Endogamous DNA Support Group

[storm rose]

Migrating from the thread!

post image courtesy of @half ore

Endogamous DNA Support Group

[coarse yoke]

I mean I knew about this one, but... 🙂

[hot plank]

I think we're going to phase out the other 😄

[coarse yoke]

old habits die hard

[coarse yoke]

So... sometimes I find matches on myheritage that are.... low-ish... say 25-50cM and the shared matches reveal nothing to me, nor their trees. What I can see, basically, is that we are connected, and lots of others... but in a part of my tree that I have not apparentl mapped. Now I sometimes use familysearch to find connections. Sometimes there are distant, Ive added some 10th cousins.

But this one takes the cake I think (the connection is to their ancestor):

soooo... do I have the energy to actually add this crazy path to my own... just to add more (for sure) endogamous matches...

For this one match its not worth it. But I am thinking I might be unlocking lots of other matches on the way. Just starting to wonder if its worth it. Ive already added partial trees that never actually connected to any of my bloodlines, so this might connect them properly.

I mean I do have a dream about fully knowing the relationship for every DNA match of course. But dang is it time consuming

also I don't even have the sources for any of the older matches, 1600 and before is a black hole for me more or less, and I 100% depends on FS being correct. So its just tree-copying.

[neon flax]

Personally I would not, for things like this that are way further back than I can actually verify. You'd be taking all that info into your tree just to connect a DNA match, but not knowing if it's actually correct or not. Then if there's wrong information, and you're using this to try to connect other matches, you'll be basing those conclusions off of wrong information as well and making it even more muddled.

[red basalt]

My surname is X and there has been three variants of it in the past. Basic (and modern) form is just X, but there has been [X]niemi and [X]la variants. [X]niemi was the village name and [X]la was the farm name (in that village). People have swapped between the variants based on where they have lived. I found a part of tree that has all the variations and where three branches merge that were all originated from the same farm. I have of course DNA matches from both [X]la and [X]niemi too. I think I connected one match that would be my 9th cousin's granddaughter, but has huge cM value. Maybe because of that three-way merge.

Never two people with exactly same surname (or same as other's parents) married, because of that variant swapping.

That's on my father's side and I have most of my matches from that side. I have been splitting with shared matches and I should get around one-eight of the total matches if I use 3rd cousin for splitting just that branch. That should mean 11k matches. I get 36k.

[magic moon]

ooh is this where all of us "pedigree collapses" hang out?

[red basalt]

That loop there is at least 6 generations long, 200 years or more (with my large generation gaps). Shared ancestor have lived in 16-17th century. I have proof that people using that surname lived in that village in 16th century, but I have only a single name, the head of the household. That loop shortens the path to ancestors, so 9th cousin has same amount of shared DNA as 3rd cousin should have (if that is 6 generations). Pretty "fun" to see it visually, even though I can't draw those lines back to the common ancestor. Surname is so rare, that it must be just one origin (and DNA supports it, I'm not from that merged path, but from another one split earlier).

[coarse yoke]

I found I had a made a mistake with what I thought was 2C, turns out we are (at least) 8C1R and 9C1R. But biggest segment is 14.9cM.. seems unlikely big to me. So I added a few fixes to FS and I am now re-downloading using rootsmagic, which I use exlusively for exporting FS->gedcom.

This is going to take a while I think

[coarse yoke]

I can recommend this tool to view gedcoms btw: https://learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors/

This is my current myheritage trees of my fathers ancestors, vs familysearch exported with 15 generations or so:

the one with much more endogamy is the FS one

I can see now that I am just barely missing some of these connections in my MH tree

[red basalt]

Is that only for trees? I have made manually my research tree and I know that there is only two times branches merge. With MH you either get duplicate persons or you need to manually connect person to other already made person, and I should not have duplicates as I have only aroun 850 persons in my tree. In my case the endogamy is strange as those points where the branches merge are so far back, early 19th century or earlier. I get pretty fine tree after that. I watched some video and started to believe that most of my low-cM matches are most likely false positives.

[acoustic pollen]

It takes an upload of a gedcom file to display this

[coarse yoke]

Yeah how MH handles dupes is...

Ive spent hours fixing my tree after adding dupes.

[red basalt]

Thing is not that easy if there are same name repeated many times, inherited from father to son. Especially in time when surnames are not always used. I have four Johans in a same male line, so that means it's three Johan Johanssons in a row in a same line with just different birth dates. I have also four Johan Johanssons elsewhere in my tree, making total to seven. It had been very popular name, though Johan has many interpretation in Finnish, like Juhana, Juho, and Johannes at least.

[storm rose]

(sorry about that, tidying up :D)

[red basalt]

Have you tried to use Leeds method for endogamous population? I'm doing a little bit limited version and the results are weird on some way I'm expecting them be weird and on some way that I don't expect them to be.

[red basalt]

I have no idea how to interpret the results. I tested only 200 best matches (97-355 cM), going down to 90 would have added 133 more matches and it was already too laborious. I got 4 clusters, but all are pretty mixed up together. for 200 mathces cluster sizes are 175, 125, 146 and 132. There are only 14 people (including 4 leads) that are only in one cluster and quarter of matches (56) belong to all clusters.

There were two people who I got triangulated segments with every four leads, but there I couldn't get fourth lead to the triangulation, so no shared common ancestor at least to all branches.

[neon flax]

Whoo that's a lot of overlap. It's interesting to me though that you still got only 4 columns.

[red basalt]

Yep, that was the weird thing that I didn't expect

[neon flax]

Do your grandparents have known relationships, or all from the same communities?

[red basalt]

No, nothing in the past 200 years. My four grandparent's branches go without colliding at leat 200 years, but I have got something that may explain all.

[neon flax]

Oh?

[red basalt]

My male line ancestral home (that [X]niemi village from earlier image) might be source that links all my grandparent lines. Based on all the trees the village has been pretty separated from outside (it was in the border region between Sweden and Russia), so the families in the village married each others practically the whole 18th century. The tree is one big nest from that century.

Sweden lost all of Finland to Russia in 1809, and after that the families from that endogamous village spread through the Eastern Finland and all of my Grandparents' lines have ancestor that came from that village. That's my hypothesis

[neon flax]

Are all of your grandparents from this village?

Or you're thinking that they will all trace back to that village eventually further back?

[red basalt]

No, not grandparents, something like 8-10x greats

With couple of assumptions I could link at least two grandparents line to common 9xgreat in that village. Very little data though.

Other two lines may connect to those two somewhere in 18th century

It's funny that my male line ancestors have always said that our family might have come from there. Now I have got DNA matches that have trees built up to that village, and some of those matches are not from male line

[neon flax]

Hmm. With that much overlap I would expect to find lines converging closer than your 8-10x greats, but I'm still learning how to work with endogamous DNA myself so make of that what you will

[red basalt]

There might be something closer too, I'm not exluding that. Some cM values are way too high for having shared relative that far back.

[errant ember]

Endogamy: When your cluster analysis looks like a QR code 😆

[shadow pewter]

sigh unlocking MyHeritage tools just showed me so many of my theories about relationships were probably just endogamy.... two matches shared 200 CM with each other but nothing overlapped with me 🙃

[nova kernel]

Continuing from what I was talking about in genetic genealogy, since its probably better here.

There's 2 relatives that I was wondering if the amount of cMs they share would be close the added up averages of their relationships, taken from the Shared Centimorgan Project.

The two people, from what I know (which there could be more relations since I don't know anything of the mother of one of them) are 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 5c1r twice. These relations all descend from the same couple.

They share 228 cMs according to MyHeritage, but adding the averages from the Shared cM Project gives about 175. Which, I mean, isn't too far off I think?

Idk, I was just curious

I know one of the two match's mother also tested, and she is only related once that I know of to the other match. They share 112.1 cMs and are 4c2r

I missed two relationships one sec lol.

But also Ancestry is telling me to calm down because I opened too many things

The tree I have opened right now looks like a Space Invaders ship

Ok assuming I counted correctly, they are 3rd, 4th x2, 5th, 5c1r x2, and 6th

Which adds up to around... wait it adds up to 228.

That has to be a coincidence but that's actually really interesting.

The blue and pink people at the very bottom of each line correspond to the same people

[nova kernel]

Turns out I missed a couple more relationships. They are also 6c1r through that same couple, and are distant cousins through a different couple as well.

They are also 6th cousins, 4c1r and 3c1r through a different couple.

[nova kernel]

Okay I tried with another and it's actually really weird how close some of these are.

I tried with my grandpa and another distant cousin. I don't know the exact relation, but I tried with who I believe are my grandpa's 2nd great grandparents.

My grandpa and the match would be 6c1r 3 times and 5c2r 3 times.

The added up averages would be 99cMs, and my grandpa and the match actually share 97.2 cMs.

I'm gonna keep doing this with other DNA Matches I figure out (as well as actually start writing these down) and see if this pattern of them being close was just by chance or if it actually lines up somewhat.

[nova kernel]

(Just one more and I'm done for the night).

I tried another DNA Match, who would be a 3c1r and a 6c1r twice through who I believe are my grandpa's 2x great grandparents.

That adds up to 78 cMs. My grandpa and this match actually share 74cMs on Ancestry (80 cMs Unweighted)

[red basalt]

This "pincer-movement" could be the saving grace of my research. I have connected trees from many persons and I can get connection to multiple 9th cousins with 40-50 cM from that side where three branches merge. Autosomal DNA should not go that far, but that pincer-movement shortens that side of the tree by multiple generations. MH shows me that those 9th cousins should be 4th cousins, but it all adds up if it is taken to account that they have inherited DNA from three paths from the shared ancestor. Really? Endogamy makes research harder, but if I can untie that knot... Can I really use that to my benefit and go much deeper with autosomal+genealogy than it should be normally? It looks like so.

[shadow pewter]

I need to be consoled I just got a new 60 cM match and the information I've stalked out has suggested three different surnames through which we could be related 😭

WHY IS MY COUSIN FOLLOWING THEM ON FACEBOOK 😭 this is the wrong side

[blazing flume]

My late grandfather has a 700 cM match (it’s a 3rd cousin once removed that is related in 6 different ways)

Lebanese genealogy is rough at times lmao, largest segment is 39 cM

[blazing flume]

I feel your pain, they could very well be related to you in more than three ways

[shadow pewter]

I-

[red basalt]

I have two separate families in my DNA matches where three family members are tested (father, mother, and child), and I have DNA match with all tree 😂

[shadow pewter]

I called this DNA match and it's looking like it might be purely endogamous...

[shadow pewter]

what do you guys think the odds are that a 63 cM match over 5 segments is purely endogamous (largest seg is 26 cM) 😭

I can't match them up as a 2C2R or 2C3R so I'm starting to lose hope

[hot plank]

Multiple relationships: when you just keep adding dots! 😂

Also when the MRCA is Paternal but most of the further out relationships are Maternal 😆

Am I correct in remembering that there's not way of telling which line the shared DNA actually came from without a chromosome browser?

[nova kernel]

Is there a way to do this using a Chromosome Browser (or at least what MyHeritage has) when there's endogamy / both people descending from the same / multiple of the same couples?

[coarse yoke]

No, I would say. Maybe, with a metric ton of matches, raw match data downloaded and some programming and statistics is my guess. And it will still not be very accurate probably.

[wooden elm]

I have requested that Ancestry send me my test result file but they never do

they're supposed to send me a link to download my zip file but it never gets sent.

[hot plank]

Oh no! Is it possible that it's going to your spam folder?

[wooden elm]

Checked- no dice

[hot plank]

Might consider contacting Ancestry. I'm not sure which country you're in but https://support.ancestry.com/s/?language=en_US

[wooden elm]

Just a matter of getting around to it. Still plenty of brute force genealogy to do. Up to 116/128 of the 5th great grandparents.

[hot plank]

In my experience they've been pretty easy to contact. I think you can do it through chat

[wooden elm]

alright! Got my DNA

now I just need to know what to do with it

[gaunt karma]

What do the dots mean? If you previously posted the answer, just link me to the original post and I will read that instead of you having to type everything out again. Thanks a bunch.

[hot plank]

Oh you're fine! I use Jen's method, which is in the beginner doc pinned in #genetic-genealogy . Each dot is for a 2nd great grandparent's line. With a 13cM match you'd expect only to be connection on one, maybe two lines. But this match has a lot of multiple relationships with me and is related through 3 confirmed couples and possibly 3 other families. Hence more dots.

[gray turret]

I’m going to cry

💀

My endogamy got worse

So my 4th-9th great grandparents are my grandmas 2nd to 8th

If I got this right

Mind you we didn’t expect her dad to be from here she was told it was a New York man her whole life

I’ve messaged her half siblings on Facebook , and mind you both my half siblings parents are from the same area and I’m related to them on my moms side

So this has turned into a MESS

[quartz adder]

I'm in endogamy hell at the moment. Do my DNA matches keep connecting back to this place because my 2x-great-grandmother was from there or is it a coincedence? 🤷🏽‍♀️

[nova kernel]

I found a group of 4 (possibly 5) DNA Matches on MyHeritage that all share a Chromosome Segment with my grandfather, and I'm wondering if the Endogamy made it randomly end up like that, or if its actually that they share a common ancestor back somewhere.

