YDNA meandering Elmers and Thompsons

After having been accepted into the R1b-U106 yahoo group, I used my access to contact a verified U106 person who shares a lot of my more off-beat strs. He and I are in much the same boat. There are a lot of people generally like us in R1b but on closer inspection we're part of a pretty small group of individuals who are similar to each other.

He and I have discussed some of our autosomal matches in common too, which is also pretty interesting considering the nearness of Y DNA. It's near enough to make us wonder about family convergences.

He in turn sent me a close match for both of us among the Elmers. Well one Elmer in particular. I've had a match with a single Elmer at SMGF for a while and have included them in my maps. They match at about the same level as the Knowltons at SMGF.

The Elmer he was showing me is from a different branch of the same family and where the Elmer at SMGF mismatched me on 3 markers..this Elmer only mismatched on 1. Now that is very interesting.

The Elmer at SMGF is a 34/37 match and because the other (Daniel we'll call him) Elmer is tested with FTDNA we have fewer numbers to match on, but he's a 31/32 match.

31 markers isn't enough to prove a shared family without some really good paper trails but considering that this Elmer matches me where the other Elmer does not, he could well be a 36 out of 37 match.

Not too shabby.

Flipping back over to Autosomal DNA for a minute, I believe I've seen these Elmers before. One of the autosomal matches for my father who lists Thompsons also has this Elmer family in her tree. They marry into her Thompsons in New Jersey. The scary thing is that this Autosomal match also has Seeleys in her tree from the same area and I'd guess that these Seeleys are probably related to my Seeleys..although that should definitely be looked into.

These same Elmers marry into a local Seeley family.

So there are a lot of options left open by something like this. We could be Elmers who at some point became Thompsons through all the myriad ways that can happen. I could be seeing a tie to my father's Seelye family and through the interconnectedness of all things, be seeing these Elmers that we are also related to a couple different ways. I could also be seeing a group of interrelated people from the same area in Britain who came to the new world.

It turns out that the home town for the Elmers in Britain (Braintree) is something like a hundred miles from Knowlton in Britain semi-mythical home of the Knowltons who are also 34/37 DNA matches.

All of that is really interesting, but I want to take a moment to look at those Thompsons again. While researching the Elmers who are pretty well documented, I of course ran into those Thompsons from the autosomal match. They seem well documented but the problem is, there are too many documents.

I've found 3 or more different trees for the same Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer in the 1700s. One goes to Ireland and on to Yorkshire and another seems to be a mixed tree that eventually leads up to the same Thompsons who marry into the Hollingsworth family for Judith Heald's family (although a different branch). A third leads back to William Thompson, reverend in Massachusetts in the 1600s.

This is the family I'd like to look into a bit more because William Thompson has a son Benjamin Thompson who is born while William is away in Virginia. William later becomes estranged from Benjamin and his melancholia is sited as a source.

This Benjamin Thompson is not the same one who marries Elizabeth Elmer, but in some trees is his ancestor. So William Thompson leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Susannah Kirtland, who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Elizabeth (unknown) who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Anna Newcomb who then leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer.

This is not the most popular tree for these Thompsons by far. The Thomas Thompson 1677 from Ireland tree is more popular. The thing that interests me about it is the proximity to these other families, the story of melancholy and estrangement which can lead to uncertain trees and the fact that Reverand William Thompson is from Winwick, Lancashire England in the 1690s less than 45 miles from Malpas, England where the (top tier YDNA match at Ancestry.com) Edwardsons are from.

All very interesting and in need of more research.

Paternal Genome Analysis

My dad was recently tested at 23 and me as well, which has been a great tool for finding both relatives on his side and on my mom's and there were a few surprises.

One of the people that I could definitely match trees with on my father's side turned out to be a genetic relative for my mother. Several of my Hollingsworth related genetic relatives went to my mom as well as most of my Swedish matches and a chunk of the Finns.

Both sides have a German contingent which was unexpected for my father and my father has more "All" Irish matches than I would have thought because I wouldn't have thought there were any. My dad carried the few Danish matches that I had.

In the basic tools his Genome analysis is much like mine. 100% Northern Europe. Not worth posting the graphic.

His Ancestry Finder results were kind of interesting too. I would have assumed he would carry my French matches because of August Michel, but he doesn't. That goes with my mom as well. He does have someone from Jamaica though...which is interesting and would be good to contact.

I would be the Netherlands was a bit unexpected but then when I look at my Seelye family (paternal grandmother) it begins to make sense.

I asked Dr. McDonald to analyze my father's results and he said that he tested totally British with the tiniest probably insignificant amount of African.

So it would seem to me that most of the continental diversity I had, I got from my mom. I don't think that means my father's family doesn't have it, it's just that he may not have inherited it from his parents in the way that I didn't pick up a bunch of matches from the Netherlands and Jamaica.

Here is his map:

All the dots overlap in Britain. Here is his scatter plot:

Where I was in the soft spot between Britain and France my dad lines up as more English.

