Exploring Surnames, DNA & Genealogy in The Low Countries

Maarten Larmuseau - Exploring Surnames, DNA & Genealogy in The Low Countries

Published on Apr 27, 2015

There is limited knowledge on the biological relatedness between citizens and on the demographic dynamics within villages, towns and cities in pre-17th-century Western Europe. By combining Y-chromosomal genotypes, in-depth genealogies and surname data in a strict genetic genealogical approach, it has been possible to gain insights into the genetic diversity and the relatedness among indigenous paternal lineages within six Flemish communities at the time of surname adoption between 14th-15th century. Since these communities have been selected based on differences in geography and historical development, the genetic results provide relevant information in historical sciences, demography, forensic genetics and genealogy.

Dr. Maarten Larmuseau, evolutionary geneticist, University of Leuven - Dr. Maarten Larmuseau is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium). He is an evolutionary geneticist interested in the interaction between genetics, evolution and history in humans and animals. Currently he is making use of genetic genealogical tools within forensic, historical and human sociobiological research. His research in e.g. historical cuckoldry rates, the false identification of relics attributed to French kings, and the detection of forgotten historical migration events in the 16th century is well known by both academics and the broad public.

High Y-chromosomal diversity and low relatedness between paternal lineages on a communal scale in the Western European Low Countries during the surname establishment

There is limited knowledge on the biological relatedness between citizens and on the demographical dynamics within villages, towns and cities in pre-17th century Western Europe. By combining Y-chromosomal genotypes, in-depth genealogies and surname data in a strict genetic genealogical approach, it is possible to provide insights into the genetic diversity and the relatedness between indigenous paternal lineages within a particular community at the time of the surname adoption. To obtain these insights, six Flemish communities were selected in this study based on the differences in geography and historical development. After rigorous selection of appropriate DNA donors, low relatedness between Y chromosomes of different surnames was found within each community, although there is co-occurrence of these surnames in each community since the start of the surname adoption between the 14th and 15th century. Next, the high communal diversity in Y-chromosomal lineages was comparable with the regional diversity across Flanders at that time. Moreover, clinal distributions of particular Y-chromosomal lineages between the communities were observed according to the clinal distributions earlier observed across the Flemish regions and Western Europe. No significant indication for genetic differences between communities with distinct historical development was found in the analysis. These genetic results provide relevant information for studies in historical sciences, archaeology, forensic genetics and genealogy.

Jeb Bush and G.W. Bush have more non-New England than New England ancestry

Prompted by a troll post at Sailer's, I did a quick tally of the regional ancestries of Jeb's and G.W.'s great, great, great-grandparents (while I started with 3g-grandparents, I looked farther back wherever possible to identify any likely New England ancestry). The numbers I come up with:

• New England: 10.125 / 32 = 31.64%
• Mid-Atlantic: 11.375 / 32 = 35.55%
• South: 7 / 32 = 21.88%
• Germany: 2 / 32 = 6.25%
• Britain: 1.5 / 32 = 4.69%

Less than a third of Jeb's ancestry actually traces back to New England. You can see the table of Bush ancestors I used here, and see to which region I assigned each of the the 3g-grandparents below the fold (in most cases I chose to count Maryland as Southern; but where Maryland ancestry was mixed with Pennsylvania ancestry I counted it as mid-Atlantic).

While the Bushes represent the very epitome of hated Yankee/Puritan for many anti-New England types, they in fact have twice as much non-New England as New England ancestry.

A Genetic Census of America

More complete AncestryDNA estimates of genetic ancestry by state (interactive maps at link):

Using AncestryDNA results from over a quarter million people, the AncestryDNA science team set out to perform a “genetic census” of the United States. [. . .]

Solely using ethnicity estimated by DNA, these maps reveal spatial patterns that are telling of the ancestral origins of present day Americans: where they came from and where they eventually settled. [. . .]

SCANDINAVIAN ETHNICITY

For example, let’s look at the Scandinavian map. Scandinavian immigrants – from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark – tended to settle in the upper Midwest where geography, culture, and local economics felt familiar to life in the old country.

On the map, these are the greenest regions: the states with the highest amounts of Scandinavian ancestry. In other words, DNA also suggests localized migration of individuals of Scandinavian origin to North Dakota, Minnesota, and neighboring states, with little migration to other U.S. regions. History agrees with genetics!

IRISH ETHNICITY

Look at the Irish ancestry map as another example. The highest statewide averages are concentrated in Massachusetts and other states in the Northeastern U.S. – where many Irish immigrants, forced to leave their homes and lands, settled in the 19th century. Growing numbers of Irish that arrived after the 1820s were often poor and common laborers, and took jobs in the construction of buildings, canals, roads, and railways in cities in the eastern United States.