I think that I know which line its coming from. Just need to go back on some of their trees first and see where they line up, and hope that they line up with only one pair of ancestors and not like 5

[nova kernel]

I'm assuming I can say that segment they all share comes from their common ancestor, but now I have a different problem.

If a group of matches that have a shared segment descends from two different couples (multiple times in some cases), how would I know which couple the segment comes from? Assuming I understand how common segments works lol.

Would I need to find a shared match that only descends from one of those couples and see if they happen to have that same segment?

[coarse yoke]

I can't see how to it otherwise?

[nova kernel]

I think at this point I need to make a Chromosome browser spreadsheet, and just make a list of all the matches who triangulate according to MyHeritage.

[red basalt]

Starting to get some knots untangled. I realized from shared matches tool that my confirmed maternal first cousin is a fourth cousin (based on MH) for my confirmed paternal third cousin. That's why I have both paternal and maternal relatives in shared matches for practically everyone (+35k shared matches with everyone). Most of my endogamy is from that far back, from 18th century.

[gray turret]

https://tenor.com/view/waiting-akward-silence-syeed-well-gif-14614626

[red basalt]

One of the Mary Polly Hudsons lived 10 years longer. Must have been from different dimension then the first one.

I was able to untie two endogamy knots today (by expanding one family's tree further). Got an additional relationship paths for two different families where I had DNA from both of their father and mother. One child which was 2C1R is now also 6C1R, while another 2C is also a 4C. That solves their too high shared cM amounts, but those were not the only ones... one by one going further.

First one was the more meaningful and blow up my labels as the 2C1R was from maternal side and 6C1R is from paternal side.

[nova kernel]

Finally got a full rainbow, but sadly the triangulated segment is only 3.7cMs long (according to MyHeritage)

[coarse yoke]

Found a, for me, record breaking cousin on wikitree. We are 6C but related in 16 different ways!

We are also 7C1R, 9C and 10C

[red basalt]

What you are using to see the relationships on multiple ways? I found out that MyHeritage is superbad on those as it always pick the wrong one. It often defaults showing in-law relations rather than further down cousins, which is frustrating. It shows something like 2C1R's husband's grandmother, instead of showing 6C1R from another way. Havent' had more than two ways yet, but closing on for further paths.

[coarse yoke]

Just wikitrees built-in cousin feature. It doesn't show it in a fancy way though and it requires some clicking to see all paths

MH is especially bad. For me it actually chooses a non-blood relation often instead of a distant cousin relation

[errant ember]

What's the average segment length? Rule of thumb: under 15 cM is probably endogamy. Under 10 cM is very probably endogamy.

This is in my father's tree. I assigned 8 colors to each of his great-grandparents and their ancestors. All his ancestors come from the same village and surrounding area. So far, the maximum number of colors I have been able to find for any ancestor is 6. This means 6 of my father's great-grandparents descend from that person. I keep hoping to find more connections to find the ultimate ancestor that everyone descends from. I'll call him Adam.

[shadow pewter]

ahh then only 2 segments for a total of 40 cM :/

[nova kernel]

I've found 2 couples (4 people total that Everyone in this community seems to descend from, including my grandpa, which is making figuring out DNA Matches really hard (aside from the fact that I don't even know how my grandpa is connected at all, just which line its through).

And do you have any advice for dealing with DNA Matches when its endogamy

I've been building out their trees and finding common ancestors between a bunch of them

But I don't know where to move from there

[errant ember]

No I mean what is the average segment size for the 5 segments? If the average is below 15, it's probably endogamy.

[errant ember]

I look for shared geography to figure out which endogamous cluster they belong to (my father comes from a greatly endogamous region and my mom from a mildly endogamous region). On my father's side, I don't assign segments to individual ancestors since there are too many different shared lines.

[shadow pewter]

ohh, alright, then it’s only 12.7

[errant ember]

That's probably endogamy then.

[nova kernel]

What do you mean by shared geography?

The families of the DNA Matches seem to come from different places, but the ancestors of those people seem to all eventually (in the mid 1800s) come from one city in the Dominican Republic.

Or at least, the records have one city. There are a lot of rural farm areas that might be nearby the actual city that they may have been from, but the church records won't specify and only have the city the church is in.

And I understand not trying to track the segments, since they can come from any of more than 2 couples, but do you still try to look at the shared segments?

There are some DNA Matches my grandpa has that have oddly long longest-shared-segments, like above 30cMs, even if the person only shares that one segment.

[errant ember]

I assign people to groups/dots based on places they share rather than family names. One of my categories is "Winterswijk soup" for example. For the highly endogamous groups, I only look at segments over 30 cM, where I can be reasonably sure it comes from an ancestor in the past 8 or so generations.

[coarse yoke]

I have a geographic group called "Lycksele" where I have hundreds of ancestors from, so definitely useful. If I see anyone from Lycksele in a shared matches tree its sort of a dead giveaway

especially since the endogamy is far far back from when the place was settled, and I don't have all the early settlers documented

[acoustic pollen]

Ooh, that’s a good idea, I might try that one

[hot plank]

Ha, mine would just be "York, PA" "Jewish"

[acoustic pollen]

Still waiting for my own test to be processed, but my friend’s test needs one for “Kent County, Delaware". I’m probably going to need one bordering Yvette’s soup: Dinxperlo soup

[hot plank]

For the record I think it's a great idea, just chuckling at what that would look like for me.

[acoustic pollen]

Yeah that’s fair 😂 my ancestor’s won’t be distinct enough for the regular dotting

[rocky yew]

My Dad's side would be "endogamy soup" and every maternal side match ope

One of the maternal dots has some endogamification on that side between both families of the guy's parents but not him, though so there's still a little bit of endogamy, just not in my tree

it's why it has so many matches

(I've been labeling the no tree ones as "endogamy soup" in notes bc I legitimately cannot sort them out too much by matches alone rip)

[shadow pewter]

If I have two matches who are known to be relatives to each other, but we don't have any triangulated segments, does that mean that we aren't actually all related through a common ancestor?

[acoustic pollen]

Since matches could be related to each other in multiple different ways, it won’t always mean that there’s a common ancestor between the 3 of you together. Something I’ve definitely seen before is where you’re related to a paternal match and a maternal match, and those 2 matches having a match through a different common ancestor that you’re not related to. Can be an endogamous situation, can also just be a coincidence outside of endogamy.

Generally speaking, it does not mean for certain that if your test matches with person A and B, and A and B match with each other, that you all have to share a common ancestor. I have not done enough work directly with triangulating segments to say anything about that aspect, but it sounds like this kind of situation

[hot plank]

So I'm working on a DNA match and we seem to have 5 sets of common ancestors. I don't even know how to mark this 😆

Two sets of those common ancestors appear twice

[errant ember]

My dad's tree would be one single dot 🙂

[acoustic pollen]

Considering how often I typed "Het Beggelder" today, yeah, that's fair 😂

[magic moon]

you could say we're...soup-er duper.

Question: how many relations would I need to pinpoint whether a child was / was not born (TW)||of parent-child or close-relative incest||?

[errant ember]

It depends on who tests. (TW next reply)

[errant ember]

||If the child of such a relationship tests, you do not need another person. A child whose parents are parent-child will have large runs of heterozygozity, where the chromosomes they inherited from the mother match the father. GedMatch has a tool that detects these (Are Your Parents Related). If the descendant you test is more distantly related, like a grandchild, and if other relatives of these grandparents tested (like siblings, niece/nephews; not their descendants), you can usually tell to. The grandchild will match people on the grandmother's father's side 3x higher than expected.||

[rocky yew]

Soooo y'know how the paternal side of the two npes for my father a few generations back would have removed all Quebecois matches because they were all on that line?

...he has a cluster of Quebecois matches of unknown origin that match a dot with a bw on it in Louisiana

This is going to be very unfun given they are all 20 something cM 😭 (and match a few each folks with the dotted family in question)

The connection is either via La Rochelle ish, Avignon ish, or Natchez of unknown provenance so that. Narrows it down I guess? But

||the Natchez guy is a natural child of his mother too 😭||

[coarse yoke]

MH presenting really interesting theories for some of the DNA matches Iv'e had a hard time finding a relation to... two alleged 4C with these matches:

100cM, max segment 31cM, 8 segments
85.6cM, max segment 17cM, 8 segments

Especially the first one is very high for a 4C. With endogamy I would expect more smaller segments adding up to a large overall cM.. which is why these are a bit surprising to me. The highest other 4C I have is at 87,5cM, and that is also a 3C. I expect if these are 4C, they then are either 4C multiple ways or 3C several times over or something.

well, its easy to verify, just add all my connections up to 10 steps out.. which I have calculated will include probably around 10000 people..... 😩

[rocky yew]

So I looked at these again last night and a question: how exactly does one best try and id an ancestor in common from a (somewhat distantly related) mess like that beyond just going "you don't" 😆

I'd made a list of every surname from the folks trees and there were a few families that were in about half of them, but they're in two groups, (that still match each other) one near like Laval (Montreal ish) and one closer to like. East of Trois Rivieres, between that and Maine

Some of the surnames did have at least two dozen matches with it, which is notably more than some of the other surnames from the group, which would lead me to suspect it might be via them, just. Endogamy hell makes me afraid to go with that as a hypothesis 🤣

Also that it's via either an unknown father for a child born in 1720/30 something in Natchez, or his mother (also a brick wall)

[rocky yew]

Most of the matches had a large segment of like 20-25 cM in common (sometimes with an additional smaller one of a few cM) which combined with only matching people with one dot is why I'd suspected via that couple specifically, as they're brick walls that might be Canadian on that side

[acoustic pollen]

Update: it looks like I need a “Winterswijk soup” too 😩 did honestly not expect that 😂

[neon flax]

What is the effect of endogamy when looking at close relatives? I understand how endogamy can make distant matches appear closer than they are, but what about matches that are a close relationship? My thinking is that the effect would be lessened or not a major factor, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something?

For context, I am working with the DNA test from a friend who is adopted. Her mother is from an endogamous population, but she has several close matches on her mother's side (500-1000 cMs). Unfortunately they all either have holes in their family trees, or have not been responsive, but I'm wondering if endogamy is a factor for these close matches that I should be considering differently.

[hot plank]

I saw a lecture by Adina Newman, who specializes in Jewish DNA. She was saying that the endogamy shouldn't become problematic until you get further out than 2nd cousins.

[neon flax]

Thank you! That's more or less what I was thinking, but wanted to confirm I wasn't missing something important

[hot plank]

I'm not an expert so just parroting what I was hearing. Will be curious if some of the more experienced folks here have thoughts.

[nova kernel]

I was wondering about this not too long ago. My grandpa has a bunch of “close” matches and I wanted to know if there was like, a general point where endogamy isn’t messing with the DNA amounts as much.

My grandpa shares I think 682 cMs with his 1st cousin 1x removed, but my grandpa’s parents were first cousins and the match’s grandparents were double 2nd cousins (both share 2 sets of great grandparents).

[coarse yoke]

endogamy takes many forms, i guess. In my case Ive seen very little effect on close matches, but the endogamy is also far back in time. The endgamy is also limited to my fathers mothers branch. Well not to 100%, but its much more prominent there.

[hot plank]

I think that's where the difference between pedigree collapse and endogamy might come into play.

I do know that people talk a lot about target testing with endogamous populations and I know that having a bunch of different tests to work with has helped me a lot since I can ID close matches in each of them.

[nova kernel]

I feel like I understand the difference between "Endogamy" and "Pedigree Collapse," but I'm struggling to see the difference within my own family.

[hot plank]

So within your family I think there are a lot of double relationships, right?

[nova kernel]

Yea, because some people on my grandpa's side are marrying their 1st cousins.

Including my grandfather's parents being 1st cousins.

[hot plank]

I would think of that as pedigree collapse and not just endogamy

Do you have people who don't have double relationships?

[nova kernel]

But then there's also this community my grandpa is related to (somewhere), where there is a lot of people marrying distant cousins (1st-3rd cousins) over multiple generations, which sounds like endogamy to me.

[nova kernel]

The only place that I know of would be through my grandfather's maternal grandfather, whom I know of matches that are from that side, but I have no idea how they connect.

[hot plank]

I see what you're saying. I guess it may have to depend on how they relate to the test taker.

[neon flax]

For a point of comparison, both of my grandmother's parents are from endogamous communities. I can see it in the same surnames marrying into families over and over again, however so far in my direct line there are no known double-relationships. It's an accumulation of more distant double relationships over generations.

[nova kernel]

Or my grandfather's paternal grandfather (whoever that is).

