DNA survey - please respond

I mention my non-conformist ancestors simply because that family had a habit of marrying their own cousins (both first and second and I think occasionally third). There are a lot of husbands and wives who share the same surname within that side of the family, although not in my direct line, there are also a number of repeating surnames as the family also intermarried within a small group of other families.

Perhaps what really affects my results is that my paternal side immigrated earlier and further than my maternal side - and a lot of those immigrants found their way to North America, both the USA and Canada. Thus the likelihood that my paternal side has more links within a database which would likely to be dominated (at the moment certainly) by results from those in the US and Canada would not be all that surprising?

I have yet to find any ancestors on my maternal line that were early immigrants to North America - I only have a small number of sisters emigrating in the late 1800s. Ancestry's results are insisting that my mother has two relatives that I don't have on my tree, both born in North America long before I know of any of my ancestors doing so! I also, so far, have the least number of "hits" in my maternal line that I can identify where the DNA link comes from. I have well over 20 "hits" on my paternal line (with or without help!)

 

Based on how my spreadsheet came out, I'm not really sure I could agree with that. I've done another spreadsheet using my sister's results (attached), and the counties where our ancestors came from are a little bit more weighted towards the top in hers, but some still appear much lower than I feel they should.

I see that Bob has found that his 'major counties' do appear close to the top of his list but he has only 3 counties in this category. I think I would have to put at least 12 counties in my 'major' list. Does this make a difference to the overall outcome? Or to put it another way, does the degree of diversity and/or mobility of our English ancestry affect our results?

 

Not really a theory but intriguing because both counties (in my opinion) feature correctly in my wife's Tree as they both border Northamptonshire and I know only too well she has ancestors originating from both counties.

But then if viewed from my own perspective, I had the same the thoughts about Beds & Bucks until it dawned on me that my own children (from a first marriage) were born on the borders of Northamptonshire (an area which today comes under Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire) and her family heavily features in my Tree. So, perhaps not too surprisingly, I could expect cousin matches tied to my first wife's family from these counties. In fact I should have highlighted both counties to reflect this.

But that aside, perhaps it is something to do with both counties being part of London's 'Home Counties' which, according to Wikipedia, are -Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surry & Sussex- but also often included because of their proximity to London and its regional economy - Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire & Oxfordshire. So their frequency (and perhaps the others) may have something to do with ancestral migrations?

I realise that will not be a bit of use if researching family based far north if the same two counties also appear top of the list , but I will leave others to offer an explanation of why this might be so.

 

I hope I have done this right, its been very interesting to me to see the spread of my dna ancestors across the Country.

 

Yes, I agree, and with what you say about Rutland. And I also agree with what you say about defining “major” counties. But that still leaves me thinking some of my highlighted counties are not where they should be in my list, with Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire (and probably Berkshire) being too high, and Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire being too low.

 

Hi Peter, I hope that I speak not only for myself but for others on this forum that are not as tech savvy as some. I have tested with Ancestry DNA and I do have lots of English ancestors and know which counties they are from BUT how do I get the information you require to do the survey? I have looked on my DNA page on Ancestry and do not understand how to get the results that other forum members have worked out. Maybe a step by step explanation would help, I'm willing to do the survey but am at a loss on how to do it, plus I have never used a spreadsheet. I know unbelievable but true.

 

Go to your DNA page at Ancestry
Click on the big green button "View All DNA Matches"
Click on the big blue button at the top right "Search Matches"
Using the "search by birth location" field, starting typing in the first county. You should then get a drop down list of options, and you then select the county from that list. (Eg. if I type "berksh" then "Berkshire, England" pops up 4th in the list.)
Click search and wait for the selected county matches to appear
Then you need to find out how many pages of matches you have. If there is more than one page, then at the top and bottom of the page you will see a box with a "1" in it and arrows either side. You can either click through the pages one by one until you get to the last page with any matches listed, or you can enter a number into the box to navigate, say, 5 or 10 pages at a time.
For each county, the information you need is the page number of the last page containing any matches.

 

Without recourse to examining my 32 x 3G Grandparents as Peter has done (but will do soon), I am pretty sure that the 3 main counties I list -Warwickshire, Worcestershire & Staffordshire will show as the only counties entitled to be called MAIN; although it is possible Staffordshire might get a downgrade to being sub-major and rate only a pale-yellow highlight.

In fact had today's 'West Midlands' been in existence at that time, that would certainly qualify for an Orange highlight, although I suspect there remain enough villages and hamlets outside of this qualifying Metropolitan area to cause Warwickshire & Worcestershire (in particular) to remain yellow.

 

Rather pleasingly having now isolated my 32 x 3G Grandparent locations, the results are more or less as expected, with Worcestershire & Warwickshire topping the list and Staffordshire relegated. The main change is Ireland now showing 3rd and Wales just creeping in.

Here is the breakdown:
Worcestershire 13.5
Warwickshire 8
Ireland 4
Staffordshire 2
Cheshire 1.5
Herefordshire 1
Gloucestershire 0.5
Shropshire 0.5
Lancashire 0.5
Wales 0.5

The counties missing ( based on my original highlighting) Northants,Wilts, Notts, Lincs, Oxon clearly relate to 2xG migrations and Lancashire gets in by the skin of its teeth because an ancestor born in Liverpool married someone from Cheshire before their 2G descendants moved to Worcestershire.

The only other observation I would make to all this is that some of my 2xG descendants and many of my 1xG had moved to Birmingham to seek work and so Warwickshire won out in the long run, although my Market Gardener & Builder ancestors ensured Worcestershire was not far behind.

 

Following on from that, I thought you might be interested in my husband's results. One of his grandparents was half Irish and half Scottish, but the rest of his ancestry is English, and overwhelmingly in Yorkshire, with a small contingent in Durham. All of his English 3G grandparents were born in Yorkshire, but 2 of those had their roots in Durham.

As you will see, Yorkshire has come well down in his list while Durham is much higher.

(The faint highlighting of Middlesex relates to a 4G grandparent born there, but whose roots are unknown.)