Many of these cities still show the highest average amounts of Irish ethnicity in the U.S. today! DNA affirms that many descendants of Irish immigrants still live where their ancestors initially settled – in the Northeast.

GREAT BRITAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE ETHNICITY

If you look at the maps for Great Britain and Europe West, you see that other ancestries are more widespread across the whole country. Leading up to the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, large numbers of Europeans arrived in what is now the U.S., in some cases to escape religious persecution. While there were subsequently many waves of immigration, individuals primarily from Western Europe and Great Britain were our first Americans.

That we see British ancestry in many people of the U.S. may be evidence of the long history of individuals from Great Britain migrating to the United States, and far and wide across those states.

As I mentioned, the "Irish" estimates are likely inflated in much of the country, with Scotch-Irish, Scottish, and Welsh probably contributing a considerable part of the "Irish" component outside of the Northeast.

Genetic estimate of percent Irish ancestry in US

'Based on AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates for over 300,000 AncestryDNA customers*, the AncestryDNA science team set out to discover the “most Irish” regions of the U.S.':

States with the highest Irish ancestry

First, for all AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates of people born in the same state, we averaged their fractions of Irish ethnicity. Then, we found the U.S. states whose residents have the highest, and lowest, amounts of Irish ancestry.

On the map are the top five states with the highest average Irish ancestry. Massachusetts is #1, and all of the other top states are also in the Northeast.

AncestryDNA estimates its Massachusetts-born customers average 28.5% Irish genetically, which is reasonably close to my surname-based estimate of 26% (using 1940 census data).

AncestryDNA's estimates of Irish ancestry for much of the rest of the country are likely inflated, however. AncestryDNA's "Irish" cluster spills over into Scotland and Wales, and to a lesser extent even into England and France. While (in an analysis shown in the AncestryDNA white paper) 95% of Irish are placed into the "Irish" cluster, only something like 60% of British are placed into the "Great Britain" cluster (with most of the rest presumably being placed into either the "Irish" or "Europe West" clusters). AncestryDNA's estimates rely on ADMIXTURE, an allele frequency-based approach, whereas I think very large data sets and an approach that makes use of haplotype information will be needed to clearly dissect recent ancestry within Northwestern Europe.

ESEB 2013 abstracts and videos

Some abstracts and videos from the 2013 Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology.

Genetic genealogy comes of age: advances in the use of deep-rooted pedigrees in human evolutionary research (video)

Author(s): Larmuseau, MHD, Van Geystelen, A, Decorte, R

Summary:

Research on the recent human evolution will benefit from the implementation of extended genetic genealogical data. The approach to combine deep-rooted pedigrees with genetic information advances the understanding of changes in the human population genetic structure during the last centuries. This recent advance is mainly based on the extensive growth of whole genome sequencing data and available genealogical data of high quality. Moreover, according to the latest genetic genealogical research the historical non-paternity rate in Western Europe is estimated around 1% per generation within the last four centuries, which means that the expected relationship between the legal genealogy and the genetics of DNA donors exists. Therefore, genetic genealogical data will help with three research aims of human evolutionary studies: (I) detecting signals of (past) population stratification and interpreting the population structure in a more objective manner, (II) obtaining the time scale and impact of particular detected gene flow events more accurately and (III) determining temporal genetic differentiation within a population by combining in-depth pedigree data with haploid markers. Each of these research aims will be discussed with examples of the human population in Flanders (Western Europe). At the end, we will discuss the advantages and pitfalls of using genetic genealogy within studies on human evolutionary genomics.

Detection of polygenic selection at different evolutionary levels (video)

Author(s): Excoffier L, Daub J

Summary:

Most approaches aiming at finding genes involved in adaptive events have focused on the detection of outlier loci, which resulted in the discovery of individually ´significant´ genes with strong effects. However, a collection of small effect mutations could have a large effect on a given biological pathway that includes many genes, and such a polygenic mode of adaptation has not been systematically investigated in humans or other mammals. We therefore propose to evidence polygenic selection by detecting signals of adaptation at the pathway or gene set level instead of analyzing single independent genes. Using a gene-set enrichment test, we identify genome-wide signals of recent adaptation among human populations as well as more ancient signals of adaptation in the human lineage and in primates.

A genome-wide scan for relaxation of constraints in the human lineage affecting specific functional processes (video)

Author(s): Somel, M, Wilson-Sayres, M, Jordan, G, Huerta-Sanchez, E, Fumagalli, M, Ferrer-Admetlla, A, Nielsen, R

Summary:

Changes in the subsistence mode of a species can lead to adaptive evolution of new functions, while it can also cause relaxed negative selection in previously essential functions. While positive selection in humans has been intensely studied, functional processes subject to relaxed constraints in the human lineage remain largely unknown. Here we present a framework for detecting relaxation of selective constraints that affect a particular functional process specifically in one taxon. Jointly using human and chimpanzee population genomic data with mammalian comparative genomic data, we identify olfactory receptors and proteasome subunits as candidates of relaxed constraints in humans: both gene sets contain high frequency non-synonymous mutations in humans while having conserved amino-acid sequences across other mammals. We further discuss the possible underlying causes of this signal.

