AncestryDNA vs FTDNA & What the Results Tell Me

My FTDNA myOrigins results

Earlier, I talked about the new myOrigins results at FTDNA and how I had zero results for my British heritage even though I have several known British branches in my tree and AncestryDNA puts my British results around 55%, a massive difference - which one do I put more weight in? On one hand, FTDNA's zero British results seems hugely inaccurate but equally, AncestryDNA's estimate of only 5% West Europe (German, for me) when I know I have several German branches and only a 2% "trace amount" of Scandinavian when one of my great grandfathers was Norwegian always felt a little off too.

My results from AncestryDNA, trace amounts are in outline

In my other post, I talked about how FTDNA was probably placing my British DNA into it's Scandinavian and German categories, because the British do have Viking and Germanic tribe influences and my results for those categories are much higher with FTDNA than they are with Ancestry.com. I've realized that what this may mean is that my British DNA is entirely Viking and Germanic, with little to no Celtic or Roman influence. This idea is supported by the fact that AncestryDNA give me only trace amounts of Irish results (less than 1%). At first, I though this was just because I have no real Irish ancestry - all my "Irish" ancestors were actually from what is now Northern Ireland, which means they are more than likely genetically Scottish or English (shhh, don't tell my half Irish husband). And this may still be the case. But it's also come to my attention that what AncestryDNA mean by "Ireland" is actually more like "Celtic". Additionally, FTDNA seems to suggest that their "European Coastal Islands" category (shown on their map as basically Britain and Ireland), may be their idea of "Celtic" too, because their description of this category says: "This group is typical to the British Isles, especially Ireland." So, I'm getting little to no Irish/Celtic results from AncestryDNA and I'm also showing no results for "especially Ireland" from FTDNA. Maybe the different results from the two companies aren't so different after all, if what they are both trying to tell me is "you're not Irish or Celtic."

What it's also probably telling me is that because my British DNA is so influenced by Viking and Germanic DNA, it is almost indistinguishable from those categories. Depending on the control group samples each company used, my British, Scandinavian, and German DNA will therefore naturally have different percentages and it doesn't mean one is more accurate than the other. When you have two or more groups of peoples who are genetically too similar to one another to tell them apart, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to accurately place their DNA. It's probably never going to be accurate to say I'm "this much British and that much Scandinavian" - it will be more accurate to say that apart from my Italian heritage, I mostly come from Viking and Germanic blood, regardless of whether that DNA has more recently come from Britain or Norway or Germany.

At least both companies seem to agree that I am about 1/3 Italian - although with FTDNA, I am getting similar influences from the Middle East. According to them, I am 17% Middle Eastern but of course, I know there is no one in my tree from the Middle East. What's happening here is very similar to what is happening with my British DNA - that the Italians, particular southern Italians and Sicilians (which are a known part of my ancestry), have had genetic influences from the Middle East and therefore some of their DNA can be very similar. Even AncestryDNA identified trace amounts from the exact same regions of the Middle East - just one example of why you shouldn't always dismiss those trace amounts as statistical noise.

While it's easy to lump those Middle Eastern results into my Italian ancestry because I have no Middle Eastern ancestors, it's more difficult to distinguish my British, Scandinavian, and German DNA because I do have ancestors from all of those places. But if you take a look at the two maps above and ignore the percentages for a moment, it's interesting to see how almost all the circled regions are the same from both companies. They've both identified "West Europe" or in this case, my German heritage. They've both identified my Scandinavian - or Norwegian heritage. They both identified some small amounts from Finland/NW Russia which I think is coming from an influence on my Norwegian ancestors. And they've both identified my Italian DNA with it's Middle Eastern influences. The only thing missing from FTDNA is a circle around the British Isles, which I think I've been able to explain, and the fact that AncestryDNA's results has less than 1% from Asia South, which is essentially India, but I'm pretty sure this is just statistical noise or somehow again related to my Italian ancestry.

Still, FTDNA results like this can be very misleading for people who don't take the time to consider these possibilities. Equally, Ancestry.com's "trace" amounts of my Scandinavian DNA might be misleading too, when it may be higher than that. There is so much to consider and my varying percentages from these two companies just goes to show that DNA is not such an exact science yet after all.