[neon flax]

So what I have (at least so far) would be endogamy, but not pedigree collapse

[nova kernel]

This sounds like my father's side of the family (mostly the Monastirli part). Lots and lots of repeating surnames but no one specifically married their cousins that I know of.

[coarse yoke]

going through a few "MH thrulines"... and some stunning things... it found a 6C1R with 132cM! Thats so far "out of spec"! Max in Shared CM project is 60...

I already had this match in my tree, but even further away at 7C1R.

This match is either super-entangled with me or there is a NPE or something...

My lowest "family of relativity" it has found was a 6C1R, very very closely related to this previous 132cM match... but that one has 14cM which is smack in the expected range

[hot plank]

Wow interesting!!

What’s the longest segment?

[coarse yoke]

29,9

and the 14cM one is just one segment

[acoustic pollen]

29.9 segment for a 6C is already a lot too, within range, but a lot!

[coarse yoke]

Interesting. I have always known my Lycksele ancestors were endogamous forest finns, and its well documented before me. Someone quoted like 60% of all people there was related to the original ~8 or so settlers severals generations later... But I have now also detected a very distinct, earlier endogamous period in another location, and even further back. Although I suspect its so far back it might not matter much.

This is all true only if we assume the familysearch tree as approximately correct:

although... if we imagine the fully filled-in tree, there would surely be even more endogamy. This is still very sparse that far back.

[faint heath]

How do I get/make one of these charts?

[coarse yoke]

I use rootsmagic 9, import my tree from FS, export as gedcom to https://learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors/

[faint heath]

Hmmm, hadn't considered doing that. Maybe I'll make a new db just to do the pure FS import, ancestors only.

Fed it my mostly wide, and a little outdated, GEDCOM, and it's not very interesting.

[coarse yoke]

thats a very neat tree. Same as for most people I assume. Same with my adoptive parents' tree.

[faint heath]

I told RM9 to scrape back to 50th grandparent, knowing I didn't have connections back past like 6th or 7th.

Except, I guess I technically do on their tree, even if they're dubious. It's on scraping person 23,236, and bouncing between 12th and 16th greats as it scans.

(Afraid if I try to stop it that it'll lose all its progress and I'll have to start over lol)

[magic moon]

I definitely need to do one of these! (For anyone who hasn’t seen, this is my endogamy soup 😭), this side has no cousin marriages….but an endogamous group from 1890-1950. @errant ember is my 5c1r (?) via the purple person. The bottom is my grandparents on one side

[magic moon]

https://tenor.com/view/soup-soup-time-good-soup-good-soup-gif-thats-good-soup-gif-23862078

[shadow pewter]

those 2 1680 lines lol

[acoustic pollen]

Awww, this looks so cute! Really need to do a gedcom export again 😅

[faint heath]

Trying again, this time with 30,000 46,000 ancestors/siblings from FS. Somebody apparently added a parent born 1 BCE to someone in the 1500s (typical FS), so the whole thing squishes vertically.

[faint heath]

Ok, fixed.

[coarse yoke]

Yey! 🙂

[undone orchid]

My half brother just found out his x3 great grandfather had a child with his own sister 😬

From whom he descends

All of my half siblings, including him, were born clubfooted so I wonder if that's related

[coarse yoke]

as I understand it, there is no "lingering" effects from cousin marriage, so even one generation of "new blood" will, maybe not erase all effects but I guess it should be strictly less than before. Should apply to this scenario as well. I mean, the "damage" was done at one point, and after that you are just using less of that "bad" DNA. I am not an expert, but I do know genetics is complex so I'm sure there are cases that might seem to contradict this due to interactions between different parts of the gene.

But after this many generations? Doubtful I would say. But take it with huge grain of salt.

[hot plank]

When I saw a medical geneticist last year they didn't care about further back pedigree collapse at all - in terms of risk they only wanted to know if my mom and dad were related. I don't have knowledge outside of the questions she asked but that sounds in line with what John is saying here.

[shadow pewter]

not as close but i have a collateral relative who married his niece; 2 children died in infancy but all of his grandchildren are alive/lived into their 70s

[queen spire]

Did one of these, pulling 25 gens from FS with no descendants. Downloaded over 80k names, but I imagine this just shows ancestors and not families so is a view of 28,526.

Definitely interesting to look at, but accuracy is what it is for non-verified FS tree data of course.

[hot plank]

I'm interested in how little there is actually. And of course my mom and dad's sides don't cross.

My dad's side doesn't seem to have any pedigree collapse at all. Just goes to show that endogamy ≠ graphable pedigree collapse.

[errant ember]

Looks like my tree (but without FS errors!)

[nova kernel]

Finally gave in and got a subscription to Banyan. I also quickly gave up on keeping the lines in this tree straight and organized with how much pedigree collapse there is.

Is this endogamy yet

I don't want to remake this from scratch, but I swear I need to find some way to organize it so I can see what the heck is happening again

[storm rose]

i think it is pretty! but bewildering!

[nova kernel]

I can put some of the couples back to being next to each other, but I think I'm gonna have to accept that some of the siblings are gonna be on complete opposite sides from each other

(I'm gonna go to bed now before it gets too late lol, I can always continue this tomorrow)

[nova kernel]

I also think it looks nice. Would be better if I had more birth/death years so I can make the whole think a gradient rainbow

[coarse yoke]

we need 3d trees? 🙂

[shadow pewter]

this line has been giving me a lot of trouble due to endogamy... but surely a 40cM segment cant be endogamy... right

i think though, I've identified a sibling of my great-grandmother! but could 2 third cousins from the same line be so drastically different? (60 cM & 80 cM, both 3rd cousins, not known if related otherwise)

[nova kernel]

Managed to clean this up pretty well I think. Not as compressed but definitely less messy.

[nova kernel]

I forgot to "anonymize" the people but I think zooming all the way out not being enough is good enough lol

[shadow pewter]

oh thats so pretty, what are the calculations you ran looking like lol?

[nova kernel]

There are two or three problematic matches on each of the hypotheses I have set up

One match I don't know who the mother is and could connect back to these MCRAs through there

The other 2 matches I'm not sure

[acoustic pollen]

Names are pretty blurry, I think you’re good

[nova kernel]

Yea I had to zoom all the way out in the program, and then zoom out a bit with ctrl+minus for Google, so I could actually see the whole thing.

[acoustic pollen]

I know the feeling. I’m attempting to figure out if the four in the bottom right are endogamy matches or if I can find a common ancestor in recent generations. This is their paper trail tree back to 1790. Grandma, two sons and a granddaughter, of which sons and granddaughter share an extra segment and more cM than grandma. Managed to identify a couple overlapping towns, and shared matches push me towards a couple known ancestors as direction. This one too is also only viewable from a distance, too blurry to discern any text

[faint heath]

I'd sure love an "auto-arrange" button or maybe a little stronger snap-to-grid with a override method (like hold Ctrl or Shift while dragging to disable it). I feel like a good chunk of my time with it was just getting the tree to looks somewhat readable. lol

(Admittedly, the inability to save in the beta version did not help at all.)

[nova kernel]

You weren’t able to save before?

I would’ve thought that’d be one of the first things they put in lol

And yea an auto-arrange would be really nice, but probably wouldn’t work too well if the lines cross too much (like in my example lol)

[faint heath]

Nope. Saving was disabled for free users during beta. You lost everything once you refreshed or closed the window.

I think @pearl quiver fell victim to it too.

[pearl quiver]

As long as I manually saved it was fine

[faint heath]

Ah. I wasnt. I got a popup saying "nah ah ah" lol

[nova kernel]

10 cMs isn't much, but could it still be something to look into if those 10 cMs are a shared segment that a bunch of DNA Matches all share (according to MyHeritage)

The DNA Matches share between 20.8-54.6 cMs with my grandpa (there's 5 of them)

[nova kernel]

Also can someone remind me the name of / explain what the thing is where, in endogamous communities or with pedigree collapse, multiple shared segments can shove together and look like a longer segment than it is, or something like that? I’m not sure if I’m remembering what it is 100% correctly.

[nova kernel]

Currently with my Banyan madness, I've added a couple more DNA Matches in since last time, and it seems like my original thought that my 2x great grandfather's godparents are indeed more likely to be his grandparents than the other hypotheses I've put in so far.

There are 2 highly outlying DNA Matches though. One I do not know who their mother is, so I'm missing an entire half of possible relations that could account for the extra ton of shared DNA, but the other match stumps me.

The 2nd match shares around 97 cMs with my grandfather according to MyHeritage, and I've traced her tree up a good amount on every line. There are only a few places that stop before reaching any common ancestors I've been looking at, so maybe they are through there? I would need to do some digging for that though.

These two matches, aside from seemingly not being related enough to my grandfather / the hypothesis people to explain how much DNA they share, they also don't seem to share enough DNA with some of the other DNA Matches whose trees I've also built out a fair amount. Either way, definitely something there.

This is the tree so far. I was trying to find a way to rotate the Google Chrome screen or my computer screen, and when I rotated the desktop display, Banyan had an error pop up so obviously it doesn't want me to show this clearly lol (so I zoomed out all the way and then zoomed Chrome out to 67%).

[quartz adder]

Would Banyan be helpful in cases where you know there must be endogamy/pedigree collapse, but you don't know where? I've only been able to get back to 2x-great-grandparents, occassionally 3, because Ireland, but I know it's a highly endogamous population because it's my Dad's Gephi we keep using as our spaghetti monster representative for endogamous DNA 😅. Would Banyan be of any use to me?

[neon flax]

Also wanting to know this!

[quartz adder]

Not sure if you saw any RootsTech discussion, but it looks like the answer to my question might be 'no'
#rootstech message

[neon flax]

Well darn. Thanks for the ping, I missed that discussion

[quartz adder]

Apparently there's another Banyan talk today, so maybe they'll rescue themselves? And @nova kernel seems to be finding it useful? Idk, I guess time will tell

[acoustic pollen]

this is actually not as bad as I was expecting. Probably because of the lack of people who tested 😅 (my own test, MH, threshold at 35-400 cM, shared matches minimum 10 cM)

[faint heath]

That looks pretty good tbh. My father's got mostly pre-Rev War lines all in one state and his looks about this level of noise. (Sorry I'm so late to the party.)

[acoustic pollen]

Yeah, it’s mostly noise. I’ve one 2nd cousin, a couple 3rd cousins and furthermore only 4th-6th cousins who tested, so there’s a lot of noise and the line I’ve only one test confirmed so far is at least one I’ve confirmed through medical DNA testing

Got to say though, in the 20 - 35 cM area the noise is not only increasing, but I’m also getting a whole bunch of unexpected matches, mostly 2-3 segments and matching with clear lines, no clue yet what’s up with that, but they’re outside my known endogamous populations. It’s going to be a couple years of genuine fun to figure that out

[viral crescent]

Decided to run my dads test through the autocluster tool on GED match without the endogamy filter just to see and... lol 🥴 😅

[shadow pewter]

i like to imagine one couple just had 15 children and every single one of their descendants tested 😄

[coarse yoke]

whooa.. how many matches in that one? Also noisy all over... so all related?

I find it enough that my fathers mother has endogamy... thats enough of it for me, thanks! 🙂

[viral crescent]

A little under 300 I believe. There's been a few NPE's and MPE's so I've been working on those branches to figure out where exactly it's coming from.

Most of my dad's family branches were all living in the same area of Mexico at the same time so I'm assuming some intermarriage among the families

[coarse yoke]

dear oh dear. BanyanDNA is very useful. Sadly it only highlights the problem with my hypothesis' ... and with endogamy!

😭

[pearl quiver]

haha yeah, i tried to use it for my lebanese side but then realized it was hard because every relative is likely related in multiple ways 😭

for example: used a match to determine if ggpa and his cousin were 1st or 2nd cousins since the exact relationship is not known. matches much closer to 1st cousin, but i realized i have matches through the in-laws of ggpa's cousin so i must be related to his wife's family too in some way (which yeah they're from the same village) so im not sure

[coarse yoke]

yup, so many possible ways to be related. If you have no idea really, then it is very hard.

Im trying to "prove" my hypothesis of a father which is undocumented. I have seemingly DNA matches that would be proof of both fathers! Found through myheritage ToFR.. A lot of trees have what I believe is the incorrect father which if course makes it confused. Now I added another match that proves my theory, but banyan helpfully tells me that its a massive 3.3 SD away from normal, and I sort of realized something was off when looking at it now: 73cM for a 5C. BUT, this is also easily explained away if the descendants from both hypothesis' are related in other ways... which they are likely to be. Already at 44/50 people though so thee free tier is not going to cut it.

[coarse yoke]

😩

[cloud narwhal]

God bless you everyone. So I’m now doing genetic genealogy.

Where can I find the Puerto Rican endogamous DNA group?

[hot plank]

There isn't a specific group here for that. Or do you mean in your DNA test?

[cloud narwhal]

Uh in my DNA test

[hot plank]

Have you ever been in a town where everyone is kind of related to everyone else?

