DNA Monday: Mom's full results are back! Let's go find DNA relatives!

I tested with 23andMe.com back in January, then Mom tested with them in July. A couple of weeks ago we got her results back and as with mine the health results came first and the ancestry/genealogy results came back later. In January, my health results came on a Sunday and by Tuesday, as I remember, I had all of my results. There was about a week lag time before the ancestry results for Mom came back and that's slightly longer. So let's take a look at Mom's ancestry results, shall we?

Her health results are stellar and just about anyone might want to trade her for them! No inherited conditions to watch out for. The health traits are things she already knew about because she's 95 and in real good shape, and you can read an earlier post about that here.

We're both in the haplogroup H3, which could be expected of mother and daughter. And, oh yeah, 23andMe picked up our relationship right away! No doubt, I'm her kid:) You can read about haplogroup H3 here in a previous post on this blog. Funny, it's one of the most popular posts and is getting more frequent visits, I guess, as more people do DNA testing.

Now here's the thing, Mom's DNA relative matches are a little different than mine, which is to be expected as she shares only 49.9% of her autosomal DNA with me. The rest I got from Dad. So, if we had Dad's DNA to test, and sadly he passed in 2006, then I('d know more and have the other half of "me". But for now, I need a list: a list of Mom's matches and a list of my matches and a table showing where those matches are the same.

Now I want to state right here that I'm no expert on this and learning as I make my way slowly through the forest that is DNA. There's so much I don't know... and I took Ce Ce Moore's wonderful introduction to DNA for genealogy seminar this past spring. My ignorance is not her fault;)

But I'm looking at the two lists of Mom's DNA matches on 23andMe and my matches on 23andMe and wondering why. Are my matches that don't match her because of Dad's DNA? And should I look to those people (if they will answer my inquiry messages and have a nice big tree online) for a match to Dad's surnames? Maybe.

And Mom's matches that don't match me, what about them? Is that indicative of the DNA given her that wasn't passed on down to me? Maybe.

Frankly, I still have a kid's sense of wonderment about this DNA stuff. I love to marvel at the thought of my mitochondrial DNA handed down from women who were mother to my mothers, all the way back in deep time, deeper than I can even think about.

When I look at our family photos I think about that long line of mitochondrial DNA. There's a concept I just learned about called "daughtering out". (Wish I could remember whose blog post that was so I could give credit and a hug.) It means that there are no more women in a line to hand down the mitochondrial DNA. When I look at our line of female mitochondrial DNA and our present family ties I see that our best chance for passing it on is my niece, Molly. Anyone know a nice young man about 30 or slightly less, loves science, smart and funny, and attractive?

Me, about 1947 or 1948.

Mom on her 21st birthday.

Emma Susan Whetstone Williams (1897 - 1956).

Photo from Aunt Betty.

Emma's mother, Catherine Elizabeth House Whetstone (1865 - 1947)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/09/dna-monday-moms-full-results-are-back.html 

Wisdom Wednesday: Where did they put that?

Oh gosh! Either I'm getting old and the mind is going or stuff is changing too fast! Maybe a bit of both:) Because it's Wednesday, I'll try to keep track of it all and use the GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays.

FamilySearch: Oh no you didn't! Just when I thought that I was finally getting the hang of finding my way into the FamilySearch site in an orderly and useful manner, they went and moved it all around again! Much blogging has been done about what it all means and how to now make your way in to find what you're looking for. Here's what Randy Seaver wrote on Genea-Musings, and you might want to bookmark this as a guide. He quoted Dear Myrtle on the subject: "In this day and age, bookmarks on a specific computer should not be the mainstay for Internet researchers." I missed that post from Ol' Myrt but as usual she hits it on the head!
I understand from fellow bloggers more in the know that I that FamilySearch feels that just 11% of their users are dedicated genealogy and family history buffs. The rest are casual visitors. Really? I do find that difficult to comprehend. Do they mean the population of unique visitors? Maybe I could understand that and they are thinking in terms of being similar to Ancestry.com with lots of people who come and go, but mostly eventually go. But what about page loads and time spent on that site? (I could possibly account for a tenth of all their measured user time on that site because some days I feel like I'm just "parked" there all day long.) Really, FamilySearch? Really?
Keep Randy's Genea-Musings on your favorites. I know that he'll lead us through.