Today's Genealogy Lesson

An ancestor's place of worship and burial location are not necessarily one in the same. Many places of worship in dense urban areas did not have room for large cemeteries, or any at all, so just because your ancestors worshiped there doesn't mean they are buried there. They may have even had a funeral service there but been buried at a different church cemetery. 

I was fooled by this recently when I found an obituary for my ancestor saying his funeral service was at First German Church on Juniata Street in Pittsburgh (a.k.a. First German United Evangelical Protestant Church and now known as Victory Baptist Church). I wrongly assumed that meant he was buried there, even though I know that today it's very common to have a funeral service in one location and the burial location in another, in my experience, this is usually done at a non-denominational funeral home, not two different churches. So when I got the ancestor's death certificate saying he was buried at "Spring Hill", I was kind of confused. For starters, I couldn't find any Spring Hill church or cemetery in Pittsburgh but then I recalled that the ancestor's in-laws were buried somewhere with "Spring Hill" in it. It was called Saint Johns Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery (now called Brighton Heights Lutheran Church Cemetery) in an area of Pittsburgh called Spring Hill, North Side (and to make matters more complicated, Brighton Heights Lutheran Church is not in the same location as the cemetery).

So the lesson learned is to not assume the place of worship and burial location are the same, even if the funeral service was held there.

myOrigins at FamilyTreeDNA

Family Tree DNA users might have noticed their new and hopefully improved myOrigins which replaces the old and less detailed Population Finder. Most notably, we now have more of a break down of our ethnic background into sub regions. Whereas before I was simply 72% Western European and 28% "Middle Eastern" (this was my Italian heritage), now it's telling me more specific regions such as 34% European Northlands (Norwegian, for me) and 26% European Coastal Plain (my Swiss/German heritage). Additionally, it seems to have regrouped 20% of that so-called Middle East into the more accurate European subgroup North Mediterranean Basin, but it's still telling me 17% Middle Eastern with subgroups 12% Anatolia and Causcasus (mostly Turkey) and 5% Eastern Afroasiatic (Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and part of Saudi Arabia).

It's very interesting but very different results than Ancestry.com tells me (I transferred my ancestry.com test to FTDNA for $69 - worth it, if you ask me). Ancestry.com estimates my ethnicity as around 55% British, 31% Italian, 5% German, and 2% Norwegian. FTDNA thinks my Norwegian and German ancestry is much stronger (34% and 26% respectively), my Italian is about the same at 37% if you combine Mediterranean and Middle East, but my British ancestry doesn't even seem to register on their radar. They also say I'm 3% North Circumpolar which looks similar to ancestry.com's 1% Finland/NW Russia, which I suspect is part of my Norwegian heritage.

Who's right and who's wrong? Well, it's not necessarily a case of right or wrong. The way this is all determined is by taking a control group of people who say all 4 of their grandparents were born in the same region and comparing their DNA to mine. Similarities to the control group for European Northlands, for example, will place a portion of my DNA into that category. Naturally, there can be problems with this. Who knows where the ancestry of the grandparents of the control group were from or how they migrated around Europe (which they will inevitably have done at some point)? Each company will be "correct" based on the control groups they used but different control groups will mean different results. But this is a good thing and reminds us that there is still so much to explore regarding our DNA, so much more it has to tell us. As control groups get bigger and better, we will get more accurate results which both companies continue to update.

I'm thinking that FTDNA might be lumping my British DNA in with European Northlands and European Costal Plain since Britain does, after all, have a history of Viking and Germanic tribe settlers. That would explain why my European Northlands and European Coastal Plain percentages are so much higher than ancestry.com's equivelants.

At least they both seem agree on my Italian makeup being around 31-37%. In addition, some of GEDmatch's admixture proportions agree my Mediterranean or Italian DNA is about 34%. So I can say with some certainty I am about one third Italian. Considering I have only one Italian grandparent so statistically should only be a quarter Italian, it's safe to say my Italian genes are stronger than I had considered. My Nan would be so pleased.

