The Results Are In…

So I received my FamilyTreeDNA results and the first thing I wanted to check out was my ethnicity. I grew up with the assumption that my Dad’s family was from Germany and my Mom’s family was from Ireland. While my research to date has shown me that’s not entirely accurate, I figured it wasn’t far off the mark.

A look at the results showed I was >99% European, so no surprise there. A look at the breakdown of my European ancestry shows 47% British Isles, which basically covers all of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The percentage was higher than I expected. I’ve been doing research on my Dad’s side which suggests there is some English ancestry dating pretty far back through Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but didn’t think there was enough to impact the results.

The second largest group, at 36%, was Southeast Europe. This covers present day Italy, Greece and several of the Western Balkan states including Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovenia. The next group at 16%, was Scandinavia which includes present day Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Admittedly, both of these groups perplex me. My dad has a large number of German ancestors and my mom a few. I have traced these lines back to the 1700’s and in some cases, the 1600’s. I would have thought there would be a presence in the West and Central or East Europe clusters (both of which include present day Germany).

With respect to my Y-DNA, there were no matches to anyone that would suggest statistically significant match closer in than 4 generations. Similarly, the mtDNA did not show any potential matches of note.

On the other hand, the family finder test shows there are 37 individuals out there who are 4th cousins or closer. I don’t recognize any of the names, but a little more than half have supplied their family tree. So it looks like a closer review of the submitted family trees would be in order.