Yde, born 1506 in Denmark; father Scot, mother Gypsy

[Yde]

If your paternal line is 'I1' Y-DNA, I would lean toward a more likely Scandinavian heritage than a typical Scotsman.

About the technical specifications experts says:
Thegordondnaproject has placed me in The Northern Highland Branch, the descendants of Adam de Gordoun (born about 1035) through the two brothers “Jock and Tam” Gordon, which is the biggest Gordon family group with most testers seem to have wound up in Scotland.
The ftdna I1-project placed me in I1-Z140 L338+ AS-1
The I1-Z140-project placed me in I1-L338+
The Normans of Continental Europe-project placed me in I1-AS1
The Denmark-project placed me in I1-Z59 Branch Nordic Continental West
The Scandinavian project placed me in Ungrouped.

I have at this moment only seven matches "12/12,23/25,33/37", of which six have the name Gordon and the seventh is a Douglas.

From Minnesota, USA, a Mr. Gordon reports that his forefather Gordon was born in 1740 in Scotland.
From Australia a Mr. Gordon announces that his ancestor Gordon had a son born in 1844 in Scotland.
A third Mr. Gordon, eastern USA, is a descendant of a Gordon born 1759 in Scotland, he kindly tells.

What have these and the other three Gordons in common? I think everyone in this forum would say “an ancestor named Gordon, who was born before 1720”.

But then, what do I and other Yde-folks have in common with these Gordons? Is “six out of seven matches 12/12, 23/25, 33/37” too little to give the answer: "Gordon we have in common"?

The ftdna-calculators tell that the common ancestor for Yde and Gordon “for sure” lived after “1066” and that he could have lived in “1492”, par exemple.

The Gordon-deoxyribonucleic acid-molecule was in Normandy, France, before it came to Scotland. People with that signature might very well have seen the Viking ships of Ragnar Lodbrok and later those of Rollo in the 9th century passing by.

It was not till the 15th century that relations between Scotland and Denmark were established, whereas contacts between Scotland and Norway had been frequent for centuries. In the mid-15th century Scots sailed to the Baltic and Scottish immigration to Denmark began at the same time, spreading along the international sailing-route through the Sound into the Baltic. It is thus due probably not only to the hazards of the survival of records that a few Scots occur at first in Aalborg, North Jutland, among the members of the Corpus Christi Guild. Many Scots came to Danish Elsinore, Copenhagen and Malmo, but even more headed for Danzig/Gdansk and by the 17th century, there were an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Scots living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Familynames and DNA in “Preussia” can in our days be traced back to Scotland.

Studying history is a must in the new dna-world. Dna-calculation itself is not enough at present.

The mentioned gypsy/sigøjner/zigenare/mustalaisia/kaale/roma, was my many-G-grandmother,and she might have been pregnant when she left Scotland.

[suttonwho]

While I agree that the British to Scandinavian ratio is heavily skewed toward British testers, I must second Molly's observation that there are plenty of Scandinavians in the database. My dad and I share a fair amount of native Swede, Finn and Norwegian hits. My son has none from his paternal side (Irish born with mainly Irish and Scottish ancestors).

Whatever the truth may be, Yde, interesting personal case study.

[mollyblum]

Actually my father's birth mother was Scandinavian (through her father) and I have a pretty significant number of Scandinavian matches that include Norway, Sweden, Finland a few from Iceland and some Danes. So there are people from Scandinavia who have tested in the database.

[Aperipatetic1]

I mean this kindly, and you are free to believe any account of your own ancestry that you choose to, but if what you relate in your story is all that you have to base your family story on, you have a lot more work to do until you can substantiate the tale, in my opinion.

If your paternal line is 'I1' Y-DNA, I would lean toward a more likely Scandinavian heritage than a typical Scotsman.
While MT 'M5' could very well indicate possible gypsy maternal ancestry, you would not carry that Hg if this was the parent of someone in your paternal ancestry born in 1506, unless I am missing something.

What maternal and paternal Hg do you specifically test as possessing? Obviously this is not definitive proof of your tale or evidence against it.

The reason you likely have a lot more matches to people in Scotland and the British Isles than other Danes is likely affected by the comparatively limited number of other Danes and Scandinavians who have completed the autosomal and Mt/Y tests.

A lot of people descended from Brit Isles populations have taken these tests, and many have distant connections to Scandinavia. I am primarily Brit Isles, and match people in Sweden and Norway with only very old and limited links through a specific set of families out of some Frisian Islands that technically would be Danish today, however I have no match to any Danes.

