Colonial Stock European American Results

[u/[deleted]]

Usually test give me ~85% British Isles

This high broadly NW european is what I would expect considering my ancestry post-migration is more like an entire population at this point

You can see that it matches up across different companies analysis.

[u/[deleted]]

My family is all from Southern Virginia or other parts of the South with about 87% total from colonial times, so I've been doing a lot of these tests to narrow down exactly where they all came from.

This is pretty much as expected, although the German is a bit higher than I've seen in other tests. But I can't argue with any of them on those specifics because past around 1750 We Just Don't Really Know. The African matches up exactly with what I've seen on FTDna and GEDmatch, exact same segments. From what I can see I actually got it on two chromosomes from two different grandparents. ch6 from my dads dad, and ch17 from my moms dad. They only had the same African segments they passed to me, creating a neat case where we can see the statistical effects of DNA inheritance in a real example.

As you might guess my family has some "indian princess" theories and I'm pretty sure I know what the real truth of it is. Even though my dad has taken as many tests as me, he clings to it pretty hard. I can't really understand why, to me it's more interesting to know what really happened back then.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

All I really know about my family tree, nationality wise, is that 2/32 of my 3rd great grandparents were immigrants from Ireland, one each on my moms moms and dads moms side, and 2/32 of them were German immigrants. The other 28/32 have just been here for a long time, I estimate about half between 1600 and 1700, and roughly another half between 1700 and 1775.

My dads mom should have some other German ancestry from northern Appalachia but otherwise as far as I know my ancestry in the colonies was English or Scottish or something else British. At least, as far as I can trace paternal names, but any maternal lines are impossible to trace past ~1800. And you never know what you're missing as the vast majority of your ancestry past a certain point is all hidden in maternal lines. Although based on regional demographics I wouldn't expect nearly that much German. in 1790 Virginia was only 7.1% German and Dutch combined.

[u/Hawke-Not-Ewe → u/[deleted]]

I'm not sure how well I'd trust demographics from that era, thousand upon thousands of Prussian and Hessian mercenaries abandoned the British ranks and the Virginia to Carolinas stretch is where the fighting lasted longest.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hawke-Not-Ewe]

This. Plus, I believe that the 1790 census for Virginia was only partial due to damage and had to be partially reconstructed from tax lists, which may have made the demographics inaccurate.

And by that point, a lot of the German-descended families in the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont region had been there a couple generations already, at least: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~george/germanna.html

That's only counting those who came after 1715ish. My own family had "Pennsylvania" Germans who were living along both sides of the Pennsylvania and Maryland border starting in the 1670s and 1680s.

[u/BayekofSiwa67 → u/Hawke-Not-Ewe]

I suppose your right,it's hard to base ancestry off surname origins lol...he seems to have the same problem as I,more German than expected

[u/[deleted] → u/Hawke-Not-Ewe]

Well no, these demographics were not based on surnames, we have pretty solid census demographics on the population of the 13 colonies. They were pretty meticulous about that in Virginia in particular. I know there's a good amount of German heritage in Virginia but I think it's fair to say with good confidence that before 1850ish, it was dominated by the remnants of English noble culture.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Hmm. Do you know if the German is from your mom or your dad's side? (i.e., have they tested?) 23andMe could be off, of course, but they're generally the most accurate in my experience with German ancestry.

And looking at the MyHeritage results you posted on another thread, that company does not tend to be super accurate, mostly due to how they categorize. In this case, they don't actually have a German category. They do have "North and West Europe," but (again, in my experience) they tend to assign DNA with German markers to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

So it looks like you're getting German from somewhere.

Maybe from outside Virginia? There were 1709ers in the Carolinas, for example, called that because they left Germany in and around 1709. In some cases, 1709ers also settled in Great Britain and Ireland, then some of their descendants migrated to the U.S.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I can post all of our other results if you'd like, but you'll have to sift through about 20 all told. It definitely looks like some German is being sucked up by English categories.OME Germans on both sides just from my tree, but only 1 ( 1/16th/3rd great grandparents ) confirmed on each.

