Your Irish Ancestry May in Fact be Spanish

When someone talks about ancestry they know 2 to 3 generations back the actual names/dates/places for their family and maybe a few stories their parents or grandparents told and the oral tradition that we are "fill in the blank heritage".

If someone or a family member has done a bit of genealogical work--traced a paper trail, documenting their family's history through legal documents and records, then you can either prove or disprove what information has been passed down through the family.

And if you are lucky and determined/patient/skilled that paper trail may extend back for many centuries and tell quite the tale itself and add another dimension to all those photographs and stories and legends in your family's past.

But even with all that, there is a step you can take that will add even more insight into your heritage, the genetic DNA tests.
And sometimes that information will be a game changer.

When I had my DNA tested(mitochondrial and autosomal tests)I wasn't too surprised to see that my admixture(my ethnic makeup) was 100% European(mostly Northern, Western and Central).
My father's lines came from Ireland and my mother's lines came from England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland at least in the last 10 generations or so.

My admixture currently reads--

100% European which breaks down into--

90% Britich Isles
9% Central and Western Europe
1% Finland and Northern Siberia

When I saw the names of the people who matched me genetically who have also tested at the website, I read names like Magnessønn, Sköld and Fagerström located in Sweden, Finland and Norway.
Clearly Scandinavian surnames all, and after reading up on the history of this area and the trade routes and how civilizations moved about and blended, those ethnic surnames and my 1% of genes helped to explained this piece of the puzzle.

But then I didn't know what to do with finding genetic matches with people named Vicente, de Marchena and Ferreira Lopes located in places like Spain, Portugal and Brazil(someone's family that migrated from the Iberian Peninsula).
The furthest South in Europe my admixture shows is France.

These ethnic groups were not on my radar.

Then when my brother's admixture came back it read thusly....

99% European
1% Middle Eastern

Middle Eastern?!?

The break down of the 99% European being--
92% British Isles
6% Finland and Northern Siberia
1% Southern Europe

And the other 1% Middle Eastern of his ethnic makeup?
The break down of this was 1% North African.

Now even though we are siblings there are variations in where our DNA is located on our chromosome chains.  And DNA testing only takes samples from certain parts of your chain.  This means that 2 people with the same DNA(like full siblings except if only one is male, then the Y DNA won't match as the female does not carry Y chromosomes)will show differences in their results, as the places on their chains that are tested don't always hold the same genetic material. 

This explains why I come up as 100% European and my brother comes up as 99% European/1% Middle Eastern.

So this means I have a minute amount of genetic material found in people who originated in the Middle East even though my test results didn't unearth it.

My Haplogroup J(which comes from my mitochondrial DNA), is said to have originated about 45,000 years ago in the Near East or the Caucasus.
This would go a long way to explain this Middle Eastern gene finding(since my brother and I share the same mitochondrial genes)but if the Middle Eastern gene is in fact specific to Northern Africa this explains nothing.

The fact that a number of people from modern day Spain and Portugal were exact genetic matches to me has been a head scratcher for me. 
Under the assumption that their ancestry is Spanish and/or Portuguese, how could we be such a close match if I possess so little Middle Eastern/North African material?

And also, where did this 1% Middle Eastern genetic material come from?  In all the paper trail research I've undertaken I have never found any ancestor that led me back to this part of the world.

And then I found an article that blew my mind and turned my thinking around.

If you go back in history.....back before the Celts.....back before the English conquest of Ireland, Ireland was invaded and ruled by stone age settlers who migrated from Spain.

There was a Kingdom called Dál Riata (or Dalriada).  Shown in the drawing in green.

People from the Iberian Peninsula invaded into Ireland and Scotland between 400-800 AD.  This kingdom ruled over by stone age settles from Northern Spain extended from modern day Spain across the sea into western Ireland and into Scotland.  During this time the Picts ruled the eastern part of Scotland(shown in yellow), but not the western region, as well as the northeastern chunk of Ireland.

To quote the article....."The latest research into Irish DNA has confirmed that the early inhabitants of Ireland were not directly descended from the Keltoi of central Europe. In fact the closest genetic relatives of the Irish in Europe are to be found in the north of Spain in the region known as the Basque Country."

You can read the article yourself HERE.

DNA testing in Ireland and Scotland has confirmed this long held mythology of an dark invading race during the Stone Age and has gone a long way to explain the physical and cultural similarities in people from those two countries.  Genetic propensity for freckles with fair skin and red hair are both quite prominent in Irish and Scottish peoples.

Here's a Youtube video that goes into some of this.



So if your family tree takes you back to Ireland or Scotland, you most certainly have a little Spanish in your genes too.

And if you get your DNA tested be prepared to find a small bit of Spanish in your ethnic makeup, or people with Spanish surnames genetically matching you.

Sluggy



 

Boring Genealogy Stuff.....Not Real Long Tho

I've been spending quite a bit of time with my genealogist's hat on lately.

*  I am sad that this season of TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" will be over in only 2 more episodes.