GEDmatch is a great way to get another perspective on your percentages when ancestry.com and FTDNA don't agree but unfortunately they don't have maps or definitions for the regional categories so it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which groups on GEDmatch compare to those in the other companies. My next step is to figure all those out to see whether they agree more with ancestry.com's percentages or FTDNA's regarding my German, Norwegian, and British ancestry.

 

Of Unknown Origin

Probably all American have branches in their tree which dead end in the US. How do you determine what their origins might have been when you can't find the immigrant ancestor for that line? There's a few things that will give you clues.

With a high percentage of British DNA, do I maybe have
more British branches than I thought?

One of them is DNA. Of course, a DNA test won't tell you "this branch came from here" and I wouldn't recommend getting a test done just for this purpose but an autosomal DNA test will help you determine your ethnic makeup. It's important to keep in mind though that it's possible to have an ancestor you happened to not inherit any DNA from, especially the more distantly you are related. But sometimes, you might come across an unexpected ethnicity, or perhaps have a higher percentage of something than expected. This could give you an idea of what those unknown branches could be. For example, my British heritage came back with a higher percentage than expected so I'm wondering if maybe a number of my unknown branches are of British origin. Of course, we need something more to go on than this but it's something to consider if you have already done a DNA test.

Another thing that will help you determine the origins of a branch is where they lived in the US and when. Almost all the branches of unknown origin in my tree dated within the US to at least the early 19th century, which means I'm looking for their immigrant ancestors from probably the 18th or maybe even 17th century. That pre-dates the Scandinavian immigration period of the mid 19th century to the Midwest, as well as the Italian wave of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, so that rules them out despite them being a part of my DNA makeup (I already have these documented in my tree but now I know I have no others). Plus most of my branches with unknown origins were from Pennsylvania and 18th century Pennsylvania was mostly English or Welsh Quakers and Germans or Swiss Germans, with smaller portions of Scots-Irish and Dutch. Again, this is looking good for British. Additionally, sometimes more specific locations, especially early settlements, can give you an idea of the origins of the community. For example, in early Franconia Township, Montgomery County, PA the community was almost entirely of German or Swiss German origin so I know all my ancestors there were likely German. This is why it's so important to learn about the history of the locations in your tree and about immigration and migration patterns.

Similarly, sometimes an ancestor's church or burial place can be a dead giveaway of their origins. Mennonites were normally German or Swiss German, Quakers were English or sometimes Welsh, although in early PA, these two groups were known to convert to one or the other. Presbyterian was often British but it was not unusual for German Reformed churches to become Presbyterian later so it's important to learn what the church's denomination was at the time your ancestors attended. Something like a "First German Church" is a dead giveaway.

You can also get an idea of their origins by their surnames, using tools like Ancestry.com's Name Meaning Look Up. Of course, names could be subject to change but in combination with the above knowledge, it may help narrow down the options. And sometimes, names which weren't anglicized can be a dead giveaway. I have a few names in my tree which are clearly German, even though I haven't found the immigrant ancestor yet, I know that branch is German. Likewise with a few Scottish names. Sometimes, even a first name can be the indicator. I have a "Willem" in my tree which is the Dutch spelling of William so they must be Dutch even if I haven't found their immigrant ancestor yet.

Lastly, you may also be able to get an idea of their origins by looking at the families they married into. While it was not unusual for people of early, small communities to be forced to marry outside their faith or culture, it was more common for people to marry within their faith and culture so who they married might be a good indicator of their cultural background, especially when comparing who their siblings married too.

Combine all of this together and with some branches, you may be able to say with reasonable certainty where they probably originated from. Here's a quick checklist:

• DNA
• Where/when they lived in the US
• Religious orientation
• Names (surnames or even given names)
• Background of families they married into

Discuss this further at GeneaBoards.

More Adventures in DNA: The X Chromosome

The sources of X chromosome DNA for women, from
The Genetic Genealogist

Thanks to Gedmatch.com, every once and a while I will come across someone who I share a lot of DNA with, but only or mostly in the X chromosome. What does that mean? It means we can rule out several branches of our tree as the source of our shared ancestry. For men, it means ruling out their entire paternal side because men, who have an X and a Y chromosome, get their X chromosome from their mother and their Y chromosome from their father. Women, on the other hand, get one X chromosome from their mother and one from their father, but we can still rule out several branches because it does not come through two males in a row. In other words, men can pass on DNA from their X chromosome but it's from their mother's side, not their father's. So as a woman, the shared ancestry could be on my father's side but it would have to come from my father's mother's side, which conveniently is entirely Italian so if the person I share X chromosome DNA with has no Italian in their tree, I can probably rule out my dad's whole side of my tree; my mother's side will be the source.

