, I couldn't validate the connections.  I removed them.

I wrongly identified a service record as belonging to a great grandfather.  That one hurt.

I extended my paternal surname line with too much haste.  I grabbed at a probable ancestor.  Later checks revealed a doppelganger.  I've had to go back to the drawing board, removing three generations from that line.

I don't regret these mistakes.  I'm always checking for validity.  A good quality family tree is better than a massive, old, but incorrect record.  The fun is after all, in the research, and that seems to go on forever.

I'm continuing to have some success in adding ancestors to the tree, while at the same time I'm verifying, adding sources and citations, and adding flesh to bones.  I've been hitting Ancestry.co.uk and FindmyPast.com pretty hard while I can.  I also sometimes use the NORS facility on the Norfolk FHS website.  Finally, I've collected my old paper records and certificates from my old days in pre-Internet genealogy.

In some cases I have removed some proposed ancestors.  During a moment of weakness, I allowed the My Heritage website to add some branches to my tree from those of other researchers.  I wont do that again.  Looking closely, and checking for sources myself, I disagree with the authenticity of them.  I also found that I was barking up the wrong service record for my great grandfather.  I'll learn by these mistakes.

New branches or ancestors that I've recently uncovered include the Particular Baptist Tovel family of Suffolk, and the Daynes of Garvestone, Norfolk.

I found another handy feature on the open source Gramps genealogy software.  A Number of Ancestors Report.  It generated the below stats for me.

I think that it is typical for a family tree - recorded ancestors as a percentage of the biological generation, really start to rapidly fall away from Generation 8 (G.G.G.G.G Grandparent Generation).  Until then, most of the missing ancestors are down to illegitimacy events:

Number of Ancestors Report 11 April 2016

Generation 1 has 1 individual. (100.00%)

Generation 2 has 2 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 3 has 4 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 4 has 8 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 5 has 16 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 6 has 29 individuals. (91%)

Generation 7 has 49 individuals. (77%)

Generation 8 has 37 individuals. (29%)

Generation 9 has 26 individuals. (11%)

Generation 10 has 16 individuals. (3.5%)

Generation 11 has 4 individuals. (0.4%)

Total ancestors in generations 2 to 11 is 191. (9.53%)

The above image was made from an opportunistic photocopy of a photograph held by a second cousin.  it is a portrait of Samuel William "Fiddler" Curtis.  He was one of my sixteen great great grandparents, and was born at Hassingham, Norfolk in 1852.  He worked as a teamster - an agricultural labourer that drove a team of horses in the fields.

1. The Past - Record Office Genealogy.

This was how I did genealogy almost exclusively twenty two years ago.  It still exists as a method.  It is still the most qualitative, and traditional research method.  It could be represented by a pair of white gloves - the sort that many record offices and archives insist that readers wear, while handling conserved records.  There is of course a cost.  Some parish registers for example, will suffer from handling, regardless of the level of care.  Otherwise I would recommend that all present day genealogists should practice it from time to time - in order to reference to the most original documents, or simply for the experience of handling these wonderful links to our ancestors.  I remember reading some parish records that I knew had been personally kept by my parish clerk ancestors.  I visited county record offices in Norfolk, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, and Glamorgan.  I visited archives and the GRO in London.  Genealogy meant leaving the house and travelling.

Twenty two years ago, Digital Genealogy was in it's infancy.  The "IGI" was on microfische.  Censuses up to and including 1881 were available on microfilm.  Some parish registers were just starting to appear in the microfilm/fische room, but for many, I had to produce my readers card, don the white gloves, and carry a soft lead pencil.  Good times.  But sometimes frustrating.I had many dead ends.  If an ancestor moved more than a few parishes away, and preceded a census, you had to either spend years looking in so many parishes - or rely on a bit of luck.  You could of course find other researchers with shared interests.  They would advertise these interests in the columns of genealogy magazines, and in printed annual directories.