Last Wednesday evening's episode was neat because the first ancestor of guest Valerie Bertinelli had lived near were I am living now. 
Her great grandfather Gregorio Mancia tried to kill her great grandmother, Mary Possio Crosa Mancia, and then turned the gun on himself in a little town outside of Scranton, PA back in 1931.  Before removing to Lackawanna County, PA, Gregorio and Mary had lived in western VA, near Wytheville as his draft card noted.  He was a coal miner so both areas make sense for them to be living in during those times.

Anyway, after her paternal ancestor search, they moved on to her maternal ancestors and soon were revealing how one of her lines stretches back to Edward I of England and beyond to William the Conqueror.
Edward Longshanks happens to be my 23 x Great Grandfather too.
Thus Ms. Bertinelli and I are some sort of cousins.
Imagine that!

*  Then later in the week I was doing some deep ancestor hunting on my PARHAM line.  On my maternal grandfather's line I have Thomas Parham Sr. and Susannah Hunt as my 9 x GGrands.  I discovered that it appears that Susannah married twice, with Roger TILGHMAN being her second husband.
I know a fellow blogger who has talked about her TILGHMAN(later changed to TILLMAN) connection over the years so I wrote to her to let her know that we may be related through allied families(related by marriage of one line to another, but not directly by blood).  My blood relation ancestor, Susannah's son Thomas PARHAM, is not a TILGHMAN.
So we hashed it out and my 9 x Great Grandmother married the brother of my friend's 8 x Great Grandfather.
Are you confused yet? lol

I had seen that TILGHMAN name on my tree yet had never thought that it would be connected to fellow bloggers TILGHMANS, because mine came to/were based in Virginia and she kept mentioning Maryland in connection to her TILGHMANS.

But on further investigation her TILGHMANS were part of the Virginia branch of that family that ended up heading into Maryland early on after their immigrating to the New World in VA.
There are 2 different TILGHMAN lines in Maryland it seems--The piece of the Christopher TILGHMAN line that removed to Maryland and a line sprouting from a Dr. Richard TILGHMAN, for which TILGHMANS ISLAND and other areas in Maryland on the Eastern Shore are named.
And this is more than anyone reading this ever wanted to know about the Tilghman family I am sure. lolz

Having found that connection by marriage she led me to some more family Tighlman ancestry information going further back on the TILGHMAN line showing that Christopher/Gideon/Roger/et all descend from the Plantagenet line of the kings of England.
And this line is the same line that I and Valerie Bertinelli's have on our trees.

So fellow blogger and I DO share bloodlines after all, just further back in our respective ancestry.
Our most recent shared common ancestors are Ralph de NEVILLE and Joan de BEAUFORT as we are each descended from a child of this couple.  My 19th x Great Grands are also fellow bloggers 17th x Great Grands.  I guess my family is a bit sooner to jump into bed than hers.  ;-)

*  Then I got bored last week....after all, all the college prep was finished......so I started doing a family tree on the next TLC "Who Do You Think You Are?" guest, Kelsey Grammer.
I have never really been a fan of his but what the hey!  I am always up for a genealogy challenge.

I wanted to see if I could do this(without cheating and googling his line, other than his parents names and dates to get me started), tracing his ancestors back before the show aired on tv.
And I think I did fairly well.
I got back into the late 1600's on 2 of his paternal lines and 2 of his maternal lines, as well as back to late 1500's on 1 of his mother's lines.  I am not saying that there might not be errors in the information because, after all, I haven't documented all this information, but it's fairly accurate.
I found lots of English, some French, some German, even some Nova Scotian Canadian ancestors.

And the tv promos sound like the show will be investigated a "patriot" on one side and a "pioneer" on the other side of his family during his episode.

And I know EXACTLY which ancestors they will talk about now, since I found them too.  8-)
So stop reading this and don't scroll down to the end of my post if you don't want to spoil the surprise when you watch the show, ok?
Because I am gonna end this with the names but I won't give any other clues or information about them.  I just want a record of me having found this myself.  8-)))

*  Then late last week, I got an email from someone asking about a certain line of my ancestors.  This person manages DNA accounts at FamilyTreeDNA for, I am assuming, are other family members who have had their DNA tested.  She let me know that one of her subjects/members matched me in the autosomal testing they had done(about 50cms)and we also have one surname in common on our respective family surnames lists, DUDLEY.

It didn't take long to track down our common ancestor--Edward DUDLEY, my 10th x Great Grandfather.  Their ancestor William, and my ancestor Richard were the sons of Edward DUDLEY and Elizabeth PRITCHARD.
While it's not common to match DNA with someone when your shared ancestor is so many generations far removed, it IS possible and highly likely if the ancestors are affected by "Founder's Effect", and if you have ancestors who were very early (usually English)settlers to America and intermarried within their social circles.  You may be able to match DNA on those lines of your ancestry going further back than the standard 6 or 7 generations.

Keep scrolling for the Spoiler--

































SPOILER ALERT--
The patriot ancestor for Kelsey Grammer is probably Jacob Grammer, a First Lieutenant in the Maryland Militia/Revolutionary War, and the pioneer ancestors are probably Joseph Dimmick and his wife Mary Frances Kriechbaum, in 1852.  You figure out what state they removed to...it's out west and has a shoreline.  ;-)

Sluggy