If that doesn't make any sense, this article from The Genetic Genealogist, complete with charts, probably explains it a lot better. Being a very visual person myself, the charts made it much easier for me to understand the sources of DNA in the X chromosome.

PA Death Certificates 1906-1924 are on Ancestry.com!

It's finally here! Pennsylvania Death Certificates from 1906 to 1924 are now available on Ancestry.com. Actually, they became available on April 17th but I was on vacation so I'm only just now getting around to searching the collection. They are adding to the collection in batches so the later years, I think up to about 1962, will be added later in the year.

I stayed up late last night searching the records and one thing I noticed is that the scans of the documents are much better quality and easier to read than the photocopies I had previously ordered. I can finally confirm that one of my ancestor's mother's name was Kate or Catherine, which was illegible on the photocopy.

What have you discovered from this new collection so far?

Call for Resources

I've started a new genealogy forum called GeneaBoards because there isn't really one with a good interface/layout and good moderation. Ideally, I want every regional section to have a pretty comprehensive resources list, so people researching in different areas know where to look for local (or national and even international) sources. I am slowly compiling PA resources right now. I'd really appreciate people joining and contributing to the resources list, since I don't have a huge amount of knowledge of resources outside Pennsylvania and a few other select areas.

Further Ventures into DNA

I still feel like I have only just scratched the surface of the potential of DNA analysis for genealogy purposes. Thanks to GEDmatch, a free, third party DNA analysis company, I have some other perspectives on my ethnicity admixture. Previously, I shared my results from Ancestry.com, which basically said I'm mostly British and Italian, with some German and Norwegian. GEDmatch provides a variety of admixture proportions which show some differing results (below) that I'm still trying to understand. Despite how overwhelming it is, I highly recommend GEDmatch. It's free, and it provides a wealth of tools that Ancestry.com doesn't.

In my previous post, I talked about how I had some trace results from West Asia (mostly Middle Eastern) and South Asia. I attributed the West Asia results as possibly associated with my Italian roots, since both are Mediterranean. The less than 1% South Asia (mostly India) results I didn't put much stock in because there is such thing as "noise" results which may not even mean anything. But the admixture proportions on GEDmatch are coming back with higher percentages of West or Southwest Asian or Middle Eastern. They are mostly under 15% but more than "trace" amounts which suggests something significant. I do have to keep in mind that it may just be different terminology or categorization being used, for example, the Dodecad Africa9 admixture says I'm 31.14% SW Asian but those results don't seem to have a category for Mediterranean results and therefore I have a feel all my Italian DNA is being lumped into that group. It does appear to be an admixture for African heritage, which I don't really have to my knowledge, but many of the other admixture results have high-ish proportions of West or Southwest Asia too. Anyone able to weigh in on this or anything else, please leave your comments below! Above should be a spreadsheet with all the results which you can browse or you can view them in another tab.

Availability of PA Vital Records

I thought it might be useful, particularly for some beginners but also for those like me who always forget, to list when and where vital records from Pennsylvania tend to be available. So here's a quick reference list.

