In addition to Y-DNA (for male bloodline) and Mitochondrial DNA (for female bloodline for both males and females), Ancestry has offered somatic DNA testing for over a year. Somatic DNA casts a wider net. When they started, I took advantage of the offer of the test free to existing customers who had had Y and MDNA tests done. The goal is to test thousands, and apparently it has been popular, since every week I get a list of 'matches'. Most are of remote and low probability (8-9th cousins) but most weeks there are several matches that have >96% probability of the person being a 4th-6th cousin. In some cases a family tree is provided, and you can examine the entries for likely source for a match ... family names or place of birth. The test looks for any blood relatives on both sides of one's family. I have attempted to get in touch with a few persons who seemed like reasonable candidates. Oddly, I have have heard back from only one person whose 4-6th generation kin came from the same area of Mecklenberg that my maternal gr GPs came from. That person shared my enthusiasm for finding each other, but since we are both at an impasse beyond the gr GP generation, we could make no connection. But at least we can both now look for several additional family names as the possible link. In addition to that potential but fragile match, there was a match with the same high probability with 'jsouthworth744' ... and this turned out to be our own Jean Tyler Southworth! We are fourth cousins and related through Thyge and Mariken Kurdøla Naas as closest common ancestors. So the process works! It's a mystery to me why people pay to have the test done, and then don't bother to answer inquiries from probable 'matches - cousins'. The only other candidate that I had hoped to hear from was a person who had many Loberg ancestors from Gerpen in Telemark. Jean Simonson's mother was Ruth Loberg, and Julia Thygesen Simonson was her grandmother, so some connection is certainly possible. And Gerpen is not far from Drangedal and the Naas heartland. If any of our virtual reunion cousins has somatic DNA tested, they should match with Jean and I ... and thousands of unknowns.
Hi Marc: This is fun information. As you know, I've tested my mt-DNA at 23&Me because I wanted to know my haplogroup (K2a10) and my health information.
ReplyDeleteI also tested at FTDNA (Family Finder + mtDNA and mtHVR1 to Mega) so I could "fish" in at least two ponds. Then, I had a first cousin male from my Norwegian line tested to 67 Y-DNA markers at FTDNA. As you say, the process worked. From among the thousands of submissions FTDNA said we matched either as first cousins or Aunt/Uncle. Our longest block of DNA is 76.81 and our shared cM is 623.77. This first cousin's haplogroup is R1b1a2 which is pretty common for Norwegian men.
To date, FTDNA has sent me distant matches to three men in Norway, one of whom shared his private database with me. That was a great find and I'm looking forward to more matches.
And, I was so lucky. One of my male Minnesota second cousins on my Swedish father's side of the family (Pihlstrom) tested at FTDNA to 67 markers. He falls into the I1 haplogroup. So, barring any non-paternal events and/or adoptions, I know my deceased father's haplotype and that of his male ancestors.
Now for the fun part. Our male Pihlström second cousin who lives in Sweden just sent his spit sample to FTDNA. I cannot wait for his results to come back so we can do comparisons between these two Pihlstrom men.
My next step is to get all three of our results uploaded to GenMatch so we can play in the really big gene pool.
If you and Jean upload your DNA information to GedMatch we'll be able to determine if we have any genes in common and, even better, we'll all be fishing in another humongous pool.
Smiles, Yvonne