Selection on penis size, body shape and height in humans: a simple multivariate method to quantify female preferences based on male physical attractiveness (video)

Author(s): Mautz, BS, Jennions, MD, Peters, RA, Wong, BBM

Summary:

Compelling evidence from many animal taxa indicates that male genitalia are often under post-copulatory sexual selection for characteristics that increase a male’s relative fertilization success under sperm competition. There could, however, also be direct pre-copulatory female mate choice based on male genital traits. Before clothing, the non-retractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates. This, in combination with claims that humans have a large penis for their body size compared to other primates, has generated suggestions that human penis size partly evolved due to female choice. We presented women with digitally projected fully life-size, computer-generated animations of male figures to quantify the (interactive) effects of penis size, body shape and height on female assessment of male sexual attractiveness. We generated 343 male figures that each had one of seven possible values for each of the three test traits (7x7x7 = 343). All seven test values per trait were within two standard deviations of the mean based on a representative sample of males. We calculate response (fitness) surfaces based on the average attractiveness rank each of the 343 male figure received. We also calculated individual response surfaces for 105 women (each women viewed 53 figures). Both methods yielded almost identical results. We discuss our finding in the context of previous studies that have taken a univariate approach to quantify female preferences. We discuss the hypothesis that pre-copulatory sexual selection might play a role in the evolution of genital traits.

Quantitative genetic variation, selection and secular change of skull shape in humans

Author(s): Klingenberg, C, Martínez-Abadías, N, Esparza, M, Sjøvold, T, Hernández, M

Summary:

The combined use of geometric morphometrics and quantitative genetics provides a set of powerful tools for obtaining quantitative information that is crucial for many important questions concerning the evolution of shape. In particular, the demographic information that is available for human populations make humans a unique study system for studying the mechanisms of evolutionary change in morphological traits. We investigate skull shape in the population of Hallstatt (Austria), where a collection of human skulls with associated records offer a unique opportunity for such studies. We use an individual-based statistical model to estimate the genetic covariance matrix, and characterize selection using fitness estimates from demographic data. We find clear evidence for directional selection, but not for nonlinear selection (stabilizing or disruptive selection). The predicted response to this selection, computed with genetic parameters from the population, does not match the estimate of secular change over the 150-year range of the data. We discuss possible reasons for the mismatch.

Genetic genealogy talks

Some DNA lectures from Who Do You Think You Are 2014:

Scottish DNA - Clans, Families, and Surnames (Alasdair Macdonald)

Wales, DNA & Surnames (Brian Swann)

Autosomal DNA Success Stories (Emily Aulicino, Maurice Gleeson, Katherine Borges)

The Basics of DNA Testing (Katherine Borges)

Autosomal DNA - a step-by-step approach to analysing your atDNA matches (Maurice Gleeson)

DNA for Beginners - the three tests (Debbie Kennett)

Update: A few more have been posted.

Citizen Science - an online community approach to researching haplogroup R1b1a2 (Andy Grierson)

Men, Metal, and the Recent Re-Peopling of Western Europe (Michael Hammer)

Combining Traditional & Genetic Genealogy - The Pomeroy DNA Project (Chris Pomery)

Estimating the proportion of Irish ancestry in the US and Massachusetts

[See Estimating the proportion of Puritan genes in America's white population for links to census data.]

"A Survey of Irish Surnames 1992-97" (pdf) lists the following as the 10 most common surnames in Ireland in the 1990s:

1. Murphy 2. (O)Kelly 3. Walsh(e) 4. (O)Connor 5. (O)Sullivan 6. (O)Byrne 7. (O)Brien 8. Ryan 9. Smith/Smyth 10. (O)Neill

We'll exclude Smith/Smyth for obvious reasons. The remaining 9 most common names, all of Gaelic origin, cover 7.85% of the 1990s Irish population. (With the 1890 data, the number would be 7.67%; but that's leaving out some of the variants included in the 1990s survey.) Northern Ireland's inclusion in the survey might end up inflating our surname-based Irish Catholic population estimates by something like 10%, but I'm not worried about this level of error right now.

The number of US whites bearing one of the nine most common Irish surnames in 2000, from Census data: 1188571

The extrapolated equivalent total number of Irish individuals among the US white population in 2000: 15141032

Which comes out to 7.78% of the ancestry of the US non-Hispanic white population in 2000.

15 million (or maybe 13.5 million) descendants is certainly a more plausible biological outcome of 4.5 million Irish immigrants than the "40 million Irish Americans" we see from census self-identifications.

