The Results are In!

I took an autosomal dna test in 2013 through ancestry.com. I uploaded that data to gedmatch.com, My Heritage, and Family Tree. I learned how to use DNA Painter. I've made many fascinating discoveries in the years since.

I've found close and - hitherforeto unbeknownst to me - relatives. I've found family mysteries, and the answers to family mysteries. I've discovered how to trace paternal lineages beyond the known by using Y-DNA testing of  direct- line male relatives for that particular surname,  with varying,  and continually evolving, results. 

But one path I had not yet taken was the mtDNA test.

Simply put, mitochondrial dna, or mtDNA, is genetic information passed down from only the mother, to all of her children. Unlike a Y-DNA test, that can only be taken by biological males, an mtDNA test can be taken by anyone. It's been passed from mother to child for generation after generation. And as with YDNA, mutations occur along the way causing variances. By testing and studying those variances, scientists can visualize the human migration patterns of ancient peoples and the origins of certain groups, called haplogroups, of individuals. 

But I'm not here to give a science lesson. The reason I took the test was just out of curiosity. Where did my mother's mother's mother's mothers' mother's roots come from?

I've been able to trace most of my family tree for 5 or 6 generations, and a few more prominent lines even more. Through DNA, I've discovered ancestors I never knew existed, and still not sure of where the genetic trail and the paper trail meets, or diverges. With the mother line, family names are not so important and not at all helpful, as most women in history who married, took their husbands name and passed that name to their children. Each culture is different, but that has been the pattern in the culture from which I descend. 

I can trace my mother's family tree from my mother, to her mother, Maude, to her mother, Wincy, to her mother Margaret Catherine Russell, to her mother Elizabeth who married Eli Russell. I don't know Elizabeth's maiden name. I know she was born in 1811 and died in 1861. Now, some have her pegged as the daughter of an Elias Solomon Morris and his wife, Mary West.  If so, then Mary is my next mother up.  Now, that's 6 generations up from me, which is pretty good, I suppose, as some people can't get that far. But there's just some things in my genetics that I keep trying to get to the bottom of. 

My maternal grandmother is the girl between her parents.

My genetic pie is pretty typical for who I am: an American, who is visually Caucasian, whose ancestors have been in the country for several hundred years. I mean, my most recent ancestors arrived to the state I live in prior to the Revolutionary War. I'm a pretty ancient American. And as happens in that situation, my ancestral origins are pretty diverse. 

This is the pie chart of who I am genetically. This is from Eurogenes K13 test from Gedmatch. It's a program that is designed for the genetics of people who are of primarily European origins, which I can scientifically surmise by looking in a mirror. 

Each autosomal test can vary a little bit, that's why it's not to worry over small differences because as their databases enlarge, and new discoveries are made, those variances can shift slightly. 

From my autosomal testing, I have discovered that I am at least a third  British Isles, around 20 percent Germanic or from central Europe, with a dash of Jewish, some Portuguese, 12 percent Native American, 8 percent African (with that showing Angolan and West Indies origin) 11 percent Finnish and to a smaller degree West Asian and 3 percent East Asian. I just about have the entire globe covered. 

The few lines I've been able to get back to an immigrant ancestor has led several times to Scotland, various parts of England, Wales, one to Ireland, and one to France. I know the names of my West Indies ancestors and some of my Native American ancestors. I have several Palatinian ancestors from Germany. I've recently discovered Armenian. I know the name of a Jewish merchant in Monmouth New Jersey who got himself in debt and reinvented himself in Coastal North Carolina around the Revolutionary War and ended up in my family tree. I joined a Finnish ancestry group because that 11 percent Finnish I just have not been able to nail down. So this MtDNA test is just another step in the journey. 

So yesterday I got my results back. 

Haplogroup - U5a1b1d-T16093C 

Your Origin

Haplogroups mark the branches on our shared maternal tree reaching back to Africa. Haplogroup U5 is between 24,900 and 35,600 years old. Researchers believe it was born to a woman living in West Asia. Its presence in both Mesolithic gravesites in Iberia and Iron Age gravesites in the Altai Mountains indicate that it spread early across a wide area in Eurasia. Bitter cold and ice forced members of this haplogroup who traveled to Europe as hunter-gathers during the Last Glacial Maximum into refugia. When the ice began to retreat, they were among the earliest settlers. The most common of these lineages in modern populations are U5a1, U5a2, U5b1, U5b2 and U5b3.</p> The origin of the U5a1 lineage dates to between 14,100 and 19,800 years ago. Members of the U5a1 lineage were among the first people to repopulate Europe and West Asia. However, Neolithic farmers and herders from West Asia crowded out the U5a1 lineage as they entered Western Eurasia. It is now about 3 percent of the population throughout Europe with its greatest diversity in Central Europe and greatest frequency in central and northern Europe and Russia.

