Fifteen months away means fifteen months' worth of other folks' DNA tests being uploaded to Ancestry. It's a good opportunity for me to run through the previous steps and update the records for Elder.
Let's get cracking!
1) I've been given access to DNA results for two of Elder's grandchildren. Although this won't help with building Elder's tree, Elder's tree is an essential tool in investigating their grandchildren's DNA connections.
2) There have been changes in Ancestry's ethnicity algorithm, as I mentioned their could be.
Ethnicity | 2022 result | 2023 result |
Irish | 43% | 35% |
Scottish | 45% | 32% |
English/Northwest European | 8% | 25% |
Swedish/Danish | 2% | 8% |
Welsh | 2% | 0% |
The recalibration of the English element marries closer with the half of Elder that I expected to be that ethnicity. Irish + Scottish is still over 50%, so there must be a decent influence on Elder's paternal side, which still hasn't been made clear via the records. The Scottish may well be from Elder's McNally lineage, or may just be due to the close historical ties between Scotland and Ireland.
Ancestry has homed in on Lough Neagh, which matches the Cabery and Carson families we'd traced back to the mid-19th century. It has also highlighted The Potteries in the English Midlands, which is backed up by records and conveniently enough not only do I have roots there myself, but so does another friend who has asked me to review their ancestry. Also, it's not too far for some in-person investigation, should the need arise.
3) The dataset has increased for 4th cousins or closer over 20cM. I need to add these into my spreadsheet and can easily do so thanks to Ancestry automatically tagging all un-viewed (ie new) matches and enabling me to filter them. Also added are a few that Ancestry have already worked out are Common Ancestors. Notably, a few people have since removed their DNA results from Ancestry. At the end of the update, there are now 565 matches on my sheet.
4) In the process above, I also entered clusters. Some new DNA samples linked existing clusters and I am left with maternal DNA links that account for 41.06% of all matches. Since last year, Ancestry have attributed DNA matches with the parent, or noted the match as 'unassigned' if the segment could have come from either. This has been helpful, but also eye-opening in highlighting the sheer number of distant cousins (5th and above) that have more than one shared ancestor (8-10%).
5) There are now a total of 25 matches denoted as having Common Ancestors by Ancestry, up from the 17 I ended the blog at last year so these have all been linked in with supporting documents.
6) Additional graphics are created for all of the new links, including Cumbria and Derbyshire.
7) Descendancy Sheets are all updated to reflect these new links. 8) Shared Matches in clusters have been investigated, leading to an interesting theory about a missing link and an unrecorded adoption 150 years in the past. In my next blog, I'll lay out the theory and the multiple supporting pieces of circumstantial evidence that can be woven together to create a story which itself helps us understand where we need to look to find the hard proof to turn theory into fact.
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