But it appears there's considerably less disconnect between levels of Irish ancestry and Irish self-identification in Massachusetts (vs. the US as a whole).

In the 1940 Census (the 2000 Census surname data is not available broken down by state), 87028 Massachusetts whites had one of the nine most common Irish names. Based on that, we can estimate the number of Irish in MA was 1108637 -- or 25.9% of the total 1940 MA white population of 4280019.

The 2005-2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates put the Irish proportion of the Massachusetts population, based on self-identification, at 23.7% (vs. 11.9% for English). Or, considering only the non-Hispanic white population, something like 29% identify as Irish.

This better agreement likely reflects relatively lower levels of intermarriage in MA, as might be expected from the state's greater Irish concentration.

The future of genealogy

An ASHG 2013 abstract from AncestryDNA:

Reconstruction of Ancestral Human Genomes from Genome-Wide DNA Matches.

Individuals who lived long ago may still have much or all of their genome present in modern populations. The genomes of these individuals exist in small segments broken down by recombination and inherited in part by his or her descendants. If such an individual had many children, leading to a large number of descendants today, much of the ancestral genome will be present in modern populations. For the pairs of descendants with the “target” ancestor as their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), any region of their genomes shared identical-by-descent (IBD) most likely represents the corresponding region of the ancestor’s genome. Given a set of pairs of individuals linked to the same MRCA, we develop a novel computational approach to reconstruct the haplotypes of the MRCA from the IBD segments and haplotypes of the descendants. With simulated data we assess the performance of our method, affected by factors such as quality of genealogical trees used to infer the MRCA, reliability of inferred IBD, coverage of IBD segments, number of descendants of the MRCA, and number of sampled descendants. To demonstrate the utility of our method, we examine over 125,000 individuals in the AncestryDNA database with phased genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data and detailed genealogical information. After first identifying regions of the genome shared IBD between all individuals, we selected one group of several hundred individuals with an 18th century couple as a known MRCA. Using our method to tile together these individuals’ IBD segments, we are able to reliably construct the ancestral couple’s four haplotypes in large genomic regions with high coverage of IBD segments. In regions of the genome with lower IBD coverage, we are unable to identify and construct all haplotypes with certainty. Our study demonstrates the possibility of reconstructing the genomes of human ancestors, with large family sizes and a large number of living descendants, who lived one to even 12 generations ago. The ability to reconstruct the genomes of human ancestors using genetic and genealogical data has exciting implications in the fields of population genetics, medical genetics, and genealogy research.

Blaine Bettinger has a longer post, The Science Fiction Future of Genetic Genealogy, inspired by the abstract.

While the potential for this sort of thing has been apparent for years, it's good to see concrete steps being taken in this direction. A related (perhaps slightly over-optimistic) 2010 post by Tamura Jones:

Paternal age and fitness in pre-industrial Finland (SMBE 2013)

Accumulation of Deleterious Mutations and Fitness in a Pre-industrial Human Population

Adam D. Hayward1, Virpi Lummaa1,2, Georgii A. Bazykin3,4 1University of Sheffield; 2Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; 3Institute for Information Transmission Problems; 4Moscow State University

Many of the mutations are detrimental to fitness, and each individual carries a burden of deleterious mutations that were accumulated over many generations. In humans, the number of de novo point mutations passed on to an offspring is strongly dependent on the father’s age. Here, we use extensive pedigree data on a pre-industrial Finnish population to get, for each individual, the ages of his or her male ascendants for up to three generations, and use this data as a proxy for the number of acquired mutations. Individuals whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fathered their lineage at age of 20 were ~9% more likely to survive to adulthood than those with 40-year-old male ancestors. Among survivors to adulthood, older male ascendants were also associated with a reduced probability of getting married. These observations suggest that the deleterious mutations acquired from recent ancestors may be a substantial burden to fitness in humans.

R. A. Fisher: The Social Selection of Fertility (1930)

Chapter 11 of The Genetical Theory Of Natural Selection:

Genealogy / genetic genealogy conference free live stream

SCGS Genealogy Jamboree to Offer FREE Live Streaming Sessions June 7-9

The Southern California Genealogical Society announces its schedule of live-streamed sessions of the 2013 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree. The "JamboSTREAM" webcast is free to viewers and is made available through the gracious support of Ancestry.com. [. . .]

Sessions to be live streamed include:

Friday, June 7 [. . .]

4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
FR022: DNA Panel Discussion - Hear it from the Experts.
CeCe Moore; Alice Fairhurst; Ken Chanine PhD; Joanna Mountain PhD; Bennett Greenspan
Co-Sponsored by International Society of Genetic Genealogy

Moment Magazine's great (Jewish) DNA experiment

23andMe:

In September, Moment Magazine got all nerdy and wrote about their Great DNA Experiment, in which they look at the 23andMe results of 15 notable Americans of Jewish ancestry and make some interesting genetic connections. It’s a good illustration of how our DNA can tell us about our interconnectedness.

