* DNA Descent through the male line

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E Wilcock
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DNA Descent through the male line

Post by E Wilcock »

I have had an email telling me that DNA from a male descendant is essential to establish descent from an individual.
I couldnt find a query to find male line descendents, so wrote one - tho a bit uncertain how many generations to go down.

After writing the query and discovering unknown male line descendants, I realised they all had the family surname. This could be a better way of filtering for the direct male line. However some children born out of wedlock took their mother's birth name.

Should I upload this query? Or is one there already?
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by tatewise »

I imagine you started from the standard Descendants Query and added the Rows filter:

Exclude if %INDI.SEX% matches Female

That will cater for children born out of wedlock regardless of Surname.

I also suspect it a good idea to add this series of exclusions because they break the male blood line:

Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Adopted
Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Adopted (father)
Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Foster
Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Foster (father)
Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Step
Exclude if %INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI[1]% matches Step (father)

I think those may need to be repeated for INDI.FAMC[2] and INDI.FAMC[3], etc.

After thinking about it more, those exclusions go too far, and will exclude even the genuine descendants.
So let me think again...

Each of those exclusions need to be conditional on the father being a descendant of the starting person.
e.g.
Exclude if
=IsTrue((%INDI.FAMC[1].PEDI% = "Adopted") and IsDescendantOf(%INDI.FAMC[1]>HUSB>%,["Starting Person"]))
is true
Exclude if
=IsTrue((%INDI.FAMC[2].PEDI% = "Adopted") and IsDescendantOf(%INDI.FAMC[2]>HUSB>%,["Starting Person"]))
is true
etc, for FAMC[3] and for "Adopted (father)" and "Foster" and "Foster (father)", and so on...
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E Wilcock
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by E Wilcock »

No I didnt Mike. I edited an existing custom query that shows age at death of male ancestors. But computer is now off. I changed direction from one generation up to one generation down.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

E Wilcock wrote:I have had an email telling me that DNA from a male descendant is essential to establish descent from an individual.?
Just to clarify for others, that statement only applies to the X-Chromosome (X) which is passed from father to son only, and is of most benefit in Surname research, as Surnames generally follow the Male line.
The other two tests are Y-Chromosome (Y), which passes from Mother to Daughters only, and Autosomnal (AT), which compare all Chromosomes, which come from both the Father and Mother (approx 50% from each, but %age varies greatly).
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by E Wilcock »

Thank you Gowermick. There has been a bitter genealogical dispute in my Sadler family about whether or not it is descended from Sir Ralph Sadler of Wolf Hall fame. For a moment I wondered if it could be resolved through DNA. Probably not, but I was instructed to find male descendants. Having girls rather than sons seems to run in our family so I needed to search and see.


I dont know how to write a query for uploading , nor how to have it approved, nor how to print it out in a post. But here is is if you have time to look at it Mike. It is far simpler than you envisaged. I took only the first step, but it worked.
Attachments
decendants male line.fhq
(2.64 KiB) Downloaded 202 times
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

E Wilcock wrote:Thank you Gowermick. There has been a bitter genealogical dispute in my Sadler family about whether or not it is descended from Sir Ralph Sadler of Wolf Hall fame. For a moment I wondered if it could be resolved through DNA. Probably not, but I was instructed to find male descendants. Having girls rather than sons seems to run in our family so I needed to search and see.
DNA will only truly help if you already have 'X' DNA from Sir Ralph or a 'Known' direct male descendant of his.

You are more likely to prove a link by standard genealogy research i.e working backwards in time, proving each link as you go. If the link is there, you will find it :D

Sadly DNA does not provide a shortcut to normal research, but merely a confirmation that your research is correct.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Jane »

I thought Y was the Male line? Isn't that why the One name studies site says
Y-DNA 37-marker Test Kit – For males only, a special reduced price of £88.00, plus postage and handling.
Read more at https://one-name.org/dna-kits-available ... bwvejM6.99
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Peter Collier »

Gowermick wrote: Just to clarify for others, that statement only applies to the X-Chromosome (X) which is passed from father to son only, and is of most benefit in Surname research, as Surnames generally follow the Male line.
The other two tests are Y-Chromosome (Y), which passes from Mother to Daughters only, and Autosomnal (AT), which compare all Chromosomes, which come from both the Father and Mother (approx 50% from each, but %age varies greatly).
You have your Xs and Ys mixed up there. Males are XY, with the Y-chromosome being inherited from the father and the X from the mother, whereas females are XX, having inherited an X-chromosome from each parent. As only males have the Y-chromosome, it can only be passed from father to son – mothers do not have a Y-chromosome to pass on.