So my haplogroup began with a woman living in West Asia. It goes into migrations and mutations and letter segments that mean nothing to the reader, and is still Greek to me.

Then I checked my matches. I am sure there are many more people who have taken autosomal tests and Y tests than Mtdna tests. My 3 closest matches are Americans, no surprise there. They are all on the Number One level, so we could possibly put our heads together and find a common ancestor. So they also descend from this mother who came to America, but that's not where she was from.

Then beginning with my 4th closest match, and all of my Number Two's which mean their a mutation beyond the Number One's, I noticed a change. The surnames, instead of Smith, Philbeck and Bates, which are the first 3, I get Westin Fodd Grahan with little dots over the o, and Gustavsson F.  Larsson and Lendburg and Forsberg and guys named Ulf  Israelsson and Lars Erikkson and Juel and Killick. 

Some have listed their oldest known ancestor. Number 4 is descended from Sven Wallstrom 1712 - 1776, with those little dots over the "o" again. But there's a cluster of 8 people, in my Number 2 batch, descended from a particular woman, their oldest known female ancestor straight down their maternal line named: 

Anna Jonsdotter b. ca 1670 Arnäs, d. 1728 Arnäs

There's those little dots again. Now, I've never heard of Anna and I had no idea where Arnas was, so I had to google her. But I've found my maternal roots and they led to;

I'm a Viking y'all.

Now, how my GGGGGGGGGGGGG Grandmother got from Iceland to the US of A, I have no clue, but I do know her mitochondrial dna arrived to me via Elizabeth, of whom I am sure of, and possibly from Mary of whom I am not. What I do know is that I have yet to find one ancestor who spelled their name with little dots over the vowels. 

So, with this information, Family Tree DNA included a nice little video, which I will link to in a minute, explaining the migrations of my maternal haplogroup and when it gets to near the end of where it was leading, up pops -FINLAND. The 11 percent I could not figure out. 

The jist of it is, many ancestors we may think were from Western Europe or the British Isles may have sailed from there to America, but that does not necessarily mean that's where their roots are from. Think about it, 11 percent is nearly an entire Great Grandparent and I don't have a Great Grandparent from Finland...or Iceland. 

Each letter in that long haplogroup string they give you is another change, another mutation, that breaks down into a more recent location and individual.

U5a1b1d-T16093C

That's my Finnish ancestor who evidently ended up in Iceland and was an ancestress of 

Anna Jonsdottir born in 1670.

A female descendant of hers migrated to America and here I am. 

U5a1b1 is the largest group within U5a1b with 83 members and an age estimate of about 8000 years. U5a1b1* has 29 members, with 10 from the UK, 3 from Poland, 2 from Germany, 2 from Finland and 1 each from Ireland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, and Russia. U5a1b1 also has six named subclades (U5a1b1a to U5a1b1f).  U5a1b1a has 17 members, with 4 from Ireland, 2 from the UK, 2 from Norway, and 1 each from Germany and Italy. U5a1b1b has 7 members with 4 from Russia, 1 from Belarus and 1 from Sweden. U5a1b1c has 12 members include two U5a1b1c* from Russian and England; seven U5a1b1c1 with 3 from Finland and 1 each from Russia, Serbia, Poland and Denmark; and U5a1b1c2 has 3 members with 2 from Russia. U5a1b1d has 8 samples including 2 from the UK, 2 from Poland, 1 each from Germany and Switzerland.  U5a1b1e has 8 samples including 2 from England and 1 each from Germany, Poland, France and Norway. U5a1b1f has only 2 samples including 1 from England 1 from India. To summarize, U5a1b1 has its greatest frequency and diversity in Northern Europe from Ireland to Russia, and 54% of all U5a1b samples fall within U5a1b1.

On Gedmatch, one of the neat little tests you can take is that of archaic dna. These are comparisons with the skeletal remains of ancient peoples found all over the world. I match most to some found in Siberia, Greenland ,Sweden,  Russia, Hungary and Luxemburg. 

I also match to the ancient dna of a Native American child found in the mountains of North Dakota. 

I wonder if that child was descended from early Vikings who discovered Newfoundland ?

My Dna Journey. 

