AncestryDNA SideView/New at Ancestry.com

I've been interested in seeing how accurate our ethnicity results become as the technology advances. It's difficult to gage accuracy without separating the results by parent. 23andMe has been separating the results by parent if at least one parent has tested with them. 

Since 23andMe phases your results with an actual parent, or parents, their ethnicity results are more accurate. Separating the results by parent is called phasing. 

Ancestry.com phases results by guessing the phase based on strings of letters that make up our DNA code, A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosine), and T (thymine). These appear in base pairs, such as A-T, one letter for each parent. In order to separate the base pairs according to parent strings of letters are separated by parent using your matches in their database. It's an accurate process but errors can occur. A phase can turn out to be wrong, which will cause your ethnicity to be incorrectly estimated.

(For a better explanation by a professional genetic genealogist read: "AncestryDNA SideView | Ethnicity Inheritance | What is Phasing?" by Diahan Southard.")

How accurate is SlideView for my mother and me? 

Looking at my mother Edna Forgey-Kapple's SideView gives us a good idea regarding how accurate Ancestry.com's phased results are. My mother's father's ancestry is 100% Colonial American. His ancestors originally settled in the mid-Atlantic and Southern part of the United States. there is no New England ancestry I have been able to find. Settlers of those areas were heavily Scots-Irish and German. Those two ethnicities make up the bulk of his ancestry. There is also likely some English and Welsh ancestry. 

My mother's mother, Graciela (Lucresia) Del Castillo, was Nicaraguan. Nicaraguans are a mix of Spanish, Indian, and African. My grandmother lived in Granada, Nicaragua in an area that was a segregated area where people who were primarily of Spanish/European ancestry lived. Granada had a line drawn in the city separating the indigenous population from those who looked more European. However, all Nicaraguans are a mix of the 3 ethnicities because there was never a large migration of Europeans into Nicaragua.

Now let's look at the split between my mother's parents in her results.

Looking at parent 1 and parent 2 on the parent chart, and the ethnicity breakdown, I can easily tell which parent is which. The breakdown looks fairly accurate. If a person's parents were both from the same places, they wouldn't be able to identify which parent is 1, and which 2. We see parent 1, Graciela Del Castillo, has much more color in her chart representing the fact she isn't 100% European, and she has more trace regions. 

Maternal Parent 1 Graciela Del Castillo-Forgey

It's definitely obvious Graciela is parent 1. 

Below you see African admixtures represented in the chart as coming from the Graciela Del Castillo side. Tracing my grandfather's ancestry, I haven't found any African ancestry. Our mtDNA is L, which is African, and would support this result. Europeans in the United States generally married other Europeans. 

Now looking at the indigenous Indian admixture we see that share is larger than the African representing the fact they were more numerous being native to the area. 

Ancestry estimates that my mother received a 25% admixture share of Spanish from her mother Graciela. 

Below we see Basque, and Portugal represented which would make sense because they reflect the Iberian Peninsula ancestry. The surname Lacayo on my grandmother's side is Basque. 

Some French is showing up on Graciela's side. This could be French Basque or it could be a phasing error? 

Below we see a sliver of Irish on Graciela's side. I don't believe she had any Irish and believe this is a phasing error. 

90% of this so far looks accurate for Graciela Del Castillo. She said she had some German ancestry which is not showing up in my mother's results. 

Maternal Parent 2 Charles Forgey

As I said Charles Forgey had American Colonial ancestry which was a mix of British Isles and German. 

Since many of his ancestors were Scots-Irish we would expect to see this reflected on his side. We do see Irish, and Scottish, represented in the parent chart below. 

England and Northwest Europe below helps fill this Colonial American admixture. Obviously this portion of DNA isn't pointing to anything more specific. 

I would say Charles Forgey was about 1/4 German on paper. According to his breakdown my mother received 8% Germanic admixture from him. 

My mother is said to have received 2% Sweden and Denmark admixture which I believe isn't accurate. That is probably Germanic. 

This again, is very accurate. I think it's accurate because my mother's parents were from such different ethnicities, and their ancestors married people from the same ethnic groups for generations. 

My parents

On my father's side I'm 1/4 Austo-Hungarian, 1/8 Irish, 1/16 French Canadian, and the remainder of my 50% share from my father would be a Colonial American mix which would mainly be a British Isles mixture. On my mother's side I'm 1/4 Nicaraguan and 1/4 Colonial American British Isles, and German mix. On paper that is. That doesn't mean I inherited these amounts of DNA admixture.

Parent 1 Edna Forgey-Kapple

I can identify my mother Edna immediately by clicking on all of the ethnicities associated with Nicaragua. She is definitely parent 1 as we see below with the Iberian and Indigenous. Those ethnicities cover about a quarter of the chart as expected. 

The ethnicities I would associate with my mother's father's side, my grandfather, looks to be over represented. Maybe I did receive more DNA from my grandfather's side? 

I found what is apparently a phasing error. My breakdown shows Welsh and Norwegian admixture on my mother's side. My mother doesn't have those ethnicities in her results? If she doesn't have it she couldn't give those to me. 

Since I'm more Heinz57 than Ivory soap pure my results aren't as accurate. As families spend more time in America they mix with other ethnicities jumbling the letters in our DNA up. 

Parent 2 Robert Kapple

Since my Kapple grandfather Rudolph was Austro-Hungarian and my grandmother Dorothy Maon-Kapple Colonial American, Irish, and French Canadian it's again fairly easy to figure out which quarter share of parent 2 represents each grandparent. 

Paternal Grandfather

The Germanic and Eastern European on the parent 2 side represents my Kapple Austro-Hungarian grandfather. When I first tested 8 years ago I didn't see him represented in my ethnicity results. It's nice to see him represented. These admixtures don't cover a 1/4 of the chart but are getting closer to correct. 

Paternal Grandmother

My grandmother Dorothy Mason-Kapple was a mixture of Irish, French Canadian, and Colonial American is showing up correctly on parent 2 my father's side.

Clearly, we see my great-grandmother Helen Mullen-Mason's Irish showing up. She was born in Ireland in 1880. According to this breakdown I received 23% of my Irish from her. The Scottish could have come from early American Scottish ancestors? 

What's missing from my maternal grandmother's side is French. My grandmother was 1/4 French Canadian. I have many French-Canadian DNA matches so I believe I have some of that admixture. 

I would say the breakdown by parent for me isn't as accurate as it was for my mother. I believe it's because I'm more ethnically mixed and it's confusing their algorithms. Some of my ethnic groups are underrepresented in the database which also makes identifying my ethnicities difficult. The closer someone is to a particular ethnic group the better the results, meaning your family has been in one place for centuries and haven't mixed much recently with other ethnic groups. 

I know where my ancestors lived in the past few hundred years, so the ethnicity results are less important to me (although ethnicity results can help sort our DNA matches). If someone doesn't know where their ancestors are from the accuracy of these results are important to them. 

So how accurate is the Ancestry.com SideView for us? I would say it's in the 90'% range for my mother and about 80% accurate for me. So, I would infer the ethnicity results overall accuracy are in those ranges.