7 Months | 2.5 Years: My Charts

Latest genealogical pie charts, for me, based on new-ish information:


[click to enlarge]


[click to enlarge]

Note that not all of the labels in the legend are represented in this particular pie (the chart has to work for me, Mary, the kids, and any other individual in the tree, and I can't figure out how to make Excel ignore zero-value fields). The eastern European segment in this case is Hungary. I've actually combined Germany/Prussia in this chart, so it's all reported under Germany. The Scandinavian portion is entirely Norway, in my charts.

Another interesting (to me!) point: a healthy chunk of the "Scottish" pie slice is currently somewhat in doubt.

The way I do this is to track back as far as I can in a family tree until I get either into the 1500s/1600s OR to the Old Country, somewhere. Then I apply the appropriate mathematical weight for that generation to the country where the person is from (12.5% for a great grandparent, 3.125% for a 3rd-great grandparent, etc.). Obviously, since some of my branches are fuzzier than others, I've had to make some assumptions.

One of my fuzziest branches traces along my maternal line to a 2nd-great grandmother who's name was Kerr and who married a man whose heritage had been well shuffled already through several generations in the States. Rather than assign her as "Unknown" I have her down as Scottish, and 6.25% of the pie chart above is assigned Scottish on the strength of this.

The problem is that my maternal Halplogroup, which I inherited from this individual and which was discovered via DNA testing, indicates heritage from Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, or even the Middle East / Persia. This could either indicate that our Kerr's mother was, say, 100% Armenian, or it could just mean that her mother's mother's m's m's m etc. came from the Caucuses (or wherever) to Scotland (or wherever) 500 years ago, and this more-exotic heritage has been completely watered down except for a tiny fraction.

The fact is that about half of the Scottish portion of the chart above should probably be assigned Unknown until we're able to dig deeper on Ruth Kerr's heritage (if we ever can). It might be (virtually) correct as is. It might be only partially correct. It might be completely wrong.

Who are you, Ruth Kerr?

7 Months | 2.5 Years: Genealogy Update

Good news and bad news today, Thanksgiving 2010.

Bad news first:
After signing up for the same DNA sequencing site which led to the "discovery" that my maternal grandmother had Jewish and Nigerian and Chinese ancestry (described in this post), I'm now convinced that those exotic connections were actually just a misinterpretation of the way that site presents information. So, I'm sorry August & Lela, you're not as diverse as we had once hoped you were!

But there's also good news:
Through that genetics site and based on information I've found there, I've been connected with many distant relatives who are helping me piece together my own heritage—this time with the power of science behind it! I have intelligence today from a 4th cousin 1x removed who explains the actual heritage of the same maternal grandmother mentioned above (on her mother's side, at least, she's all Norwegian)... this goes back into the 18th century.

Setting the record straight. Have a lovely Thanksgiving!

9 Weeks | 2 Years: Eyes Revisited

When August was 4 months old I posted this post about how his eyes were changing. Now I'm adding Lela's eye to the photo. Probably a bit early, as they continue to lighten, but I'm convinced they're going blue, rather than green. That's Lela at the bottom. Daddy, Mommy, August (at 4 months), Lela (at 8 weeks).



And here are her eyes:

Day 262 | 2 Years: Way WAY Back machine

Remember all that research I did on August's genetic background? Remember how we ran into a few dead ends? Well some information has surfaced that will surprise many.

August's genetic paternal great grandmother recently had her DNA analyzed. It indicated descent from (in addition to her generous share of Scandinavian/Western-European markers):

• Jews
• Nigerians
• Chinese
• Japanese
• Pacific Islanders
• South Americans

This is a woman whom I have marked as down as 50% Danish and 50% German in my pie-chart-generating spreadsheet. And she definitely looks the part. Clearly these indicators, if real, must come from rather many generations ago, but it can't be that many, else they would likely have disappeared by now.

Interestingly, her grand-daughter (my biological first cousin) inherited none of these. I'm not sure how the math shakes out, because multiple markers may reside on the same chromosome, and it only takes one generation for a chromosome to be switched out for that of the other parent's. Odds are August has (and Baby Girl will) inherit few of these, if any, but it's still cool to think of it.


Just your average Swiss-German/Prussian British Scandinavian Eastern-European Jewish Nigerian Chinese Japanese Pacific-Islander South American kid.

19 Months: New Information

After a rather unlikely and extremely lucky series of events, I'm now able to fill-in, for August's genealogical heritage, that (previously) (Unknown) segment from my father's mother. For me it makes me more German than ever, and now also a healthy measure of Danish. For august it bumps his Germany portion by a bit more than 6%, and introduces a Danish portion of the same size.