Births and Deaths

• 1852 - 1854. This was a failed attempt of PA counties to record births and deaths statewide and they are usually available from the county Register of Wills (go to the county's government website) or archives. Sometimes, they may be available online, or an index of them will be.
• 1873/1893 - 1905. This was a more successful attempt of counties to record births and deaths, most began in 1893 but a few (including Philadelphia, Chester, Cumberland, and Fulton) began in 1873. Some collections may go beyond 1905, for example, Philadelphia goes to 1915. These are also usually available at county level, from either the county Register of Wills (go to the county's government website) or archives. Sometimes, they may be available online (check with FamilySearch.org but also, sometimes counties will make the index available online, for example Berks County Register of Wills Index).
• 1906 - 1963 Deaths and 1906 - 1908 Births. This was when the state took over the recording of births and deaths and actually began issuing official certificates. Up to this point, birth and death collections are merely registers or recordings, not certificates. Non-certified copies of certificates are available to order for a small fee from the PA State Archives by mail but will soon be available on Ancestry.com (with a subscription).
• For births or deaths preceding 1852 or between 1854 and 1873/1893, check at county or especially city level. Big cities were more likely to start recording sooner. For example, the Philadelphia City Archives has Philadelphia deaths from 1803, a collection from various city sources (hospital records, cemetery returns, etc) - the index for it is available at Ancestry.com. And Pittsburgh started recording births and deaths in 1870. But mostly, you will be looking for baptism/christening or death/burial records from churches, obituaries, cemetery records/gravestones, and probate records (such as wills) instead. Some births which occurred before 1906 were issued a delayed registration certificate beginning in 1941 and are usually found at the county seat.
• Death certificates after 1963 and births certificates after 1908 have not been released to the public. The Pennsylvania Department of Health, who issues the birth and death certificates, releases death certificates 50 years after they were issued and birth certificates 105 years after they were issued (so the most recent years will increase as time goes on, if I forget to update this, be aware that more recent years might be available). To order a certified copy of a birth or death certificate which has not yet been released to the public from the Department of Health, you must be able to provide identification proving you are ordering your own birth certificate, or that you are immediate family, legal representative, or power of attorney. Certified copies of death certificates can also be ordered by extended family members but only those who have a "direct relationship with the decedent". Alternatively, the Social Security Death Index is available on Ancestry.com from 1935 to present (though keep in mind not all deaths are listed here, only those with social security numbers whose deaths were reported, usually for benefits) and other options include obituaries, church records, or cemetery records/gravestones.

Marriages

• 1885 - present. Counties statewide began recording marriages/issuing marriage certificates in 1885 and continue to do so today so government recordings of marriages from this period will be found at county level, usually from the county clerk of orphans' court (see the county's government website). Some may be available online - FamilySearch.org has Pennsylvania County Marriages from 1885 - 1950, however, not all counties in this collection cover this entire period.
• Marriage recordings prior to 1885 can sometimes be found from the county or city so check on a more local level to see what might be available - either the county or city government website. But usually, you will have to look for church records or newspaper announcements. 

For more details about this topic, see FamilySearch.org's wiki page of Pennsylvania Vital Records. This is just a quick reference guide.

Also check out Ancestry.com's Pennsylvania BMD records in their card catalog (you can narrow it down to county level too) and FamilySearch.org's Pennsylvania collections.

A Spinster's Chance in Hell of Marrying

Think an "old" spinster in history didn't have a chance in hell of ever marrying? Often I see people with this misconception, that in history, once a woman was passed a certain age, she had little to no hope of ever marrying and would be considered an old maid. The specified age varies, some people seem to think it was as low as 18! Others are a little more realistic and put it around early to mid 20s.

In my experience, the average age at first marriage for women was actually in the early to mid-20s and therefore an unmarried woman of this age would not necessarily be considered an old maid, doomed to a barren, solitary life. Though there are plenty of examples of women who married for the first time aged 30+, this is closer to the age group I would label "old maid" or "spinster" since this is the smallest age group of women marrying for the first time. But it was certainly not unheard of. Consider the fact that childbirth took many female lives and left widowers with young children and no mother to take care of them. Often, a man might be pleased to take an older, never before married second wife to look after his children. It would mean he wouldn't have to take in her fatherless children from a previous marriage and since he already had children by his first wife, he would not have been as concerned about whether his second wife was still young enough to bare children or not. Of course, plenty of women then and now are able to start having children well into their 30s and even 40s but it does become less and less likely as time goes on.

But take, for example, my recent venture into studying the marriages of Butler County, Pennsylvania. I have ancestry there, mostly around the mid 19th century, and for the purpose of my family history writings, I wanted to get an idea of the average age that a woman would marry for the first time in this location during this time period, and also at what age the local law said a woman could marry without a parent's or guardian's consent. Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania County Marriages collection at FamilySearch.org only have marriage records for Butler County going back to 1885 but it was as close as I was going to get to the mid-1800s. Here are the results, I hope you find the stats as interesting as I do, though please keep in mind that different locations and different time periods may have different results, particularly regarding the age at which one can marry without consent of a parent or guardian needed. However, I would not be surprised if at least most of Pennsylvania had similar results, just based on my general experience doing genealogy research. If I had the time, I would do this for each available county in PA but for now, I sampled 300 records (out of about 630, basically the first half of folder 004811571) of the 1885-1886 records to get these stats.