[cloud narwhal]

Yes. Arenales Bajo, Isabela, Puerto Rico.

[hot plank]

So the DNA test isn't going to show you that in your ethnicity estimates. There won't be a community for it. But you'll see it as you start dotting, because a lot of people will wind up with shared dots in multiple families.

[cloud narwhal]

Oh I understand

[hot plank]

Go slowly with what Jen showed you. It really takes some time - it's a long term project.

[cloud narwhal]

Understood!

[hot plank]

I didn't at first! I was like LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO

[cloud narwhal]

🤣😅

You have a similar excitement than mine that’s good. Lol.

[acoustic pollen]

oh, I certainly had so as well, and some days I wonder if working with endogamy makes your tests more fun, or takes the fun out of it (some days it's both) 😂

[half ore]

sometimes I think working with endogamy is like this

[red basalt]

It was just like a spark from a fireplace flying towards the living room carpet when I found my first triple DNA-match, a family who all (father, mother, and child) I was related . Now I have so many of those that I just enjoy the warmth of the living room that is on fire. A child shares more DNA with me that their parent? That's just fine.

[sand bison]

@fading cedar

[acoustic pollen]

The first time I realised I shared more DNA with a granddaughter than with her grandma, I felt like a "wait, what is happening here", now I’m used to seeing that.
Same with triple dna matches where the son doesn’t know how I’m related to his mother, and calls it "spooksegmenten": ghost segments. He’s my maternal 3rd cousin through his father, but his mother is Belgian (def outside of my cosy rural farms-on-fire area) yet I share too many segments with her to discard it like he feels like doing 😂

[hot plank]

I know this might be a silly question but here goes anyways. I'm working on my dad's (Jewish) DNA test and building quick and dirty trees for all matches to 2xgg on all lines just to check for multiple relationships. Quite often I am getting an immigrant ancestor at the 1x gg line with a very common name. This person is not in the line I think is shared. In this case would you work to break the brick wall or would you call it good enough and move onto the next match?

[acoustic pollen]

most of the time I make a quick note so that in the future I can come back to it if I wish to, but then move on. I do write down the name of the "brickwall" person, and if I see that name again I'll put both trees next to each other and try to see if they could be the same, but otherwise leave them for another moment to look at.

[gaunt karma]

Before I dispense advice, what is the name in question?

[hot plank]

It's something I'm coming across a lot on different tests and I haven't actually been writing them down well. Some names are the classic Cohen and Levi but there's also Goldstein that I can remember grumbling about off to top of my head. Sometimes also they're non-Jewish lines that are Italian or Irish with very common names.

[gaunt karma]

In that case, middle, baptismal, or confirmation names may be helpful.

[hot plank]

I guess what I'm asking is whether it's worth the energy. I know tactics to break brick walls but because of ME/CFS I'm already the slowest genealogist in the west. On a good day I'm sorting 1-2 matches. So I'm curious how people handle that when building their own quick and dirty trees to sort DNA matches.

[gaunt karma]

Ah. Thank you for clarifying. I think if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. If you think it will take too many spoons to put in the effort, you drop it for the time being until you can build up your reserves for a period you can set aside time just for that task.

[hot plank]

Thanks Shadow. Would you dot and move on (when there's energy) or set aside as unfinished until you can complete?

[gaunt karma]

I would set it aside as unfinished, as that works for me. But some people can't do this because feel anxious and as if something is either resting on their shoulders or hanging over their heads. So pushing through to finish may work best for other people. Do what stresses you out the least. This is supposed to be fun.

[hot plank]

Thanks. The only way I'm managing to work with DNA at all is through less than ideal means so I'm just trying to find my limits (how much can I cut corners before it undermines the integrity of the work).

For instance, I'm often just glancing through pre-made trees on Ancestry or FS for multiple relationships rather than building the trees myself. I'm only building if nothing else exists. But I am not just doing the shared line because at least on the PA Dutch side it was common to find multiple relationships. (I am more carefully checking the connection on the shared line).

Also for anyone reading who doesn't know my situation, I'm disabled so this is all just about adapting genealogy to be doable with my disability. It's often not how I would recommend other people research.

I'm super duper new to the Jewish side and because a lot of people had more recent immigrants I'm just trying to figure out whether it's worth my time to break those brick walls just to ensure there's not a multiple relationship within 2xgg.

[gaunt karma]

On an unrelated to you question topic but still related to the purpose of this channel, I got to explain the idea of endogamy to my cousin earlier today. My long commute to work seems to be an issue of great concern, so I told her that it was nothing. Last summer, I was involved in an archeological dig a 1.5 hour drive from home each way. And that I love doing these types of things out of the way. You never know who you will meet. I mentioned that I met a distant DNA relative on the dig. My cousin couldn't understand how I figured out the relationship. So I discussed finding surnames and places in common and how the intermarriage of several families over time has created what we call endogamy. I tell the most long-winded and twisty stories. Sorry.

[hot plank]

I love it

[gaunt karma]

Wait until I finally manage to explain our connection through your grandfather's law parter and my uncle by marriage's apartment neighbors.

[nova kernel]

Finally found a new pair of DNA Matches I can add to my Banyan tree.

One shares 77 cMs with my grandpa, the other I don't remember but it was something somewhat low. One of their parents tested though I believe, so hopefully whatever they share is higher (both parents are DNA Matches to my grandpa as well).

[rocky yew]

i forget how bad thrulines is for some of my dad's fourth greats until i look at the list again bc this one is even worse than the one I sent a few days ago 😭

my Dad only has him once but he had three wives and at least two of them are in the endogamy mess ™️

the third probably is but idk her parents

[rocky yew]

Wait

The three wives is his son oops

Sorry I am tired

[acoustic pollen]

Managed to connect 2 matches tonight that I had worked out a few months ago, even had their tree worked out to include the shared common ancestor already. I just didn't realise that this person was our shared common ancestor :P

24 cM/2 segments for a daughter, and 33 cM/3 segments for her mother. Going with the 24 cM match, she's my half 6th cousin once removed. One common ancestor identified so far, but that might be more.

I had messaged her before, because the second wife of said common ancestor was born on the farm next to where I grew up! I've done more research on that farm, as it's the oldest in the village.

[acoustic pollen]

Once again fighting with MH and clustering... running the "regular" autocluster will cluster based on shared matches, but does not take triangulation into account. So I've a couple clusters who are indeed matching each other, but not on a shared line. And I keep losing track of what I'm doing when I try to make manual lists of clustering based on triangulation

Anyone experience with trying to do this?

[fading cedar]

I don't even try to use clusters because of so much overlap - I just use a spreadsheet and try to keep track of segments that way. It's a little less pretty visual wise, but it does the trick at least for me. The issue with clustering particularly when it's generated by the various websites is that it's based on the person/match as a whole. I find it better to look at individual matching segments where I can because often times one person might have multiple connections, I can (so far) break those connections down through each segment. So MatchA may share 3 segments with me - segment 1 comes from one branch, segment 2 comes through a different branch and segment 3 comes through yet another branch. I figure out each segment by looking at the various shared matches and where the triangulations are, and that's what I record in the spreadsheet.

[acoustic pollen]

yeah, that's what I'm attempting to do as well, but so far I'm quickly losing track of what I'm doing in a spreadsheet too. When you register the segments/branches, what do your rows/columns look like in the spreadsheet

[fading cedar]

I have mine set up in a way that it can export to about 3 different programs using various formats so there's a lot of columns. Let me create a screenie for you...

@acoustic pollen These are my column headers (which go the other way of course, this just shows them better LoL)

[fading cedar]

There is a separate line entry for every shared segment. I replicate the first 10 columns for each segment with the same person (I don't leave them blank, that way I can sort and filter and it doesn't matter, that info will always be with that segment record (aka row). Several of the Yellow group records are purely for dnaPainter use. For me, one of the keys that I use to help me keep track are dates. Whenever I look at a person or even just a particular segment, I put the current date in the "updated" column - so I will always know when I last looked that particular record. When I first started doing this, everyone said "tracking segments is too hard and not effective" but for me, it has really helped me sort things out and I'm slowly finding the cross overs and such. It has taken quite a while to get it to this point though.

[acoustic pollen]

That list is useful, thank you :)

[acoustic pollen]

Yeah, I’ve a couple segments already identified to specific clusters, just no clue at all how they relate to me, so I’m hoping this might help

[fading cedar]

I put that in the notes sometimes with detailed note as to why I suspect that branch, and also in the mrca field which is always my best estimate until I fill in the relationship column. Even then I leave lots of notes particularly if there is room for additional relationships.

[coarse yoke]

how does thrulines handle endogamy? I only recently realised MH family theory does handle it well enough.

[rocky yew]

It'll only show the closest connection

Or one of them at least

Well

Thrulines ON THE PROFILE

Thrulines by ancestor will show all connections that are set up in thrulines

Thrulines is sometimes finicky with not recognizing people a bit for me ope

That being said, why I came here

I now have 500 people on the Locklear dot 😭

There is literally not even endogamy on my ancestors in the dot, just all of the matches to my Dad have horrid amounts of it

Literally it has more than anything so far in the endogamy soup of my Dad's paternal side

[faint heath]

I don't usually like posting in both locations, but don't want this missed for the folks with endogamy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEiwn4NgHPs

[urban agate]

is there an objective way to figure out how much endogamy exists in my DNA after i take a test?

[coarse yoke]

There is the "Are Your Parents Related?" tool in gedmatch, other than that I don't know of any tool except looking at your cluster results 🙂

[urban agate]

my parents arent related but i know that my maternal grandparents are second cousins

and probably more endogamous than most second cousins, since they come from a small isolated village with many common ancestors.

[errant ember]

• Cluster diagrams will look like Swiss cheese
• With severe endogamy you often have matches over 100 cM that have an average segment length < 15 cM.

[errant ember]

Are Your Parents Related does not test for endogamy.
My parents are not related but I have heavy endogamy in my tree because all my father's ancestors come from the same village. Similarly, you can have related parents without endogamy, for example if your parents are first cousins from an otherwise not endogamous population.

[gray turret]

😭felt like this went here 😂 it’s been getting even more messier for me

[sand bison]

🍝

[vague spear]

LOL @ this existing

[hot plank]

Did you see our amazing mascot?

[vague spear]

yes ... yes i did.

[hot plank]

Here

[rocky yew]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1041508712281559071/1256119192323624960/image.png?ex=667f9ba9&is=667e4a29&hm=6a8f3dac4fe8308dd9ae0004963017be5b0cd8eb3daabf5b049c758db5a073db& courtesy of queakie, pages of matches of matches of one match. 😭

[viral crescent]

My dad also has a cousin on my heritage with over 1,500 shared matches 😭

[queen spire]

I signed up for pro tools, and looking through some shared matches, checked an Acadian match first of course (7844 total shared matches with this person):

[rocky yew]

OH NO 😭

[queen spire]

And it works against my mother's kit as well, so checked there, same person (11,749 shared matches)

[rocky yew]

@hot plank you have protools, how bad is it for your ashkenazim's matches of matches?

I am curious which is worse lmao

[rocky yew]

Also this match was 7/8ths or so overlapping ancestry with me at the level of like her 2xes ftr

Or 5/8 I forget which

I wanna say 5/8ths bc iirc she has this one (also related) couple I don't have, in addition to Syrian or Lebanese branch

[nova kernel]

How in god's name did you even get to the last page of that

You did not click through one at a time, right???

[rocky yew]

You can change the page in the url iirc from screenshots

[queen spire]

Hah, no, can go to the url and adjust the page number. Just go till the names stop changing, then work backwards until they do, then you can narrow down to the true last page

[nova kernel]

Ooooooh

I mean I knew you could do that, but I never thought of actually narrowing it down lol

[sand bison]

absolutely bonkers

[hot plank]

I think I don't understand. Aren't matches of matches the same as shared matches?

[hot plank]

I don't think my tests are that bad.

Many people here have way more endogamy than my family does.

[acoustic pollen]

Protools is showing the shared matches below 20 cM, whereas without Protools those don’t show up om the shared matches tab, so a lot more show than usually. Additionally, it shows them in pages rather than scrolling down indefinitely, which gives a better idea of the amount.

[hot plank]

Ohhhh that makes sense!

[rocky yew]

Yes that!

[hot plank]

Oh lol I got it figured out. @rocky yew

This is my dad's cousin's test. He's fully eastern european Ashkenazi which is more endogamous than my line.

[acoustic pollen]

that's a lot 😭 I was able to look at my test last night with protools and the "worst offender" had 3 pages of matches 😂

[nova kernel]

My worst so far is 20-ish pages

That's the Monastir side lol

I need to check my grandpa's test

[crystal mist]

Not as bad as it could be... but here's a match I just dotted. Gotta love spaghetti matches.

[red basalt]

I share about 30 000 to 40 000 matches with each and every one of my matches. 48k might be most now (with my dad's side second cousin), but that will go over 50k probably in few months. Makes all strategies about labeling common matches useless. I can't even browse all common matches of a single match in same day or I will reach MH's limits.

