Irish etc

[Michelstaedter]

Hello my lovelies,

Couple of questions about my origins 1.) Do people from the British isles, particularly Ireland, tend to show up much (or even majority) in the "western and Central Europe" category? How about Northern Italians?

And a more general question: is there some sort of gross database containing more ancestral breakdowns and their corresponding known ancestry so that I can begin making educated guesses of my own?

For example, the percent ranges of somebody with one known great grandparent who was Ashkenazi (I e 7-14 percent or the like). I know I need to be more proactive and am just being lazy so sorry if this is a repeat offense...

[Michelstaedter]

Actually let me state my conundrum more articulately:

I have recently done an autosomal transfer to FTDNA from 23andMe. I must say that I find FTDNA superior in that there seem to be many more genealogical tools available on it, and it has one of the health-related boloney (ugh, why?) that 23andMe has, nor the endless and ridiculous "padding", for lack of a better word, that the new 23andMe website has.

On to the question:

There is an oral history of a great grandmother on my mother's side being "part" Irish. The rest was presumed Ashkenazi Jewish. This is about all we know. I have however reached an impasse genealogically and was wondering if there would be any concret steps I could take to find the ancestry of this individual. She is essentially a deadend, and Ancestry.com has not yielded any real results. On 23andMe I show up 7.5% British and Irish, and moreover 11.7% northwestern European. However I am not sure how much of this comes from the great grandmother, and how much from my quarter northern Italian ancestry (from Trent, Genoa, and Lucca). I know that northern Italians tend to score around 20% northwestern European on 23andMe, so it seems probable that about half of that 11.7% northwestern European could come from that side. The problem however comes from my Ashkenazi scores. They are low: 31.6 on 23andMe, 33% on DNALand, 35% on FTDNA and 36.3% on MyHeritage. My expected ancestry is 7/16 Ashkenazi. Either my great grandmother was 100 percent Irish, which would make my northernwestern European scores too low, or half Irish, which would make my Ashkenazi scores too low.

I know we are talking small percentages that cannot be easily read by this kind of test, but I really want to get to the bottom of this!

[ltd-jean-pull]

wrt your jewish ancestry there are several posters with

in-depth knowledge who should be able to assess your level of Jewish ancestry.

You don't mention Gedmatch. It would definitely be helpful to upload to there as well. It has some good admixture tools and you will get further matches.

For what it's worth I don't read too much into admixture since my known ancestors were Scots/Irish/English with a dash of Huguenot - so not from areas that were all that far apart. They they should be mostly British Isles, Scandinavian and Western & Central Europe. They're getting totals of around 80-90% British Isles and Western & Central Europe added together.

[DADIG]

upload RAW DNA to MyHeritage.com

myheritage.com DNA gives a much broader spectrum of the ethnicity I and other mtDNA matches I have been given permission to do with as I will.

GEDMATCH seems like a good idea; however, too many have joke or nicknames or no real identifiers.

Such is my experience.

[MonaLisa]

Actually let me state my conundrum more articulately:

I have recently done an autosomal transfer to FTDNA from 23andMe. I must say that I find FTDNA superior in that there seem to be many more genealogical tools available on it, and it has one of the health-related boloney (ugh, why?) that 23andMe has, nor the endless and ridiculous "padding", for lack of a better word, that the new 23andMe website has.

On to the question:

There is an oral history of a great grandmother on my mother's side being "part" Irish. The rest was presumed Ashkenazi Jewish. This is about all we know. I have however reached an impasse genealogically and was wondering if there would be any concret steps I could take to find the ancestry of this individual. She is essentially a deadend, and Ancestry.com has not yielded any real results. On 23andMe I show up 7.5% British and Irish, and moreover 11.7% northwestern European. However I am not sure how much of this comes from the great grandmother, and how much from my quarter northern Italian ancestry (from Trent, Genoa, and Lucca). I know that northern Italians tend to score around 20% northwestern European on 23andMe, so it seems probable that about half of that 11.7% northwestern European could come from that side. The problem however comes from my Ashkenazi scores. They are low: 31.6 on 23andMe, 33% on DNALand, 35% on FTDNA and 36.3% on MyHeritage. My expected ancestry is 7/16 Ashkenazi. Either my great grandmother was 100 percent Irish, which would make my northernwestern European scores too low, or half Irish, which would make my Ashkenazi scores too low.

I know we are talking small percentages that cannot be easily read by this kind of test, but I really want to get to the bottom of this!

Maybe your great-grandmother was 3/4 Irish?

Or it could just be that, for example, your mother didn't inherit 25% DNA from each of that set of grandparents, but randomness struck and she got something like 15% from one and 35% from the other.

As for concrete steps - do you have a relative (or more than one) on that side of the family who'd be willing to do a DNA test? Preferably as closely related to that great-grandmother as possible. They might have inherited DNA in a different distribution from you, and you could perhaps make a better estimation with more than one data point.

[Michelstaedter]

I am actually awaiting my maternal aunt's results, which should shed some more light on the matter! Many thanks

[Michelstaedter]

myheritage.com DNA gives a much broader spectrum of the ethnicity I and other mtDNA matches I have been given permission to do with as I will.

GEDMATCH seems like a good idea; however, too many have joke or nicknames or no real identifiers.

Such is my experience.

Do you think then that I should believe the 36.3, or the 31.6? These seem to correlate to a difference of about 1/16.

There was a thread on 23andMe with people listing their Ashkenazi percentages and their corresponding known admixture. 1/4 ranged from 18-28% and 1/8 from 7-13%. Averaging these two sums and adding them yields 33%, which one would expect to be the average for somebody with 3/8 who receives it from different sides the way I do.

That 36.3 on MyHeritage though seems closer to the 7/16 range, which was given I think as 37-40% on 23andMe...