Ancestry DNA results don't seem relevant. Puzzled.

[ansteynomad]

I’m a complete novice at this DNA lark.  I did the test in October and have had the results since the beginning of November.

The genetic mix surprised me a bit.  I have researched my family back to the eighteenth century, all in the East Midlands, so the 16% Irish was a bit of a surprise and I had expected more than 8% Scandinavian.

I started off with 115 matches, including 25 4th-6th cousins.  There are three on my mother’s side that fit perfectly.  Either they are people I already knew were related to me, or they have people in their trees that are in mine, so that’s good.

Other than those three, none of my matches so far have any surnames from my father’s side.  Many of them have no surnames in common with me at all.

I have just had a new match, allegedly a second cousin, who has also none of my surnames in her tree.  We simply cannot find a great grandparent in common.  There is a connection in one line to the same county, but it’s one of the largest counties in England and our ancestors accounted for were at opposite ends of it.

I’m a bit baffled by this to be honest.  Is this what I should expect to find?

[Rosinish]

I have just had a new match, allegedly a second cousin, who has also none of my surnames in her tree.  We simply cannot find a great grandparent in common.  There is a connection in one line to the same county, but it’s one of the largest counties in England and our ancestors accounted for were at opposite ends of it.

Hmm, my thought, was there a bit of playing away, a child born to someone else rather than the husband?

Annie

[DavidG02]

I had mine done at the end of November and I also found a stronger connection to my maternal line. I did find one match on my fathers line. When I say match I mean DNA+Family Tree research.

I have a lot of 4-5th cousins and I assume they are more the English stock left behind. And the other part of this is the high % of US users who are also searching , not only for US stock , but the UK stock they left behind.

I am still going through waiting for a few more matches and hopefully connections will get clearer.

Good luck don't give up hope

[davidft]

What you have found is quite common. The ethnic mix you have been given is really just a bit of fun and is based more on the algorithms the companies use to analyse your results together with the astoundingly small sample sizes they use to determine what is in which ethnic group. Don’t believe me then upload your results to Gedmatch.com where they have several different analyses tools you can use and which will give you several different results. Now you may say what is the point of that and I would counter by saying it may reveal some of your hidden “ethnic mix”. For example my test at ftDNA did not give me any GB in heritance despite my ancestors being here back to the 1700’s and 1600’s (with one exception). However my father’s test revealed a good dollop of GB inheritance. When I uploaded our results to Gedmatch there were tests there that gave us much more aligned results including giving me a good dollop of GB inheritance. It seems the ftDNA analyses had rolled my GB inheritance into that of Western and Central Europe. So what your tests have revealed is an opinion based on the testing companies methodologies as much if not more so than your actual genes.

You mention that you have done your tree and going back to the 1700’s and it is East Midlands based. However in genealogical terms this is really quite recent and the tests that determine your ethnic mix look at your genes that are the product of thousands and thousands of years of inheritance. Add to this the genes that you inherit from your parents are at random so it does not follow that any particular group will or will not be passed down. Say your maternal grandmother was 25% from each of the groups A, B, C and D. Now the 50% of the genes she passes on to her daughter could actually be split say 50% group A and 50% group C i.e. no group B or D genes inherited. In turn the 50% of the genes she passes to you could be split 75% group A and 25% group C, So in three generations you have gone from an equal split between four groups to having two groups eliminated and one group providing the majority of the inheritance from your maternal line. OK this is an extreme example but it does help to explain why siblings can have quite different “ethnic mix” as they are inheriting genes at random from their parents.

As to matching with all those 2nd to 4th etc cousins I am afraid this is a bit of a lottery as so few people actually test so if you make any matches you are lucky. As more people test it may get easier but that may take a long time. Once you have an indicative match proving it with a paper trail can be very hard at times but it does happen for example I matched with a 4th cousin once removed. She is in America and I am in the UK, she had two incidents of illegitimacy and one of adoption in her line but we still managed to prove a paper trail based on what we knew, and could find out, about our respective lines.

So in short what you have is not atypical. You may get lucky and get some early results or it may take a long time to make progress. You can improve your chances by uploading your results to sites such as gedmatch.com where your results will be compared to those of people who tested with companies other than the one you used. And remember the ethnic mix interpretations the companies give are really only pseudo-science and you should not place too much reliance on them, not least because a different company could well analyse your results and give you a completely different “ethnic mix”

[diplodicus]

Dear Ansteynomad,

Please don't be disheartened. I submitted my DNA almost two years ago and I too was "offered" a number of 4th to 6th cousins and eventually found some connections with my mother's Welsh ancestors. However, more and more UK-based people are now submitting their DNA and finally some interesting possibilities are emerging.

Both my children have submitted theirs too and one of my maternal cousins has too. This last test has been amongst the most revealing as where we both share a contact, it must be one of my mothers antecedents. It is nice to be a little more positive about the connection. I am now persuading one of my paternal cousins and that too will help focus my scrutiny.

One note of caution though, I wrote to many of my "cousins" and only a few of them have ever responded. So, don't be disappointed at the apparent lack of interest. The occasional positive response is still rewarding.

Good luck and keep the faith!

Happy Christmas and good hunting in 2017.
Malcolm