Not Hither, Not Farther

 

DNA testing may have opened our eyes to multiple ancestral possibilities, but genetic genealogy's tools still have some growing room. As I explore my paternal roots, based on the tried and true paper trail relied upon by traditional genealogy, I've discovered that at least my paternal grandfather's mother's roots—Zegarski and Wojtaś families—were documented in villages in northern Poland apparently considered to be part of Pomerania. More to the point, their villages were located in a specific subregion called Pomeralia—not Hither, and not Farther Pomerania, as one website warns me—containing a specific ethnocultural location called Kociewie.

Yet, when I went looking for any mention of those ethnic regions in my DNA test results, despite recent updates at some companies, I don't quite see any mention to that fine a degree of specificity. Yesterday, we looked at ethnicity updates at Ancestry.com, where it seems we are now closer to such a possibility. But what about MyHeritage?

When puzzling over my Polish heritage, I prefer relying on DNA matches I've found at MyHeritage, given their worldwide reach. Indeed, I already have found several European DNA cousins with Polish roots through that company. But is there any mention of further ethnicity refinement to their DNA results, based on this year's update?

The MyHeritage update had been long in coming. They beta-tested the release of an update in 2024 to a select sampling of current customers, but felt the response merited more work on their part. The update has apparently been live since earlier this year, but was offered in an opt-in format. 

While the revision represents a reference set of seventy nine ethnicities worldwide versus forty two in the previous version, my report still amassed my paternal results into general regions, such as East European, Germanic, and Baltic. Only by independently researching the broad history of the Pomeranian and Pomeralian subsets do I see migration patterns over centuries which may explain my minor percentages attributed to, for instance, Danish or Balkan roots.

There is a second subset of ethnicity discussions at MyHeritage which I looked to in hopes of seeing them drill down deeper into my family history. That separate tab is labeled "Ancient Origins." From that tab, I can select points on a timeline: Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman Era, and Middle Ages. Yet, examining the results by selecting "Middle Ages," I still am left with broad categories: Germanic and Slavic.

True, as MyHeritage noted in the readout for their ethnicity estimates section, not all ethnic roots in my own heritage will be passed down through multiple generations to me. Inheritance patterns vary, due to the randomness of recombination from generation to generation. Then, too, a significant aspect of each update depends on the reference panels used in each revision.

The greater the specificity, the larger the number of assembled reference populations, the more the DNA company can zero in on smaller regional variations representing the inheritance of these older groups, such as the original West Slavic tribe known as Pomeranians, who settled by the Baltic Sea in that northern region of what is now Poland in the fifth to sixth century.

Perhaps results that drill down that deep to such specific ethnic groups will mean a long wait for me, but at least I now have the paper trail to confirm that geographic origin in my paternal heritage.  

Drilling Deeper into Origins

 

So a while back, I discovered that my paternal grandfather's long-kept secret was that he was born Polish. No, no: now that I'm researching the details, I discover that the family actually came from Pomerania. I hop on over to the online database of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (PTG) and learn the names of the actual villages where family members lived, back in the 1800s, and where they got married and had their children baptized. I look up those details on a map, then find further information on those spots, and learn that they were considered to be part of an ethnic group known as Kocievians.

So which way was it? Am I Polish? Or Pomeranian? Or Kocievian? I'm still looking for that elusive family history identity, but the deeper I drill into those family origins, the more the answer recedes beyond my grasp.

I had thought it an awe-inspiring stroke of good luck when I discovered a census enumerator in 1920 had entered verbatim—and a little bit phonetically—the actual answer of my grandfather's sister, Rose Kober, regarding her history. She had originally replied "Schwartzwald" to the question of where she was born, but a supervisor struck out her answer and corrected it with "Ger" for Germany. That was the discovery which led to my search for the real Schwarzwald she had indicated, a place in what is now part of Poland.

Now that I know that Rose's native Schwarzwald is actually known in Poland as Czarnylas, I've searched for some basic information on that location. Other than the usual details we find about foreign countries—the size of the town, where it is on a map, or what the weather is like there—I noticed another fact: Czarnylas is part of an extensive region bordering the Baltic Sea, known as Pomerania.

Beyond even that, though, I found out that the eastern portion of Pomerania, historically called Pomerelia, contains what is identified as four subregions. Czarnylas, it turns out, is located within what is known as an ethnocultural region called Kociewie. And the indigenous people group known to inhabit that region? Perhaps you guessed it: Kocievians.

