DNA Analysis

L1011 wrote: »

S.................... - and should I use Ancestry or FTDNA or someone else? .............

Hmm, I don't see a way to edit my post. I should have said I have many shared matches with Sarah Towers' descendants among my known 1st and 2nd, cousins here in the US. They are all descendants of Elizabeth Towers, like me. The matches definitely descended from Sarah are further out--4th cousins and beyond.

I also have matches with known siblings of Elizabeth Towers who emigrated to England after the evictions of the 1840s and 1850s.

Thanks very much for the info on how to edit a post and also for the shared centimorgan tool. I took a look and it will take some study for me to use.

It is certainly possible that I might have more than one link to Sarah's descendants. I did think of that altho none of the names are recognizable to me tho that is far from conclusive. If Sarah Towers and Elizabeth Towers are sisters, they did have a lot of siblings according to an Eglish RC parish census done by the parish priest in 1840. He gave numbers and genders but only the name of the head of household, in this case Hugh Towers.

And yes the known siblings of Elizabeth Towers' descendants, Thomas and Mary, are shared matches with Sarah Towers' descendants but they could still be cousins, not siblings, I assume. Thanks again.

That's great detail - I used "my heritage" and they can't be anymore accurate than 40% Irish/English/Welsh, without even a breakdown between the countries, nevermind counties!!!

They are being very broad with your paternal line, is the R1bM343 not broken down more?

I have not gotten any 1st-4th cousin matches on Ancestry in at least six weeks and few in the last year or two. I have 268. My brother has 318 which seems like a large disparity. I find the matches feature very valuable in my research and am wondering about the lack of them for quite awhile and the disparity between my brother and me. The irony is that he doesn't even do any genealogy so never looks at them.

Is anyone else experiencing a lack of matches and/or a disparity in number between yourself and a full sibling? Is this a normal statistical variation?

Thanks for the reply. I got my ethnicity update last week but no new matches yet. We'll see.

Hi all,

Apologies if this is not the correct thread, but just a question on DNA matches.

My father got a message from someone on Ancestry who he has a 935CM DNA match with - I'm just wondering if this is a close or distant match (generally speaking) ? Seemingly this guy is surmising that his dad (passed away) and my dad were brothers. My dad has never known or met any relatives on his side of the family, hence joining Ancestry, so its totally possible, I'm just wondering if 935CM is a high or low number ?

Thanks

so a STR test such as the Y37 will only guestimate what your haplogroup is based on the pattern of STR's. To get an accurate Haplogroup you need to do SNP testing. SNP's are single-point mutations where a DNA nucleotide mutates into another one. STR's are useful for finding close matches (within the last 200 years, though in some cases they'll show matches at deeper date) -- SNP's are more useful for understanding the structure of a lineage on deeper timelines.

When such a SNP arises in a Y-Chromosome lineage it denotes a single point of common ancestry eg. all men carrying a SNP share descent in the first man to carry that SNP.

In example above, M223 could be regarded as the 'ancestral' branch, whereas your I-CTS616 branch could be though of in terms of 'mutation B'

Here some screenshot from FTDNA BigY tree showing structure of M253 and CTS616:

simplified 'cookie trail' would be: I-M223 > I-P222 > I-CTS616

eg. every CTS616+ man is also P222+ and M223+, however not all P222+ men are CTS616+ and likewise not all M223+ individuals are positive for P222.

All three of these SNP's are very deep in time, I'm not fully up on Haplogroup I, but you are looking at branches of lineage that arose at least during the Bronze age. Going off the chart above the average CTS616+ individual has at least 145-150 SNP mutations occur in their Y-Chromosome since CTS616 mutated. It's for this reason that BigY testing is very powerful. As it allows you to discover every SNP mutation that has occurred and as more individuals do the testing you end up seeing connections show up. For example here is a tree showing McManus/O'Connor family of Connacht.

R-BY18115 appears to have arisen during the period 800-1000AD, so far individuals who have tested positive it generally carry either surname McManus or O'Connor. We find individuals with surname McManus exclusively on left branches under R-BY18179, where as O'Connor's are found in all the sub-branches. The McManus family of Connacht is a cadet family of the O'Connor's having branched in the 12th-13th century. This BigY tree also includes a member of the O'Conor Don lineage which provides an anchor showing the link.

Well the tests are subsets, so for example if you have matches at 37 STR's who have tested further (say 67 or 111) you can always upgrade to that level to see if match holds true. Technically it would be cheaper then to update to BigY-700 from say 111 STR's. However in general I would always recommend people wait until sales (FTDNA do several a year) as you can make significant saving on any level of upgrade/new test.