By the time that my personal interest drifted away from genealogy, things had already changed an awful lot.  Many more records had been photographed onto film or fische - to protect the original records from a growth of interest in family history.  Here in Norfolk, amateur genealogists were encouraged to use the film/fische reading rooms, rather than access the original documents.  Although some negatives were hard to read, it was much faster than ordering and waiting in a reading room by a ticket system.  People were also increasingly using the Internet as a way of sharing.  The IGI moved online.  We were also using database software programs such as Family Tree Maker, and sharing our .gedcom files online.

I then totally moved away from genealogy totally, for perhaps 12 years.

2. The Present - Internet Genealogy

My interest in genealogy and family history returned after that long break way.  What had changed?  What do I think of the current scene?  So many documents have been digitally photographed, transcribed, indexed, then fed onto online databases.  It's incredible.  Within a few months, my family tree has grown and grown.  I've picked up so many dead ends.  The IGI has evolved into FamilySearch.org, an incredible free online resource.  National archives have growing online collections.  There are commercial online subscription based resources galore competing - Ancestry, FindmyPast, MyHeritage, TheGenealogist, GenesReunited, FamilyLink, Genealogy, etc.  FreeBMD grows.  We can not only browse the England & Wales census online, but since I started researching 22 years ago, we now also have 1891, 1901, and 1911.  With a subscription we can even view them from our homes.

It gets much better though.  So much has been transcribed and indexed - then added to databases.  This means that we can database Search for missing ancestors.  This is the greatest advantage to Internet and database transcriptions - this ability to find them, where we might not have looked.  Also to find new details, to flesh out the bones of our ancestors - military records, criminal records, transportations.  In the old days, we would have needed to either visit a number of difficult archives in London, or hire an experienced professional genealogist to do this for us.  This is the sort of stuff that can now be accessed by the amateur from the comfort of the home.  There is a lot that is positive about the Present.

What can be depressing is that the margin for error has not only increased through badly transcribed indexes, but the ease of Internet search, and of copying previous research - duplicating error has greatly increased.  When I uploaded a skeleton direct ancestral tree to MyHeritage, I was plagued by the website, to add other people's work to my tree. However, when I look at their trees, very often, I don't agree with their conclusions.  I see what I believe to be errors.  Wrong generations married up.  Desperate looking links from parents many miles away - that when I investigate them, I can't verify.  I've very quickly learned to distrust other people's online trees.  I'll use them only as suggestions to investigate.

3.  The Future - Genetic Genealogy

The title of this section is a bit of a tease.  I was a bit of a sceptic of genetic genealogy.  Even now, I feel that people wishing to use DNA evidence for extending family trees should in most cases, save their cash.  However, I can see that one day in the future, genetic genealogy could be a serious tool.  What it presently lacks, particularly outside of the USA, is data!  It can only work, when enough people have recorded and shared enough DNA data online.  Even then, for anything else than measuring quite close relationships up to say, second or third cousin, autosome DNA does not offer much to the genealogist.  Most of our DNA is autosome.  Very useful for checking for recent non-paternal events.  Useful for example, for finding close biological relatives.

What I think will be of more use in the future, will be haplogroup DNA.  The Y-DNA and mt-DNA, and then - only when many, many more people, have submitted and recorded their DNA.  Even then, it will not produce a family tree.  It will identify common biological relations between researchers and other submitters.  Y-DNA will increasingly tie to surnames - and also mark the non paternal events where the haplogroup jumps from one surname to another.  FamilyTreeDNA are the forerunners in that field, with their DNA Projects.  Surname and geographic projects link actual family lines to certain haplogroups, clusters of haplogroups, STR markers, SNPs etc.  It's a great idea, but it's in it's infancy.

