My Genetic Pedigree

I’ve been remarkably absent from this blog for much 2019 so far. That’s because I’ve been obsessed… uh, busy researching my DNA matches, looking for common ancestors—particularly those who match my known Snyder cousins. Since that’s the case, I thought it might be helpful to determine just how much of my genetic pedigree I’ve established.

We all have two pedigrees: our genealogical pedigree and our genetic pedigree. The genealogical pedigree contains every ancestor from whom we descend who we’ve been able to identify. The genetic pedigree includes every ancestor from whom we’ve received DNA.

Below you can see my genetic pedigree chart through my 5th great grandparents (click to enlarge).

The green indicates ancestors who have been identified as a common ancestor between an AncestryDNA match and I or a DNA connection—meaning one of their ancestors (and most likely their spouse) is the common ancestor. I’ve overlaid the surnames I’ve found in my genealogical research. Those cells without names are people I need to find.

As you can see I’ve managed to confirm a considerable about of my genealogical tree. What’s interesting to me is that they are in my lines that have been in America since the 1700s. The two largest gray areas—Greulich and Smith—are the two most recent immigrant ancestors. William and Eliza (Bonnington) Smith came to the U.S. in the 1890s and Carl Greulich arrived in New York on 28 January 1856.

Confirming those ancestors with DNA will require me to investigate more of my non-U.S. based matches. So, I should spend some of my research time on MyHeritage and those non-Ancestry test takers in GEDMatch.

The rest of the gray areas may be filled in by analyzing some of the matches for whom I’ve yet to determine which of my great grandparents’ lines they belong to. Perhaps one of the clusters I’ve noticed but not yet identified.

If you’ve been researching your DNA matches, have you tried to figure out how much of your genetic pedigree you’ve found?

• Category: Research
• Tag: Ancestry, DNA