Help me understand DNA testing

[turpin]

So how does it work if my Scottish line comes thrugh my mother, her father and grandfather, thence through her great grandmother to her GGM's father and patrilineal from there?

Obviously the Y test isn't right, but will the mtDNA test shed light any better? Or is this a case of "you're hosed, turpin"?

[ForresterModern]

Turpin

It sounds as if your lineage is pretty well sounded out from the run you laid out above. Y testing won't work and mitochondrial DNA will only get you your MATRILINEAL heritage, and only partially at that. Unfortunately the two do not mix. And in your case it switches from patrilineal to matrilineal and back, twice. I would consider myself lucky you have such a good paper trail so far back. your family must keep great records. I am envious.

[Galician]

Galician

Although the connection is loose, according to family historians :

"BALDWIN III, of Flanders, the Forester, ‘of the handsome beard’, who married the daughter of the Count of Luxemburg. This Forester was a great warrior and defended his Kingdom against the united forces of Emperour Henry, King Robert of France and the Duke of Normandy. He died in 1034 and was succeeded by his son:

6. BALDWIN IV, the Forester, called ‘LeDebonair’, who married Princess Adela, daughter of Robert, King of France. They had four children:

7. i. Baldwin V, the Forester

8. ii. Robert Forester, who conquered the Principality, Frisland.

9. iii. Matilda (or Maud) who married William the Conqueror.

10. iv. Sir Richard Forester, (sometimes Latinized, Ricardus Forestarius.)

10. SIR RICHARD FORESTER, mentioned above as the first to naturally bear the name, was head of the powerful Northumberland family of Foresters. "



Sir Richard Forrester was brother in law to William the Conqueror and reportedly his right hand lieutenant in William's conquest which extended north to about the Firth of Forth. Interestingly Corstorphine, parts of the Stirling region, and Northumberland were in some fashion seats of power for the Forrester clan from then on, with a disproportionate distribution of Forresters/Forsters/Fosters represented there in old and recent census data.

If you note more than one "Forrester" married royalty (Baldwin III to the daughter of the Count of Luxembourg, his son Baldwin IV to the daughter of the king of France, and their daughter Matilda to William the Conqueror). There are supposedly several other reports of male branches of the Forrester line marrying into various branches of a couple of the other historically royal bloodlines:

"18. SIR REGINALD who fought at Bannockburn in 1314. A number of his descendants were great chieftains, many being knighted, and were closely related to the Royal Families of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. "

As I said above I am still verifying the american lineage to the English/Scottish lineage, but feel confidant that I am only a year or less away from completing that task. DNA may be the final arbiter one way or the other, however. The knight to which I originally referred was a Sir Richard Forster who allegedly came to america in the early 1600's, landed and was "landed" in Virginia and begat the vast majority of the Forster/Foster families and descendants of those families that originated out of Virginia, one of which we believe to be mine. I am only a couple generations away from making my connection to the Old Country through Sir Richard (lineage verified back to the mid-late 1600's in the appropriate counties in Virginia).



We now return to your regulalry schedule broadcast.

Not to get into a huge debate, but as I stated before, counts would be aristocracy, not royalty.

Two further points, just for the record, in researching the Counts Baldwin, according to Wikipedia:

A) Baldwin III died in 962 and was succeeded by his son, Arnulf II.

B) Arnulf's son, Baldwin IV, begat his son and successor by his first wife, Ogive, daughter of the Count of Luxembourg. Later he was married to Eleanor, daughter of Richard II, Count of Normandy.

C) Baldwin V married Princess Adele of France in 1028. (So this is where a royal connection does indeed enter the family.) This Baldwin was the father of Mathilda, who married Count William of Normandy, who went on to become King of England.

Here endeth the lesson.

P.S. An interesting footnote perhaps. Do we remember that the major reason for William's Conquest was that King Harold Godwinson's army was exhausted from a previous battle? If not, let me remind people that the English army had just fought off a Norwegian force on the northeastern coast of England. Just days later, William's forces landed in the south. One of the two leaders of the Norwegian invasion was married to Mathilda's aunt, daughter of Baldwin IV. Ah, family!

[Alan H]

I know that some people...I'm am thinking of a great fellow here, locally, whom I like very much and who is much involved in Clan Cian.... swallow the DNA testing ideal, hook, line and sinker without really understanding how it works, both from a technology standpoint and a historical standpoint.

A whole, whole lot of genetic theory goes into the background on genetic testing, especially when someone starts trying to pinpoint any actual times or dates onto divergence points.


Truth is, IMHO...and this is just my humble opinion, I'll tell you in a few minutes why my humble opinion might be worth listening to....but my opinion is that DNA testing should be corroborated with "paper trails". Just because you share a certain number of polymorphisms with 100 people who have the last name "MacDonald" does not mean that you are particularly closely related to any of them. Yes, the general rule holds....as a GENERAL RULE, the more polymorphisms you share with another person, the more likely you are to be closely related. However, if you are keen to use DNA testing to corroborate lineage to a specific Highland Clan, I think you're spending money on an exercise in futility.