The piece shows it’s not “six degrees” that separates these individuals from each other, but, in all but one case, no degrees of separation. This means that these individuals are all directly related to one another, albeit in most cases distantly. This was also news to the 15 participants.

All but one of the individuals has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The one exception is Linda Chavez, the political commentator, who descended from Conversos, indivduals of Jewish and Muslim ancestry who converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition. Her ancestors eventually settled in New Mexico. But even in her case, although she isn’t directly related to any of the group, she is connected to each of the others individuals focused on in the piece by just one other individual in the 23andMe database.

The connections shown in the article are what prompted The New York Times columnist David Brooks and NPR “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel to joke about learning they were distant cousins, sharing a common ancestor several generations back. Brooks kidded that he was “most surprised that our ancestors worked together on National Schetl Radio, on a program called ‘All Pogroms Considered.’” (Maybe the line needs a drum roll to work.)

The article shows the genetic connections between people like Mayim Bialik, the actress on the Big Bang Theory, and Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. Or the connections between NPR’s Siegel, and Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, or his connections to 23andMe’s CEO’s mother Esther Wojcicki, a journalist and teacher. The magazine shows the connections and the amount of shared DNA, measured in centimorgans (cMs), to illustrate the “relatedness” of any two individuals. More closely related individuals share more DNA.

In the full article at the Moment Magazine website we also learn, for example, that Stephen Dubner's "first cousin once removed was Ethel Greenglass, wife of Julius Rosenberg", or that "Esther Wojicki's maternal-grandparents gave each of the boys among their 13 children a different surname in order to help them avoid conscription in the Russian army".

Our findings are typical of what geneticists would expect from a group of people of mostly Ashkenazi Jewish origin, says 23andMe's Mike Macpherson. Today's Ashkenazi Jews descend from approximately 25,000 ancestors who survived plagues and massacres in the 12th and 13th centuries. Survivors of these "bottlenecks" and other similar occurrences then married one another, sharing their DNA with millions of descendants.

Dutch ancestry - two NYT articles

The Van Dusens of New Amsterdam:

As with the Old Testament patriarch who gave birth to a nation, it all began with Abraham, whose forebears were from the town of Duersen in northern Brabant. Known in official documents as “Abraham the miller,” or “Abraham Pieterszen,” as in son of Peter, he landed on the island of “Manatus” some time before February 1627. Nearly 400 years later, he has more than 200,000 descendants over 15 generations scattered across the Americas, according to several genealogical experts who have built on intensive studies of the family over the centuries. In the 1880 census, there were 3,000 heads of household with the name Van Dusen — or Van Deusen, Van Deursen, Van Duzer and other common variants — all, the experts say, traceable back to Abraham the miller.

Theirs is among a small cohort of large, long-running Dutch families — including under-the-radar Rapeljes, with more than a million descendants, and the more prominent Kips and Rikers, with their names on neighborhoods and institutions — whose well-documented histories provide a compelling window into the development of what would become New York and, later, the United States.

Two of Abraham’s progeny — Martin Van Buren, a great-great-great-grandson; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (add four more greats) — served as presidents of the United States. A third, Eliza Kortright (Generation 7), married one, James Monroe. Egbert Benson (Generation 6) was the first attorney general of postcolonial New York. The Rev. Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, a theologian (Generation 10), made the cover of Time magazine in 1954.

There were family members on both sides of the early border wars between New York and Massachusetts, the War of Independence and the Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Pvt. William Jackson Raburn of Indiana’s “Fighting 300” died of a gunshot wound on July 2, 1863; a day later, Matthew Henry Van Dusen — Raburn’s fourth cousin twice removed (by marriage) — a “reb” with the fabled Hood’s Texas Brigade, was sidelined with a head injury.

Cornelis Kortright (Generation 5) owned slaves accused of participating in a “Negro plot” in 1741. Jan Van Deusen Jr., Kortright’s second cousin, saved New York’s historical records when the British burned the state’s first capital to the ground in 1777. [. . .]

Phoebe shares her father’s fascination with the family, particularly since she read some of the excerpts from her great-great-great-great-grandfather’s Civil War diary. “It kind of amazed me that I knew someone who was part of what I was studying in school in textbooks,” she said. “A lot of my friends’ parents just came here and don’t speak English yet. And some came here two generations ago. The one who has been here the longest came from Scotland, and that’s only a hundred years.”

Jets’ Tebow Can Trace His Lineage to New Jersey:

Tim Tebow arrives in New Jersey, where the Jets practice and play, as the world’s most famous backup quarterback. It is a homecoming, of sorts, centuries in the making, because Tebow appears to be the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of a man from Hackensack.