As I followed the church records of the various collateral lines of my Zegarski and Wojtaś paternal ancestry, I moved from Czarnylas to Pączewo to Wolental and beyond. The one unifying factor of all these villages? Did you guess it? They are all part of that ethnocultural region of Kociewie.

So am I Polish? Or Pomeranian? Or Kocievian? These are questions I would never have known to ask, let alone answer, if I hadn't had the curiosity to follow the insatiable calling to that family history rabbit trail.

Curious to see what might be reflected in the most recent DNA updates at Ancestry and MyHeritage, I went looking to see their changes. After all, the latest updates are supposed to zero in on some specific ethnic regions. We'll take a look at these tomorrow.

Finding "My People," Twenty-first Century Style

 

There's always something about finding those people with whom your words, actions, and even preferences just resonate. Some friends of mine used to joke about that as finding "my people." In the case of my recent—and feverish—chase to learn more about my Polish ancestry, I've since discovered that "Polish" might not necessarily be "my people" after all. Digging even deeper into the history of a place as foreign to me as Poland, I've learned that I might not exactly be Polish, after all. That's what we learn when we dig deeper into the concept of ethnicity.

In my case, I had first learned that my paternal roots came from a region known as Pomerania, a place with its own identity and certainly with its own history. From that point, however, I've since discovered that there may have been other separate and distinct people groups in that same region, with their own history, language, and culture.

With genealogy businesses like Ancestry and MyHeritage recently releasing updated versions of their DNA ethnicity updates, I was curious to see whether either of those companies had sniffed out the differences in these population groups from the northern portion of what is now the country of Poland. After all, using DNA testing to examine our ethnic heritage is a technique specific to the twenty first century. I wanted to see whether the refining of those reference populations might reveal anything to confirm what I was finding in the historical record for the area.

This week, as I work my way behind the scenes, building the family trees for descendants of my ancestors' collateral lines, we'll talk about those historic ethnic groups and examine the likelihood that the migrations of centuries past may have been reflected in the tale told today by DNA test results. 

Drilling Deeper Into Ethnicity

 

Let's just say I was influenced by the recent ethnicity update for DNA tests at Ancestry.com. The boast there, only a few days ago, was an increase in granularity of results, now linked to data drilling deeper into about 3,600 separate ethnic regions around the world. During this update, every DNA customer's results were re-analyzed, further refining the update.

On my side of the equation, having just made some discoveries furthering my understanding of my Polish roots, I wondered how well the Ancestry updates could drill down to my specific level. After all, having discovered the marriage record for the parents of Thomas Puchała's wife, Anastasia Zegarska, I now had a third Polish city to call my family's ancestral home. Known in Prussia as Ponschau, the place in Poland is now known as Pączewo. 

Pączewo, as it turns out, had a slightly different historical background than Czarnylas, where Anastasia was baptized, or Lubichowo, where she and Thomas eventually lived. While all three towns were located in the region of Pomerania, Pączewo was a bit different. It was noted to be part of a separate ethnocultural region known as Kociewie. 

The Kocievians, as I'm learning, were perhaps the Polish equivalent of an indigenous population. While their modern language is not that different from Polish, it is considered a separate dialect. 

But does a region like that show up in this newest Ancestry update? I was encouraged to see that the latest DNA readout does break down the region around Poland into smaller geographical areas. For my father's side of my results, I show genetic heritage from what Ancestry now calls Northeastern Poland and Southern Poland. Also included are the more broad-based North Central Europe, plus the smaller Estonia and Latvia. But no Kociewie. Not even any Pomerania.

As I'm delving deeper into my ancestral roots and simultaneously endeavoring to learn the local history, I may be gaining a greater appreciation for the variations in ethnicity in a place now as remote to me as Poland. There are, however, limitations to what a company even as large as Ancestry may be able to accomplish.

For one thing, though they are expanding their reach, Ancestry.com is mostly a North-American-centric organization. In my personal experience, I have far better results with finding Polish DNA matches at MyHeritage than at Ancestry. Though Poland is currently not as impacted by restrictive regulations regarding direct-to-consumer DNA testing as, say, Germany or France, use of such options does not seem to be as widespread in Poland as here. Based on how this latest Ancestry DNA study was conducted, it's no surprise that regions as specific as what I'm now exploring did not make an appearance in their update.

Not now, perhaps, but someday....

