Saturday, January 4, 2014

BritainsDNA - Global Connections - All My Ancestry

I have been analyzing the results from my brother's testing at BritainsDNA and the global connections plots are most interesting. Given our 100% British ancestry back many generations known, with a couple not known past 3x great grandparents, I may find this the best tool yet to look at possible parents for Christopher Buller in London/Bermondsey. I think that Christopher's father is likely British and of the Buller family of Somerset/Cornwall/Warwickshire (and not sure if I can bring the Warwickshire and the southwest England Buller family together yet). But his mother is a mystery. I know he was born around 1764 from his burial registration at St Olave Church Bermondsey. The results of the Global Connections (European graph) place us right in the midst (to the bottom) of the German results. The British and German results are somewhat intermingled on the edges but we sit distinctively in the German area about midway through. This particular set of results is like a map of Europe when you examine it in detail. The French ancestry are to the south and the Spanish below that and to the side of the Spanish the Basque and then to the north of the British and German you find Norwegian and to the right of the German/Norwegian/British you find Hungarian and Croatian from the middle of this group to the south and from the middle to the north is found Ukranian and Polish. The Russians to the north west of the Ukranian and Polish. The Romanian and Bulgarian to the south west of the Hungarian and Croatian. This continues looking very like the map of Europe/Asia as you move eastward.

This is an unexpected result  in some ways but comparing it to the Family Finder Results at FT DNA not surprising given the number of German matches (individuals with only German ancestry and still living there). The matches are very distant (5th cousin to distant) and I find in general these are really distant; probably a very hearty piece of chromosome that has passed down from centuries past and just continues to get preferred at conception. Plus a sign that we likely have Saxon ancestors as well as our ancient British lines.

So I am looking seriously at the possibility of Christopher's mother being German or his grandmother. This would be the logical line since it is in London back into the 1700s and the wife of Christopher, Mary Beard, has a history in the Surrey area going back into the mid 1600s and earlier for some of her lines. The only other line that is somewhat mysterious is also in this Buller family but at Birmingham. That line is my mtDNA line and shows itself to likely be Scot either directly from Scotland or planters from Ireland coming back to England since the haplogroup is also common in Ireland.

I am considering testing myself now for All My Ancestry at BritainsDNA. There is just so much that can be learned from our genes to keep us on the right paths with our genealogy. Plus it is a wonderful gift to hand on to future generations. Now is the time to collect all this information as we enter the computer age. Our grandchildren may not be able to read these old documents if they do not learn cursive writing. It will be gibberish to them as some Old English documents already are unless you have acquired the skill of Palaeography.

Back to will transcription tomorrow; my weekend has been a busy one. Our extreme cold warning has finally lifted and we have a couple of days of minus 15 all the way up nearly to zero celsius. But then back to the deep freeze for a little bit with minus 30 or even colder. The wind child can be the worst part; at minus 39 you can feel the cold right into the bones after just a couple of minutes.

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