Maps from Ancestry showing my DNA story
England and Northwestern Europe – 71% (Smith, Fenn, Seage, West, Saxon and Howarth)
My connection to the regions on the maps come through ancestors from these communities:
Northwest England – Lancashire & Greater Manchester (Saxon and Howarth)
Northamptonshire (Smith)
Devon (Seage)
Ireland – 13% (Murphy, Jermyn and Howarth)
Sweden & Denmark – 10% (Seage variations possibly – Seggar etc.)
Scotland – 6% (Riddel)
“We are the children of many sires, and everydrop of blood in us in its turn betrays its ancestor.” Ralph Waldo Emerson 1820-1872
We each have two family roots.
The first is Genealogical which links every ancestor in your history directly to you.
The second is Genetic which consists of the ancestors who gave you your DNA, but you only inherit DNA from some of genealogical ancestors. After, about the 7th generation, only some of genealogical ancestors are part of your genetic family roots. The possibility of inheriting a segment of DNA from a particular genealogical ancestor decreases with each generation. in addition, surnames and Y-DNA normally follow the same pathway, but the link is often broken because of illegitimacy, adoption, aliases, or other surname changes.
The study of DNA is complex, and I am a relative novice. The table above is taken from Blaine Bettinger’s article on the following website:
Y Chromosome
The Y chromosome is passed down from father to son. Here are my direct paternal line ancestors.
Father – Thomas Leslie Smith
Paternal Grandfather – John William Seage (William John Smith)
Paternal Great-Grandfather – John Smith Seage
Second Great-Grandfather – John Smith
Third Great-Grandfather – John Riddle Smith
Fourth Great-Grandfather – Joseph Smith
Fifth Great-Grandfather – John Smith
Sixth Great-Grandfather – John Smith
Seventh Great-Grandfather – Thomas Smith
Eighth Great Grandfather – John Smith
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child. Here are my direct maternal line ancestors.
Mother – Agnes Saxon
Maternal Grandmother – Agnes Howarth
Maternal Great-Grandmother – Elizabeth Ann Mellor
Second Great-Grandmother – Susannah Murphy (Cork, Ireland)
Third Great-Grandmother – Mary Jermyn?
Fourth Great-Grandmother – Unknown
Fifth Great-Grandmother – Unknown
Sixth Great-Grandmother – Unknown
Seventh Great-Grandmother – Unknown
X Chromosome
Males inherit one X chromosome from their mother. Females inherit one from their mother and one from their father. See Blaine Bettinger’s X-DNA charts
If you have read the article, you may wonder why I used ‘Roots’ instead of ‘Tree’.
In researching your family history, you are looking at the people who are your antecedents, your genealogical roots. I have always had a problem with the representation of these people on the branches of a tree as I believe they are the roots of your tree, and you can only add branches when you yourself have descendants.
For example, I am single, unmarried with no children I know of, so I only have roots but no branches to my tree.
If I took one of my great grandparents, I could produce a tree with both branches and roots for them. In fact, there would be two trees, one for each of the great grandparents.