The Clans in the Highlands intermarried for generations. They fathered children by each others women, both legitimately and illegitimately, for generations upon generations. Surnames got changed, dropped, assumed assumed for all sorts of reasons. Many people who came across to the Colonies took on slightly different names, as part of their "New Start".

I would be VERY careful about claiming too much regarding your supposed Highland Heritage based on DNA testing. Understand it well from both the technological standpoint, and also the historical standpoint.

Why should anybody give two hoots what I think about DNA testing?

Well...I currently work as tech wonk in the Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, at the Beckman Center at Stanford University Medical Center. I'm the associate "main dude" in the Computational Services and Bioniformatics Center. I've taught undergraduate genetics at several community colleges, I've taught Human Biology at community colleges and Santa Clara University. I"ve taught Human Genetics at the Pscych Tech training program at Mission College in Santa Clara. I also happened to be married to the Luminous Joan, who has a 30-year career working in Genetics, and I was telling my students about polymorphism links and lineages....papers that Joan showed me...back in the late 1980's when the work was first coming out and it was done by hybridization, not sequencing.

[gilmore]

So how does it work if my Scottish line comes thrugh my mother, her father and grandfather, thence through her great grandmother to her GGM's father and patrilineal from there?

Obviously the Y test isn't right, but will the mtDNA test shed light any better? Or is this a case of "you're hosed, turpin"?

I wouldn't say you're hosed, but patrilineal YDNA and matrilineal mtDNA testing wouldn't be too helpful in your case. Besides, as was noted, since you already have the paper trail to your ancestors, YDNA and mtDNA would not be as useful for you as it would for others who have hit a brick wall and have no idea of where to look next, need help in looking at areas to focus on, and areas where further reserach isn't likely to reveal anything useful.

Our patrilineal and matrilineal ancestry are but two lines that become a smaller and smaller part of our total ancestry as we go further back in time.

There is a third test done in genetic genealogy call autosomal DNA testing. It shows which population groups your ancestors came from, but not how. The results might show that 25% of your genetic makeup matches that of people in the Caucasus mountians, 5% matches Bantus, 45% matches Finns from the southern part of that country, 15% matches Andadusians, 10% matches Westphalians, etc. In other words, it's not usually particularly helpful for genealogical research, but some find it interesting.

(BTW, I am sorry I missed you last Saturday. I was suddenly sick, but am better now. Perhaps we can get together at Fado on a Monday or The Grange in Decatur on a Tuesday before I leave on 9/9.)

[gilmore]

...

Truth is, IMHO...and this is just my humble opinion, I'll tell you in a few minutes why my humble opinion might be worth listening to....but my opinion is that DNA testing should be corroborated with "paper trails". Just because you share a certain number of polymorphisms with 100 people who have the last name "MacDonald" does not mean that you are particularly closely related to any of them. Yes, the general rule holds....as a GENERAL RULE, the more polymorphisms you share with another person, the more likely you are to be closely related. However, if you are keen to use DNA testing to corroborate lineage to a specific Highland Clan, I think you're spending money on an exercise in futility.

The Clans in the Highlands intermarried for generations. They fathered children by each others women, both legitimately and illegitimately, for generations upon generations. Surnames got changed, dropped, assumed assumed for all sorts of reasons. Many people who came across to the Colonies took on slightly different names, as part of their "New Start".

I would be VERY careful about claiming too much regarding your supposed Highland Heritage based on DNA testing. Understand it well from both the technological standpoint, and also the historical standpoint.

...

While I agree that DNA testing is best used when it supplements the paper trail, it's obvious that YDNA testing can show ancestry linking a man to some one whose other descendents are part of Clan X---or who was himself a clansman.

We are beginning to confuse biology with culture. DNA can outline the former quite well. The latter is a trickier thing. What a clan is---or more acurately, what a clan was---is determined societally, not gentically, though of course genetics play a part. (And we won't even get into clan associations.)

Of course there is a great difference between saying "My YDNA shows that I am a direct patrilineal descendant of Somerled, (even though we are pure Italian as far back as we can trace it)" and saying "I am a member of the clan MacDonald."

[ForresterModern]

Not to get into a huge debate, but as I stated before, counts would be aristocracy, not royalty.

Two further points, just for the record, in researching the Counts Baldwin, according to Wikipedia:

A) Baldwin III died in 962 and was succeeded by his son, Arnulf II.

B) Arnulf's son, Baldwin IV, begat his son and successor by his first wife, Ogive, daughter of the Count of Luxembourg. Later he was married to Eleanor, daughter of Richard II, Count of Normandy.

