Using DNA to resolve distant adoptions

[Eric Hatfield]

Hi everyone, it is a while since I visited this forum, but I'm wondering if someone can point me in a good direction please.

My maternal grandmother was born in Melbourne Australia in 1891. No father was named, the mother was said to be a 19 year old girl named Mary McDonald, but we have reason to suspect that surname may not be genuine. She was subsequently adopted, and as far as my mother knew, her mother was the child of these adoptive parents.

I haven't been able to trace any plausible Mary McDonalds. I have had my atDNA and mtDNA tested with FTDNA and Ancestry. I have many matches, but most are paternal or via my maternal grandfather. The mtDNA suggests that my grandmother's mother came from Ireland - I have just one person who matches on both atDNA and mtDNA and his family comes from Ireland as do many in my H13a2b haplogroup.

I have tried tracing this match's family back in Ireland but it is very difficult because of so many common names - his immediate ancestors inlude Michael Mannix and Mary McManus, names which can be hard to trace.

I haven't delved too deeply into techniques people use for their own adoptions, but the little I have read relates to recent adoptions (self or parents) and seems to depend on techniques where living relations are relatively close (e.g. first cousins) and can be found and asked to test, and where there may still be people alive who can recall events back at the time.

But in my case, I'm trying to go back 130 years when there weren't adoption records, everyone concerned is no longer with us, and common ancestors are likely 4 or 5 generations back. I have tried with several atDNA matches to trace their tree back and then follow the large number of descendents forward again, but it is a mammoth task and I haven't been successful.

I'm wondering whether there a clustering techniques, like DNA Painter, or tools on Gedmatch that can help with any of this, or is it either give up or do the hard hard slog of tracing many many families in the hope that one turns up a result?

Can anyone point me, please, to a book or a website that gives a comprehensive overview of techniques that might be tried by someone in my position? Thanks for any help you can offer.

[brigidmac]

if your grandmother was an only child of  only children
there may not be any other descendants of close matches who have tested
i recommend getting other family members to test . even if you cant get anyone from an older generation occasionally myself or my maternal cousin match people who do not match my mother .

i suppose you dont have any shared matches with the match with mannix and mcmannus names

sometimes its a waiting game ..we were lucky that my  great grandmother married and had one son  after giving her daughter for adoption he only had 3 children

+ one decided to test dna so we were able to solve her identity having searched 10years following paper trail and a common name .

good luck

[Eric Hatfield]

Thanks for your thoughts, and your best wishes.

Yes, I have wondered whether there are many relatives in that line and if they have tested. I have wondered whether there are strong demographic differences between people inclined to test and peoplpe not inclined. In the US, it seems a higher proportion may have tested, but here in Australia it may be lower (I don't knoiw, I'm only speculating). I have no idea about testing rates in Ireland.

My Maternal cousin has tested and I manage her account, so that is at least good.

I have no shared atDNA matches with the mtDNA match. The atDNA match with him is fairly small, in fact it has dropped off the FTDNA match list since they changed their criteria recently, so I can be thankful I found it when I did. But it means I can't keep checking.

I will keep waiting patiently, but was wondering if there was anything more I can do.

Thanks again.

[brigidmac]

I dont know if this will help gadget posted it on my topic

https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics

Carry on building trees up and down from your distant matches .you might strike gold .

Also ive just got matches to 4thcousins once removed that didnt match.my paternal aunts dna so maybe worth getting a younger family member to test too. My maternal cousin sometimes gets higher matches than my mother too .

I suppose you are already looking at ethnicity of your matches .If any are 100percent Irish that maybe a good lead what percentage are you and your cousin .
If your greatgrandmother was fully irish you should be around 12 percent
Depends on ethnicity of birth father too.

[Carmella]

There is also the "Autoclusters" tool on MyHeritage -

IF you got lucky it could generate a "Irish cluster" to investigate, but this obviously depends on your DNA matches on the MyH database in the first place.

[Eric Hatfield]

"Carry on building trees up and down from your distant matches .you might strike gold ."

I have been trying that, although there is much more I can do here. But it can be difficult building back down (much harder than building back in time I find). If this is often the only way, I'll just have to keep trying, as you say.

"I suppose you are already looking at ethnicity of your matches .If any are 100percent Irish that maybe a good lead what percentage are you and your cousin. If your greatgrandmother was fully irish you should be around 12 percent"

I haven't found ethnicity estimates to be very helpful or even consistent. I manage 7 DNA kits and most are on multiple services, but they don't agree much. For example, I just got a revised ethnicity estimate from Ancestry and it now has me at 50% Scotland. Now my mother appears to be 3/4 Irish and my dad totally English - I don't have any Scottish that I know of. Now of course, my English and Irish ancestors could have been in Scotland 2 generations before I know about them, but even if so, it means that 50% Scottish ethnicity doesn't prove very helpful.

Have you found it different?

But to be fair, Ancestry estimates I am 19% Irish, so that is within the range I think is correct.

"IF you got lucky it could generate a "Irish cluster" to investigate, but this obviously depends on your DNA matches on the MyH database in the first place"

I am on MH and I have tried the cluster tool, but I haven't tried to find a specifically Irish cluster. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that, but it is worth a look. Thanks.

[brigidmac]

Yes i have Found ethnicity useful my aunts dna has remained consistently over 90 percent scottish tho a bit of irish creeps in .and ive alwys hovered around 50 percent .so anyone with high scots percentage matches my father's side .my mothers mothers birth father was Latvian jewish and we have a lot of matches who are 100percent Jewish ethnicity so easy to work out which lines they come from .
The welsh English mixtures are more fluid .i think when we first trsted all the Celtic origins were grouped together.
Ive no idea where.my 3 percent italian comes from as neither my mother or my paternal aunt have any italian .

if a match is 75percent of a totally different ethnicity you can work out which of their grandparents you link to.
My cousins closest match on his fathers side was half south American and a quarter Italian and lived in a different continent .so we only had to trace the English born grandparent

[Eric Hatfield]

That's really cool to hear that. Scottish and Latvian Jewish sound at least somewhat different, though my brother's mother-in-law was Scottish, and only more recently did we find out her family was Lithuanian who worked for the Royal Family (or something like that) and they escaped Lithuania when there was some sort of coup, and she was born and brought up in Scotland.

I think the low percentage ethnicities, like your Italian (I have a similar one in the Caucasus area) come from the distant past when Europe was re-colonised after the ice age, and all our ancestors came through Eastern Europe.

I will try to use ethnicity a little more, if only I can get a stable set of estimates!

[brigidmac]

If there are any descendants or relattions of the adoptive family could be worth getting them to test as distant relative was often first choice for taking child in ...far enough away from birth mothers home town ...to avoid gossips