DNA News: MyOrigins Grade

My Aunt's DNA test results came back August 7, which was a month after they received the kit back. She had 22 pages of matches. Around 220 matches. I haven't found any useful matches on the Owens line yet. She also shared DNA with the same Owens descendant at GEDmatch as me, but on a different chromosome. I'm hoping the Family Finder match database increases in size so we can find more relevant matches? You can't beat tools like the chromosome browser at Family Finder. I've been trying to get AncestryDNA matches to compare with me at GEDmatch. So far only one out of a dozen requests I've sent has been answered.

I was very interested how my Aunt's ethnic origin percentages would turn out. Based on my knowledge of our family origins I would give MyOrigins a B-. Her ethnic breakdown was 70% British Isles, 29 % Eastern European, and 1% Middle Eastern. My Aunt does have substantial British Isles ancestry but it definitely wouldn't be more than 50%, and certainly not the 70% she got from MyOrigins. Her mother's ancestry was around one quarter French Canadian, one quarter British/Scots Irish mix, and 50% Irish. . My Aunt should have gotten a little European Coastal plain like I did.  My Aunt's father was born in Hungary (now Burgenland, Austria). It's highly unlikely that any of her father's ancestors came from the British Isles. I've never heard of a migration pattern in that direction. I've researched the Kapple family back to the 1700's and every line was from Austria or Hungary. The 29% Eastern European my Aunt got is at least closer than my result which were only around 8%. This still leaves 20% of her father's side out, considering she had to inherit 50% from her father. The 1% Middle Eastern supposedly goes back to Asia Minor. This result is plausible since my Kapple cousin's Y DNA haplo is J2b2. However MyOrigins gave me 2% Middle Eastern, African Asiatic, which would be from the line I share with my Aunt.

Diaspora Jewish is also missing from our results. It's more than likely that we do have some of this ancestry. AncestryDNA did pick up a trace. When I ran the J test at GEDmatch my Aunt had a result of around 2% Ashkenazi.

My Grandmother Kapple believed we had some Native American ancestry. MyOrigins didn't show any? However, trace amounts of 1% to 1 1/2 % were found at Gedmatch. I tend to think GED match is correct. I believe our Native American comes through John Owens, the Indian Trader's wife.

MyOrigins is much more accurate than the old Family Finder ethnic predictions. However, the results are far from completely accurate, and tend to be inconsistent when comparing with family members, even taking into account the fact not all family members share the same DNA.