Since writing my last blog post (which I actually transferred across from a previous blog) I have had the results of my sons' and my sister and parents DNA results. This has been fabulous in allowing me to narrow down which side of the family new DNA relatives belong to. Weirdly, there are a number that I am related to on both sides! Are my parents related? Well, yes and no, they share a common ancestor in Sir Hugh Ridley who was born in Willimoteswick Castle (pictured) in Northumberland in 1498 and makes them 14th cousins once removed. However, speaking of DNA, the trace amounts are negligible so they don't show as DNA relatives until you drop the parameters significantly. What these new DNA cousins most likely reflect is that they come from one or more pairs of common relatives. In other words, a relative of mum's has obviously married a relative of dad's and they therefore have DNA from both sides like I do. Considering a number of my ancestors come from similar areas on both sides of the family, this is not really all that surprising. Durham in Northern England is one such area that both mum and dad have recent ancestors, so is Staffordshire - Leek in particular, parts of Derbyshire and also Ayrshire and Lanarkshire in Scotland. There are a few names that appear in both sides in more recent times too, although I'm, as yet, unable to match them up.
I have found 23andMe a little frustrating with finding relatives - yes they are all listed there, but very few of them respond to emails. I'd say I have gotten about one response from every 10 emails I've sent to relatives. I guess many of them may have just wanted the raw data for health or other reasons, or maybe just to verify their connection to one particular relative? I have had a number of those with adoptions in their family history reach out, as they want to solve the puzzle of their origins. I certainly got more response from Gedmatch as people seem to be more about connecting on there. I decided to go the Ancestry.com DNA route as well, to expand on ancestral connections and I'm so glad I did. That has given me some connections that match the paper trail - FINALLY. So if you are wanting to be DNA tested for family tree reasons, I would recommend going with Ancestry from the beginning. The other bonus with using Ancestry.com as opposed to 23andMe is that you can then upload data to Family Tree DNA and I have found so many CLOSE connections on ftdna that I haven't come across at any of the other sites. You can also find common relatives and generally look at their family tree on there as well. One of the things with Ancestry.com testees that frustrate me is that many of the people who've been tested don't even have trees or have private trees, but on ftdna they seem to be wanting to genuinely connect (although my closest connection still hasn't responded to my email).
Having the entire family tested has been fabulous though, we can see the differences, we can see the inheritances, I love comparing our raw data and seeing who got what - especially with my sons - two of them inherited my dodgy MTHFR gene mutations and only two of them are carriers for hemachromatosis. I'd love to know more about their ancient DNA though, as I'm 100% European, as is my sister and parents, but my boys show a few traces of North African, East Asian and even Far Eastern Russian or American Indian. There recent ancestry is all British though, it really makes you wonder where and how these other traces came through...
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