DNA Ethnicity Nonsense

Still with the same sceptical eye, and following on from my own ethnicity estimates (depicted in bold above) - I have now checked out my daughter's DNA ethnicity. Unlike me, she was not born in the Midlands and although that will naturally follow through as part of her ethnic route, but born as she was to my first wife I would expect to find her mother's strong ties to Bucks/Beds/Northants showing, but that does not happen. Here is how Ancestry shows her ethnic breakdown.

82% England & NW Europe. (Greater London, The Midlands, West Midlands) :: 11% Wales :: 3% Scotland :: 2% Ireland :: 2% Sweden

"Greater London" is a pretty poor "catch-all" and fairly meaningless if meant to cover North Buckinghamshire , West Bedfordshire and South Northamptonshire which predominate in my first wife's Tree. I can say this with some emphasis after researching her line as - almost boringly - one is hard pressed to find any connection -paternal or maternal - outside of this region, other than a few 'minnows'. I can accept the southern areas of Bucks come with the Greater London reach, but the others merely emphasise that Ancestry's attempt to delineate specific areas should be taken with a great deal of salt.

For the remaining comparisons I would accept Scotland and Ireland percentages to reduce as I found none other than my own within my daughters Tree, but cannot quite understand why her Welsh contingent has increased 2% from my 9% to her 11%. Perhaps that comes under the 'minnows' element and I will check this out further.

 

Yes, that's a good point. He was married in an Anglican Church (in 1873) but other than that I don't know anything about his background.

 

I have been left rather perplexed by the recent ethnicity update as I am now 35% Scottish. On paper, in all the lines of my tree that I have been able to research, none of my ancestors even so much as went on a day trip to Scotland and all come from a fairly narrow geographical area: Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, South Yorkshire and the East Riding. I realise that the ethnicity estimates are just that and not an exact science, but can anybody advise me where to go from here? I'm wondering if somebody in my tree isn't who they were supposed to be, or should I just ignore this latest update altogether?

 

I also had a significant percentage, 29% (0-29 range) of Scottish show up in my updated analysis, up from a much smaller percentage. I do have some Scots ancestry -- one (or possibly 2) POW from the Battle of Worcester and several Great Migration ancestors from Yorkshire and Lancashire on my father's side, a lot of Scots-Irish on my mother's side. The "predicted" amount would, however, be on the low end of the range.

For my husband (a Newfoundlander), his update also showed 33% Scottish (1-33 range). For a Newfoundlander from the west coast of the island, the gene pool is very limited: predominantly southwestern England (Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and a little bit Gloucester), with a little bit of French and Miq'maq. Predicted Scottish ancestry from his tree is nil.

As Peter says, "for amusement only". But it does seem that Ancestry's "Scotland" reference data is perhaps flawed.

 

I watch a number of 'Family History' TV shows - such as WDYTYA. They often bring on an Ancestry expert who only talks about the ethnicity results - never the actual DNA matches! Several times I've seen (in the Australian version) the expert say that the ethnicity indicates Devon or Cornwall and then they immediately suggest that is where the person needs to go to find answers. I'm not sure which planet these people are on.
Also there was a case recently that was investigating a woman born in a German concentration camp. She knew her mother was Jewish but had no knowledge of her father. The ethnicity showed roughly 50/50 Jewish and German, so the expert stated that as she knew her mother was Jewish her father must be German. Later in the show they even named the supposed father based on DNA evidence, even though this person had no other descendants to match with.