In the meantime, whether making a showing in convenient scientific reviews at big genealogy companies or not, I can grow my appreciation for my roots by learning more about my ancestors' homelands and lives through the ample online resources providing such information. Document by document, as I uncover more details, I can then turn to Internet searches and queries to answer questions as they pop up. It's an ever-expanding exploration that broadens the boundaries of genealogy.

Tilson Surname Origin

 

While some people spring for a DNA test simply out of curiosity over what ethnicities might show up in their test results, that has never been my case. Yes, I already have a fairly clear idea of the places my ancestors left to migrate to North America. But when I remember that my Broyles family, for instance, came over from Germany in the early 1700s, I can hardly use that fact to think of myself as German-American. Three hundred years can do a lot to shift one's allegiances.

With that in mind, though I've spent the bulk of this month focusing on my Tilson roots, I hadn't given one thought to the origin of that surname—until, that is, I started working on my Tilson DNA matches. 

For each match showing on my ThruLines results at Ancestry.com, I've constructed the line of descent from the most recent common ancestor we share, adding documentation to my database as I go. One particular DNA match led me on a different path. Unlike the many Tilsons I've already researched, all clustering in northeastern Tennessee, this particular family line left Tennessee to apply for a land grant in western Canada.

If you have ever researched Canadian ancestors, while we use many of the same documents for such a search, the contents of the records are sometimes different. For instance, the Canadian census records have included questions, for instance, on the family's religious preference, or on their ethnic identity.

In following this migrating Tilson line, it was their answers to the Canadian enumeration which surprised me, not so much because of the answers themselves, but because I had never given much thought as to what religion the Tilsons might have claimed, and even more so, with what ethnic origin they identified.

In this particular Tilson emigrant family's case, the answers indicated that the family considered themselves to be of Scottish origin, and thus it was no surprise to see them claim Presbyterian affiliation. How did I miss picking up these details in all my years of (figuratively) tromping through the wilderness of southwest Virginia, trying in vain to locate the Tilsons in local records?

I went exploring to see if there was any resonance in other resources. First to the Mercer Vernon Tilson book, I searched for the term Scotland, and found only the slightest reference: "The name 'Tilson' has long been known in England, Scotland and Ireland."

Not much help there. How about using a surname distribution map? Not better there: while the top eight countries for incidence of the Tilson surname are mostly England and its former colonies, while Wales and Northern Ireland were listed separately, there was no mention of Scotland.

I checked out Ancestry.com's page for the Tilson surname. Scrolling down the page to the gray-scale map readout labeled, "Where is the Tilson family from?" I selected Scotland for the location and clicked through each decade on the timeline. Reading the legend told me that there were precious few Tilsons in Scotland at any time from the earliest date given—1841—through the readout's final decade in 1901.

It doesn't seem like there were many Tilsons from Scotland at all, judging from those sources. So where did this Tilson family, recently arrived in Canada, come up with the notion that their roots were from Scotland?

Thinking that question over leads me to realize a few things we need to keep in mind when we research our family's roots. First, the report in the Canadian census was based—at least, presumably—on answers provided by the family themselves. What if the specific reporting party was actually a Tilson in-law who was giving an answer from his or her own point of view? Sometimes family members in such situations don't really know the correct answer, especially for the other side of the family.

Even when details are recorded in government documents, the official could have heard the answer incorrectly, or the original document could have been transcribed incorrectly. I am wondering whether that is the case in another Tilson puzzle—Peter or Peleg in land transactions—and believe that to be a more common occurrence than we think.

But in some cases, perhaps the person giving the answer hadn't expected such a question to even be asked. How many times do we blurt out an answer because the question was one we didn't even expect? That immigrant family in Canada was probably accustomed to the types of questions posed in a United States enumeration and wouldn't have given a thought to their origin if not asked. After all, this Tilson line arrived in New England sometime before 1640. How would they see themselves, well over two hundred years later?

Unexpected realizations like this, springing up as we progress through our work, can remind us of the assumptions we carry with us on this research journey. Little surprises—and the self-reflections that come with them—can guide us in formulating further questions, and broadening our search.

 

 

Lazy Days of August

 

Perhaps those of you south of the equator may not relate to this feeling right now, but after a solid week of hundred-degree-plus days, I'm feeling rather melted. Perhaps lazy is the word for it, but strangely, I've had no gumption to jump into my usual daily family history research. Instead, I decided to do some mindless wandering on the Ancestry.com website.