The new charts (for August) look like this. Specific:


And more generalized:

4 Weeks: The 16 Names

The research I've been doing has caused me to think in new ways about how to understand ancestry and family lore. Some of the names I've uncovered going back into August's past have been interesting, to say the least: Hepsibath Death, for example... one of Mary's father's forebears, 10 generations back! (It actually started as D'Eath four generations before that). And then there's the surname Feasil... a name so obscure it hardly registers as a word on the Internet—indexed by Google only about 1,000 times. (We've since had family sources who swear it's Irish).

I thought it would be interesting and revealing to list the 16 people who are four generations back from August. I don't have all those names, but each of these 14 people contributed more than 6% of August's genes... so who were they?

[FFMF = "August's father's father's mother's father"]

• FFFF: Everett L. Ball - b. 1882, California.
• FFFM: Francesca Loftus - b. 1891, Colorado.
• FFMF: ?
• FFMM: ?
• FMFF: Henry Wagner - b. 1880, Joliet, Ill.
• FMFM: Paulina Limacher - b. 1881, Joliet, Ill.
• FMMF: Willard S. Poage - b. 1894, Bolivar, Missouri.
• FMMM: Marcia Hulanski (Julianski) - b. Ouray, Colorado.
• MFFF: Elliott Augustus Finkelnburg - b. 1892, Winona, Minnesota
• MFFM: Charlotte Willey
• MFMF: William Henry Vaughn - b. 1901, Kansas.
• MFMM: Lillian Anne Wager - b. Minnesota?
• MMFF: Andrew Slaveck - b. 1889, Slovenia
• MMFM: Anna Kolman - b. 1892, Turnisce, Slovenia
• MMMF: Frantisk Dundr - b. 1894 Drbretiva, Czechoslovakia
• MMMM: Anna Slopak - b. 1901, Stod, Czechoslovakia

To me, this is a very American list of name. It's English and it's Irish and it's German. It's also a bunch of stuff you wouldn't be able to place—Mary's Mom's side is fun to read: Slaveck, Kolman, Dundr & Slopak. Sounds like the name of a Manhattan law firm!

Originally this was going to be "The 32 Names" but I realized that even with all the research I've done, I still only have 18 of those 32 names going back 5 generations back from August. All this research and I still only know 56% of August's great great grandparents.

But some of those names are awesome! Pleasant Vaughn. August Wager (see Namesakes Part 3, coming soon). Fessenden (believe it or not, this is our thread back to Augustino Balbani and his 4th-great grandfather Turco, in 1280). Stringfield, from Texas. Sauer, from Alsace-Lorraine, via Missouri. And the widow Christiann(a) Irwin Ball, mother of 11 children, our purported link back to the 9th Laird of Drum in Scotland!)

It's fun. I really wish I knew the other half of these names.

4 Months: Namesakes - Part 2

Augustus Friedrich Finkelnburg was born in 1830, in Marialinden, Rhenish Prussia. Today, Marialinden is a part of Overath, Germany, not far from Cologne, and looks like this:



Why would anyone want to leave a beautiful, civilized little town like this?

Not sure, but like many of our son's ancestors, Augustus (referred to as August in the 1880 US Census) was a pioneer. He moved to Wisconsin in 1848, at about age 18. That was the same year Wisconsin became a state. He traveled west to California in 1851 and returned on muleback from San Diego four years later.

He started a family with Amalia Busch, from Hamburg, Germany, whose father's middle name was also August. They raised nine children, eight of which survived to adulthood, but sometime between 1873 and 1880, Amelia died. In 1880, there were still seven children living in the household, from age seven to 20. Augustus was a lawyer, by trade, and figures prominently in the early legal history of the state of Wisconsin.

Augustus Finkelnburg's Prussian blood represents only about 1.5% of our August's entire genetic pie chart, but I hope our son will have inherited a much larger share of the man's spirit. I'd have liked to have met Augustus Finkelnburg, the widower immigrant from Prussia who raised nine children. A man like that could teach you things!

Latest pie charts for August are below. This is after further research: not appreciably different, but hacking away at that "Unknown" slice. Note that Augustus Finkelnburg's Prussian 1.5% isn't the only Prussian contribution. There's some on my side as well, and anecdotally it's possibly that a large section of the Unknown pie slice will turn out to be Prussian.





More on other pioneering ancestors and still more namesakes in future!

Much of my information about Augustus Finkelnburg comes from this page.

