Estimating Ethnicity Percentages Comparing Your Pedigree to Your DNA

I recently read an article on how to estimate your ethnicity percentages from DNAeXplained. Roberta Estes explained how to estimate your percentages based on what you know about your 64 great-great-great-great grandparents. You could then compare it to the ethnicity estimates generated by any DNA testing company.

I wanted to see what I’d come up with.

I used Google Sheets to create a chart that included six generations of my direct ancestors. It’s basically an ahnentafel chart, but in reverse because it’s just easier to create it that way. Here’s the chart:

In the header, you’ll see percentages. This is an average of how much DNA I could get from each person in that generation. In reality the percentages are likely not exact. Could be a little more, could be less, could be none. Read Roberta’s article if you’d like more of an explanation.

Next I color-coded each of my 4x great grandparents based on what I know of their ethnic heritage. Most of them were born here in the United States, so I was relying on what I know of their ancestors or the communities they lived in. As you can see, they were mostly of German descent (green). I’m including my Swiss ancestors as Germans as that is the language they spoke and the group that they immigrated with and settled among.

My Smith and Bennington ancestors (blue) came over from Scotland in the late 1800s, so they were easy to identify, too. James Buchanan and Sarah Craig were both born in Ireland (orange), so I included them as Irish, though it is likely they were from Northern Ireland and of Scottish descent. I also have a couple of ancestors I can identify as Irish (orange), Welsh (red), Danish (purple), or English (light magenta). Several of the German ancestors have names that appear to be of English-origin, but closer examination of their lives shows a close relationship with German communities and use of the German language.

I was pleased to see that I only have two 4x great grandparents who remain unidentified. I wasn’t surprised to see they were Jefferson Force’s parents. He is largely an unknown, so I’ve identified his parents as of unknown heritage, though they could possibly have been French.

How does this relate to my AncestryDNA ethnicity?

According to Ancestry, I’m:

• 63% Western Europe: Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Netherlands, Brussels, Northern Italy, Western Poland
• 16% Ireland: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Britain
• 5% Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark
• 4% Iberian Peninsula: Spain, Portugal, France
• 4% Great Britain: Eastern Great Britain, Normandy, Brussels, Netherlands
• 2% Italy/Greece
• <1% European Jewish

Compare that to my estimates from the pedigree chart after I’ve matched them to Ancestry’s regions:

Region	AncestryDNA	Pedigree
Western Europe	63%	73.72%
Ireland	16%	15.6%
Scandinavia	5%	3.12%
Great Britain	4%	1.56%
Italy/Greece	2%
Iberian Peninsula	4%
European Jewish	<1%
Unknown		6.24%

Ancestry’s regions are fairly large and overlap significantly, so the estimates aren’t actually that different. The variance in Great Britain is insignificant given that Ancestry’s region for Great Britain includes most of Western Europe.

What is interesting to me is just how close my estimate of my Irish ancestry from my pedigree is to the DNA estimate. To the best of my knowledge, I have exactly three possible Irish ancestors in the 6th generation: John Mulhollan, James Buchanan, and Sarah Craig. That works out to 4.68%. If I add in all my Scottish ancestors (9.36%) and Welsh ancestor (1.56%), it comes out to 15.6%, only 0.4% off Ancestry’s estimate. Pretty amazing.

The Scottish and Irish comes to me through my dad, the Welsh through my mom. It’s likely that the 16% is DNA I inherited primarily from my great grandmother, Isabella Aitken (Smith) Hocker. And maybe there’s a bit from my great grandmother Nora Melinda (Houdeshell) Hoover and my Welsh ancestress Rachel Jones, too. That’s actually quite a bit given how overwhelmingly German my ancestors were.

I know a lot of researchers who are more expert at this stuff state that the ethnicity estimates are entertaining, but hardly reliable. In my case, they’re pretty close to what I would have expected from my research.

• Category: Research
• Tag: DNA