I got my 92y old dad's cousin to do the test to help me and I'm now waiting results. I hope that it will clear up that side, but most likely it just bring even more matches that I had before due reaching further back.

[quartz adder]

There is one line in my Dad's Irish soup of endogamy that has always been relatively distinct, and I've taken great satisfaction in it being relatively endogamy free - his paternal great-grandparents don't seem to connect much to the rest of the family. Except one of my 4th cousins on the great-grandfather's line has graciously allowed me to view his DNA matches, and I'm seeing matches I recognize from great-grandmother's side 😩

So much for endogamy free

[stoic dock]

O, exciting! Hope you get the results soon. I hate to wait... 😂

[stoic dock]

O no. It is always something. 😔

[nova kernel]

I've decided to take a break from writing down my shared DNA Matches and how much DNA they share with certain matches on my Monastirli side

Going on my grandpa's test with the Dominican endogamyness

So far I'm only writing shared matches that are 200cMs+ to this one match because dear lord they had way too many people

The only hard part (aside from endogamy) is that this match is from a while ago generation, so many of their closer matches may just be super-nephews/nieces.

For context this DNA Match was born in 1929. They have a half-1st cousin born in 1876. Their shared grandfather was born around the 1820s-1830s.

A great uncle of theirs was born in 1813

[nova kernel]

I've already written down 50 200+cM DNA Matches to this one DNA Match.

It's only been 13 pages of like 40

[nova kernel]

I have severely underestimated the number of pages possible here

It’s not 40

Its 414

Ancestry better add a sort by closest to shared match thing QUICK

[red basalt]

Yeah, waiting is the thing I hate most. I did big-y at the winter when I had time to do genealogy, and got results some months later at the spring. But then I had too much to do and haven't been able to do anything else than a quick glance on results. No time for that kind of hobby at the spring/summer when you live in countryside.

[atomic thorn]

After taking quite a while away from trying to use my DNA results for genealogy, I decided to take another crack and damn it's so disheartening there are so many Jewish relatives who are definitely not 3rd cousins despite 23andme being convinced they are 3rd cousins 😭

[hot plank]

I think that Rebecca spends quite a large amount of time explaining this to people. Sighhh

[atomic thorn]

I’m fairly certain I talked with her a bit a while back and it was helpful, just venting some frustration!

[fading cedar]

what/why/how are you writing them down?

[nova kernel]

I'm writing down how much DNA shared DNA Matches share with DNA Matches on some of the tests I manage.

I'm writing them down to help me narrow down how some people are related to each other or on what branches. Also because I don't want to pay for the Ancestry membership for a long time.

I'm writing them down manually onto a spreadsheet.

[fading cedar]

Do you want to do it manually so that it sticks in your head? otherwise, there's (probably) a program out there so you don't have to do it manually

[nova kernel]

I'm doing it manually because I don't know how to do it not manually lol

[fading cedar]

do you use Chrome?

[nova kernel]

Yes

[fading cedar]

There's an extension that will do it, I just don't have pro tools (yet) so I don't know if anyone has set up one that will do what you are doing, but you could it yourself also. Give me a bit, I'm in the middle of something - then I can pull it up and make sure I'm giving you the right name for the extension

[fading cedar]

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nndknepjnldbdbepjfgmncbggmopgden

[nova kernel]

This actually works really well except for one thing.

I can't get it to recognize the Next Page button lol

[fading cedar]

Lol yeah, I’ve struggled a little with that also. Sometimes I just do each page - still faster than one at a time. I also still don’t have the pages yet so sometimes I just scroll and load the whole thing, then run the scrape.

[nova kernel]

I've been looking at their videos about automating the paging thing, and even in their video it doesn't work lol. They didn't bring it up though.

Like, it goes to the next page for them, but the data is duplicated rather than having new data.

[fading cedar]

Oh weird. Might be something in the coding. I can’t look at it since I don’t have pro tools

[nova kernel]

I think I see the issue, but I have no clue how to fix it lol.

When I do Inspect on the page, the Next button is in a section inside of a class, but Data Miner doesn't actually see that section of code/pathing when you try to do the Nav thing.

[fading cedar]

Sometimes if I just wait a few days someone else fixes it.

[nova kernel]

Started doing it one page at a time, it is MUCH quicker than what I was doing before lol.

Still gonna take a while if I really do want to go through the entire Shared Mathes List for this one DNA Match to my grandpa (I'm on page 10 of 422)

[fading cedar]

I’m curious how many matches per page? I just recently grabbed my great aunt’s shared matches with me -900 something total, but as I mentioned I don’t have the pages I had to keep scrolling down and loading more until they all came up.

[nova kernel]

For the Shared DNA Matches pro-tools thing, it has 20 matches per page.

The normal DNA List you just scroll down for a while

[fading cedar]

Ahh I see. That’s why I don’t see it that way. I thought both lists would do that. Cool.

[bright sundial]

I have been trying to figure out how many ancestors we might have at nth generations who appear in multiple branches in the family tree (thus leading to pedigree collapse eventually)
Is there anyone who have made some progress in this regard?

[coarse yoke]

don't quite see what you mean, in general or for a specific person? It will vary wildly.

[bright sundial]

sorry for not elaborating
I am trying to simulate how many ancestors we usually have at each generation above us
The usual calculation is 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc but even in a non-endogamous community there is bound to be some endogamy when 3rd cousins or more distant relatives marry
Which could make our ancestor look something like this instead: 2, 4, 7, 15, 30, 60 etc
As we keep on going upwards the family tree, at some point there's supposed to be a pedigree collapse when the number of ancestors each generation starts shrinking

I am trying to find that "nth generation", or that range of generations, where pedigree collapse usually hits
imo, that should be the generation we have the max. no of paternal and maternal haplogroups (since its the generation with the max. no. of ancestors)
As a result I should be able to know how many max. no. of distinct lineages/haplogroups each person usually has

which should greatly vary from person to person, depending upon culture, location, religion, and socio-economic backgrounds

[rocky yew]

The worst match so far endogamy-wise for my grandmother's test has six dots and fifteen (15) couples in common

100 cM in 9 segments, largest is 22

Some of those 15 are repeats obviously

most of them are repeated at least once

[coarse yoke]

I realized my adoptive mother has an even fuzzier auto cluster than me! But still very similar to mine, which is expected since we both have ancestry from northern Sweden (but not directly related, at least not closer than 7C-8C probably). I just imagined her DNA matches would be clean, endogamy-free for some reason.

[vague spear]

I hope this is the right place for this but I think I need to scream .....

Susannah “Suckey” Davis married (1) Benjamin Wickliffe about 1748, and after his death in 1767, she married (2) Daniel Kincheloe. Susannah had seven children with her first husband, Benjamin Wickliffe, and three children with her second husband, Daniel Kincheloe. There were several intermarriages between the two families.

 *    Susannah and Benjamin Wickliffe’s daughter, Dorcas Wickliffe, married Susannah’s stepson, Cornelius Kincheloe, a son of her second husband, Daniel Kincheloe, and his first wife, Elizabeth Wickliffe, who was a sister of Benjamin Wickliffe.  
 *    Susannah and Benjamin Wickliffe’s son Aaron Wickliffe, married Susannah’s stepdaughter, Mary Kincheloe, a daughter of her second husband, Daniel Kincheloe, and his first wife, Elizabeth Wickliffe, who was a sister of Benjamin Wickliffe.
 *    Susannah and Benjamin Wickliffe’s son Robert Wickliffe, married Susannah’s stepdaughter, Sarah Kincheloe, a daughter of her second husband, Daniel Kincheloe, and his first wife, Elizabeth Wickliffe, who was a sister of Benjamin Wickliffe.

These three siblings of Susannah Davis and Benjamin Wickliffe married a STEP-sibling who was also a first cousin (child of their aunt Elizabeth Wickliffe Kincheloe).

fucking early colonial Virginia.....

and in addition to all that going on with her, her grandkid on the 3 other lines would marry someone who was 1st cousin 3 times over.

no nm.... that was a parent of one of the endogamous lines ... i don't know if that makes it better or worse.

[red basalt]

How on the earth I would be able to research NPE case on endogamy population? It's like endogamy^2. No such luck that the one would be from outside the population. I can't find any DNA proof to my GGF from his ancestors. Not a single DNA match originating from his siblings or ancestors. But... I have now a dozen matches that I can not connect, from another branch of same surname, people that I'm already related (common ancestor somewhere before 1700), but the cM values are way too high. All the same people appear in matches everywhere, only thing that changes is the balance in cM values, that is now off.

Shared matches are practically worthless to solve the NPE case. I'm trying to use triangulation now, but with endogamy population half of my matches triangulate on some route anyway, so it's pretty slow to compare chromosomes. Any tips or methods that could be useful?

[hot plank]

@lapis tinsel might have ideas?

[jovial hound]

Well, you've already identified a probable connection, so that's a great start! I would suggest doing FAN research next: look for census records or other records that would place someone from the target community in the place and time you're looking at. Try to brainstorm how the NPE guy would have met your GG's mother. You can also look for people by the NPE surname during your FAN research.

[lapis tinsel]

That is a great approach @jovial hound I will need to use that with my more stubborn cases.

I ended up taking an approach where I did a chromosome paint of the paternal side of the family.
When you are dealing with an endogamic community it is possible to find those odd connections or even (gasp!) to find out it isn’t an NPE.
Once I had the paternal known chromosome map, I overlaid those that I could not place and that has helped me eliminate some due to endogamy and allowed me to focus on other branches for research.

I’d be happy to discuss this with you further if you like @red basalt just let me know 😄

[red basalt]

Thanks, good suggestions. I don't have much resources, I would have never gone this far without DNA research. All church records burnt in 1918, so I have solely rely on yearly censuses (for taxing) which started 1818. I do something like what I read what the FAN is. I often do research expanding to branches that I'm not relative, as those might end up be relatives later on (thanks endogamy). So, I already had the best NPE candidate on my tree when I started to get ~100cM DNA matches with trees that I couldn't connect.

The NPE guy is from my mother's paternel line's sister branch (common ancestor beyond records, 1600-1700). Town is small, just around 50 km diameter, so walking distance to everyone, or maybe staying with relatives over night (30km distance between them). My grandfather was born in 1886, so it's "back then". The funny thing is that the NPE guy and my GGF shares the same name Juho Tiainen, though the first name is the most common name for men (Johan in Swedish) and the surname is one of the most common in the area. MH started to suggest the NPE guy to be my GGF (because of same name) and I rejected that many times, but then I started research that connection and MH might have been right because of all the matches.

[red basalt]

I haven't tried chromosome painter. Things are not very clear, I don't thing that may help. There is no clear paternal/maternal sides. I have have around 105k matches and whoever I pick I have have around 38-42k shared matches with them. That makes many labeling methods unusable. Practically all paternal matches are shared with maternal side. My paternal cousins are 5-7 cousins to my maternal side cousins etc. Now I know that I most have some shared DNA with that Tiainen sister branch, so I assumed that I might be something like 5-7C to them, but I started to look connection closer up when matches were at 100 cM level. Sure, it could be cumulative from multiple branches, but couple of large segments (that I'm now tracking) suggest other wise. Thanks for input and offer! I think that I have some good info, but the thing I'm uncertain is when and on what proofs I label that NPE guy as my biological GGF. I might have already gone past beyond what someone might think is proper proof.

[coarse yoke]

I am not wrong in saying that every visible cluster should be a specific ancestor? They are overlapping which just means that there is more than 1 path. So for my cluster I should be able to identify what Ive marked as a specific MRCA for the square here

then there are also even more possibilities here, but this feels like the easiest one

[coarse yoke]

Oh yeah. Ive mentioned at times that I have many (6k) Finnish matches, but I have never been able to find a connection.

Now I have!

Ehh.. its a 14C one according to geni. I feel extremely skeptical tbh. 🙂 Thats got to be a record of some time. Ive had 9-12C DNA matches before, but this

Its even 14C1R

[red basalt]

That's pretty far. I have connected 10C matches by connecting trees, though those matches have too high cM value for being just 10C, so there must be many other paths. I have many matches that connect two ways, 4C+4C or 5C+6C for example, but no triple connection yet (which is rather surprising).

[coarse yoke]

do you have a gedmatch kit, btw?

sorry, already asked I see now, hehe

[coarse yoke]

Oh, this felt very uncommon for me (since I have many matches where the kids has more cM than one of the parents.): Father has 119cM, daughter only 10cM.

[bright sundial]

anyone has gedmatch premium subscription?
dealing with a a endogamy case and I will need to see pileups of triangulations on various segments I have shortlisted

[coarse yoke]

its honestly not expensive, you can cancel the 10$ monthly sub anytime afaict

[rocky yew]

@agile siren it's here now!