Imagine a future though, where not only most researchers have registered DNA data, but that of past generations - parents, grandparents, and even ancient DNA from archaeological sites.  This is where genealogy overlaps with anthropology.  Traditional genealogy traces ancestors from recent centuries.  DNA haplogroups show promise for tracing the general movements, admixtures, displacements of ancestors from thousands of years ago.  At the moment, genetic genealogy rarely supports traditional genealogy - rather, it compliments it with very different material.  In the future though, as if we continue to tie more SNPs and STRs to actual family lines, it'll start to mean something more to the historical period.  Actual surnames will start to attach to clusters.  At least that is how I see it.  I'm sure that the shareholders of the DNA testing companies would also like us to see that vision.

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.  Not actually the Justitia, but the Discovery Prison Hulk also at Woolwich around about the same period.

I'm using my free 14 day trial at Ancestry.co.uk, to see if I can pick up any new details for the family history.  Whenever I see an ancestor suddenly disappear out of the records from his wife and children, I tend to think either desertion or death.  But this is not always the case.  Sometimes there is another reason.  That is the lesson of today's story.

Back in the pre-Internet days when I carried out much of my genealogical research, I came across a bit of a puzzle on my grandmother Doris Brooker's (nee Smith) side of the family.  According to a marriage register and a 19th Century census, my great great grandmother Ann Smith was born circa 1835 in Lincolnshire, as Ann Peach.  That was as far as I got back in the days of traditional paper based genealogy.  In recent months, with my return to Genealogy within the Age of the Internet, I made a break through.  She was actually born 27th July 1835 at Etton, near to Peterborough, to a David and Sarah Peach.  Her mother Sarah, had been born as Sarah Riches at Hockham back in Norfolk.  Later, Sarah returned to Norfolk without David.  She and her daughter Ann appeared as servants in Attleborough, Norfolk, where young Ann met my great great grandfather Robert Smith.  Sarah worked in Attleborough as a char lady or washer woman for many years after.  She never appeared to marry again, but did go on to give birth to a few more children, that went on to carry the Peach surname.

So where did her husband David Peach go?  They were actually married four months before the birth of Ann, at Holywell in Lincolnshire.  How Sarah ended up there remains a mystery.  Few of my ancestors moved as far at that time.  I have not so far been able to trace his roots.  I was trying to do so, when I just browsed on the records at Ancestry.co.uk, that answered the question, where did my great great great grandfather David Peach go to?

The sources of the answer?  The UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books 1802-1849, and England & Wales, Criminal Registers 1791-1892.  David Peach had been convicted of cattle stealing in an assize court, on the 15th  July 1837.  He was found guilty. His punishment for the crime was Life Transportation.  In this case, it appears that he was first sent to serve as a prisoner, on a prison hulk ship, moored at Woolwich, London.  The ship that was to serve as his temporary prison, was the Justitia.  The prison hulk registers of the Justitia, record that he was 30 years old, was married, had stolen two steers, was literate, and was a shepherd by trade.  He had been incarcerated on the 27th September 1837, shortly after his trial in Lincoln.  Prisoners on the Justitia faced hard labour there, while awaiting transportation.  The prison hulk had been originally launched many years earlier as an East Indiaman named the Admiral Rainier.  It had been converted into a gun ship, an gun store ship, then finally, the old hulk was moored at the Woolwich Warren, and used to hold convicts in preparation for their transportation.

David was not held in the Justitia for long though.  On the 4th October 1837, he boarded the Neptune for transportation to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).  This was a 644 ton merchant ship built in 1815.  According to her Wikipedia entry: "On her first convict voyage, under the command of William Ferris and surgeon Joseph Steret, she departed Sheerness on the 7 October 1837 and arrived in Hobart on 18 January 1838.^[3] She transported 200 male convicts, three of whom died en route.

So that is where he went!

Hobart town in 1841.  From the Tasmanian Archive on Flickr.  No known copyright restrictions.