Update from Mary's Dad, Dave Finkelnburg:

Waldron,

Regarding your blog post, my understanding is that AFF came to the US with his mother and two siblings as a result of the 1848 rebellion in Germany, in which his father had taken the wrong side, politically speaking, and was therefore convinced Germany was no longer a fit place to raise a family. This was, as I understand it, when he was mayor of Badgodesburg (I think that is the name), which is an old pre-Roman town (I've walked a portion of the Roman-era wall which at that time surrounded the town) upriver and west of Bonn not far from the Belgian border. Eventually, so the family story goes, the wife and one sibling returned to Germany to live. Thus two Finkelnburgs remained in the US, one as a judge near St. Louis. The other two carried on the family line in Germany. This is my recollection of what was told to me by my distant cousin Wolf-Dieter Finkelnburg as he guided us through the town the year Mary was a student in Paris.

4 Months: It's All Relative - Part Deux

A statistical approach to my previous "It's All Relative" post, which explores the mathematical impossibility of any one individual's having completely different ancestors back more than 24 or 26 generations: let's look at whatever evidence we might from our sample data and extrapolate.

In my research of August's heritage I've looked at 333 different individuals so far. Seven of those had at least one set of common ancestors (2nd cousins married married, 9 generations back from August - in the mid-late 1700's).

I'm not sure I'm mathematician enough to figure out just what this ratio means, given the composition of the tree I have. 7/333 is more than 2%, but I only have a very small number of the full mathematical complement of August's ancestors from 9 generations back. Look how quickly the proportion of known ancestors tails off after the great-grandparent level:



Of the 512 individual in a tree at the 9th generation level, we've identified only 27 for August. That's about 5%. So if 1 out of those 27 is the product 2nd cousins, does that mean that we can expect the same for 20 out of the full 512?

Any self respecting statistician would tell you that one data point in one non-random sample is indicative of nothing. But it would be surprising to me if the true number, for most people, were actually that low, especially if you get back into the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of the people we've found are farmers, from tiny little towns. Farming communities in Virginia in colonial times, rural England in the 16th century, farming communities in the mid-west in the 1800's. At least once in August's line we found a man marrying a woman who had the same surname as his grandmother. And if you're talking about Augusta County, Virginia around the year 1800, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out what's going on!

And consider this: though we knew 27 of the 512 people at the 9th generation level, we didn't necessarily know if each of them were the product of 2nd cousins because to know that we'd need to know all of their ancestors, going back 4 generations. You can see that we don't have 27 * 2^4 = 432 great great grandparents for each of the 27 9th-great ancestors that we do have.

More analysis required.

4 Months: It's All Relative

Mathematically, you're inbred, and not as far back as you think.

Take me, Mary, and August for example; and all other European-descended white folk in America and elsewhere.

The population of all of Europe around the year 1350 is estimated to have been around 70-100 million. Estimates of the population lost to the famines and plagues of the mid 14th century run from 25 million to as high as 50 million, most say a third to more than half the population. Almost every estimate has the population dropping to around 50-70 million or less by around 1400.

1350 A.D. was 350 years ago. If a generation takes about 25 years on average, then we are separated from our post-plague European ancestors by roughly 26 generations.

The math is that you have 2^[generations] ancestors (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, etc.).

Only, you can't.

2^26 is more than 67 million people. That's probably more ancestors than there were people in Europe at the time, or getting close to it. And if you take into account the fact that not everyone reproduced, and that those who did sometimes had their entire line disappear, and the effect of standard deviation in family size, then you know the true number of Europeans who could have had a part in your family tree had to be something much less than say 40%, or 30%, or maybe even much lower (10%!? lower!?!?) of the population at the time. So if you're white, you know you're inbred at least as recently as 24-26 generations ago. Probably much more recently as well, all the way down your line.

I thought some similar math might be in play for slave-descended African Americans. If you assume you have a similarly homogenized group that starts with a small pool, and work your way back, might we find the mathematical evidence of much interbreeding?

The answer is no. The numbers only get dramatic when you go back a certain distance. My 67 million number doubles to 134 million if you go back just another 25 years from 1350 to 1325, and that's more than the peak population estimate for the middle ages. But even if you say that black Americans' ancestors were mostly already here by 1700 (and they weren't, the slave trade continued for a long time afterwards) there was only time for about 12 generations between then and now. Twelve generations back, one has about 4,000 ancestors... that's a tiny number compared to the numbers of people in that population at that time. Even if you really get aggressive with the "levers" of our little equation, and tweak the length of a generation to 20 years, you still have fewer than 33,000 ancestors between now and the beginning of the 18th century.

