When you hear the term endogamy, what communities come to mind? French Canadians, Puerto Ricians, Mennonites, Pacific Islanders, and Ashkenazi Jews are common examples. Some of these examples are from island peoples, so what about the Irish? Last time, I discussed the effect of a clearly endogamous community, Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ), on a relatively non-endogamous community, German, within my dad’s match list. My dad has more AJ matches with longer segments (greater than 20 cM),...
As genealogists we want to understand our match lists. We want to identify the matches that will give us the solid clues we need to make progress on our target ancestor’s family tree. Endogamy and its close cousins, pedigree collapse and multiple relationships, complicates that. Diana laid out the definitions in the first blogpost in this series: “Endogamy, Pedigree Collapse, and Multiple Relationships: What’s the Difference and Why Does it Matter?” Nicole wrote about strategies...
Have you ever suspected that endogamy was affecting your DNA analysis? You might notice a large number of matches from an island population or isolated area. The matches might seem to share a lot of DNA but no common ancestor can be determined. Clustering matches doesn’t seem to produce clusters related along different ancestral lines. Instead, you find one big mass of tightly connected matches. The total amount of shared DNA points to a second...
Steve Little, one of our Research Like a Pro with DNA 4 Study Group members, wrote this guest blog post about how he uses diagrams to help visualize the multiple relationships with his DNA matches. He is from a community of mild endogamy — Appalachia. I hope his insights will help anyone dealing with multiple relationships with DNA matches, pedigree collapse, and endogamy. -Nicole Don’t panic! At first glance, the swirling tangle of lines below...
I am sure I am not alone in finding that I constantly have more to learn when it comes to using DNA in my genealogy research. For example, I have defined many situations in my DNA research as pedigree collapse. However, after reading Diana’s post Endogamy, Pedigree Collapse, and Multiple Relationships: What’s the Difference and Why Does it Matter? I realized that almost always, when I used the term pedigree collapse, I was actually describing...
Do you have DNA matches that seem to belong in multiple genetic networks? Are you nervous that you’re seeing pedigree collapse or endogamy? Before you despair, realize that this phenomenon could be due to DNA matches sharing more than one common ancestral couple with each other, or what’s often called “multiple relationships.” In Diana’s post, Endogamy, Pedigree Collapse, and Multiple Relationships: What’s the Difference and Why Does it Matter, she talked briefly about multiple relationships...
You may have heard the terms endogamy, pedigree collapse, or multiple relationships as you’ve been learning how to use DNA with genealogy. What does your match list look like if you have any of these scenarios? What do your cluster results look like? How do you work with those DNA matches? What does this mean for your research and analysis? This article will help you understand each term and give you examples to digest. I’ll...