Did my transported ancestor survive the voyage?  Yes he did.  In 1841, he was recorded in the New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849 list, as police number 1404, a convict from the Neptune, who was employed in service at the Port Arthur Convict Settlement in Tasmania.  According to the Wikipedia entry for Port Arthur: "From 1833, until 1853, it was the destination for the hardest of convicted British criminals, those who were secondary offenders having re-offended after their arrival in Australia. Rebellious personalities from other convict stations were also sent here, a quite undesirable punishment. In addition Port Arthur had some of the strictest security measures of the British penal system.".

[Public domain] A convict team ploughing at Port Arthur.  Wikimedia commons

On the 18th July 1851.  David, residing at Longford, Northern Tasmania, was issued a conditional discharge.  He survived his transportation, forced labour, and life in a harsh convict settlement.  Did he manage to return to England?  I see no sign of him with Sarah.  My guess is that like many, he settled as a free man in Tasmania and died there.  I see no record of a ticket for leave.

Meanwhile back in England, his wife Sarah Peach nee Riches, and young daughter Ann Peach, returned to Sarah's family, who had moved from Hockham to the nearby market town of Attleborough in Norfolk.  Sarah had to survive and rear their daughter Ann with no husband.  She worked hard over the years as a servant, washer woman, and char woman in Attleborough.  She gave birth to at least two more children that carried the surname Peach.  One she christened as David, giving him his biological father's surname (Wilson) as a middle name.  She appears on the records as a hard working, strong, and independent woman.

Their daughter Ann went on to meet and wed local Attleborough boy Robert Smith.  For many years, they jointly ran a beerhouse in Attleborough named the Grapes.  Robert also worked as a bricklayer, and ran a builder supply yard from behind the Attleborough inn.

One of their children was Frederick Smith.  As a wheelwright, he moved to Norwich.  There he met a servant from South Norfolk called Emily Barber.  They married, and reared a family.  The youngest child was a Doris Emily Winifred Smith.  Her father would take her on business to East Dereham, where she met a young Reginald John Brooker.  End of this story.

The above portrait is of my great uncle Leonard Smith, with my grandmother, Doris Smith of Norwich.  Taken circa 1904.

Preserving our genetic heritage

I've ordered a genetic profiling kit to test my mother.  I want the results 1) for phasing with my own results, in order to better understand where different segments on my chromosomes originate from - from which parent.  2) because I feel that my mother has a particularly rich, documented, and very localised Norfolk ancestry.  Finally 3) because I feel almost duty bound to do so, while I can.  I've lost my father.  My mother will not always be here, as neither will I.  I wont always have the chance to do this.  By examining Mum's SNPs, I'll be able to find out exactly what SNPs my late father gave me.  I think that I've seen programs that try to rebuild the DNA of a missing parent, by combining the results of their children or / and other relatives.

This has lead me to ponder over the future.  Will we want to preserve the genetic scans of our parents and grandparents?  Will the desire to capture photographic images of our elders, then to preserve them long after they've gone, transform itself into a desire to preserve genetic profiles?  Will we value the raw data of their SNPs?  Will great granny's genome be handed down in the form of binary data from chip to chip?  Will families pride themselves on the ownership of a SNP scan data from a great great grandparent?

The above photo at A Capela dos Ossos (the bone chapel) in Évora, Portugal. The entire chapel is covered with human bones.  Every wall and pillar is decorated with skulls and bones.  On another wall hangs the mummified remains of a man and child, said to have been cursed. There is a sign at the entrance of the chapel which states "Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos" (Our bones here, await yours).

Genetic Genealogy

I was a sceptic of genetic genealogy, I'll admit it.  Now I'm hooked.  Not because I feel that it has been a way of hooking up with distant cousins, that can help me extend my family tree.  That's not the way that I've used it so far.  Instead, it has provided very different kind of information, that helps me understand who I am, and how I can link my ancestry to known heritage.

I might not have been so hooked, but I've had so many surprises with my 23andMe results.  If my results had been perhaps, dire and boring, then maybe I would have retreated to traditional genealogy and regarded the technique as predictable and uninteresting.  However, what ancestry related surprises did I have?