Albeit for dna stuff

[agile siren]

Ahh thanks I couldn't find it hahaha

[vague spear]

So if you marry someone and your parents are related as follows, one parent being from each spouse:
parents 1 are each 1st cousins
parents 2 are each 1st cousins on both sides
So I guess you would be your spouse's 2nd cousin on 3 different lines? That would be what? anywhere between 9-15% shared DNA? So equivalent to a 1st cousin?

[rocky yew]

Sometimes I cannot tell if I am making progress in identifying clusters on my vovó's test or not bc so many of these people have overlapping families that in theory could be a coincidence 😭

[vague spear]

Vovo?

[rocky yew]

Specifically I am trying to deal with a cluster who I noted as only matching descendants of a foundling in my tree, I have a second dot made for a group that all descend from a different foundling of about the same age who by wato's estimate is my ancestor's brother or half brother

[rocky yew]

Shortening of grandmother (avó) in portuguese

Sorry I call her those terms irl so it bleeds into what I type about her

[vague spear]

Ahhhhh. I figured it was a family member

[rocky yew]

Ye!

Her test is useful but also the endogamy makes me scream

Only two or three people in this mess are marked both sides at least so. There's that?

[vague spear]

I wish I had gparent tests

[rocky yew]

Some of the unassigned ones are def both sides though, including the father of my closest both sides match

[vague spear]

I'm jealous 😊

[rocky yew]

Tbf I only have one

I can also see the tests of two half great aunts but have no access to the

M

[vague spear]

Mine died in 1990, 1994, 2002 and 2003.

I had one great aunt and uncle alive until recently but we were so disconnected I didn't feel comfortable asking.

[coarse yoke]

I really like the endogamy clustering tool on gedmatch.. Ive used it when it was new, but I like this result I got with some custom settings:

You can subclusters in several levels... which likely matches up my complicated tree. I one day would like to map these clusters to ancestors.. and see if I can get it to match up with my endogamy in a logical way

[vague spear]

huh well this is probably not something i needed to know existed ... i guess i know what i'm doing tonight lol

[coarse yoke]

its a paid tool, but its pretty cheap for a month

[vague spear]

i suck at moderation. I just paid for the year.

[vague spear]

Mom's Louisiana results....

basic settings with me not knowing wtf i'm doing.

[coarse yoke]

These were my settings:

Total number of DNA Matches: 210
Min cluster size: 2 members

Primary match filtering: min cM: 10 cM max cM: 400 cM min average segment size: 8 cM min size of largest segment: 8 cM # of largest segments: 1

Shared match match filtering: min average segment size: 8 cM min size of largest segment: 14 cM # of largest segments: 1 min shared cM between shared matches: 30 cM

the settings thats most different from "no endogamy" is the last one at 30cM I think

[vague spear]

yeah that's closer i think lol

[coarse yoke]

Does she have endogamy mostly on one side? Looks like the last clusters are cleaner, thats also the case for me

[vague spear]

One side is unknown ancestry beyond great-grandparents but from a small town in Italy so endogamy there wouldn't be surprising and on the same side Grandma was Cajun. The other side is Old New Orleans mixed with quebecois which we haven't gone very far back from and then German and Irish. Each side independently obviously isn't endogamous with each other but within each segment I wouldn't be surprised.

And within each of the segments beyond arrival in Louisiana, I haven't done as much research as I need to. But all segments had been in Louisiana since at least the 1890s.

[hot plank]

I appreciate the comment on this video talking about "dogamy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7JiCLzsOfE

[regal wagon]

Guy's surname being Arsenault makes it way funnier

[rocky yew]

#general-genealogy message
@atomic plover crying in northern Mexican endogamy🤣

Northern Mexico, Louisiana, and the Azores all tend to have fairly notable endogamy

Too many matches who relate like 3 separate ways

[blazing flume]

I live this every day of my life in Lebanon

I feel your pain Ethan

God with my canarios too

Every single line I have from La Palma is connected

I descend from Maxerco (a Guanche chief who lived in the 1400s) seven or eight times over at least

and I haven’t even traced all the lines yet

[vague spear]

Yay, pedigree colapse! :/

[fading cedar]

Fun times… (a pair of my 2nd great grands were 2nd cousins to each other, and French Canadian to boot - I can relate!).

[valid merlin]

My partner's matches have lots of pedigree collapse 😆. He has a 1/2 1st cousin who's the daughter of his dad's older 1/2 brother, but this uncle's mother is the older sister of my partner's paternal grandmother (i.e., his dad's mom).

Then on top of that, this 1/2 1st cousin also shares DNA on his maternal chromosomes, so both the maternal and paternal sides of his family tree loop back together at some point

He also has a full uncle tested who is a "both sides" match too

[magic moon]

Real question: when does something qualify as Pedigree collapse? Wouldn't just about every small town community for 200 yrs become a pedigree collapse by some point?

[vague spear]

depends on just how small , how insular, and what the level of emigration they have is. I also have a theory about catholic tradition so when the Catholic church is involved, sometimes they do a pretty good job of limiting how close potential partners can be - at least they used to.

For me, my small town KY trends way more towards ped collapse than my small town in South Louisiana.

[magic moon]

I have a problem with just a lot of double-cousins and such. This is the one that idk is true collapse

[vague spear]

i mean .... its just a term that's used to describe trees. How much does it really matter if it is or isn't?

[regal wagon]

I am working on a family in Poland rn where two FIRST COUSINS with the same incredibly recognizable surname married. I think saying catholicism prevented this entirely is too big of a brush to paint with.

[magic moon]

yeah if the Hapsburgs are anything to go by, they did give out dispensations fairly quickly

[vague spear]

I mean i did say it was a theory .... there were policies in place to prevent close coupling within the church dating back pretty far. That doesn't mean every church followed them.

And when an area is small enough, it can be near impossible to enforce.

even with provable rules, there are always exceptions.

[magic moon]

my issue is that while 1st cousins really didnt happen, they habitually had double cousins and so DNA clusters are a nightmare.

[regal wagon]

You have talked to Lena, yes?

[vague spear]

You'd have to do widespread studies by decade in various small towns across the globe for hundreds of years to prove it out and and I just don't care enough for all that nonsense. I'm not trying to get a graduate study in it lol

[magic moon]

@errant ember in your experience, would Gelderland towns (not counting Wassink endogamy) marrying within a ilmited group.

[magic moon]

yup, though theirs is more true endogamy, with nieces and 1st cousins and all 😬 .

[vague spear]

that's not really endogamy though ... that's borderline incest.

[regal wagon]

I actually think that’s less “true endogamy”

[magic moon]

then...how are we defining endogamy?

[vague spear]

endogamy is like .... beyond 2nd .... 2nd being a bit close by many definitions .... 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc

[regal wagon]

Endogamy is not a synonym for inbreeding

Endogamy is when the same group marries within itself for generations resulting in many many many distant relationships all going on at once. It is not a single instance of first cousins marrying

[magic moon]

well yeah. I'm going to refer back to the tree I posted: is that endogamy, pedigree collapse, or both?

[vague spear]

places that are closed off for various reasons - especially in the before times like .... South Louisiana ... Sicily ... or anywhere that straight up didn't have access to additional populations beyond whoever orignially settled a place.

[magic moon]

0r in my case, and insular religious group.

[regal wagon]

Pedigree collapse is the general, more neutral sounding term to describe any time you have the same ancestor appear multiple times in the same tree. It includes endogamy as well as just straight up “inbreeding” (this kinda has a negative connotation tho)

[vague spear]

could be cultural like amish or could be geographic.

[regal wagon]

So yes, that is pedigree collapse for sure

[magic moon]

Like, the English royal family could be considered pedigree collapse, vs endogamy

[regal wagon]

It’s not “vs” pedigree collapse is like an umbrella term here

[vague spear]

The royals are their own specific flavor of coupling patterns that can't really be extrapolated to describe anyone else.

[regal wagon]

Sometimes it’s 3rd cousin marriage (Queen Elizabeth II and her husband were 3c, right?) which is pedigree collapse but not really “inbreeding” because they are distant… and then sometimes it’s Habsburg level

[vague spear]

yes and no.

I mean Victoria's kids were exported to every royal family in europe which is how haemophilia became such a thing in royal families across europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilia_in_European_royalty

and then some of the grandchildren married each other and then like you said .... waves hands around there were the habsburgs

[rocky yew]

If I may joke:
If it looks like my catholics in Louisiana and Texas, it's pedigree collapse 🤣

But yeah I would say just that whenever a couple is appearing twice in your tree it's pedigree collapse, definitionally

It only becomes endogamy if it's happening a bunch over a long period of time

[magic moon]

So I'd put this one in definite endogamy, right? Because Howard/Verna and Margaret/Klaas never actually share an ancestor?

(i've posted this one before, but I computerized my chart finally)

[rocky yew]

I am not Yvette but having seen @acoustic pollen's "oh no Oostendorp" is enough for me to say yes, at least for the catholics there (more limited marriage pool than reform to be fair)

[magic moon]

yeah I'm not from Catholic, just the farms

(I'm Yvette's American 4th cousin via the protestants lol)

[rocky yew]

For a good illustration of this over time:
3/4ths of my grandfather's tree have some amount of Mexican ancestry. Via this, I descend from a 16th century couple about 35 times so far.

😭

[magic moon]

thats a possibity for me, but I've never gotten that far lol

[rocky yew]

They only had 4 kids known and I descend from all of them more than once

[vague spear]

I haven't math'ed it out like that but my great grandmother's family suffered Usher's disease which is a result of similar. 3 of her siblings were deaf.

[regal wagon]

That's cool!

[rocky yew]

Admittedly for the one son it's only repeated bc of a much later descendant (born in the early 1750s) being repeated a few times

[vague spear]

another example is the fact that i show native dna (trace) thats only explanation is acadian/Mi'kmaq couplings which would go back to the 1600s

[rocky yew]

I would say given this mess the area probably is gonna be endogamous at least yeah but also I swear I have seen a Hoekstra before

[regal wagon]

Me too but I think I'm just thinking of the fact that there's a trucking company out of Michigan, whose founders are probably related to adri lmao

[rocky yew]

Yeah I googled the surname and several famous people have it ope

[regal wagon]

Only half related but y'all ever drive past something with an ancestor's surname on it and yell "cousin"

[rocky yew]

(Also a generic Frisian place name that isn't for a specific place so probably has arisen in several towns)

[magic moon]

Yeah there are a lot of those

[vague spear]

waves broadly at every business in south louisiana

[magic moon]

I’m literally working on that. I think that’s a 4th cousins family?

[vague spear]

or at least .... SELA
I have however spent the last hour looking for my Schaaf lol

[rocky yew]

Marriage dispensations and protocols of the cabildo (legal things for a town, including wills and property stuff) for my Mexican lines made it possible for that area so I very much have them to thank for getting me past when church records start in those two towns 😆 (1660s)

Well, the family in question came north from Mexico City, where church records for them do exist but for Saltillo and Monterrey (and Zacatecas to a degree) I've got a lot of nothing at times too

[regal wagon]

My 3rd great grandpa came up here from a, uh, sprawling german catholic family from southeast missouri and I almost lost it laughing when I saw a ton of signs with his surname when we went through his birth county going down I-55

He's the one who married the ancestor of mine that you and I are related through

The Ötigheim one

[rocky yew]

My only actual really farther south LA lines are:
🥁
Micheli (Italian), Le Cointre, and Hurteau (direct from Quebec) in St John the Baptist

Pte Coupée isn't very south

...also right I have a nobody from 1750ish nola

😭

[rocky yew]

(The middle is a brick wall, idk where exactly he's from but I've found another man of the same surname there that I suspect is a brother or something. Idk I need to go through every church record there some day.)

[vague spear]

I need to get my count but every time I start counting my LA names my eyes roll over but mostly millers, thibodaux, hebert, pitre, but like there's at least one of most of the names that are common - landry, theriot, dantin, melancon, i dunno .... I don't even count my italian line as "south louisiana" at this point lol

And @magic moon my Schaaf is from Alsace so unless they're from somewhere that doesn't follow the naming patterns of the rest of that tree, not the same lol

[rocky yew]

Well, my Italian line I have nothing for in Europe bc born 1760something so. Definitely south LA for a bit 😆

[vague spear]

we didn't show up til the late 1800s

[rocky yew]

(He later moved to Ouachita (iirc) for a brief bit then to Nacogdoches)

[rocky yew]

Yeah Vicente Micheli was um. Very early. For an Italian there

[vague spear]

NLA is like speaking a foreign language to me lol

[fading cedar]

I Hurteau cousins…

[rocky yew]

Although oddly there's a croatian simultaneously in Nacogdoches at the same time as him

Also very weirdly early immigration (Lucobichi, or Luković in Croatian)

[rocky yew]

Oooh hi! Is this in LA or QC?

[regal wagon]

whoa

I love that this became Louisiana chat. If this server had a Louisiana channel it would fittingly be this one anyway

[fading cedar]

QC

[vague spear]

Its later but there's also a Transylvania in N. Louisiana because someone went to school at a school of the same name in KY and wanted to make a town named that lol. I had to look it up because I thought some european immigrants settled there and was sad.