The buzz among the genies I follow on Twitter has been about the latest ethnicity updates at Ancestry DNA. While I am generally only mildly curious about those ethnicity readouts, in my heat-defeated state of mind, I decided to amble over and take a lazy look.

The word out on Twitter had been that, yes, Ancestry has just released another update, but that there was something wonky about the new labels. Debbie Kennett gave an example of some of the "strange names" she had seen on her update, and retweeted another customer's screen shot of the same. Regions named "Class Conflict and the Social Gospel" and "Nativism and Regulation" made their appearance in the ethnicity readout, along with "Far Western Territory" and "Early Connecticut & New York Settlers."

True, Ancestry.com had recently added several other reference populations, but I don't think they were supposed to include anything like those names being reported by my fellow Ancestry customers over in England. Though I don't personally put much stock in ethnicity estimates, perhaps the heat got to me; I decided to take a look for myself.

To my disappointment, my own most recent DNA update at Ancestry.com was dated June of this year. There were no fun glitches with labels like "Town and Country" in my readout—only the boring eastern European and northwest Europe percentages from past (evidently more tame) versions.

Just to make sure, I also checked my husband's test. Same result: updated last June. Nothing new to help me ignore this heat wave.

Perhaps, though, all this uproar about the funny labels woven into the latest release should just be put back in a proper perspective. After all, as genealogy blogger Jane Hough commented in her recent post asking, "How English am I?": "The crucial thing about ethnicity estimates is while their accuracy is improving over time, they are still only estimates."

And that pretty much boils it down to the crux of the matter.

Who do you Think you are This Time?

 

Ancestry.com has updated their ethnicity estimates once again. Those estimates and the tools with which they are developed are, as Ancestry likes to put it, "constantly evolving." While many of my students seem genuinely amazed—or dismayed, as the case may be—at what their DNA results reveal about who they should think they are, some of them seem to have a hard time grasping one key detail: those results are simply estimates. Scientifically calculated, yes, but still estimates.

Still, I was curious to see what the updated results would yield for my own account. I wasn't really impressed with the last version. While I still have much to learn, for instance, about my mystery paternal grandfather's origins, I have been able to come to the conclusion that if he wasn't, after all, Polish like his wife, his was still a heritage from somewhere east of Germany. Yet, the last AncestryDNA version slighted his percentage, no matter where it should have been placed.

With this latest update, it is encouraging to see the increase in number of reference populations. When AncestryDNA first launched, their offering included populations representing a meager twenty two regions. Now, they compare customers' DNA with samples from more than one thousand regions worldwide. Their reference panel includes nearly forty five thousand DNA samples which "divide the world" into seventy overlapping groups, as demonstrated in this chart provided in Ancestry's explanation of reference panels.

Unlike other bloggers who were keen to compare before-and-after snapshots—I'm thinking of you, Randy Seaver, as well as my Canadian go-to resource at Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections, John D. Reid—I was not quick to snatch a screen cap of the results that were replaced. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance to the former estimate—out with the old, in with the new! 

In case you don't share my sour grapes attitude, you can always recapture your former stats by following this advice from Ancestry: 

• Go to your AncestryDNA home page
• On the "DNA Story" box on the left of the screen, click on "Discover Your DNA Story"
• On the top right of the next "Ethnicity Estimates" screen, click "Learn More About This Update"
• On the next screen, click "View previous estimate"

You can download the previous numbers in a .pdf version, if you wish, by clicking on that option on the last screen of the series listed above. Don't delay, though; the previous numbers will be available to you for ninety days following rollout of your updated estimates. Hopefully, though, you'll find the newer estimates far more agreeable to your own research.

 

Not on the Father's Day Sales List?

It is now less than two weeks until Father's Day, at least in North American countries. Yet, all I can spot, on the gift-giving horizon, is one single sale for DNA tests. I'm not sure whether that is a sign that DNA testing has gone out of style, or that it has experienced a chill factor due to worries over the current coronavirus. After all, you may be able to spit in the isolation of your own home, but what becomes of the lab technician who runs the risk of handling contaminated samples?

Meanwhile, it looks like only MyHeritage has taken the opportunity to put their DNA tests on sale for this Father's Day. Genealogy Bargains blogger Thomas MacEntee has made sure to report that right away, and just as surely as he brings all genealogical bargains to light with lightning speed, he has been rather silent about any other DNA opportunities. At least, so far.

