Analyzing your GEDmatches 2

Most of us are not all one ethnicity, even if our grandparents all came from the same place.  You can use that to assign a DNA match to one of your family tree's branches.

Grandma Ellen. Take my grandmother Ellen for example. She was born in England in 1892.  She lived to be over 90, and while I didn't see her a lot, as she lived in Canada, I remember her as this sweet lady with a good sense of humor.  

Grandma Ellen's estimated ethnicity:

~ 30% "Great Britain" 

~ 30% "Western Europe"

~ 30% "Iberian"

~ 5% "South Asia"

~ 5% "Ashkenazi Jewish"

Not bad for someone born to a coal miner in the English midlands, to have all these different ethnicities, I was rather impressed.

This is where you need to know some local history.  There a lot of articles on the Internet about the different ethnic groups that came to Britain, and where they settled.  "Iberian" - the peninsula that Spain and Portugal is on, people from there settled in West England (Cornwall, Devon) over a thousand years ago.   "West Europe" - they Anglo-Saxons arrived around 600 AD.  The original Britons, the one around when the Romans were there, were pushed out of central England by the Anglo-Saxons, but their genes are still around in the hinterlands.

Exotic DNA can be really useful.    "John T." is a DNA match of mine.  He shares 11.6 cM DNA with me on Chr 6.  

         Using the Ethnicity tool: Chromosome Painting,   I can compare our Chr 6 chromosomes side by side: 

My Chr 6 is the one on top, John's is the one in the middle, and the bottom row shows what ethnicity we share at that spot.  Black means no sharing.  The Red is North Atlantic, and Green is South Asia.

John and I share a lot of South Asian, and I only have it on Grandma Ellen's side, so we match on her side.  Specifically, we match on HER grandmother Caroline Riley's branch.