It is mitochondrial DNA (Mt-DNA) that is passed on by the mother only, but is passed on to all of her children, male and female. As Mt-DNA is passed on only by females, male children are a mitochondrial "dead-end", but any female children will pass it on to the next generation.

The above is the biological norm, but there are very rare exceptions, such as aneuploidy (XXY Syndrome, XXYY Syndrome, XX Male Syndrome, etc.), and heteroplasmy (Mt-DNA from both parents).
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Sadly DNA does not provide a shortcut to normal research, but merely a confirmation that your research is correct.
I disagree.

I recently solved a long-standing mystery in my family tree using a DNA match to identify an individual to research... The final confirmation came from a documentation trail, but the DNA pointed the way.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by E Wilcock »

I have not previously participated in the genealogical discussion section of the forum, but will explain there about the Sadler problem - and why I thought DNA might help.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

Sorry, completely screwed that up, my bad :oops:
Last edited by Gowermick on 11 Feb 2019 11:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

Helen,
Yes I agree that DNA can help guide your research, but I was trying to make the point (perhaps clumsily) that on its own DNA will not provide a tree for you, and is not a substitute for normal research! :D
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by tatewise »

Going back to the Query, I now see the need to process one generation at a time, otherwise Female lines get included.

However, the elimination of Adopted, Foster & Step children should be added.
That has to be repeated at each generation for the same reason the exclusion of Females is needed at each generation.

I suspect it would be useful to add the Columns from the standard Query for Descendants.
e.g. Generation, Relationship, Father & Mother

Doe anyone have an opinion?

BTW: The genealogy research continues in the Sadler Disputed descent (16602) discussion.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

Having read the other post, original poster disputes the link to Sir Ralph, so it stands to reason he won’t have Sir Ralph in his tree, so any query would be useless.

If he has put Sir Ralph in the tree, any other individuals relationship to Sir Ralph can quickly be checked using the ‘How Related’ method!

I can’t see what extra can be achieved by the proposed query, or am I missing something :D ?
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by E Wilcock »

The point of my writing my own query as that I was not sure whether there were any living male descendants through the male line of the Sadler family who lived in in Doveridge in the 18th century.
There are none known to me but the query threw up a couple - neither of them known to me. And no, I dont yet know whether there are male line male descendants of Sir Ralph but that too could be researched.

However, I too can report something positive from DNA matching. ancestry felt a certain John Brown was a distant cousin of my husband. The main researcher recognised the name because for many years he and John Brown had been in touch and researching the same surname but in neighbouring villages. In spite of all their efforts they had never found a connection. Of course the DNA relationship between John Brown and my husband could have arisen via female lines, but its turning up has certainly reopened the question. And is poignant since John Brown took the test some time ago and may no longer be active.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by tatewise »

Maybe I am missing something, but how does DNA help with long deceased ancestors?
Surely you can only obtain DNA from living relatives.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Maybe I am missing something, but how does DNA help with long deceased ancestors?
Surely you can only obtain DNA from living relatives.
It's DNA that started out belonging to the long-deceased ancestors... and can (with some serious effort) be traced back to a particular ancestor (or at least an ancestral line).
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by tatewise »

Sorry, I still don't see how that DNA trace back works if you have no DNA samples from any ancestors.
I appreciate that parts of my DNA are derived from various ancestors, but how do know who they are if I don't have their DNA.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by LornaCraig »

Mike, the point is that if you find a DNA match between two living people and you know how close that match is, you can trace the ancestors of each and (with luck) find out where their ancestors converge.

As Adrian has said in the other thread:
the obvious suggestion is Y-DNA. Find wholly male-line descendants of each of the parties, i.e. of Sir Ralph Sadler and Ernest Sadler (I think), and get them to do a Y-DNA test.
But of course, as Adrian also pointed out, if there is a DNA match it doesn't follow that they are both directly descended from Sir Ralph. One of them might be descended from a branch further back than him.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

How long have you got Mike? It's a complicated subject, but essentially you're looking for 'triangulated segments' -- segments that you and one or preferably more matches share -- plus known MRCAs for the triangulation group (Most Recent Common Ancestors -- which might be a single person or a couple).

So for example I share 24 cM (centimorgans) over 2 segments with D (who turns out to be my half-third cousin). We both descend from Caroline Ellen Augusta Brown 1827-1871. D descends from her first (illegitimate) child. I descend from her third (legitimate) child.