[rocky yew]

How far back in Quebec do you have them traced? (Also are they yours shared with these cousins or just your own cousins' lines?)
But mine is from a Marie Louise (baptized 1737) who left QC with her first husband Étienne Nadal, her parents are Jean Hurteau (from Nanterre) and Marie Madeleine Dubeau (from Charlesbourg)

[fading cedar]

I’m at work so I will have to check for details once I get home. I do know they are mixed in with Bombard and Lahaie.

[solid cedar]

I am also surprised. I am from Germany and decided to become a NOLA sports fan (mainly basketball, but also a bit of football). And after that I get into genealogy, get on this server and meet like a bunch of Louisiana folks. Maybe because we share the endogamy, it's not that rare to have some kind of that in the Volgagerman community.

[vague spear]

You also have two distinct migration patterns of German families in Louisiana. You have the colonial ones that settled the River Parishes and arguably saved New Orleans from starvation and then you have the 19th century ones that came over with all the other Germans mid-century or so. I've been trying to learn more about my German Louisiana family. But every time I do I get sidetracked working on my Irish brick wall that married into said German family lol. I did find a book on Germans in Louisiana when I went home last week though and I'm looking forward to getting into that.

[nova kernel]

I remember finding a Wiscovich in Puerto Rico from Croatia

[acoustic pollen]

And from what I remember, Yvette's research on the high amounts of endogamy in Winterswijk (iirc 80% marrying within the direct community), with those areas being mostly reformed, but still marriages restricted to their own (church) community

[acoustic pollen]

(and I'm Yvette's 7th cousin once removed via the catholics on a different set of farms nearby Winterswijk)

as for the mentioned Oostendorp family: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/248957628942778379/1341591321386680328/oh_no_oostendorp_update.jpg
(for readability, this only includes the direct ancestors of my grandmother, displayed as descendants of their shared common ancestor

This is the worst pedigree collapse on my tree, but the entire area is a farming community where people stayed pretty much within the community, just slightly less extensive than Winterswijk.

It's not the only farming community endogamy I deal with, but so far I've not found it worse than Dinxperlo yet. Or well, not on this scale of collapse

(shoutout and honourable mention to my 5th great grandfather who after getting widowed remarried to his goddaughter's 5 year older sister, who was also his 1C1R; I got a bit of pedigree collapse there within another endogamy chaos, but nowhere near as bad as Dinxperlo aka Oostendorp chaos)

[regal wagon]

....the sister is 5 years older than the goddaughter?

I just read this as she was 5 years old period and almost freaked

[magic moon]

Wait where’s a schaaf? It’s definitely not my van der Schaafs, but relations by marriage to Schaafs…I got those

[acoustic pollen]

considering he had children from his first marriage who were older than his second wife, she could just as well have been his goddaughter 😬 but luckily they only got married when she was 19 (and he was 54)

[vague spear]

Mine is in or was in colonial, Louisiana... From alsace and settled on the River parishes. I'm not sure exactly which one but I want to say either St. James or assumption. They were part of the John law recruiting thing.

[vague spear]

Reading this I had a flashback to my great aunt whose husband left her for their adopted daughter and somehow got custody of the younger daughter.

[rocky yew]

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schaaf-123 this family?

(If so then lmao he came about the same time as another (actually from germany) German coast family in my FAN)

Yeah yeah yeah they're the ones ESM wrote an article on =p
(And not my ancestors)

[acoustic pollen]

okay so Garrit Jan Gotink alias Jan Wolterink (gotta love farm names) was born in 1764. He first married Grada Roessink (born 1771) in 1793. Grada passed away in August 1818, and then Garrit Jan Gotink remarried in October of the same year to his 1C1R Henrica Gotink.

Henrica had a couple sisters; the youngest was born in 1808 and had Garrit Jan's mother as her godmother. And their sister Antonia was born in 1805 and had Garrit Jan as godfather.

[regal wagon]

I've got Gotink married into my tree, what's the locale on this?

[vague spear]

Maybe a sibling? I'll have to look a lot of similarities, but too many differences to be sure right off the bat... The person I have that would be the same generation as him is listed as being Adam which seems unlikely so that needs to be looked at... But whoever this Adam person is, his son shares the name Peter. And I'm pretty sure my Peter, whoever his father was.... Didn't make the track overseas. So a possible similar family but not likely to be the same exact one unless there's a lot of incorrect documents.

[magic moon]

what in the woody allen

[acoustic pollen]

farm name. I've seen a few farms with that name, this one is located on the outskirts of Hengelo iirc

[rocky yew]

Not inconceivable that two families who are related both immigrated tbf!

[regal wagon]

ah, this guy I see is from Ruurlo

[acoustic pollen]

seriously? My Gotink line comes from Ruurlo originally

Dries Gotink, born in the late 1600s. Married to Boekslag, I got to look up her name

[regal wagon]

ok I haven't gone far back because he's like a husband of someone I think is my ancestor's sister but I wasn't sure

I have him back to late 1700s or so, lol

[regal wagon]

https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/52204269 here's the father of the guy that married into my tree, for reference

[acoustic pollen]

Dries Gotink and Maria Boeckslag. Those are the closest common ancestors of Garrit Jan Gotink and his wife Henrica Gotink

Okay, let me look up that baptism 👀

[nova kernel]

I'm just laughing at that file name for a bit don't mind me lol

[acoustic pollen]

This is the baptism, but curious because I don't see any witnesses listed...

[vague spear]

NVM.... I'm an ijit. Same family.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schaaf-60

[acoustic pollen]

Time to see if I can find the grandparents of these, or even just their marriage 👀

[regal wagon]

1808 Jannes has 3 other siblings I've got listed in my tree, if you want me to send their names and births too I can in case they have witnesses?

Also Jannes died at only age 35 in 1844 😢

[acoustic pollen]

Gotcha, they married catholic in 1799 in Vorden. I got this book as well :) Joannes Goting and Gertrude Sassen.

(ECAL DTB; call no 1616, scan 119)

I got all books for the ECAL DTB as fulltext pdfs :) was definitely a good investment of time to get them all. Though I use this book a lot, there's a bunch of marriages in my tree on all the surrounding pages

I should explore the FAN of this more when I'm not sick (oops), because yeah, I see quite a few familiar names

[regal wagon]

For the ✨ lore information ✨ 1808-1844 Jannes had only one son I know of, also a Johannes/John, in 1840.

This guy John moved to the United States, to my city, and married in a catholic church to this German-American immigrant (Maria Theresia). Theresia has the same surname as, and came over with, my 4th great grandparents. Obviously I think she is related but I haven't dug into it deeply to see exactly how. (but should). They met a rough end though. They were married in April 1868 - Theresia passed away in July 1868 from apoplexy at only 23 (terrifying) and then John followed in September in an accident involving falling off a wagon.

[acoustic pollen]

couple pages back more relevant marriages. Maria Ringenbergh appears a lot as witness to marriages, and I'm curious why. But on April 25th 1796 there was the marriage of Joannes Gotinck to Teuntjen Gotinck, with a Reijnerus Sassen as witness together with Maria. And the entry prior to that is for Gerardus Hummelinck and Euphemia (Fenneken) Goting, with a Wilhelmus Weverinck as other witness, again with Maria.

I've a Weverinck family from Vorden on my tree, which marries descendants of my Gotink family.

[acoustic pollen]

got a baptism for another sibling of your Johannes, January 28th 1804 in the same parish in Vorden where their parents married. Henrica, daughter of Joannis Gotinck and Gertrudis Sassen. Witnesses: Joan Gotinck and Maria Sassen.

ECAL DTB call no 1616, scan 96

[regal wagon]

She must have passed away :(

I have
Maria, bapt. March 31, 1805
Hendrika born June 27, 1812
Evert, born January 25, 1816

in addition to the existing

the 1812 Hendrika emigrated as well. It's been a minute since I looked at this! I was going to mention how Theresia and John are buried in a plot of another Dutch guy who I didn't know who he was, but I just realized he is the guy Hendrika married

Evert passed away in 1819

[acoustic pollen]

got a few more for you:

• Everdina, January 24th 1800. Surname was first written as "Gotink", then crossed out and replaced by Goting.
• Everardus, March 20th 1801
  (Potential father as witness to a baptism with Sassen again in 1803)
• Henrica Gotink, January 28th 1804, mentioned previously.

And that's when they appeared to move to Ruurlo/Ruurlo parish instead.

[regal wagon]

okay, makes sense

... does them moving to Ruurlo make it unlikely they connect to your folks at all?

[acoustic pollen]

so with the marriage in 1799, the first children born in the parish in Vorden, then the rest in Ruurlo

[regal wagon]

or maybe a previous generation had been from ruurlo anyway

[acoustic pollen]

not at all. Ruurlo and Vorden are basically bordering each other

[regal wagon]

I was about to pull up a map but wasnt there yet. Thanks!

[acoustic pollen]

it's 7 miles from each other

and if you were to draw a triangle, Hengelo is on the other leg. My Wolterink/Gotink chaos is in the Hengelo & Zelhem parish

[regal wagon]

I am not sure if I have told you but my 4th great grandmother on another line of mine was born in Enschede

I know I have told Yvette - and there she is typing, lol

[errant ember]

Depends on which Gelderland towns. My family was from Winterswijk, where some people were serfs until 1795. They would get fined if they married someone who did not belong to the same manor. In other words: these groups were endogamous by law. They did not stop marrying within their community when the laws changed. As late as the mid 1800s, as many as 80% married within the village, the highest in the whole province. Many other places in Gelderland were much more open and did not have endogamy, or not as much.
Here's my father's side of my pedigree, to show Winterswijk endogamy (and associated pedigree collapse).

[acoustic pollen]

fun :P I don't think I've any Enschede lines myself :P

Historical society of Ruurlo has done farm research. Which includes that of "Brouwers Gotink or Reindershuus": https://oldreurle.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Brouwers-Gotink-of-Reindershuus-K.7.pdf

They've more articles about the family of brewers, and their brewery that have been published over time. But I've not done much research myself on the family yet, beyond confirming a few vitals. I'll definitely get back to them once I'm ready to start working on the WT profiles for this branch

[errant ember]

I was born in Enschede myself 🙂
Not sure if you know this already, but before 1811, many people in Twente (East-Overijssel) and the Achterhoek (east-Gelderland) did not have hereditary last names yet but named themselves after the farm they lived on. My family lived on the Hoitink farm in Winterswijk, for example (now called Huitink).

[solid cedar]

I hate endogamy.
The 3x great grandparents of my grandfather are probably also the 3x great grandparents of his wife, my grandmother.
And most of their matches also have ancestry from both of these families, if not even multiple times. The shared cM is just multiplying and multiplying, and proving something through that just doesn't makes any sense, because if I proved a theory through endogamy, I just discover new endogamy, which means the old calculation can not be true anymore? I hope that is understandable and maybe you guys can give me some tips.

[coarse yoke]

Well, yes, endogamy will screw royally with your numbers, that is sure.

I did some calculations in my own tree, and some people have 6x the normal amount of influence on my DNA for example, meaning any cM numbers will probably be inflated x6

It helps a lot I find to ignore the total, and look at the only biggest segment. Then check the cM project and look what it says for that number. This will only be an approximation but I find it comes close-ish

but this needs to be applied ofc only conditonally if you know there is endogamy, or suspect it

[valid merlin]

Imho, Lewisian/Leòdhasach genealogy is arguably the most difficult endogamous part of my family tree. Mainly because typical surnames were only formalized on Lewis by the 18th-19th centuries, and they were based off the clan system, which was fluid and tribal/political in nature

[valid merlin]

https://tenor.com/view/confused-math-what-wtf-peep-gif-6081931

Me trying to parse out how I'm related to a Leòdhasach DNA match

Trick question, the cluster is a blob of "all of the above" 🤣

[eternal tree]

Accidently posted this in the old thread.

[primal finch]

hey all! i'm new here and was hoping to get some tips on clustering my matches with endogamy.

[crystal mist]

Caffeine... In all honesty I will give you some real tips when i arise from migraine land in the morning

[hot plank]

Hello! Not an expert by any means, but are you working with Ancesty and do you have protools?

[primal finch]

Yes to both.

[hot plank]

One idea that I work with a lot is that large matches are less likely to be inflated, so I work with my own large matches, but also large shared matches.

By sorting for cM in the shared matches list, I can often get a sense of where this person sits in my tree.

For each match, I also build their tree to 2x-great-grandparents, which is a HUGE pain and makes things slower but I've seen it repeated in several lectures that this is what we are supposed to do, so I do that.

Because I work with an energy disability, I sometimes spot-check on FS but I always notate whether I have spot checked or carefully checked. The of course I carefully check any line that looks shared.

[primal finch]

Yes. I do this too. It's difficult right now because I'm working with 3rd cousins and apparently they lead to an ancestor I don't know about.

