Thursday, March 28, 2019

Living DNA Results


Living DNA Results

My Living DNA results have come in and have proven to be quite interesting.  Looking at my known ancestry, 80% of my ancestors were in the American Colonies prior to 1700.  The first arrivals were: Hendrick Hendricksen [Kip] (Note 1) between 1637 and 1642 from the Netherlands into the New Netherland colony; Winthrop family 1630 into the New England colonies from the Netherlands where they had lived for a number of years due to their being Non-Conformists from England; Roger Williams (freedom of worship and a founder of Rhode Island) 1631 from England to The Massachusetts Bay Colony.  This group of Non-Conformists were primarily from the areas around London and London itself as well as up into Yorkshire.  Also included in this early group was my paternal line from Amsterdam and earlier to that from the area to the north and east closer to the border of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen).  


Another group of my early American ancestors came from Ile de Re, France (Huguenots) about 1686 (Perlier or Parlee) to settle first at Narragansett and then on to Staten Island.  From the Palatinate another 10% of my ancestors came to the American colonies and New York State between 1710 and 1750.  


Then in the early 1830s my 2x great grandmother (Abbs), her parents and siblings came to Ontario from Norfolk, England.  


My latest arrivals were my great grandmother (Niemann) from Mecklenburg in 1846 and my great grandfather (Schultz) from Mecklenburg in 1866.  One would expect these results to be quite diverse and they were.  The percentages of my ancestry, as revealed by the testing at Living DNA from particular areas, sent me on a path to examine all those 8x, 9x, and 10x great grandparents.  We are a product of all of those ancestors and the amount we inherit from each of them can be as low as 0% beyond our parents.

From our parents we always inherit 50% from each looking at our autosomal DNA; from each of our grandparents we will inherit approximately 25% but that can be quite variable with our inheriting between 0% and 50% from each one.

Note 1: Hendrick Hendricksen [Kip] came from Amsterdam, Netherlands to New Amsterdam, between 1637 and 1642.  His surname of Hendricksen was a patronymic. Research suggests that he acquired the surname Kip or Kype or Kyp after arriving in New Amsterdam.

Map of autosomal Inheritance (Living DNA):


Overall I am said to be 98.2% European and 1.8% Near East.

The above map illustrates the sub region map Great Britain and Ireland, 19% Europe (North and West), 8.3% Europe (South), 5.4% Europe (East) and 1.8% Near East (North Turkey).

Going down one more level yielded a quite in-depth look at these results.

Great Britain and Ireland
Southeast England 32.1%, North Yorkshire 14.2%, East Anglia 14%, Cornwall 3.7%, Central England 1.6%

Europe (North and West)
Germanic 13.3%, Scandinavia 4.2%, France 1.4%

Europe (South)
Aegean 4.4%, Tuscany 3.9%

Europe (East)
Northeast Europe 3.6%, Finland and Western Russia 1.8%

Near East
North Turkey 1.8%

I have never really thought of myself as English (ancestry from those counties called England within Great Britain) but looking back at my 8x, 9x, 10x great grandparents and their origins I discovered that more than half of my ancestors were from England (and they were mostly non-conformist!).

Since my 2x great grandmother came directly from Norfolk the 14% certainly includes her.  It is large for a 2x great grandparent (generally thought to be 6.25% (varies between 0% and 12.5%)) and I do have some American colonial ancestors known to be from England but their place of origin is unknown.

The North Yorkshire is large at 14.2% but I do have non-conformist ancestry from this area.

Southeast England covers the areas where many of my non-conformist ancestors lived prior to going to Holland where they lived for a generation or more.

Cornwall I have no idea at this point in time but will investigate that with some of my unknown lines. Central England fits in with my known non-conformist ancestry.

I did think my Germanic ancestry was somewhat low (17.5%; Germanic 13.3% and Scandinavia 4.2%) given my paternal great grandparents coming directly to Canada from Germany would be around 25%.  Also my mother’s paternal line is Palatine German but in two hundred and fifty years intermarriage with many English families has indeed minimized that German influence.  The Eastern European likely belongs to my German great grandparents as well.

My French ancestry (1.4%) is mostly from Ile de Re (6x great grandparents) predicted inheritance from a 6x great grandparent is 0.39% (or 0.78% as both of these 6x great grandparents were French Huguenots) and the Perlier-Parlee family immediately intermarried into English families after their arrival in the late 1600s.

The Southern European ancestry is unknown to me but it is very small and could just be an echo from a much earlier time in my ancestral history and that likely includes the Near East Ancestry.

Living DNA also examined 389 SNPs on the Y chromosome.  I had only tested myself to R-L48 at FT DNA.  R-L48 is known as the Null 425 group known to be localized to an area within 100 kilometres of Amsterdam.  This further delineation of my haplogroup took me to R-Z326 with this particular haplogroup subclade named as the Germanic branch of the R1b father-line.  Interestingly my Hendricksen [Kip] family is found in the area of Eastern Netherlands close to the West German border (Lower Saxony).

Mitochondrial DNA results are also given with this particular test and the map of this particular subclade T2b3b was rather interesting.  Although I can trace my maternal line back to Margaret Carr born circa 1654 at Newport, Rhode Island daughter of Robert Carr - the name of his wife is a mystery although some have given her the name of Hannah Hale.