C) Baldwin V married Princess Adele of France in 1028. (So this is where a royal connection does indeed enter the family.) This Baldwin was the father of Mathilda, who married Count William of Normandy, who went on to become King of England.

Here endeth the lesson.

Guess I should be wearing my asbestos kilt right about now. Thank you for your kind and gentle corrections to some of my statements, but as I said they were based on "family histories", which are as much if not more prone to factual errors as are the listings in Wikipedia sometimes. Key point: potential royalty relations as described above and graciously acknowledged by you.

[pdcorlis]

I hope I may ask a question - I have my fathers line back to George Corliss - first Corliss across the pond in the mid 1600's and to his father somewhere in Britain. Knowing this, what else can Y DNA testing tell me?

[ForresterModern]

While I agree that DNA testing is best used when it supplements the paper trail, it's obvious that YDNA testing can show ancestry linking a man to some one whose other descendents are part of Clan X---or who was himself a clansman.

We are beginning to confuse biology with culture. DNA can outline the former quite well. The latter is a trickier thing. What a clan is---or more acurately, what a clan was---is determined societally, not gentically, though of course genetics play a part. (And we won't even get into clan associations.)

Of course there is a great difference between saying "My YDNA shows that I am a direct patrilineal descendant of Somerled, (even though we are pure Italian as far back as we can trace it)" and saying "I am a member of the clan MacDonald."

Here is the key point. Y-DNA testing can tell you, if you find another person with the same Y-DNA profile, only that both of you descend from a single common ancestor----no telling how far back or exactly where that ancestor may have come from. There are some maps of current profile geographical distributions but not necessarily useful in historical distribution extrapolations as people have moved around the earth for many many centuries. So as Alan and others have said the paper trail is the most important part of the equation, and the y-DNA testing may help you fill in some blanks or give you a direction to start off in if you run into a dead end with the paper trail, or simply verify some of the shaky pieces of your paper trail.

[gilmore]

Here is the key point. Y-DNA testing can tell you, if you find another person with the same Y-DNA profile, only that both of you descend from a single common ancestor----no telling how far back or exactly where that ancestor may have come from. There are some maps of current profile geographical distributions but not necessarily useful in historical distribution extrapolations as people have moved around the earth for many many centuries. So as Alan and others have said the paper trail is the most important part of the equation, and the y-DNA testing may help you fill in some blanks or give you a direction to start off in if you run into a dead end with the paper trail, or simply verify some of the shaky pieces of your paper trail.

Actually, there is a way to tell how far back in time your and your close YDNA's matches' most recent common ancestor lived.

Family Tree DNA has a software tool that will give you an estimate as to the probability of the number of generations that separate you from each of your matches. "...FTDNATiP™ calculator which takes into account our new University of Arizona mutation rate study information. " http://www.familytreedna.com/my-ftdn...ftdna-tip.aspx

It is expressed like this, an example of one of my close matches and me:

"In comparing 37 markers, the probability that Mr. XXX and Mr. AAA shared a common ancestor within the last...
generation is 2.72%
2 generations is 9.72%
3 generations is 19.9%
4 generations is 31.56%
5 generations is 43.32%
6 generations is 54.25%
7 generations is 63.84%
8 generations is 71.93%
9 generations is 78.53%
10 generations is 83.79%
11 generations is 87.89%
12 generations is 91.05%
13 generations is 93.44%
14 generations is 95.22%
15 generations is 96.55%
16 generations is 97.52%
17 generations is 98.23%
18 generations is 98.74%
19 generations is 99.11%
20 generations is 99.37%
21 generations is 99.56%
22 generations is 99.69%
23 generations is 99.78%
24 generations is 99.85%."

We can see that the 50th percentile is crossed between five and six generations. Therefore, it becomes more likely than not---or probable--- that our most recent common ancestor was at least five or six generations ago. The number of years in a generation for men varies from culture to culture, from society to society, but the usually accepted figure is 27 years, so we see that that was some 135 to 162 years ago, or around the period starting in 1847 and ending in 1874. Thus, our most recent common male ancestor probably lived in the early 19th century or earlier. While this fact is not in itself dispositive of a whole lot, it can be an important clue. And that is what much of genealogical research is, following clues until we arrive at harder and harder facts, and get a more and more conclusive picture of who and where our ancestors were, and what they were doing.

In this case, the other man knows from his research when his patrilineal ancestor came to America from Europe, and which city he came from. This tells me where and within what period of time it might be useful for me to do further research, starting with my oldest documented patrlineal ancestor I am sure of, and working backward.

Also, YDNA testing can sometimes show with amazing exactitude---with precision that increases as more and more men test--- the geographic location where the mutation of the marker(s) that distinguishes their YDNA from others' occurred, and how long ago it occurred. In other words, it is now sometimes possible to say, e.g., that "It is more probable than not that Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z descend from a common male ancestor who lived on the island of Harris 250-300 years ago."