Buchans of Borthwick

Diahan Southard coined the term Bottoms Up for a technique to group together the Leftovers in our match lists  after finding matches within a particular family grouping - for us the descendants of George and Jean. Those who are not descendants of George and Jean are literally 'left over'. Although called the Buchan Network, it should more accurately be called Buchan+Johnston network , as there will be people in that group who only share DNA sourced from Jean Johnston. The technique looks at Unknown Matches at the lowest cM for the 4C range, or about 20cM, and then groups matches according to whom they 'cluster with'. More than one cluster always arises, because it is inevitable that there are quite different groups 'around' George and Jean. I did this originally with my Australians and found a cluster with quite high values up to 50cM. I had called this my Target Group A. It turns out 3 of this group were actually Australians whom I had not found previously. But...

What are our compared Ethnicity estimates? Despite a deal of controversy, ethnicity estimates are great fun. Commentators suggest almost 40% of people who have taken a test have done so SOLELY to see their ethnicities. The reference populations that different DNA companies use to form these estimates  continue to evolve over time, and so estimates also evolve over time. We have also noted differences in our ethnicity estimates if we tested with multiple companies.  Ethnicity Estimates reflect where our ancestors lived 500-1000 years ago, and we are very unlikely to have our trees back that far. If you haven't already checked out the first panel on Ancestry's DNA Home page, it is definitely worth looking at. Initially we received a 'global' estimate that included all our DNA from both parents. This year Ancestry released a clever analysis that split the chromosomes along parental and maternal lines. Now we can see what ethnicities our individual parents gave us.  This ca...