Crucianize

Tag: Genetic Genealogy

  • Ancestry Pro Tools

    Ancestry Pro Tools

    Ancestry has really been on my last nerves for a while now. They did an update a while back where you can’t view your DNA relatives in common with someone or view their tree unless you have an active subscription, and I find that move left a sour taste in my mouth. Even without a subscription, I could separate my DNA relatives into groups to figure out how they are related to me. But it gets even worse – groups, even my custom groups that I had created over many years, are now paywalled. I swore that I wouldn’t pay for Pro Tools, swore that I would not pay for another subscription, but Ancestry kept enticing me with $1 subscriptions, and I cave every single time.

    In June, I decided that I would take the bullet and pay for Pro Tools. I parted with my €11.25 very reluctantly. Oh, I was punching the air and saying if it wasn’t worth it, I would be so mad. I’m even more pissed off that it has proved very useful. The one feature that I bought this subscription for was the Advanced matching. Basically, it does what 23andme and MyHeritage both do; it shows you the cM your DNA match shares with your matches in common and how they are possibly related to those matches. Angry, I am so angry because it immediately proved that my theory about a half-second cousin was correct. I had guessed at the connection to our shared DNA matches, but I really did not know how much DNA she would share with our shared matches, and now I know.

    I actually wrote a post about this match and how I went about proving that she was a half-second cousin. I just have the information about how much DNA she shares with my known half-second cousin 2x removed.

    Here’s the post if you haven’t read it: Detective Lynnette and the Case of the Mysterious DNA Relative

    I want to say I don’t know if I will renew, but I am still undecided because I have not done everything I wished I could do with this new tool, and I will no doubt continue to get more DNA relatives and I’ll need to figure out how they are related to my other matches. I will probably stagger my subscription because I cannot pay for this every single month.

  • Is knowing your Maternal Haplogroup helpful?

    It depends.

    In my father’s case, because he was adopted and we don’t know much about his family, matches on the X are pretty helpful for me.

    In my case they aren’t very useful because I have two Xs and any match on my X will need thorough research to figure out which side of the family this match comes from. I inherited an intact X from my father which is a recombination of his mother’s mother and her father. I also got a recombined X from my mother. Let’s take a little look into what this will look like in terms of DNA relatives.

    Matching with my father.

    As you can see, I share 50% DNA with my father including the X.

    We have different Maternal Haplogroups.

    Even though we share an X we don’t have the same Maternal Haplogroups because it is inherited strictly from the mother. My Maternal Haplogroup is L1b which came from my mother, her mother, her mother, and so forth. My father’s Maternal Haplogroup came from his mother.

    Matching with my maternal aunt.

    This match is my maternal aunt and as you can see I share 25% DNA with her including an X, in case you didn’t notice it’s not an intact X because I inherited DNA that my aunt didn’t.

    Sharing the same Maternal Haplogroup.

    Because this is my maternal aunt, the fact that we share the same Maternal Haplogroup tells me that she shares the same mother as my mother. I can also look at the number of cMs we share and 25% indicates a full aunt meaning she shares both parents with my mother.

    Matching with my mother’s first cousin.

    Here’s my match with my mother’s first cousin, we don’t share an X because he inherited his X from his mother and I’m not related to his mother. This tells me that I’m related through his father who was the brother of my grandmother.

    We don’t share the same Maternal Haplogroup.

    The interesting thing about this cousin is the amount of DNA we share. I thought I had just inherited more DNA from my grandmother than I thought but I recently learned that my grandparents were possibly related. I have not found any actual evidence that this is true but like most Islands Dominica is small and it shouldn’t surprise me that there could be some endogamy going on.

    I hope this was helpful in understanding how Maternal Haplogroups can help you in your genealogy research.