Shifting over to DIY Dodecad here is my father's admixture:

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FINAL ADMIXTURE PROPORTIONS

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10.70% East_European

52.89% West_European

27.20% Mediterranean

0.09% Neo_African

5.57% West_Asian

0.82% South_Asian

0.65% Northeast_Asian

0.02% Southeast_Asian

0.00% East_African

1.33% Southwest_Asian

0.74% Northwest_African

0.00% Palaeo_African

And here is his Dodecad Oracle result:

[1,] "CEU" "2.7351"

[2,] "Orcadian" "4.5262"

[3,] "Orkney_1KG" "4.8476"

[4,] "N._European" "5.1663"

[5,] "Argyll_1KG" "5.3784"

[6,] "German_D" "8.1553"

[7,] "French_D" "9.5645"

[8,] "French" "9.7545"

[9,] "Mixed_Germanic_D" "11.0269"

[10,] "Dutch_D" "11.4072"

[11,] "Kent_1KG" "13.6581"

[12,] "British_Isles_D" "15.5764"

[13,] "British_D" "15.603"

[14,] "Cornwall_1KG" "16.3898"

[15,] "Slovenian" "18.3699"

[16,] "Irish_D" "18.9789"

[17,] "Swedish_D" "19.1611"

[18,] "Norwegian_D" "19.8417"

[19,] "French_Basque" "21.5444"

[20,] "Hungarians" "22.599"

[21,] "Portuguese_D" "24.2288"

[22,] "Spaniards" "25.0297"

[23,] "Spanish_D" "26.2921"

[24,] "IBS" "26.5104"

[25,] "N_Italian_D" "27.6466"

[26,] "FIN" "28.1464"

[27,] "Tuscan_H" "29.143"

[28,] "TSI" "29.3426"

[29,] "Tuscan_X" "29.6094"

[30,] "North_Italian" "31.4779"

Again, like me "white people from Utah" are at the top. Orcadian and Orkney are next where I registered as Northern European. Then he hits Northern Europe and Argyll, German, French etc. Bearing in mind that Orkney is a melting pot for Norse and Scots, it seems to be in line with what I would expect about my father's family. Orkney seems to be a designation for a lot of British people and that's probably because of it's position as a crossroads for different colonizations and invasions. I don't think it would be too surprising if people with a lot of New England roots were compared to Orkney or Argyll.

Having uploaded his results to Gedmatch.com there were some interesting twists. He has matches with those people who first made me suspect Thomas Jacobsson the Finn as well as a few new Finns not in my list. He also carries my Ashkenazi matches and my Irish matches who also themselves seem to have Ashkenzi matches.

And, because Gedmatch shows smaller segments than 23 and me I can see that my dad and I share the largest X match I have.

For those of you familiar with highschool biology and sex ed...that shouldn't happen. I guess I can't say "shouldn't" it's just not expected. A man gets his X from his mother. So my father got his X unchanged from his mother and I got my X unchanged from my mother. In effect it would mean that my paternal grandmother and my mother are related...distantly.

That is completely reasonable because both my families have a similar background. Migrated to the U.S. in the same time periods, lived in the exact same communities and hung around with the same people. The real question would be "how could they not be related?".

This brings me to another interesting thing that I've been noticing. Hyper-relatedness. I read a lot of people saying that matching beyond 5th cousins is unreliable, yet I seem to only be able to reliably match with people as far away as 6th and 7th great grandparents and 8 and 9th cousins.

The reason I'm able to match up at all seems to be because I can take a family tree to the 1700s...even into the late 1600s. Even to me that seems a bit old to be showing up. None of these are close matches mind you. My dad and I don't match with anyone more that 0.43%..so less than half of one percent of our DNA is shared with anyone else.

I don't think it's any accident that I'm finding these matches in old East Coast, colonial families that are well documented but it makes me wonder if I'm going to be able to connect with someone who is related to my 1834 Thompsons or 1840 Williamsons. How can I find them if I'm overshooting the mark by 100 years?

Also, most of my matches to date have been indirect. Meaning they're not people who appear in my tree. Most family trees have parents and siblings, somtimes just one child and their parents in a line back to the past. Autosomal DNA is relevant for cousins, wives of cousins, step siblings and moms only listed as "mary" or "elizabeth" so I have to effectively make new trees for my matches with branches that reach wider than tall. I also have to do the same for my own tree. Each mom without parents or siblings is a loss of hundreds of years of information.

The other danger that I've seen is in being labelled a "collector". I've contacted genetic matches only to have them ask how many people are in a tree. When I answered thousands they were done working with me. That's because when people think of genetics they think of their parents and siblings. Some might stretch it to cousins. Rarely will their patience go beyond that.

Trying to use our genes to gather information has been at the same time, fascinating and frustrating. Every step I take leads to more steps.

Now I have my dad to use as a wedge to split out my mother's family. The next logical step is to find a relative that is outside of one or the other grandparent to split matches even further.

For instance. If I was able to get a Seelye cousin or known Thompson (my dad has no Thompson cousins my grandfather is an only child..as far as we know). I could then split out hits based on matches that overlapped with my dad and that cousin. The same goes for my mom's family. Finding a known Price or Hutchinson outside of my grandparents family could make matches more meaningful.

Meaningful is "expensive". In times like these it's hard to come up with hundreds of dollars to spend on frivolous pursuits. People have families right now they need to take care of, third great grandparents can take a back seat.