But in the long run the same principal applies to all people, no matter where your ancestors were. For our species to work, mathematically, there must be many "multi-purposed" ancestors in your line. You've only got 25 or 26 generations before it gets unreasonable to assume that you aren't inbred! That's only 500 to 650 years, max.

4 Months: Simplified Chart

Update: Charts are superseded by the ones in this post.

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Here's a simplified version of August's chart, aggregating into categories.

4 Months: Pie Charts

Update: Charts are superseded by the ones in this post.

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OK, so if we make assumptions on heritage based on names and origins of surnames, that takes away much from our various "Unknown" segments, especially in Mary's chart. In my case there's still a big question mark because I don't even know the surname of my biological paternal grandmother (I think she's German... that would add another 12.5% to August's Germany pie-slice, 25% to mine).

So with that caveat (that I made some assumptions), here are me, Mary, and August (me + Mary).







Remember Augustino Balbani and his great great great great grandfather Turco? They account for just 0.012% of August's genetic heritage. Mary and I also spent several hours tracking down her Swiss connection (that's how we eventually found the Balbanis. All that Switzerland research gave us just 0.83% of August.

I'll probably follow-up soon with an even more simplified chart.

4 Months: Chart

Update: Charts are superseded by the ones in this post.

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August's immigrant ancestry:


[Click to see larger chart]

Only those portions which are known with certainty are represented here.

The problem is that we don't have as much information on all of Augusts' immigrant ancestors as we do about Mary's mother's grandparents—who were relatively-recent immigrants, from Slovenia and Czech Republic (apologies for spelling on the chart). Those segments, therefore, get magnified out of proportion when viewed against what we do know. The reality is that the majority of the "[Unknown]" section will more German/Prussian, Swiss, English, Irish.

Stay tuned for a chart that is a bit less scientifically rigorous but much more colorful and probably closer to accurate.

4 Months: Eyes

A child's eyes can continue to change color up to 9 months or later... or something like that. Anyway, August's eyes are still changing. They've lightened considerably since he was born. He's already lighter than me and on his way to Mary-colored eyes.

Here's me, then Mary, then August. A real photographer would have gotten better shots. Note, the best of them is the one Mary took of my eye. Figures.

4 Months: Namesakes - Part 1

In October of 1492, as Columbus set sail to "discover" the Americas, Augustino Balbani—born in Lucca, Italy—was 35 years old. His father, who had one month to live, had also been born in Lucca. In fact, the Balbanis had been living and dying in Lucca for at least seven generations—since 1280. So even if he had been aware of Columbus' voyage, he would probably have had difficulty imagining that his 16th great grandson (that's great great great 16 times) would be born in an as-yet undiscovered New World, and would carry a localized version of his name: August.

It would take another hundred years before Augustino's great granddaughter would leave Lucca, and move to Geneva, Switzerland. In another hundred years, that woman's great great grandson would leave Geneva for the New World and settle in Virginia, not far from where I grew up, in fact. But it was still more than 300 years 'til August would be born, after the line had traveled through Kentucky, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Idaho and Montana and then returned to the east coast. And there, in Boston, a boy would be born—so WASPy, so fair—that Augustino Balbani's Northern Italian ancestors might regard with great skepticism his claim to their lineage.

Genetically, we can quite safely call August a WASP. After all, the child is literally Anglo (much English blood) and Saxon (ancestors who lived in Saxony when it was called Saxony) and Protestant (at least through descent - John Calvin lived in Geneva for nearly 30 years, and many of August's ancestors were there during and after that time in the mid 1500s). So although we can trace August's ancestors back 24 generations to Turco Balbani, born in 1280 in Lucca Italy, mathematically, that individual contributed only about one 17 millionth of August's genetic code: or 0.000006%. So August could be excused, perhaps, for not looking the part.

More later on other namesakes and on other discoveries I've made, such as how it is that Turco Balbani turns out to have actually contributed twice as much to August's genetic code as reported above: one 8.4 millionth (0.000012%).

4 Months: Laird of Drum

From what I can tell, my son is a direct descendant of Sir Alexander Irvine, 10th Laird of Drum.

Granted, he has to go back at least 13 or 14 generations, and even then it's a pretty twisted, tortured path to get there (find Christian Irwin marrying John Ball, and that's how it eventually gets to me, then August). Also, it looks like it might be the 9th Laird, not the 10th, from which August descends. But hell, I'm willing to claim this heritage on his behalf!


