Playing Catch-up

 

There are so many new tools for genetic genealogy that it’s been a challenge to catch up.

DNA Painter has some great tools. Here’s a sample of my chromosome map showing that I’ve painted 43% of my map. The legend on the right shows the familial relationships. I’ve mapped matches from 23andMe, MyHeritage, and FTDNA. I don’t yet have results from my Ancestry test.

The legend also shows that I’ve imported the ethnic origins of my chromosomes as interpreted by 23andMe, but they’re not displayed in this image.

Another useful tool is Blaine Bettinger’s Shared cm Project. The Shared cM Project (ScP) is a collaborative data collection and analysis project created to understand the ranges of shared cM associated with various known relationships. Click on the link for an explanation of the project.

DNA Painter will also show your family tree based on the ancestors you have listed and showing the color of each group.

There’s a contrast between my ethnic origins as shown by 23andMe and those from FTDNA. Both of these reflect the raw data from the same test.

Here is a sample of the DNA Painter chromosome map showing ethnic origins as per 23andMe. Familial relationships not shown in this image.

And here is the chromosome map of my ethnic origins as interpreted by FTDNA. Again, the same raw data as above.

Another interesting contrast is between 2 different tests interpreted by My Heritage. My Heritage does not have a chromosome mapping tool, so here are the two maps.

23andMe DNA test raw data as interpreted by My Heritage

My Heritage DNA test raw data as interpreted by My Heritage.

Conclusion: DNA analysis is an evolving process.

Ancestry DNA Test – finally

 

Finally doing an Ancestry.com DNA test. I’ve resisted doing a DNA test from Ancestry.com because I didn’t think that it would give me any better information that I have from the 23andme and My Heritage tests. I’ll be surprised if it does.

I did 23andme when I was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I wanted some idea of my daughter’s vulnerability.

A few years later I did the MyHeritage test because the protocol was newer and I’m hoping to find cousins in Poland. MyHeritage has a huge presence in Europe.

I am not now actively pursuing my Polish heritage. I think that I’ve traced my ancestors as far back as is practical for Polish peasants – the late 18^th century. So I’ve moved into a different phase – finding more cousins and learning about them.

That brings me to the Ancestry DNA test. There seem to be many trees that list my known relatives but are posted by people I don’t know. My hope is to find dozens of matches that will introduce me to more distant cousins.