This is a review about my AncestryDNA Ethnicity Estimate
My Genealogical Ancestry
I am a multicontinental American that is highly multiethnic, and I am related to many of my fellow Americans in many different ways.
My paternal grandfather's father's ancestry was African American. He had some European ancestry.
My paternal grandfather's mother's ancestry was African American.
My paternal grandmother's father's ancestry was African American. He had some European ancestry.
My paternal grandmother's mother's ancestry was African American with English, Acadian (French in what now known as Nova Scotia), Polish, Swiss, and German.
My maternal grandfather's father 's ancestry was Cape Verdean (Portuguese and Sub-Saharan African) His parents were immigrants when Cape Verde was still a Portuguese colony.
My maternal grandfather's mother's ancestry was Puerto Rican (Spanish, Sub-Saharan African, and Taino) on her father's side and Madeiran (Portuguese with Sub Saharan African) on her mother's side. Her father was born in Puerto Rico. Her mother was born in Hawaii when it was still a kingdom. Her maternal grandparents immigrated to Hawaii.
My maternal grandmother's father's ancestry was Colonial European American that was mainly English ancestry with some German, Swiss, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and Frisian.
My maternal grandmother's mother' ancestry was Ashkenazi Jewish American. Her father immigrated from Romania and her mother immigrated from an area in the Russian Empire that became Latvia.
Because of the Transatlantic Slave trade, I know very little about my African ancestry. Africa has over 3,000 ethnic groups, and that includes Nigeria having over 400 ethnic groups. My African ancestry is highly likely to consist of many African ethnic groups. I have some Indigenous American segments on my paternal chromosomes and not just my maternal chromosomes and X Chromosome. I have some Danish paternal DNA relative matches. From examining my European American paternal DNA relative matches, I learned that my father was a descendant of John Turner and his wife Patience Smith. John was the son of English American slaveowner Thomas Weathersbee and an unknown enslaved African American woman. Patience was 3/4 European and 1/4 African. Her mother Rachel was Irish. Her father was half African, half European. She purchased her husband's freedom from his father in 1769 in Halifax County, North Carolina. They relocated to Marion County, South Carolina. I share segments with some of John and Patience's European American descendants that consist of what 23andme shows as being predominantly Southeastern African with a little Filipino/Austronesian. A French man with a paternal grandmother born in the Southeastern African island Madagascar matches me in the location that is Filipino/Austronesian. 23andme shows him as having Southeastern African and Filipino/Austronesian ancestry. His paternal grandmother was part Malagasy.
My highly mixed, diverse ancestry is reflected in my DNA relative matches at AncestryDNA, 23andme, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and GEDmatch.
AncestryDNA has my paternal European as being only 4%, and that it is all French.
The vast majority of my European ancestry is on my maternal side.
I am shown as having 14% Spanish and 1% Sephardic Jewish with it all being on my maternal side.
My mother is shown as having only 2% Spanish and having no Sephardic Jewish though.
AncestryDNA is definitely not phasing the data between parent and child
My mother is shown as having 32% Portuguese, and I am shown as having 6% Portuguese. My maternal grandfather's Portuguese ancestry was from both Madeira and Cape Verde. Both are Atlantic archipleagos that were colonized by the Portuguese. Cape Verde became an independent African nation in 1975. Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal.
My mother is shown as having 24% Ashkenazi Jewish, and I am shown as having 14% Ashkenazi Jewish.
I am certain that Ancestry is having problems distinguishing Spanish from Portuguese with their strongly shared history and ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish and Portuguese are very genetically similar.
I am also certain that some of my mother's Jewish ancestry is Sephardic Jewish with it coming from my my maternal grandfather's side which is Cape Verdean, Puerto Rican, and Madeiran as well as maybe Azorean. Sephardic Jewish and Ashkenazi Jewish are very genetically similar.
Ancestry need need to stop rounding off ethnicities. DNA isn't all even. They need to stop dismissing ethnicities that are well under 1%. My Filipino/Austronesian segment is real. I should also have some Southeastern African in my ethnicity estimate. The Transatlantic slave trade did include Southeastern Africa including Mozambique and Madagascar. There are African Americans that match me on my Indigenous American segment, and some of them are shown as having no Indigenous American ancestry. Some of that are shown as having Indigenous American ancestry are shown as having a different type of Indigenous American. I doubt that my paternal Indigenous American is from Ecuador. There are European Americans that match me on my African segments and are shown as having no African ancestry.
African regions needs to be broken down. Africa is a continent with enormous amount of diversity. There are many ethnic groups in the African regions/countries, and many of the African ethnic groups are found in multiple African regions/countries.
I have ethnic analyses from many DNA companies/sites, and they're all significantly different from each other. During my 13 years of doing Genetic Genealogy, I've grown to take ethnic analyses with a strong grain of salt. I focus mainly on DNA relative matches.
https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2021/09/my-ethnic-analyses-ancestrydna-23andme.html
https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2024/07/my-myheritage-ethnicity-estimate.html
https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2024/01/my-genetic-ancestry-with-haplogroups.html
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