MetLife Stadium, home of the Jets and the Giants in East Rutherford, is about 10 miles from where an immigrant, Andries Tebow (spelled variously as Thybaut, Tibout, TeBow and other derivations), settled down after landing from Europe in the late 1600s. One of his children was Pieter, born in Hackensack and baptized there in 1696, records show.

More than 300 years and 10 generations later, Tim Tebow brings the family name full circle, according to the amateur genealogist — and Tebow’s fourth cousin, once removed — Dean Enderlin. [. . .]

It is unclear how much Tebow knows about his genealogy. While his own recent background is well chronicled — born to Christian missionaries in the Philippines, raised in Florida, now a preacher in a championship quarterback’s body — little has been examined about his deeper roots.

But there is no doubt that early generations of Tebows settled in what is now Bergen County, and Tim Tebow appears to be the latest link in a long chain of North Jersey arrivals. [. . .]

Enderlin said that, like many Tebows in the country, he and Tim Tebow can be traced to Andries Tebow, who sailed to the New World out of Bruges, Belgium. Enderlin is unsure where Andries lived — either Belgium or Holland — but he believes his family was Walloon, a French-speaking minority rooted in southern Belgium.

“Belgium was governed by the Catholic rulers of Spain and persecuted Protestants, forcing many to flee,” Myra Vanderpool Gormley wrote in an article for Genealogy Magazine titled, “Belgian Migrations: Walloons Arrived Early in America.”

“Many went to the northern parts of the Netherlands,” she wrote. “It was from their exile in Holland that they emigrated again.”

Dutch / English / Old American ancestry

Greg Cochran writes:

When responding to the Census, more than five million Americans claim to be of Dutch descent. And they mostly are, at least a little. Now you might wonder how they compare with the Dutch back in the Netherlands: you might wonder about the relative academic or economic success of these two groups, which presumably have a common ancestry. But you would be wrong to do so. You would be comparing apples and House of Orangemen.

There were four or five different Dutch waves of settlement in this country. The first is pretty well-known, the Dutch colony in New York. Of course, it was only about half Dutch in origin: the rest were Walloons and French Huguenots. Lots of people have some ancestry from that group, including people I know. Why, if there was any justice, Henry Harpending would own a fine farm on Manhattan Island right now.

Of course, Henry isn’t all that Dutch. His surname is. He comes from an area of New York State that really did have some Dutch settlement. The thing is, white Protestants in this country have been intermarrying rather freely for several hundred years: it is rare to find someone in that category whose ancestors all come from one ethnicity. I would be surprised if Henry is 1/8th Dutch. In much the same way, my patrilineal lineage is Ulster Scot (who fears mention the battle of the Boyne!?) but the rest includes English, Welsh, Scottish, Green Irish, and a component that, I suspect, only became Dutch in 1918, and was Bavarian before that. We’re talking about ye olde Americans, not Ellis Island types. Not that they haven’t mixed as well, but less so… [. . .]

Most of the people who self-identify as Dutch-Americans are mostly something else. Why? Sometimes a family tradition, or a surname, but more than anything else, fashion.

Fashions change. For example, the fraction of Americans who report English ancestry has dropped drastically since 1980 – so much that so that you would have to wonder about secret death camps if you took it seriously. But it’s fashion. I looked at the census numbers for my home county, and then looked at the phone book: Census result was 20% English ancestry, real number was more like 80%. Of course this means that people in the US claiming a particular ethnicity can not only have limited ancestry from that group, but be oddly unrepresentative as well.

Henry Harpending confirms:

I would probably put “Dutch” on a census form if an answer were required. I am either 1/32 or 1/64 Dutch, and worse the supposed Dutch ancestor was a Huguenot or something like that, so I am likely really 0% Dutch. No matter…….

I've commented on this phenomenon before (e.g.), but a periodic reminder is useful. I don't see a problem with someone identifying with his patrilineal national origin for census purposes while remaining aware of his overall ancestry. What I find irritating is the eagerness of some with American ancestry to identify as "Scotch-Irish" after reading a review of Albion's Seed, or "Celtic" in the name of Celtic Southronism, or "German" because they had a German great-grandfather, and then declare themselves at war with or at least safely distinct from evil/culpable "WASPs" / "Anglo-Saxons" (which appellations in reality describe the core of the breeding population from which the newly self-identified Borderer/Celt/German sprung).

Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records

In the name of the migrant father—Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records

M H D Larmuseau et al.

