Bottoms Up!

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 their DNA signature had varied so much from the Buchan group that they came up as Leftovers. I had my suspicions about them being born overseas because of their high cM values. 

At June 2022, Target Group A contained 15 people. As can be seen by the following list, these people are all found on the same four DNA test takers, where the number in paratheses is the cM match for each test taker. Julie and Marnie, as one generation further removed than Pat and Kath, seem to have inherited that tiny bit of DNA that forms this group. This small amount of DNA might reflect 4-6th cousinship with removed relationships, or possibly even more remotely.

Julie Paterson – Pat (24), Kath (26), Julie (22) and Marnie (15)

Barb Daize – Pat (24), Kath (15), Julie (21) and Marnie (15)

Ruth Christie – Pat (23), Kath (22), Julie (19) and Marnie (14)

Lara Bailen Denton - Pat (23), Kath (22), Julie (19) and Marnie (15)

Cbmurray1 – Pat (22), Kath (25), Julie (23) and Marnie (15)

Edward Wilkinson – Pat (21), Kath (15), Julie (17) and Marnie (14)

Donna Rowan – Pat (22), Kath (20), Julie (17) and Marnie (14)

CB (dodgson33) – Pat (19), Kath (14), Julie (18) and Marnie (14)

James Jefferies – Pat (20), Kath (15), Julie (17) and Marnie (14)

Susananne46 – Pat (20), Kath (22), Julie (20) and Marnie (14)

Uddingstonboy – Pat (20), Kath (20), Julie (18) and Marnie (14)

Geoff Jordan – Pat (20), Kath (20), Julie (18) and Marnie (14)

Teresa Hutchinson – Pat (19), Kath (21), Julie (20) and Marnie (14)

Chris Paul Peters – Pat (19), Kath (25), Julie (20) and Marnie (15)

Autumn Buatala – Pat (15), Kath (21), Julie (12) and Marnie (15)

Within this group I have matched 5 of these people together. Julie Paterson, cbmurray1 and ruth christie all descend from Crawford Russell Paterson (1854-1920) and Margaret Boyd Birrell (1854-1934). Barb Daize and uddingstonboy are descended from William D King (1892-1952) and Magdalena Ross (1893-1968). As you can see it is optimistic to hope that these trees will intersect in a generation round the time of George and Jean. 

An example of this process is as follows. cbmurray1 has an excellent tree of 279 ancestors, almost all in Scotland. However siblings Julie Paterson and ruth christie gave very different and small snippets of their shared pedigrees, one maternal and one paternal. 




When I look for intersections between the clusters, it is not easy! So far I have not found an intersection between these two groups. The top pedigree is located in Midlothian, while the one below it is largely in Lanarkshire. There could be errors in these pedigrees complied from FamilySearch tree and sites like Ancestry.
 


Every time I add more matches into the mix, identify more Known Matches, the Leftover groups change.

At this time in mid August 2022 I have complied a match list of 520 people - 100 of whom are identified as descendants of George and Jean. Some of the remaining 420 people will be related through Janet McRae, my x3 great grandmother. But if I exclude all shared matches from the Australians, this should leave only those people related through either George and Jean. I have put a query through to my DNA course tutors to see if there is any alternative to what I have already attempted with the much smaller group above. 

Many of these 420 people match just one or two of our test takers. And like the list of 15 people above, it is clear that one segment of DNA say around 15-25cM mark has just been passed down through 5-6 generations. I have just today read an opinion piece about how big are the segments of DNA that get randomly mixed up when recombination occurs. Rather than just all mushed up as in a blender, it is far less destructive of the original sequence, such that scientists consider that only 34 segment switches typically occur per recombination. As the place at which a switch occurs is often 'easier' to break than at other places, breaks continue to occur there, allowing coherent segments of DNA to be passed down unchanged. However as each generation passes, fewer of the segments from any one ancestor are passed down.

I have been reading about DNA in general, and genetic genealogy for nearly 10 years, and I have never heard this concept expressed so succinctly. So remembering that Helen and Peter share a whopping 98cM at Ancestry (and Ancestry trims cM to make sure that only real relationships are revealed), this 98cM will not be 50 tiny segments ranging from 1-4cM, all adding to 98. It is far more likely that there are 3-8 segments.

Athough not really a post about segments, without sizable segment matches we would not have shared matches at all. I can tell you just how many segments Helen and Peter do share. This is because they have both put their DNA (well I put Peter's) onto MyHeritage which provides segment comparisons. They share 5 - with the longest being 39cM.

Chromosome mapping is considered a rather advanced component of DNA analysis. But if you are interested, and want to upload your DNA results to MyHeritage this is the sort of graphic you can get. It shows the triangulation between Pat, Peter and Helen. Peter is the grey everything, Pat and Helen's DNA matches sit upon his whole chromosomal reality. Pat and Peter are 1C1R so the very many tan coloured bars represent their common DNA segments, many of which are not Buchan. There are only 2 segments which all three people share [and why not add in the little bit of Chromosome 20?]. But you can see the pinky bars are the segments that Peter and Helen share. Great chunks of Chromosome 5 and 17, while all three share a smaller chunk of Chromosome 13. I think this is amazing - Helen  nd Peter are Half 4Cs.




The Bottoms Up technique is how I will try to find Janet McRae's family as well as George and Jean's siblings. Most of it is recognising commonalities between the trees of matches, and to do this often by having to develop the family trees myself.

If anything in this post needs further explanation, or you would like to upload to MyHeritage or an alternative called GedMatch, send me a comment here on the blog, or to my email. 

[Kathryn tells me that the new method of entering the blog does work, but she can't leave comments. If this happens please email me].


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