Genetic Ancestry

I am very curious about my origins and like to learn as much as I can about my ancestry. I think its a shame people aren't more interested in their ancestors. You owe your very existence to the fact your ancestors did their jobs and you exist and you have been raised more competently than they were if your lucky. It is important to be grateful to your ancestors and to remember them. Your ancestors should be honored and judged generously. You should follow their example and become and ancestor yourself.

Genealogically I have traced my ancestry as far as I can based on the written records available in English. I have had my DNA tested with a company called Family Tree DNA (user# 80593). My father was a Mennonite so I have also participated in the Mennonite DNA project. I have also participated in the Dodedcad project which is a genetic census of people with European Ancestry. I have also completed a Prometheus report with SNPedia which analyzes my DNA for genes that have been identified that coo relate with certain traits.

Some of the things I learned from Family Tree DNA are that on my ancestors from my maternal side have been in North America for centuries. My maternal matches are mostly in the areas of the original thirteen colonies in the United States. My grandmother traced her Stevenson line to Lynn, Ontario which interestingly was established by British loyalists during the American Revolution. The genealogical records for my maternal side are very weak and I  am yet to find a paper trail to my American ancestors. I think my maternal ancestry (Ferguson) is in part made up from British Empire loyalists who came to Canada during the American revolution and Scottish/Irish immigrants who came to Canada and eventually set up home steads in Saskatchewan. My Family Tree DNA Ferguson matches have traced their Ferguson origins to Argyll, Scotland. The Mervyn line of my ancestry can trace their origins to Armagh, Northern Ireland. I share little DNA with people of Irish ancestry, but I share a lot of DNA with people of British/Scottish ancestry so I think the Mervyn line (I think the surname is welsh in origin) are descendants of welsh settlers in Northern Ireland. My mitochondrial DNA is haplogroup U4. In geneticist Brian Sykes book "The Blood of the British Isles" says that U4 is most likely brought to Britain by Viking homesteaders. The furthest upstream ancestor in my mitochondrial lineage (mitoline) is Katherine Campbell born in 1890.  My Campbell matches in Family Tree DNA trace their Campbell ancestry also to Argyll, Scotland. U4 is a haplogroup which 2% of Europeans belong to who's progenitor lived around 18,000 years ago possibly around the Black Sea.Brian Sykes has given her the name Ulrike due to its slight over representation among people of Germanic ancestry. Some of the mammoth hunters in the Ukraine area were members of the U4 haplogroup and also the original speakers of the indo european languages.

Family Tree DNA and the Dodecad project both say that I am the descendant of people living around 1000 AD in the following areas at the following percentage of contributions to my genome:

32% are from the Northern European Plain
32% are from the British Isles
24% are from Scandinavia
12% are from Eastern Europe

The Dodecad project in addition to my DNA, use my craniometric measurements and place my in the European subgroup of Irano-Nordic which is typical of people with Northern European/Scandinavian ancestry. Interestingly your mother is craniometric measurements place her in the Proto-Europoid group so if you wanted to know if you take after your mom or me you can objectively determine it by comparing your indexes to ours. In addition according to an analysis of my DNA SNPpedia Promethease program if you inherited the following traits you likely got it from me;

* All the genes for cancer, obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Eat Vegetable based diet, don't sit around for more than 4 hours a day and don't eat to many carbohydrates.
* Light skin of the type 2 variety which is a 7 - 13 on the Fitzpatrick Scale (wear sunscreen). Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1426654(A;A).
* The VAL/VAL version of SNP which puts me on the warrior end of the warrior/worrier personality spectrum which performs better on tests which the optimum strategy changes. This trait is useful in threatening environments where maximal performance is required despite threats (warrior strategy). The worrier strategy is more useful on tasks where maximal performance is required on tasks of attention and memory. SNP rs4680(G;G).
* SNP for better performing muscles. This SNP is over represented among endurance Olympic athletes and is nearly found in 100% of Olympic medalist athletes in sports requiring highly intensive muscle performance like sprinters. SNP rs1815739 (C;C).
* The gene that allows us to eat dairy well into adulthood. GS101.
* These genes are associated with gluten intolerance. GS221
* 4.4X increase risk for exfoliation glaucoma. SNP rs2165241(C;T).
* 3.9X increase risk for macular degeneration. SNP rs1136287(T;T).
* Moderately increase hippocampal volume. SNP rs7294919 (C;T).
* Increased risk of baldness. SNP rs2073963(G;G).
* A couple points on the IQ and a couple years on the lifespan. SNP rs9536314(G;T).
* Increased longevity and less mental decline with age. I carry the gene SIRT1 which is being research to understand how people live beyond 100 years. SNP rs3758391(T;T).
* Stronger bones. SNP rs2707466(A;A).
* Lose weight with any exercise. gs282.

If your children have curly blonde hair when they are toddlers that may probably be from me. Freckles, blue eyes, and reddish-brown hair are probably from me. The ability to smell asparagus in the urine and rolling your tongue are from me as well. Despite cancers like colon, prostate and leukemia and conditions like heart disease and diabetes my grand parents lived into their 80's and my paternal grand mother is still alive in her 90's. I think their average lifespan is 85. You could live to 100 if you have a healthy lifestyle. Be careful about your weight and make sure you fill up on vegetables. If our diet isn't half vegetables we can easily attain body fat percentages above 25% and up to 50%, and because we remain usually thin through out our teenage years we are fooled into thinking we can eat whatever we want which helps us develop bad eating habits that when after 30 the weight starts to show and we have a hard time losing it.

My paternal ancestry is well documented. My father was a Mennonite. The Mennonite Genealogical Society keeps genealogical records on Mennonites in what called a GRANDMA database. My fathers entry number is #633711. My mother was not a Mennonite, so when my father died when I was four we were living on Vancouver Island where their are few Mennonites. Because of this I wasn't raised a Mennonite. Interestingly my father a grandparents were born in Mexico. They are descendants of a group of Mennonites which settled in Mexico from Canada because they were unhappy with the Canadian governments attempts to assimilate them. My grandfather moved his family back to Canada when my Dad was around 14.  My dad spoke low German and learned English when he moved to Canada. My great great grandfather Heinrich Abrams settled in Manitoba in 1875 from the Ukraine. http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Abrams,_Heinrich_(1832-1910) .  Heinrich was born near the Vistula delta in Poland. Our Mennonites ancestors began settling the Vistula delta in the late 1500's from Friesland. I have participated in the Mennonite DNA project. For some reason my ancestor Heinrich was born Abrahams, but shortened it to Abrams. I and two other Abrahams lineages though we aren't connected geneologically, we all are matches on our Y chromosome, which like surnames is inherited from father to son. Comparisons of our Y chromosome place the Abrahams progenitor in Friesland around 600 years ago. We are all members of the haplogroup R1b, which geneticist Brian Sykes named Oisin. Our furthest known down stream marker is L51. Genetic geneologit Ken Nordtvelt places our lineage in the Frisian branch of R1b, which is consistent with Mennonite history. From the 3rd through the 5th centuries Frisia suffered marine transgressions that made most of the land uninhabitable, aggravated by a change to a cooler and wetter climate. Whatever population may have remained dropped dramatically, and the coastal lands remained largely unpopulated for the next two centuries. When conditions improved, Frisia received an influx of new settlers, mostly Angles and Saxons. These people would eventually be referred to as 'Frisians', though they were not necessarily descended from the ancient Frisii. The progenitor of the R-L51 lived around 4500 years ago in central Europe.

So here is a the quick summary of my ancestry, I will go into further detail in later posts.