I would not assume that you are descended from a scenario as you related, without a lot more research and fact finding... unless you really want to do so for some reason.

[Yde]

With the help from y-dna I have proved, that an old story about “The first Yde born of a gypsy on Vilsund Strand in Denmark” is true - and that the biological father was a man from Scotland and that the boy was born in 1506 and adopted by local people.

Here told chronological.
YDE, born 1506, half GORDON from SCOTLAND and half GYPSY

A: In my family an old tale says, that the first Yde was a baby “yde(d)” by some gypsies, who camped on Vilsund or Vildsund Strand in Thy, north west Jutland, Denmark. The Danish word yde means give, render, yield, pay. In a book from 1976, “Gamle Slægter fra Hundborg/Old Families from Hundborg”, we can read, page 119: In the Yde-families in Thy has from time immemorial been told a story, that the name Yde should have come from gypsies that a night stayed on Vilsund Ferry Inn. During the night one of the women gave birth to a child, and since they had nothing to pay with, they gave the baby to the owners of the inn. (And very few in our time believed in that story).

B: I have been wondering for many years, why I had no Danish dna-matches showing up. Instead a lot of names from The British Islands and the Low Countries came in. Not until July 2014 I found, that I had only seven “12/12, 23/25, 33/37”-matches, of which six were Gordon and one Douglas, apparently of Scottish ancestry. The ftdna-calculator then explains “Since Yde and Gordon do not share a common ancestor in the last 11 generations, there is 50% probability of a most recent common ancestor within 14 generations and the 75%-probability is crossed 17-18 generations back in time. A generation among my rural forefathers in Denmark is 31 years. The Gordon clan is originally from Normandy, where their ancestors are said to have had large possessions. By the early twelfth century they had settled in the village and estates of Gordon, near Kelso in the Scottish Borders under the protection of their kinsman, the Earl of Dunbar.

C: A study of History of Scotland gave an answer to A and B quite rapidly: On 3rd July 1505 the king of Scotland, James IV Stewart, wrote a letter to his mother’s brother, king Hans/John of Denmark, born in Aalborg, to “commend Anthony Gagino, a lord of Little Egypt, who, with his retinue, had a few months previously reached Scotland during a pilgrimage through the Christian world, undertaken at the command of the Apostolic See”. In 1512 count Anthony arrived to Stockholm in Sweden with many families and told they came from Klene Egifft. More than hundred years later these in Danish “sigøjnere”, now “romaer”, came to Finland where their descendants still live, now called "Finnish Kale", and maintain that their ancestors had originally come from Scotland.

My conclusion, August 2014: The people from “Little Egypt” in 1505 sailed from a port near Edinburgh to Aalborg, from where they travelled west, 100 km, and less than nine months later, around spring 1506, they arrived to Vilsund Strand, partly Stagstrup parish, partly Skjoldborg parish, once Thisted amt. So the baby, the first Yde, was probably half Gordon and half Gypsy.

For many years a horse- and merchant's market has taken place in Vilsund, 419 inhabitants. The ferry boat crossing Limfjorden was replaced by a bridge in 1939.

A book by Thomas Riis, “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, Scottish-Danish relations c. 1450-1707”, written in English, 690 pages, names 18 Gordon and 23 Douglas, but none of them seem to be the ancestor.

So the family-line goes:
Scot Gordon ~ Gypsy Woman (probably I1-Z140 L338+ AS-1 and M5a1b1a1 or a U3b1c-subgroup)
Yde 1, born 1506 on Vilsund Strand, Denmark. Adopted by local people.
Yde 2 (and 3?)
Jens Yde, born ca. 1585, estimated. The following are from church records.
Jens Jensen Yde, 1618-1688, ~ Mette Christensdatter
Jens Jensen Yde, 1651-1731, ~ Maren Madsdatter
Mads Jensen Yde, 1686-1763, ~ Anne Pedersdatter
Jens Madsen Yde, 1706-1781, ~ Friderica Schmidt
Søren Jensen Yde, 1741-1819, ~ Maren Jensdatter Svejgaard
Jens Mathias Yde, 1773-1852, ~ Maren Christensdatter
Jens Christian Jensen Yde, 1804-1856, ~ Ovens Kathrine Sørensdatter
Søren Jensen Yde, 1831-1905, ~ Petrine Mortensen
Martin A. Yde, 1874-1959, ~ Vilhelmine Jørgine Villadsen. They had a farm in Gærup only two kilometers from Vilsund Strand.
Christian Yde
Jens Yde VII