The Results Are In: DNA test returns

With amazing speed, the results of my Ancestry.com test have been returned. I was hoping to have them about Halloween, but would not have started getting antsy until  Christmas.

The speed in which they were available were utterly amazing and the results, nothing less than surprising.

The best part of  the results is the connection to distant cousins. We all have that great-great grandmother whom we know nothing of past her name and who she married. I have several of these, and some of these distant cousins have that same surname in their tree, from the same county she lived in, so could possibly lead me to her family.

Then there is Job, my nemesis, the brickwall that has plagued me for 30 years, the one whose grandparents I thought I had determined. The one whose tombstone I have talked to over the years saying "Ok grandpa, help me out here." It looks like I've been barking up the wrong tree.

Seven or 8 of the distant cousins I've looked at so far have Davis in them. And they all have one ancestor in common, "Nathaniel". I'd came across Nathaniel in my research before, because some of his descendants were in Anson and Montgomery counties already and I was looking to see if they were related to mine. One of them even had a son named Job, but not my Job. Their origins were from the north, and they were Quakers. Job is not a given name the Virginians used. But it was a Quaker name. Even Dolar Davis, an important Davis Quaker, had a son named Job, but a century before the birth of my Job. Could his tombstone be wrong? It's not unheard of.

There is so much new information it is almost overwhelming. So much work to do.

I am a little bit of everything, mostly a little bit of everything in Europe. They explain some of the test results and European migrations because they are sure that some people will be scratching their heads going "I'm Finnish?"  when they've not found a Finnish ancestor in their tree.

Here are a few quips from my test.

Migrations from this region

Although “Celtic” is often associated with the people of Ireland and Scotland, the Celts originated in central Europe more than 2,500 years ago. From an epicenter in Austria, the Celts spread through France, into Spain and Northern Italy. With their successful iron technology, the Celts even came to culturally dominate much of Britain and Ireland. Continental Celtic culture was eventually dismantled during the Roman Empire, but outposts of Celtic people and their languages remained in the British Isles.

About Your Region

Looks like you may have some Viking blood in you. Your genetic ethnicity ties you to Scandinavia, which includes the modern-day nations of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. While the Vikings were feared by the coastal towns of medieval Europe as seaborne raiders and violent pillagers, they were also well-travelled merchants and ambitious explorers. They raided the Mediterranean coast of Africa, settled areas as far south as the Black Sea, and traded with the Byzantine Empire. And it was a Norse sailor, Leif Ericson, who is credited with being the first European to travel to North America—500 years before Columbus.

And it wasn't just the Vikings who had an irrepressible urge for adventure. In the days of the mighty Roman Empire, the Goths, originally from Sweden, wandered south and settled in what is now eastern Germany. In the year 410, they invaded and sacked Rome, setting the stage for the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire.

About Your Region

If you had to choose one region of Europe that has wielded the most influence over the course of western history, a strong candidate would be the land of your ancestors—an area that includes modern day Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

In ancient Italy, the Romans and their empire set the stage for modern European culture. After adopting Christianity in the 4th century, the Romans spread (along with their Latin language) to all corners of their realm. Centuries later, Italy again stepped to the forefront, leading the way out of the Middle Ages as brilliant artists and philosophers like Machiavelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo ushered in the Renaissance.

Spain and Portugal experienced periods of great strength and influence during the Age of Discovery. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand II of Spain funded the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492, initiating an era of global colonization and great wealth and influence. Today, as a result, Spanish is the second most spoken language on Earth. Portugal kept pace with its neighbor, establishing its own colonies around the world, most notably Brazil.

The Finnic and Ugric tribes of the far north are some of the most ancient inhabitants of the region. Many modern-day languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Erzya and Moksha, spoken by the Mordvins of the Volga region, are part of a common Uralic language group. Nomadic tribes of Turkic origin, such as the Khazars, Chuvash, and Bulgars arrived from central and eastern Asia and settled the region. In the Middle Ages, Mongol tribes, including the Golden Horde, controlled the southern areas and Slavic tribes from eastern Europe began expanding north and east into the Volga region.

Although it's disputed, historical accounts claim that several of these Slavic tribes were ruled by a group of Vikings known as the Varangians. The rulers became culturally assimilated with their subjects and this Slavic people began to be called the Rus, with major trade centers in Novgorod and Kiev. Eventually, they would form the foundation of the state of Russia.

The truth is, most of us Americans are mutts. We just don't want to admit it. People claim their ethnic heritage by the known origin of their surname, but that surname is just one of thousand in our family trees. We are all related and we are all family. A family known as humanity.