Patrilineal heritable surnames are widely used to select autochthonous participants for studies on small-scale population genetic patterns owing to the unique link between the surname and a genetic marker, the Y-chromosome (Y-chr). Today, the question arises as to whether the surname origin will be informative on top of in-depth genealogical pedigrees. Admixture events that happened in the period after giving heritable surnames but before the start of genealogical records may be informative about the additional value of the surname origin. In this context, an interesting historical event is the demic migration from French-speaking regions in Northern France to the depopulated and Dutch-speaking region Flanders at the end of the sixteenth century. Y-chr subhaplogroups of individuals with a French/Roman surname that could be associated with this migration event were compared with those of a group with autochthonous Flemish surnames. Although these groups could not be differentiated based on in-depth genealogical data, they were significantly genetically different from each other. Moreover, the observed genetic divergence was related to the differences in the distributions of main Y-subhaplogroups between contemporary populations from Northern France and Flanders. Therefore, these results indicate that the surname origin can be an important feature on top of in-depth genealogical results to select autochthonous participants for a regional population genetic study based on Y-chromosomes.

Keywords: admixture; genetic genealogy; historical gene flow; human population structure; Y-chromosome

http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/hdy201217a.html

Ancestry.com's "Human Genetic Diversity Project"

Ancestry.com will apparently be offering autosomal DNA testing soon. They just gave away 2000 free "upgrades" to people who had previously done Y or mtDNA tests through Ancestry DNA, evidently for a forthcoming service along the lines of 23andMe's Relative Finder.

What You'll Get
Your Genetic Ethnicity
By testing over 700,000 of your DNA markers, you'll see the mix of ethnicities you have in your genes and how they relate to your family tree.
More comprehensive DNA matching
Find more and closer relatives, overcome brick walls, confirm relationships and find common ancestors. Enhanced, simple web site tools

The consent form contains some additional details, which I haven't seen discussed elsewhere:

1. What is the research project?

The Ancestry DNA's Human Genetic Diversity Project ("The Project") will collect, preserve and analyze genetic information, genealogical pedigrees, historical records, surveys, and other information (collectively, "Information") from people all around the world in order to better understand human evolution and migration, population genetics, ethnographic diversity and boundaries, genealogy, and the history of our species. Researchers hope that the Project will be an invaluable genealogic tool for future generations and will engage the interest of a wide range of scholars interested in genealogy, anthropology, evolution, languages, cultures, medicine, and other topics. The Information will not be used for medical purposes in the treatment or diagnosis of any individuals. [. . .]

2. What information will be collected?

The Project will collect genetic, genealogical and health information that has been stripped of any personally identifiable information in order to study the history of our species. Genes are in your cells, and they are what make you different from anyone else. Some genes control things like the color of your hair or eyes. Genetic information includes your genotype that is discovered when Ancestry DNA processes your saliva or is otherwise provided by you to Ancestry DNA (the "Genetic Information") when you choose to use the Ancestry DNA service. Genealogical information is your pedigree, ethnicity, family history, and other information about you that is either provided by you or is gleaned from publicly available documents on Ancestry.com's website and other locations (the "Genealogical Information"). Health information includes self-reported information from you such as medical conditions, diseases, other health-related information, personal traits, and other information that is either provided by you or is gleaned from publicly available documents on Ancestry.com's website and other locations (the "Health Information").

In all cases for this Project, personally identifiable information about specific study participants (such as name and birth date) is removed from the Information before it is compiled as part of this Project.

The Project will take all of this information (that is already stripped of personally identifiable information) and compile it into a single data summary to minimize the possibility that any individual participant can be identified by any researcher or other individual from the Information.

3. How will the information be used?

Your Information will be combined with others and used to further the Project's objectives of increasing our understanding the components that define the history of our species. Discoveries made as a result of this research could be used in the study of genealogy, anthropology, evolution, languages, cultures, medicine, and other topics.

Previously, ancestry.com have advertised for a PhD population geneticist:

The right person will be using a huge dataset of information from all over the world, developing methods and experimental design to improve results in genotyping data to inform pedigrees. This is not (yet) for medical research and, as such, is not regulated by the FDA. [ . . .] We are mounting a major effort to use genomics to shed light on human diversity, origins and relatedness. The successful candidate will join our efforts to develop and apply analysis pipelines to exploit genotyping data in order to provide information about countries of origin, relatedness and apply genetic information to the construction of human pedigrees. In this position, you will develop, implement and improve methods to use SNP data to provide information on relatedness and genetic origins of humans. You will work closely with other biologists in analyzing data as well as with members of the product development team. This position offers an exciting opportunity to apply cutting edge computational approaches to an unprecedented, large-scale set of pedigreed human genome data. Characteristic duties will include: • Develop, benchmark and implement data analysis pipelines for SNP genotyping data • Evaluate significance of results and recommend changes in experimental design to improve results • Develop, benchmark and implement methods to use genotyping data to inform pedigrees. • Identify new experimental and/or analytic approaches that will improve the outcome of the study • Manage collaborations with laboratory and informatics staff • Successfully communicate scientific concepts to a diverse community of scientists and laypeople Key Responsibilities / Performance Requirements: • Doctorate degree in statistical genetics, population genetics, statistics or a related field. • Candidates should have a track record of productive research in statistical and population genetics • Experience in human population genetics and genotyping • Ability to manipulate large data sets • Programming skills in UNIX/LINUX operating systems, and fluency in standard genetic analytic software (such as R/Bioconductor, EIGENSOFT, MACH, PLINK, ADMIXMAP) • Experience in molecular biology and high-throughput environments would be a significant advantage. • Excellent organizational skills • Superior oral and written English communication skills required. • Must be able to manage multiple simultaneous long-term projects while meeting frequent project deadlines in a fast-paced environment. • Must be able to translate high-level biological questions into concrete tasks.