New-To-Me Cousin, Rich, who knows what he's doing! I just love meeting new cousins on the ol' internet thingy! Well, Mom met him first way back when, because they both have been doing this for years, or should that be decades? I like Rich because he's easy to communicate with and is willing to share. Cousin Rich is going to visit Mom this week. As you might remember, Mom is 94 and still working on her Big Tree. Rich and she have been emailing for about 10 years and they've never met, as happens in this crazy game.
Do you also run into new-to-you cousins who just want a copy of a document or to pick your brain and then disappear in the night? Hello, you there cousin? No reply or just a short email back saying they aren't working on that anymore. (Yeah, but I am!)
Must say that I've run into a couple of really lovely cousins lately and that feels super good! I just love "community"! Guys like Cousin Rich make it all worth it:)

GEDmatch! Where art thou? Just when I started loving the heck out of GEDmatch, they crashed and burned. But late yesterday they got back up. I was sitting here with two ID numbers in hand that I needed to compare chromosomes with and a juicy GEDCOM waiting to be uploaded and no way to get to the goodies. But now it sure looks like they are making a come back, and with a newly designed layout and sign-in feature too. It took me a moment to realize the GEDCOM upload feature wasn't yet functional, and another little minute to locate the old features I had been using. Never mind, they'll get there.

Haplogroup H: New Info! Where did we come from, ask the folks on the Haplogroup H3 message board where so many have Irish ancestors! A new article which you can find here reveals a lot about we Hap H people.
"Says Dr Brotherton, "This is a very interesting group as they have been linked to the expansion of Celtic languages along the Atlantic coast and into central Europe."
So Ireland it is:)

This has been such a crazy busy week... and it's only Wednesday!

Wills Creek Bridge near Cumberland, MD.

Photo by Curtis, about 1910.

(See tab at top, Nat'l Highway, to view full album.)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/wisdom-wednesday-where-did-they-put-that.html

DNA Monday: Haplogroup H3, My Deep Peeps

Is anyone out there in haplogroup H3? Anyone at all? Think I'm the only one! Can't be.

Still here stumbling around under the Nut Tree looking at my DNA results from 23and Me. It strikes me that while other blogs are written by experts and offer answers, here I am wandering round watching the questions multiply before my eyes. Why anyone would want to read this mess is beyond me, but thank you so much for stopping by. And if my misery from time to time makes you feel less miserable, then something has been accomplished.

Before I got my DNA test results back I tried to get up to speed on some aspects of the test, and one of them is haplogroup. I found out that haplogroup is a way to think about the great tree of man, or Homo Sapiens. Because I'm female my haplogroup comes down from a very distant woman living about 190,000 to 200,000 years ago now called Mitochondrial Eve. As the great family of woman grew and migrated, the ladies haplogroups grew and migrated. You can see that it's helpful to change the letters at each junction where the tree branches out.

My group, H, can only be given to female descendants because it's contained in the mitochondria of female DNA known by it's abbreviation, mtDNA. Guy haplogroup determination has a whole other set of letters and because there's so much written about yDNA and surname tests, let's let them fend for themselves. H, L2, and A haplogroups belong to us gals.

Science likes to get as specific as possible so the letters break down into sub groups and numbers are added. The haplogroups are also called clads, and the numbers are called subclads. These can be further broken down and if they are then lower case letters are added. While I'm H3 I've seen other people's results that are E1a. And science isn't resting on its laurels. No, researchers are working and these subclads are, even as I write and you read, now breaking down subclads even further in an effort to be as specific as possible. That's great because each addition of a letter or number means deeper specificity, and don't we want that so we can know as much about our deep peeps as possible?

I've had a good time finding out about my H3 haplogroup. We're quite an interesting band of travelers and here's our story. Haplogroup H originated in Southwest Asia about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago on that great big tree of man, er I mean, of women, when H came out of haplogroup HV. You can Google up a haplogroup migration tree if you get a spare moment and are interested.

Evolutionary tree of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups

Mitochondrial Eve (L)

L0

L1-6

L1

L2

L3

L4

L5

L6

M

N

CZ

D

E

G

Q

A

S

R

I

W

X

Y

C

Z

B

F

R0

pre-JT

P

U

HV

JT

K

H

V

J

T

(Table courtesy Wikipedia.)

 

 

My H3 deep peeps, after a stint in Southwest Asia, moved on down the line as part of the migration during the last ice age, and landed in the Franco-Catabrian Glacial Refuge. Interestingly for me, this is where all of the cave art also comes from. So can you picture them huddling in caves and what not, enduring the last ice age? If I was there I'd have said, "Hey, let's put some art on those cave walls!" This group was also responsible for repopulating much of Europe after the ice melted.

 

Laxcaux. (Wikipedia commons.)

 

Well, I could go on here because this is the kind of stuff I just love knowing. But you'll have your own haplogroup to work on and the fun of finding out about your own deep peeps!

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/03/dna-monday-haplogroup-h3-my-deep-peeps.html