UNLOCK THE STORY OF YOUR GENES
Your DNA WORKSHOP
MAKING DNA WORK FOR YOU
Welcome to the DNA Workshop! In every issue DNA adviser Karen Evans will be unpacking a reader case study, and giving step-by-step tips for you to use in your DNA research at home. It’s time to unlock the story of your genes…
Karen Evans
DNA CASE STUDY
'Where does 45% a Scot come from?'
READER SUE WRITES:
When my father-in-law got his first AncestryDNA results he was 96% England, Wales and North-west Europe, 2% Irish & Scottish and 2% Sweden. Given his family tree, that made sense.
Now he’s 77% England North-west Europe, 6% Welsh and a mystery 17% Scottish.
Similarly my husband’s first results gave him 79% England and North-west Europe, and 21% Irish & Scottish. Presumably at that stage Ancestry couldn’t tell Irish from Scottish, and has never taken into account that the Cornish will also fit into that bracket. His updated results give him 45% Scottish, 35% England and North-west Europe, 11% Irish and traces of Welsh and Scandinavian countries.
Our problem is this. My husband Kevin and his father have one only Scottish ancestor and he died in 1791. The family originates from Shropshire and Lancashire on the whole and the first results are actually much closer to the known facts.
On his mother’s side, my husband’s maternal families came from Cornwall, Ireland and from the Oxfordshire area. And there are no Scots in the families at all, not since the 1700s at least.
So where does 45% a Scot come from? There don’t seem to be any ‘away matches’, and certainly none in the last century. Is Ancestry confusing Akins with Aitken, which is a Scottish name, and that the Allans in Lancashire are not Scots but English?
And how does Ancestry get from 17% for the father, to 45% for the son, when there is no Scottish coming in from the mother’s side?
In his article in the October issue Chris Paton discusses at length the benefits of DNA testing to help with brick walls once families leave the UK. It seems to me that if more who stayed behind did test, Ancestry would get far more accurate results for its geographical areas. At present they are relying on the populations that have left, who are far more enthusiastic.