Dienekes releases ancestry analysis tool

For people with 23andMe or Family Finder data (background; download). Don't take the component names too literally or assume this particular analysis is the final word, but the tool allows you to compare your personal results with those for various populations included in Dienekes' admixture runs. Definitely do not take the results from Dodecad Oracle mixed mode (which lists combinations of two populations that would produce admixture proportions most similar to yours) literally. It might be useful for people with more broadly mixed ancestry. But from what I'm seeing, people of Northwestern European ancestry will frequently be shown as, for example, 7/8 Scottish and 1/8 Italian, when they have minimal Scottish and no Italian ancestry. Dienekes acknowledges "mixed mode should be used with caution". I think it throws away too much information to ever have much precision within Europe. The future will be very large databases and assignment of individual segments to specific geographic locations.

Irish DNA Atlas project launched

From an article in an Irish genealogy newsletter (pdf): "Over the past decade or so genealogists around the world have become increasingly intrigued by the possibilities afforded through the advances in genetic genealogy to augment or confirm our traditional record based research. This new group project is yet another first for Irish genealogy building on the Society’s unparalleled record of innovative projects and initiatives. The Society’s Director of Archival Services, Séamus O’Reilly, FGSI, will spearhead this new group project in conjunction with Dr. Gianpiero Cavalleri of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland aimed at promoting an awareness, appreciation and knowledge of genetic genealogy. The project will compile an Irish DNA Atlas through the collection of birth briefs and DNA samples. [. . .]

Dr. Cavalleri explained the objective of the project as ‘seeking to create a collection of DNA samples from individuals of Irish origin, which can then be used to explore human genetic variation in the Irish population. Understanding human genetic variation in the Irish population is required for two principal purposes; (1) to further our knowledge of the population history of Ireland and (2) to help us understand how genes influence health in Ireland.’ He said that ‘the diversity of the Irish genome is a valuable, yet largely unexplored, resource of the Irish nation. As an island population on the edge of Europe, Ireland has a rich cultural heritage that is the product of ancient migrations to the region. Understanding and preserving this history enriches our culture. Whilst historical records and archaeological studies have uncovered many wonderful aspects of Irish history, there are many questions left unanswered and DNA can help address these.’

The Aims of the Irish DNA Atlas are (1) To create a DNA collection that allows genetic analysis of population structure within Ireland, and ethnic groups across the island. Analysis of such a collection will reveal ancient demographic movements and inform on the ancestry of specific regions and ethnic groups within Ireland. (2) To create a DNA collection to act as controls in population based studies of health in Ireland. The Project aims to recruit individuals representing each of the 32 counties of Ireland. Each participant should have all eight great grandparents from that county – so that their DNA represents that particular region of Ireland. By recruiting people from every county the project hopes to build a “DNA atlas” of the island of Ireland. This new group project is not confined to GSI Members, anybody can participate. For further information or to participate please contact Séamus O’Reilly on Irish.DNA@familyhistory.ie"

DNA tests show Ingmar Bergman not his mother's biological child

Who was the mother of Ingmar Bergman?

The mystery is even greater given that Karin Bergman, who kept extensive diaries, recording both events and thoughts, was by all accounts unaware that Ingmar was not the child to whom she gave birth July 14,1918 but a surrogate child. [. . .]

The analysis, which reached her April 12, 2011, established with certainty that Ingmar Bergman was not the son of Karin Bergman, supporting Tillberg’s hypothesis about her own family. It is not yet certain who Bergman’s mother was, but a great deal of circumstantial evidence suggests that it was Tillberg’s grandmother, Hedvig Sjöberg (later Tillberg), who in July 1918 gave birth to a son in Stockholm who was immediately given up for adoption.

Ethnic background of the British Royal family

From the website of genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, who died last year. The Ethnic ancestry of Prince William (b. 1982):

Every so often, someone will state that the British Royal Family is "not British", that they are instead "German" or "Foreign". Since this belief seems to be somewhat wide-spread, and since the genealogy of many members of the British Royal Family is fairly well known, it seemed to me that it would be fairly easy to quantify precisely how "British" or "non-British" the British Royal Family is. This webpage shows the results of my work.