August's Place: Drum Castle, near Aberdeen

4 Months: Genealogy Again

So to get as complete a picture of August's genetic heritage as possible, I've started with my own, and tracked down everything I could. The methodology here is that if I can't trace back to a person who definitely (or nearly definitely) was born in a place outside the US, then that person's contribution to the genetic pie is relegated to "[Unknown]".

So this is me. As you can see, it doesn't help starting out with 50% unknown (my biological father's side is a blank page so far).



I'm still working on this, so the picture should change. Much of the 27% that's still reasonably accessible will probably turn out to be English, after I've tracked them down. Not too many other options, given names and dates and places (eg, Hamiltons in Virginia in the 1770s will likely be English).

To figure out the genealogical puzzle I'm using a number of tools and sources. To calculate the numbers for the pie chart, I'm using Omni Graffle to manually put together a tree that includes only the genetically relevant data. Here's a shrunken-down screen grab of my half of August's tree. Blues are dead-ends with no certain places (the "[Unknowns]"). Yellows come from known places. Lighter yellows are assumptions. Greys are "complete" because their branch has been fully explored above, whether or not there are unknowns up there.


[click to see it a little bigger]

4 Months: Genealogy

I feel a responsibility to provide my child with some context of his heritage: his cultural heritage, genetic composition, family medical history, geographic/ethnic background. So having August has piqued my interest in genealogy—both my own and Mary's.

Anyone who knows my love of spreadsheets and data will not be surprised that my goal is to create, for August and the world, an accurate pie chart that outlines August's ethnic background. You know the kind of thing, 1/16th Irish, 3/8 English, etc. Fun stuff!

Obviously, both Mary and I are subject to the complexities inherent in being an American in search of ethnic background information: we have a general idea where we're "from" (Europe, in our case), but it can be challenging to be precise, beyond vague labels. In my case, research is complicated by the fact that I was adopted, and had no contact with any biological relative until I was 27. Luckily, however, August's pie chart won't start out with one giant, gray half labeled with a question-mark because I'll be able to research at least half of my genetic background, and possibly, depending on how accurate I need this thing to be, maybe something from rest, as well.

Mary and I have similar genetic backgrounds: British Isles, Germany, a bit of Eastern Europe. As I find pieces of Augusts' heritage, I thought it would be good to organize information not just according to nationality, but also to group this information according to region. That is, England and Ireland would be grouped together into a British Isles category, and those pie slices would share a color scheme—something like that.

But when I started trying to map the places our genetic ancestors started-out it isn't always clear where the regional boundaries should be. For example, some of my forebears started out in the Black Forest, in southern Germany, next to Switzerland. Some of both mine and Mary's started out in Prussia, which is now covered by Northern Germany, Poland, and other northern European nations. So how do we classify these? Is all of Germany considered Western Europe? Are the Prussians Northern Europe and the Black Foresters Western Europe? Or is that Central Europe? And what about August's Polish ancestors? Northern Europe or Eastern? Are his Hungarian ancestors Eastern or Central European? Balkan?

It turns out that the boundaries change depending on who you ask.

I was just about to change the rules and see if it would be easier to classify August's background according to historical group/tribe (e.g. Teutonic, Slavic, etc.) when it struck me that I should take another look at the map of Europe. [Besides, it turns out there are Northern, Central, and Southern Slavic people anyway, and August's geographical heritage spans at least two of these, maybe more, depending on where the boundaries are and/or exactly where in, say, Hungary, his ancestors lived].

Looking at the map, trying to understand how it is that one kid could have so many ancestors who came from ambiguously-bordered regions, it struck me just how centralized his "genetic geography" actually is. Yes, it's the Brittish Isles, yes it's Hungary and Poland and Slovenia, yes it's Germany - both North and South. And Switzerland. But take a look at this map of Europe. All the known geographic heritage in August's past fits within the two regions highlighted below.


[click for larger image]

No France, no Spain, no Italy... nothing in Southern Europe or the (real) Balkans. No Scandanavia. No (real) Eastern European countries. Not very diverse is he?! Who knows what else we may turn-up over time, and with more research, but however you want to divide-up Europe, these are two relatively small areas.

Maybe the pie chart isn't as complex as I expected. Could be as simple as:


Update: Another example of my quandary here... seems like there's a branch of my genetic tree that hails from Alsace-Lorraine. That's currently in France, but the ancestors in question have German sounding names, but they probably left the region while it was under French control, but then it fell back into German control shortly thereafter. What the hell do I call these people? French? German? Prussian?

Update 2: Less than two days after this original post, I've already discovered forebears who definitely come from outside the highlighted region (Scotland), and some who might (Alsace Lorraine is only partially included in the highlighted area, I believe).