DNA survey - please respond

Here goes - the majority of my ancestors come from Yorkshire & Lancashire way back plus 1 branch from Norfolk but Middlesex doesn't feature much so somewhat surprised by that county coming out top!

 

I'm still working on the algorithm for the rest of my DNA results (I'm getting a slightly different list each time!) - but I had a thought, perhaps the algorithm would work better if it was more in relation to the number of ancestry labelled "4th cousins" according to county?

Anyway here is the breakdown for my 32 3xGs, but this is a little misleading as I will explain, but it is as follows:
Hampshire - 1
London - 3
Yorkshire - 2
Lancashire - 1
Cambridgeshire - 1
Sussex - 1
Staffordshire - 2
Durham - 2
Gloucestershire - 2
UNKNOWN - 2

The rest of the 32 are from Ireland (2); Scotland (6) and Wales (7). The "slightly misleading" part of this list is that my ancestors frequently, it seems, moved around quite a bit, for example my Jewish 3x GG are on this list as London (1) and Sussex! The Lancashire on this list is another whose family kept moving as his parents were born in Cambridgeshire and Lancashire respectively, while the Cambridgeshire on this list also had a parent born in Lincolnshire!
I would have added an extra two for Staffordshire, since that is the most likely place the relatives of my illegitimate great-grandfather came from, but I thought I had better add them to the "unknown" section.

 

Thanks Pauline, you are a star, I'll give it a try.

 

3 x great grandparents:
Yorkshire (West Riding) - 25
Lancashire - 1
Norfolk - 2
Cambridgeshire - 2
Unknown - 2

So really the only 'main' county is Yorkshire

 

It does raise the question as to how reliable the Ancestry search is.

My husband's brother has also done a DNA test which is linked to my husband's Ancestry tree. And since most of their ancestry is in Yorkshire, searching for Yorkshire matches in either set of results ought to bring up the other at the top of the list of matches.

However, when searching for Yorkshire matches in his brother's results, yesterday my husband did not show up as a match, despite repeating the search several times. This morning, though, he is showing up as a match. So something is amiss somewhere.

 

Ah, that explains why my husband’s brother, despite having almost twice as many matches overall, still only has the same number of pages of Yorkshire matches - 40.

 

Hope I manage to upload this...

 

Oh I didn’t mean specific 4th cousins, but rather the labelled section “4th cousins” that Ancestry uses which could cover anyone from 3rd cousins to 6th (I say 3rd because my father has a half 3rd cousin who pops up in the “4th cousin” bracket - half because they descend from different wives of the same ancestor.) As opposed to using the mostly “distant cousin” label, which might hold incorrect matches.

 

Talking of subsets but of a different type, there was one such in my household as a result of commenting on Tim's comment that all his ancestors came from Lancashire, which I thought quite extraordinary (as did Peter to a degree). I mentioned this to my wife who promptly responded with - "well all mine come from Northamptonshire so what's odd about that"? Of course I could not let that lie having researched her Tree, and in passing on a comment that "the bulk may well do so, but by no means all", I was called upon to disprove her assertion - which incidentally she has held for years (and her family before her). So I did the 3 x G exercise explaining it went back to the early 1800's and presented her with the results, and in the end it surprised me as both Huntingdonshire & Worcestershire came into the picture. However it did support a very strong Northamptonshire ancestry as these results show: (percentages rounded)

Northamptonshire =22(68%)
Buckinghamshire = 3.5 (11%)
Bedfordshire = 0.5 (2%)
Huntingdonshire = 2 (6%)
Worcestershire = 4 (13%)

But of course I forgot the female 'never say die' logic when she said, well they all settled in Northampton (not even 'shire') in the end. Game set and match to her me thinks.

 

I think that advice is a little over complicated Peter -especially the 'where they were born bit' - and especially for the period in question late 18th early 19th Century. By and large people remained were they were born and likely married someone from the same catchment and set up home within a stones throw of their respective families. At the extreme they might stray across a boundary line (such as it was at that time) and this would apply in the majority of cases for ancestors as well.

Ruling out enforced migrations fleeing uprisings/famines (et al) by far the majority of County - and indeed Country - migrations occurred at 2 x G and certainly 1 x G levels mostly in search of work. So, in my book noting 3 x G birth places (hamlets, villages and occasionally towns and in which county they lay) almost certainly will be enough.

 

My Ancestry kit was just shipped on August 31st and apparently might have cleared customs yesterday so it will be a while before I get any results since I have to send it back and then wait. We might be having a postal strike later in the month and that will hamper things even further. If you still want my results by then, I will try to figure them out and post them.

 

I think this is something of an over-generalisation, and our ancestors were a lot more mobile than we sometimes give them credit for. It may be true for some people, in some areas, but many people did move even quite long distances in this era.

Some of my 3G grandparents were born in the area where they had roots going back several generations, but a fair few weren't. For example, I have Lincolnshire folk with roots in Huntingdonshire, Nottinghamshire and Norfolk . One 3G grandmother was born in Kent, married in London and died in Surrey, but her roots were in Sussex and Berkshire. Others stayed within a county but moved from one end to the other.

 

Yes I think it is perhaps an over generalisation , but can only speak for my own and my wife's Trees, which mirror what you say about roots going back generations (my Irish ancestors excepted). Fortunately I do not have a 'London' problem, although 18th & 19th century place names and county designations for 'Birmingham' and its environs can cause bewilderment without knowledge of the area; which fortunately I do have.

But to prove my point (for my own benefit of course) I have set about analysing 4G ancestors even though I do not at this time have all 64 established. However I have more than enough known to be able to test my theory that there is little location variations within my own Trees.

I am about a third of the way through and so far have found one instance where at 3G level I split between Worcestershire & Gloucestershire, which at 4G level I would opt for Gloucestershire alone. Most likely the same will apply when it comes to Warwickshire/Worcestershire and Warwickshire/Staffordshire depending on boundary demarcations of the time. In all probability it will likely come out 'even Stevens', little different overall to what I have already set out for 3G. But the 'proof of the pudding' means I need to press on with my analysis.