In Butler County, PA, anyone under the age of 21, male or female, needed consent from a parent or guardian to marry. While this doesn't mean that marrying under 21 was unusual, especially for women, it does go against our idea that children grew up faster and married significantly younger, as teenagers. Needing consent to marry before the age of 21 suggests that people under this age were viewed as too young to make their own decisions without guidance and approval. In fact, the term "filia" was often used to refer to those under 21, which is a legal term for a child or minor. Compared to today's laws where people reach the age of majority and can marry without consent from the age of 18, the laws from the 1880s seem very conservative.

84% of men were marrying for the first time, while 95% of women were marrying for the first time.

The average age of men at their first marriage was 26. Only 4% of men married under the age of 21 and therefore required parent or guardian consent. This is not unusual in a time when a husband was expected to support his wife and children so men were encouraged to wait until they had either steady work, set up their own shop, or established their own farm before they married and began having children. The youngest men married at 18 years old so there were no cases of men marrying under 18 at all. This suggests men were not able to marry under the age of 18 even with consent of a parent. The oldest age at which a man married for the first time was 47.

The average age of women at their first marriages was 23 and 30% of women married under the age of 21, requiring their parent's or guardian's consent. This means the majority of women certainly did not marry as teenagers, but that it wasn't unheard of, with 22% of women marrying under 20. The lowest age at first marriage for a woman was 15, suggesting girls under this age could not at all, even with consent. The highest age at which a woman first married was 49 years. Take that, spinsterhood!

Now let's look at some of the age differences between the bride and groom, since there also seems to be a misconception that it was very common for a teenage girl to be married off to a 30+ year old man. Again, not unheard of but also not the norm. In 88% of cases, the bride and groom were within an age difference of 10 or fewer years. In fact, in 10%, the bride was actually older than the groom! Of the remaining cases in which there was a higher age difference of 11 or more years, 30% of them had a teenage bride (or in other words, 4% out of the total had an age gap of higher than 10 and included a teenage bride). The largest age different was 25 years, the groom being 47 and the bride 22.

Lastly, I did record some data from second (or third) marriages as well. The average age for a man at the time of a second (or third) marriage was 41, with the youngest age being 25 and the oldest 64. For a woman, the average was 40, with the youngest being 23 and the oldest 50. Divorce was certainly taboo but don't kid yourself that it never happened or that it was illegal - there were 4 cases where the groom remarrying had divorced his first wife and one case where the bride had divorced her first husband.

Today, the average age at first marriage for men across the U.S. is 29 and for women, it's 27. So while it's true that people tended to marry younger in the past, it was not so drastic as some people seem to think, with the averages instead being around 26 and 23 respectively (at least for Butler County, PA). I recall once hearing someone say that in the past, if one wasn't married by 18, they were "done", or had no hope of marrying. Hopefully, with these examples, I have helped to dispel these kinds of myths.

Update: I have since compiled another 225 marriage records from 1891, also in Butler County, Pennsylvania, just to be sure the previous year I calculated wasn't some kind of fluke and found the stats were very similar.

• Average age at first marriage for men: 26
• Average age at first marriage for women: 22
• Oldest man marrying for the first time: 49
• Youngest man marrying for the first time: 19
• Oldest woman marrying for the first time: 45
• Youngest woman marrying for the first time: 15
• 4% of men married under the age of 21 and therefore required parental consent
• 32% of women married under 21 and required parental consent
• 89% of men were marrying for the first time
• 95% of women were marrying for the first time
• Average age of men marrying for 2nd or 3rd time: 38
• Average age of women marrying for 2nd or 3rd time: 34
• 25% of men marrying for the 2nd/3rd time had been divorced
• 17% of women marrying for the 2nd/3rd time had been divorced