• I have a very rare Y haplogroup for NW Europe.  So far predicted to L1b M317.  It will be shared by my brother, my son, one cousin (and his son, and grandson).  Today I sent away a further FTDNA Y111 swab test.  The L haplogroup is mainly concentrated in Southern and Western Asia, from Afghanistan down to Southern India.  My L1b M317 sub clade is concentrated in Western Asia, including Eastern Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the South Caucasus, and Western Iran. A faint trace of it along the length of the Med in Southern Europe, and across Italy, and a slight cluster in central Europe - which apparently, I don't belong to.
• Autosome Ancestry composition by 23andMe, gave me a very low percentage of "British & Irish", and high percentages of "French & German" and "Scandinavian".  I've explored the possibility that this could reflect early medieval admixture from across the North Sea.  I've looked at the typical Ancestry Compositions of people with a strong recorded English ancestry, and compared them to the results from people with strong Irish ancestry.  That SE English people typically sit somewhere between the Irish, and typical Dutch in Ancestry Composition reinforces my view that this is the case.
• My mtDNA was H6a1.  Not the most exciting haplogroup, but not the most boring neither.  It allows me to relate to the latest evidences for Eurasian Steppe admixture into Western Europe during the Early Bronze Age.

A Southern European Enigma

I captured the above photo at Cabo Espichel, Portugal.

There was a fourth, further surprise in my 23andme results.  It lay in the autosome.  23andMe AC (Ancestry Composition) on speculative mode, suggested 2.4% Southern Europe, including a prediction of 0.5% Iberian ancestry.  On speculative mode again, it falls on five pairs of chromosomes - but never on both sides.  On standard mode, 0.1% remains, just on one side of pair 21.  This suggests that all of it comes from just one of my parents.

I might think that this was just "background noise", an error in AC.  However, it keeps popping up.  Indeed when I upload my raw data to the program at DNA.land, they predict only 80% North/Central European, and a whopping 15% South European.  It doesn't stop there.  On GEDMATCH, the Eurogene calculators keep suggesting Iberian or South European admixture on their mixed population oracles.  Eurogenes K9 for example, gives me 61% North European, 29% Mediterranean, and 6% Caucasus.

Let's just refer back to my recorded paper ancestry.  I have 190 recorded ancestors, all in England, with English surnames.  No sign of any Roman Catholicism.  I have all sixteen of Generation 6 (G.G grandparents) named.  All born and named English.  No sign of any South European even in the 1,490 people on the entire family tree for my kids.

However, I think that all of the autosome ancestry calculators could be telling me a truth, that I can't see in my known family tree.  If I have a South European ancestor somewhere, whether Iberian or not, then either a) I have not yet found them, or b) they were the biological ancestor of a NPE (non-parental event), a cuckoo.  I have 3 out of my 32 Generation 7 ancestors unnamed - all absent fathers.  I have 15 missing ancestors in Generation 8.  Above that, the representation really starts to decline, although I have some ancestors named up to Generation 11.  Could a South European be in there?  23andMe in speculative mode suggested 2.4%.  That would seem "average" for an ancestor in Generations 7 or 8 (3 to 4 x G grandparent level)  Of course from around that point, "averages" become pointless, and subject to a randomness that can delete entire lineages further up from any surviving DNA.  None-the-less, I could have a South European from around that period - either one of the 18 "missing" ancestors, or a NPE cuckoo.

I'm commissioning a 23andme test for my mother.  Three reasons.  1) she wont be here for ever.  Recording her genome feels valuable and worthy.  2) I want to see how her very dense 100% recorded Norfolk ancestry projects on Ancestry Composition and on GEDMATCH.  3) I want to phase her results against mine.  It will tell me for example, where my "South European" DNA came from - which parent.  It will help me further understand my own genetic ancestry.

The above grave is of my great great grandparents Robert and Ann Smith at Attleborough, Norfolk.

L1b Y-DNA News

Gedmatch Eurogene admixture results for an Englishman