[hot plank]

I think it also matters the level of endogamy that you're dealing with. My father is Ashkenazi Jewish and my mother is all from one county in PA, and the levels of endogamy in their tests is different. My mom's test has slightly less endogamy but more chance of pedigree collapse within the genealogical timeframe, so I'm always keeping a close eye on that. My dad's family is from a highly endogamous population but actually has very little pedigree collapse within what I've been able to track (1xgg-4xgg depending on the branch)

[hot plank]

Can you cluster them by looking at their close matches with each other?

[primal finch]

Sometimes

[hot plank]

Understood. I haven't dealt with an NPE situation yet with my tests, so I'll have to let others speak to that. Littie really is quite knowledgeable.

[primal finch]

My dad's sides criss cross each other earlier on then as I go farther back to a certain point, one or more of my dad's lines cross with my mom's line.

[hot plank]

I actually meant what endogamy level within the population. What ethnic group or location are you working with?

My dad is ashkenazi Jewish and his test looks really different than my mom's who is colonial American, all from one county. Both are endogamous groups, just different degrees of endogamy.

[primal finch]

Oh ok. African American. Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama

[hot plank]

I know nothing here! 😆

Sorry! I've done a little AA research but not DNA work, and I've never done southern research or DNA work.

We do have a lot of people who have family from those areas.

[primal finch]

Np.

[crystal mist]

Depending on the level of endogamy and how far it reaches autosomal tests can be useful for endogamous populations… you’ll likely have to work a whole lot harder than a regular test.

The first thing I would always keep in mind is that you want access to as many tests as possible in an attempt to isolate or eliminate some of the endogamy. You may have incredibly hard to read matches, but your third cousin might have less endogamy on a line of interest.

Second testing on both ancestry and Myheritage can be useful. Myheritage chromosome browser allows you to see all of the segment lengths for shared matches. Smaller segment lengths can be indicative of endogamy… Though I have seen endogamy so bad that the segments look larger 😅

Graphs and visualization can be a great tool to show you the extent of the endogamy you are working with. The more tangled or “noisy” the harder it will be. Look at these resources for automated clustering. I would run these once and see what you are looking at. Most of the time after the initial process I don’t look back at these often, it’s just a way to get an idea of what I’m working with. https://www.wai.md/blog/categories/endogamy #genetic-genealogy message

Take as many notes as you possibly can. I keep notes on my matches in the cluster, but I also have a separate spreadsheet to include more detailed information.

The most time consuming part is building out the match tree. Build them out as far as you need to determine all possible relationships. You can sometimes find the Coefficient of a relationship to see if there may be more possible connections contributing to a particular match.
Read more about calculating the Coefficient here: https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dealing-endogamy-part-exploring-amounts-shared-dna

BanyanDNA doesn’t necessarily hold up to the hype they initially gave but it is more compatible with pedigree collapse and endogamy than WATO.

It can be hard but worth it! I was not kidding when I suggested Caffeine. DNA in Endogamous populations is a long term hobby.

More reading: https://isogg.org/wiki/Endogamy

Sorry for the info bomb 😅

[primal finch]

Thanks. I'll have to read and work on my matches accordingly.

[coarse yoke]

My usual advice is, the more endogamy you have, the more trees you need!

But I would also say autoclusters can be very useful, although complex to parse. They are, for one, great to show parts that do not have a lot of endogamy if you have that

[red basalt]

I decied to draw a tree for my grandmother... It started quite nicely (every color is one family). Draw it to 1790's , no problem... All well.

Then expanded to the end of the previous war, 1743. Still all good. Only one family (red) appearing on both sides, that I knew already. There are something happening on the right though, on light blue.

Then I draw the rest of it and revealed the spaghetti monster.

Thee would be even more horizontal connections based on surnames, but the records ended too soon.

Grandma in question is my mother's mother, but to have a complete mess... the uppermost dark green dot is my 6xGGF from my direct maleline 😂

[coarse yoke]

are the background bands war or other periods?

[coarse yoke]

Thats a very good looking tree!

[red basalt]

Yep, wars between Sweden and Russia. Yellow background is for ancestors born as Swedes, red is ancestors born as Russians, and blue is ancestors born in autonomous area called Grand Duchy of Finland (under Russian rule). Same town, just the different "management".

For a perioid of around 70 years the birth town for most of the people in the chart was split between the national border (dashed line) of Sweden (two thirds) and Russia (one third). The church was on the Russian side, so all the people living in the Swedish side went over the national border each sunday on a trip to the church 😄

[hot plank]

Endogamy light

[valid merlin]

My great-uncle's Ancestry autoclusters look like this even without matches below 65cMs 😂

They're gonna be absolutely, horrifically messy when you can include matches down to 8cMs

[hot plank]

I'm very impressed that this test clustered and also laughing that this is the entirety of it

She's mostly EE ashkenazi and has about 280k matches

[regal wagon]

Is that just 3 people who were closely related to each other?

[valid merlin]

My paternal grandma doesn't get any AutoClusters rn, since she doesn't have enough close matches above 65cMs (even tho she has over 20k total)

My partner doesn't get AutoClusters because he doesn't have enough close matches either, but he only has over 400 total last I checked

[valid merlin]

That's such a surprisingly small cluster, but maybe Ashkenazi endogamy just breaks the clustering algorithm?

[valid merlin]

I laughed out loud at this 🤣

[rocky yew]

Trying to cluster when your matches are like that is always fun 🥲

*dot

Well mostly interchangeable shhhh

[red basalt]

This is one of my favorite matches

Two different people based on other matches (and images), no duplicate kits

[acoustic pollen]

here's probably my worst/favourite: two brothers married twin sisters, this is the result for the next generation 😂

My match with

1. his aunt (mother's twin sister)
2. his brother
3. his double first cousin
4. his double first cousin's daughter

I share 2 sets of ancestors with him paternally, and 2 sets maternally
Would have been a lot harder to figure out if his father was still alive (obituary made me understand what was going on here), and if their tree was less detailed

[fading cedar]

Twins!

[red basalt]

Good point, so in theory it could be possible that way. I always forgot twins, even though there will be soon in-law twins. But that's photo I posted it's actually not a mystery, I know both trees, it's separate persons. It's either A) missclicked gender, or B) gender purposely set wrong. I don't believe in A, as the manager of the second person's kit is their ex-husband, but that makes lots of options for B, though. I don't really, care, I just know that the second one is genealogically incorrect. I have solved trees for both persons for few generations, but haven't been unable to connect either one to my own tree. They are not relative to each others, but I'm relative to both of them on separate ancestors.

[acoustic pollen]

Also as a reminder, trans people exist, and you might run into them on matches in unexpected ways. That too is an option for your A/B scenarios.

[red basalt]

Most likely case, in my opinion

[valid merlin]

I've finally got around to reorganizing my massive "Centre-du-Québec & Montérégie French Settlers" custom group for my lines in Quebec, and I was able to roughly split it into seven new & partly overlapping custom groups

1. Pierre-De Saurel to Upper Midwest, Western U.S. & Canadian Prairies French Settlers
2. Yamaska French Settlers
3. Sorel French Settlers
4. Saint-François-du-Lac to Yamaska French Settlers
5. Trois-Rivières & Maskinongé to Pierre-De Saurel French Settlers
6. Early Montréal to Pierre-De Saurel French Settlers
7. Early Québec to Pierre-De Saurel French Settlers

[valid merlin]

The 1st one is basically a new group to capture my recent-ish Quebec diaspora ancestry and associated matches, while all the others are basically the blended layer cake of populations I descend from

[fading cedar]

I should probably do the same with mine. Then break it down further. That's where my one missing 3ggf is missing from, driving my brain nuts with the hole he has created in my tree! haha. ughh.

[quartz adder]

sigh

[red basalt]

Yeah, got my cousin to do an autosomal test. I know her mother is from another side of Finland, while other 1st cousins had their both parents from same area (and from same spaghetti). Now I have to wait a month for results, but getting one tester with just half of their matches on the endogamy area could help a lot.

[eternal tree]

Can't remember if I'm remembering right or not so I'm asking here, you're supposed to use the largest segment as the total cM when trying to tell how far someone is related to you based on cM alone for endogamous matches right?

My mom has a match on MH at 132cM but split between 10 segments with the largest being 58cM, but her aunt matches the match at only 32cM total, plus my mom and the match (as far as I can tell) are both fully Ashkenazi Jewish so definitely endogamy going on there.

[rocky yew]

It's only if the endogamy is very bad but in this case yeah given your mother it might help. At least for my matches, the majority of the time the shared cM makes pretty close sense for their actual relation to me, my father, or grandmother

Anyway also sharing here

My grandmother's paternal and maternal clusters😭

[red basalt]

For me (Finnish endogamy, especially from 18th century and before) it's usually couple of levels further. Someone reported as 3C is usually 5C. Something like that. Match around 130 cM should 2C1R or 3C, and I would be looking for 4C to 5C if expecting endogamy. I checked my matches around 130 cM and there are 2C1R, 3C, and 3C1R matches, probably no endogamy there. Then there are typical (for me) historical endogamy match, who is 6C, 6C1R, and 7C1R. Largest segment 42.5 cM. So, that would be 4C, or 4C1R by cM explainer. So, the largest segment estimation not working when endogamy happened so long ago. Then another match that was probably more like Ashkenazi Jews, relative only by two routes, both 4C1R, but those two lines interconnect many times in the past 300 years, not just once far back. Largest segment in that case is just 19.4 cM, which is actually correct for 4C1R. On that second case your formula works.

[fading cedar]

This might be a bit long so I hope someone can follow along and give me any pointers. I have a 3ggf who no one seems to know for sure who his parents were. Most people have no parents listed. Some have a couple from another country with a different surname. Whenever I have asked "how did you determine this couple to be his parents?" the conversation ends - I get no further reply from that person. I have stopped asking because I don't want to loose contact with these people. Even his place of birth seems to change with each document (various documents, primarily those of his children, variously give his place of birth as New York, Vermont, Canada or Switzerland (which is where the differently named parents are from). After a TON of poking around through my own DNA matches, I think I found the family to which he connects, but I'm running into some snags. Although I think I know which child of which couple he is - there doesn't seem to be a paper trail, which is quite unusual for a Catholic family living in Quebec. One of the problems is that the suspected mother has the same surname as another wife in a closely related line, so I couldn't rule out that this family was related through her instead. However, I recently was given access to view the test of a relative who is 2 generations closer to my mystery 4th great grandparent, and not (that I can see) possibly related via the other line. When I looked at their dna results and searched for the surname - all matches that popped up where either already common ancestors through my 3rd ggf and his wife, or were related to the family I already suspect is the correct one.

[fading cedar]

(ran out of room).. But - Quebec. Endogamy can be pretty thick in French Canadian lines - so while I can build out the tree using this suspected parent combination, how do I know if I have him placed in the correct spot because the shared amounts are pretty skewed every which way due to both endogamy and also just plain old tree collapse (one of the suspected sister's kids had grandkids that married each other, for example)? Any thoughts/ideas - I'm all ears! (but I am going to sleep so I won't respond for a while 😉 )

[valid merlin]

Hmm... well I think an important thing to take note of here is if this man has a secondary surname. This is quite common in Quebec, and these additional surnames are oftentimes noted as "dit/dite surname"

These surnames sometimes would become the only surname, especially in later generations who left Quebec. Which also should help explain any surname discrepancies

[fading cedar]

The other surname isn’t French at all - it’s more Germanic (sorry, I will have to go find it again). While I do have a few DNA matches with the other surname, it’s only a handful and all of them lead back to the same couple - none to siblings of either, while the suspect family I have (and so does the kit I have access to to) matches to people who descend from the potential siblings

But the amount of shared dna doesn’t line up with where we would fit in the tree - it’s like we should be closer by a generation or so - but knowing this is Quebec - is there a trick to make a better estimate of relationship?

[valid merlin]

If his wife is from Quebec, and also from the same population(s), chances are they're related. My Canadien 3GGPs are from the same village in Quebec and are related 7 different ways, and are most closely a 3C1R of each other.

Not to mention, those matches may also be related to you more than once through ancestors further back, both wife's & husband's lines, or have endogamy more recently on their direct lines.

ProTools is going to be your best friend here, since you can sort by a DNA match's closest shared matches. That way you can better filter out all of the matches connected more distantly who have inflated cMs bc of endogamy.

[fading cedar]

Hmmm - so check the people who seem to fit, and look at their closest matches?

[valid merlin]

Basically

It's essentially placing a puzzle piece by taking a look at what the other puzzle pieces look like.

[fading cedar]

Ok thanks, I’ll try that to see if it helps me solidify or disprove the theory. Thanks!

[fading cedar]

Well this is a rabbit hole that will take some time to dig back out of! 😉 At least it means I've placed a few more matches in my tree though.

[vague spear]

Coming across an uncle that married his neice making his parents both your 9th great grandparents and 10th great grandparents .... oh, colonial america ....