So I can point at two pieces of my DNA (the ones I share with D) and say without a shadow of a doubt: those pieces of DNA came to me from Caroline Ellen Augusta Brown (and to her from her parents -- but I don't yet know which of her parents provided which piece of that DNA -- I'll need to track down some collateral descendants of her parents and their parents to work that out.)

I am (very slowly) working on painting my DNA with colour codes to indicate where each piece came from. I'll probably never get it complete -- and because DNA is randomly inherited, I can only 'see' so far into the past before the amount that each ancestor contributes becomes too small to have any certainty about (and I will have ancestors from whom I have inherited precisely zero DNA, but there are already places I can look and say: X matches me on that segment -- that means they've got a Staines somewhere in their tree.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by Gowermick »

Lorna,
The whole point of the exercise was to prove/disprove a link to Sir Ralph and solve the dispute. . Unless you have his DNA, as Mike said, this exrcise will prove nothing.

Yes, you can find more recent common ancestors, thiat is normal DNA research, but it will NOT help proving the link back to Sir Ralph UNLESS the common ancestor has proven links back to Sir Ralph, which I think is lacking!, hence the dispute.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by tatewise »

Yes, I knew about the MRCA from two DNA samples of living people.
What I couldn't fathom out was the link back to an ancestor such as Sir Ralph unless you already have some likely candidate living descendants; and they don't seem to exist.
So a Query to list Descendants is somewhat fruitless, because if you already have that tree in your data, the documentary evidence has already been found and any DNA samples just confirm things.
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by LornaCraig »

Evelyn ran the query because she “ was not sure whether there were any living male descendants through the male line of the Sadler family who lived in in Doveridge in the 18th century.” She said the query did throw up a couple. So it was worth running the query.

What she now wants to try is to prove or disprove a connection between that 18th century family and Sir Ralph (who lived in 16th century). That connection is not in her tree. That requires finding a direct male line descendant from Sir Ralph whose descent is not in dispute, and persuading them to supply some DNA. (But as Adrian said there may be no such person, because unless their line was illegitimate they would be using the coat of arms themselves, and it seems nobody is.)
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Re: DNA Descent through the male line

Post by GeorgeJ »

tatewise wrote: 11 Feb 2019 17:39 Sorry, I still don't see how that DNA trace back works if you have no DNA samples from any ancestors.
I appreciate that parts of my DNA are derived from various ancestors, but how do know who they are if I don't have their DNA.
Mike and everyone,

This is an old thread but I'm eagerly reading through all the DNA related threads and thought I might add something. There is a lot of confusing discussion in different threads referring to DNA in general. Understanding the different types of tests is the key. I'll just cover Y-DNA as that is the subject of the thread.

Y-DNA - for the testing of direct male lines.

You get your direct male line Y-DNA from your lawful/natural father and he gets his from his father and so on up to "Adam" at the top of the human haplotree. There are random mutations at a conception but they don't occur every generation. Without these mutations every male on the planet would share identical Y-DNA. As more and more tests are done we can establish in what order mutations occurred. If one of you ancestors, say living a 300 years ago, suffered a particular mutation then all his descendants will prove positive for it. If a cousin of your does not prove positive for it then, no matter how good your conventional research might be, you two do not share that ancestor. You would need to test other male cousins to prove when the Non Paternity Event (NPE) occurred. This has happened to me. My 35+ years of research contains an error. There are many independently researched trees exactly matching mine but they are all wrong. How many more errors do our trees hide ? If anyone is interested I can explain how I have, by testing cousins,
placed my NPE somewhere between 2 generations.

The point here is your direct male line cousins will share your Y-DNA if your conventional research is correct. More accurately it is not your research that might be at fault but the contents of your source material. No matter how diligent you and fellow researchers might have been errors exist.

I give you, briefly, an example of Murray Waldren, son of an adoptee who was born in New Zealand, who promised his late father he would continue there 30 years of research for the natural father. He took a Y-DNA 111 marker test at FTDNA and he matched one of my John Jamison with a Genetic Distance of 2/111 markers. That is as close as I have seen in 15 years for unknown cousins. He then took a Big-Y SNP test and the match continued. So Murray, living in Australia, and John Jamison living in America, are proven cousins where no conventional sources exist.

I have also demolished long established brickwalls and shaken hands with cousins with whom I share a common ancestor that lived around 1000 years ago.

It is great fun and very rewarding. Only serious researchers need apply.

Happy to expand on anything if of interest. Anyone with N E Scotland roots PM me.

George
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