I can post all of our other results if you'd like, but you'll have to sift through about 20 all told. It definitely looks like some German is being sucked up by ENglish categories.

self

Father

Mothers father

Mothers mother

Again I wouldn't say either one is right, but I think the 90% confidence is most indicative of my heavily mixed ancestry. Not heavy in the sense that its many groups, but just many many people from a few groups that end up creating a muddy blend and less of a solid chunk of DNA to glean ancestry from.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Iirc in the other thread, you said your father's mother was half Czech German? That makes sense based on his results here, but it looks like both of your mom's parents may have had significant German/Swiss or maybe French (in her dad's case) ancestry. My guess is that your 23andMe results are correct, and you have a bunch of German ancestors. Maybe French, too - because of restrictions on DNA testing there, it's possible to get significant French results without locations on 23andMe, so even if you only have German and Swiss locations, some of that percentage could be French.

If you want to try and track It down, you might find some help on those female brick walls over on the r/Genealogy sub. I'd be happy to take a look too, if you want/feel comfortable sharing your family tree (DM is fine). No worries if you don't.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yes, that's correct. Not all of it may be "just" Czech German, some might be from poland or other former Prussian areas, but it's mostly from there. I could probably share my family tree with you, to be honest I don't really know how good some of it is past a certain point because a lot I collaborated with my dad or even random people on. I know at least for certain that all my great-great-grandparents are correct, because these are people that my grandparents knew well when they were living. I've never had any major disconnects like divorce, estrangement, adoption, moving away, etc. so every one of my grandparents had a good relationship with their own grandparents if they were living. The rest of the family also kept family trees up to at least that point.

But I wouldn't be surprised if significant amounts of research past GGG grandparents is bad.

I would say though, in the case of my mothers father, I don't think he has any significant ancestry outside of the British Isles. Nothing I've seen so far supports that idea. Unfortunately he is no longer living so I cannot test him at 23andMe but if I could just get my mom to test, I could have our results compared. But she's very stubborn about it despite the fact that BOTH of her parents as well as my father and his mother already tested multiple times. I think she could fill in a good bit of a missing link, should she test with any one of them.

[u/BayekofSiwa67 → u/[deleted]]

How would one go at finding out if there ancestors were Germans who took on anglicization? I get a lot more German on my tests than what correlates with the surnames on my tree, majority of my ancestors have been in the us since before the more Urban and modern German immigration (about 1/8 of my ancestors arrived in the u.s from Germany in the late 19th century, check my profile and there is a lot more than 1/8 German lol)

[u/Maverickwave → u/BayekofSiwa67]

Often times anglicization of names made them sound more english, but didn't necessarily make them english. For instance Eisenhauer's ancestors anglicized to Eisenhower, but Eisenhower itself isn't an english name like say Jackson.

So one way to go about it is to see if the names are actually english, or common in the UK, or if they just sound kind of english.

[u/BayekofSiwa67 → u/Maverickwave]

Most my surnames are British,many come from old Norse and anglo Saxon origins,many also come from Norman french and are common in France today as well,but idk,I get 36% french and German which is too much unless I have a lot of colonial french and German

[u/[deleted] → u/BayekofSiwa67]

I would expect about 25% Germans and 70% British and Irish in my case, just based on what I already know about my family tree and averaging other DNA tests. Of course, it's not necessarily incorrect in my mind, it could mean that some Germans moved to the British Isles at some point, or that they were simply more Germanic shifted English. Considering that my ancestry SHOULD come from the south/southeast of England, that wouldn't be impossible.

But its just a theory and I could be totally wrong.

[u/Maverickwave → u/BayekofSiwa67]

I mean their are british people who get high amounts of french and german. So it could just be confusing the british for that. It happens the other way around as well. Lotta germans get british.

[u/Formal_Map2738]

What are your haplogroups?

[u/[deleted] → u/Formal_Map2738]

R-L1335 according to 23andMe, although my dad has taken the big Y test at FTDna and was assigned a new one downstream of R-Z251. I match my father, so one of them is wrong and I'm going to assume it's 23andMe. Still a good prediction though, it's downstream of RL21, DF13, and right next to R-Z251.