I've pretty much convinced every relative I can to test, so I'm not likely to purchase any more kits this year. What I do look forward to, however, is the opportunity to gain new matches. DNA matches have done wonders for the mystery branches on my family tree, but that mechanism requires a certain critical mass to benefit customers. After all, it takes two to make a match. No family member testing, no match for you. And it's rather difficult to know who those mystery cousins are, out there in the great beyond, who would make the case for adding that missing ancestor to your tree.

Meanwhile, I'm still fielding questions and comments about ethnicity results. Today is our local genealogical society's DNA group, which meeting we now hold via videoconferencing. I try to ask members ahead of time which topics they would most like to discuss in the upcoming meeting.

For this month's round of emailed requests, one member wanted to know more about the specifics of ethnicity testing. She told me how, upon discovering the surprising assertion that she had a small but significant percentage of her heritage originating from Sardinia, thought it was strange, but decided to do research on the country, of which she previously knew very little. She studied up so much on the country that she rather warmed up to the idea that part of her roots might have been from Sardinia. In fact, she got to like the idea so much that she planned to add it to her list of places to visit.

And then, her ethnicity estimates got revised. Just when she was hoping to someday travel to her "homeland," that country's entry in her DNA estimates entirely disappeared. She laughs at how disappointed she became at that turn of events, but I imagine she is not the only one to find herself in that position.

I find myself sneaking a peek at my Family Tree DNA accounts to see whether I've received their announced ethnicity update yet, myself. Why, I can't say—I trust the paper trail far more than I believe the estimates. There are too many variables that are included in the mix of who we are and how we got to be where we are now, that we really shouldn't put so much credence upon that aspect of those test kits.

But helping people to find the missing link in their brick walls—now, that is a different issue. I can vouch for that, especially with all the tools companies are now developing to help us sort through those myriad matches. Now, that's what DNA is best at doing for us.

Figuring Out Who We Are — Again

Just when I thought I had it all figured out again, the DNA testing companies—well, at least one right now—are back at revising their ethnicity estimates. Just yesterday, a note from Family Tree DNA popped into my inbox announcing, along with improvements to the "Big Y" test, the tripling of their reference populations used for ethnicity estimates on their autosomal tests.

Great. While I have no beef about my own ethnicity report at FTDNA, I have been wondering about the proportion set aside on my husband's results assuring him he was now Italian (or Greek, or something vaguely southeastern European). Granted, while I have the paper trail only back to his roots in the 1850s—he's Irish; give him a break—I was pretty sure that must have been an outlier.

Sometimes, I wish the DNA testing companies didn't put so much of a spotlight on that feature of their product. They know it's a nascent science—and sometimes more "art" than science—but if you ask the average "man on the street," that is what he presumes is the main utility of buying such a test.

I can say that from firsthand experience. When I offered a genetic genealogy class at a local lifelong learning organization, that was the constant question I received from potential students. When I say that DNA testing is a powerful tool for genealogy, the ethnicity report is not the particular component of the package I have in mind.

I have plenty of company with such an opinion. I recently reviewed an old series on ethnicity reports by Jayne Ekins, posted on Diahan Southard's website in 2019. The title to the lead article says it all: "DNA Ethnicity Changes: That's Not What it Said Before!"

Fortunately, the series goes on to explore just what goes into issuing ethnicity estimates, and how the various companies stack up on use of reference populations. Of course, the comparison chart from that post is almost exactly one year old, so the FTDNA email is good news for us, and a report to be added to the numbers showing in that chart.

According to the FTDNA email, the new update will include ninety reference populations, which involved 8,053 individual samples. Of those reference populations, thirty three come from Asia and Oceania, twenty seven from Europe and the Middle East, and twenty one from Africa and the Americas. And while I don't expect any surprises to my own readout—well, maybe a little fine tuning for my husband's "Italian" roots—this should be good news for anyone whose family history includes roots from around the rest of the world.

What it means for those of us who used FTDNA for our autosomal DNA tests is that the numbers will be updated soon—and sooner for those who have recently logged on to their accounts there. The first round of updates will include about 287,000 testers in the coming week, and then the rest will be updated "in waves," with an email sent by the company to alert customers when their update has arrived. Last in the sequence will be those FTDNA customers who haven't logged in for over a year.

My advice: if that's you, go sign in to your account. Now.