Monday, 31 March 2025
JONES and HENGLER (HANGLER) update
Sunday, 30 March 2025
JONES and SAUNDERS update (and possibly a little rant!)
NAYLOR/NAYLER family research update
Monday, 10 February 2025
I'm finally ‘English’! (MyHeritage ethnicity updates)
It seems that, for many people, when considering DNA testing, it is the 'ethnicity' that they are mainly interested in - how "English" they are, or whether they are a "Viking", or a 'native' to whichever country they live in. I remember when I first received my Ancestry results, and contacted my closest match - they hadn't even realised that they would be able to find other people who were genetically related to them.
Whereas, for me, it has always been the DNA matching that was important, in order to confirm (or disprove!) my family history research. I think that's one advantage of being in a family history organisation like the Guild of One-Name Studies - there have usually been 'pioneers' in any aspect of the research, people who have already gone on ahead and have fed back some of the pros and cons they've discovered.
And so I was aware that, for the ethnicity estimates, the clue is in the name - these are 'estimates', and they depend very much on which reference populations the companies are using. That didn't mean I took no notice of them - I just took them 'with a pinch of salt', especially when one company, MyHeritage, indicated that I had no English DNA.
Several of the companies included the UK as part of a general "Northern Europe" grouping, so I hadn't actually noticed at first glance - the following is from a screenshot I took in 2017:
I think one often doesn't notice when something is 'missing', only when it's there but doesn't 'fit'. So it was only when I explored the maps and figures in more detail that I realised the estimate was showing me as having no English:
This was rather strange, considering that, with the exception of one 5xgreat grandfather (a German, who was in England by 1802), every one of my identified ancestral lines is either in England, or in the South Wales border area!
Since these results seemed so far 'off', I haven't paid much attention to the ethnicity estimates at MyHeritage over the years.
But the companies are always refining these reference populations and MyHeritage has recently released a new update, version 2.5. You can see their blog post about it at https://blog.myheritage.com/2025/02/introducing-ethnicity-estimate-v2-5-improved-dna-ethnicity-model/
I hadn't actually noticed that my initial results, which were from when the ethnicity estimates were still described as "Beta", had been refined slightly, at some stage, by version 0.95:
That had brought in some English, at 3%, with hints of several genetic groups from specific areas within England.
But now, with this latest update, the estimate has changed considerably and is much more in accordance with my known ancestry:
Even the "Germanic" is now showing up!
The above results all come from the same DNA test that I originally transferred to MyHeritage, so it is not that my DNA has changed in any way. What has changed is the method by which MyHeritage are analysing it, along with their updated reference populations.
As Roberta Estes states in her blog about the update, "the whole purpose of updating ethnicity results is to obtain either more granular results, or more accurate results, or both." 1
In my case, the update definitely seems to have produced both!
Wednesday, 5 February 2025
DNA progress - Ancestry Pro Tools and my NAYLOR/NAYLER family
Monday, 20 January 2025
DNA progress - first steps
At the end of 2023, Ancestry released their "pro-tools" in the UK. This is an additional set of tools for family history, and for more advanced DNA research, than are available through their normal subscriptions. But it does require both a current subscription, and additional payments. Although I was 'tempted' when it was first released, I left it for a while because that was a busy period and I knew I wouldn't have time for research. But I was then disappointed to discover, when I returned to it later, that the monthly cost had already increased from £4.99 to £7.99.
That put paid to that!
However, a recent post on FB alerted me to the fact there was an offer on (until 20th January), and I have now been able to take out a cheaper option for six months. I'll see how I get on with it, and how useful it proves to be, as to whether I continue to subscribe, or not.
Of course, the additional tools and information should be of help - for example, it is now possible for me to see how much DNA is shared, and the suggested relationship, between one of my matches and the matches we share. The thresholds at which the shared matches are shown is also less restricted than it is with the standard tools.
This will be very useful in cases where several members of a family have tested but perhaps only one or two of them share 20cM or more with me, so the more distant ones didn't previously feature in the shared match list. This should make it easier for grouping matches and allocating some of the more distant ones to potential ancestral lines.
My main hesitation is how to get to grips with recording all of the additional detail. So my next step will be to read up on some of the blog posts by other researchers, to find out how they are managing the data.
Wednesday, 15 January 2025
DNA Update
In my last post, I mentioned the need to focus on my own family history again. One aspect of that is making the most of the opportunities that DNA provides in tracing more distant or 'lost' relatives. It's been a while since I did any serious work with my DNA results so, as a start, I've updated the graph I initially posted in April 20201, showing the numbers of my matches who are predicted to be my "4th cousin or closer" at Ancestry:
I'm currently up to 345 matches in that category. As can be seen, the rate of increase has slowed down since early 2020, but new matches are still coming in relatively frequently. I check Ancestry most days and, whenever there are any new matches, the first thing I do is look to see if they have any 'shared matches' with me, since those can help with placing the new match in the correct area of my family tree. Although the more distant new matches often show no shared matches, most of those in the "4th cousin or closer" category will match 'somebody' and so I can add a note about this to the profile I see for them.
That's about as far as I've been going over the last few years.
Back in 2017, I'd worked out how matches tended to group together and what that indicated.2 But everything DNA related seems to have become much more 'complicated' over recent years, what with increasing numbers of matches, changes to the company websites and the information that's now available, and also, consequently, changes to some of the tools used for managing the data.
It might take me a while to catch up with the best methods for dealing with all these matches now, but at least the "basic principles" about DNA transmission haven't changed, so that the task doesn't feel impossible.
Updates will follow as I make progress!
1. Matches graphed in April 2020: https://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.com/2020/04/ancestry-dna-matches-passing-200-4th.html
2. The grouping of shared matches: https://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.com/2017/08/ancestry-shared-matches-and-new.html
Thursday, 2 January 2025
Family Connections
I recently had the opportunity to meet up with some of my cousins, and their children, for lunch, which was lovely - so often, as we get older, it seems as if the only time we get together with our more distant relatives is at funerals!
One of them has also been researching his family history, so it was good to chat about his progress, DNA successes, and experiences with some of the older documents we delve into. (Although most of my own lines are only traced back into the 1700s, the research I have been doing into a local historic building has involved some documents that are written in Latin - a frustration for me, since I don't understand it!)
Although most of my cousins are not specifically interested in researching, they are now of an age where they have given up work, and have a bit more free time (theoretically!) and, for those who have members of the previous generation still alive, they are also realizing the importance of asking questions 'now', before it's too late.
This, of course, has prompted discussions about things my parents, who are no longer with us, told me, as opposed to the versions their siblings remember.
All of which has reminded me of the need to focus on my own family history again - the unwritten stories, the wider research possible now that record availability is so much better than it was when my parents began their research in the 1980s, the opportunities that DNA provides in tracing more distant or 'lost' relatives....
And the need for getting all of my own research and paperwork organized, so that it is in a good state to pass on to my next generations!