Adding “Genetic Communities” to My DNA Results

Evaluating My DNA Testing Results

It has probably been three or more years since I first received my DNA test results that I ordered through Ancestry.com.  Initially, I was very disappointed with the look and feel of Ancestry’s DNA feature–it merely showed (based upon my DNA sample test), that I descended from Europeans who had migrated to the New World.  Now, the only way I wouldn’t have already known this was if I had been an ostrich with its head buried in the sand for the past 400 or so years.

Over the past 18 months or longer, Ancestry has continued to add, or in its opinion, improve to its list of features like its “life story” option which assimilated facts from my collected documentation in my family tree to general historic timeline narratives of events in close proximity with a given fact.  It was a good try, but, in my opinion, something I preferred to research and narrate on my own with more specificity, if and when I chose to do a write about an individual.

Ancestry Releases Another New Feature

Then, this week, Ancestry sent me an email announcing more new features to help me better connect my people and my places to historical details and migration paths.  It seems AncestryDNA™ has become the largest consumer genetic testing company with 3,000,000 people tested; 80,000,000 trees; and 19,000,000,000 records.  And this time, Ancestry uses its vast collection of DNA results to tap into its family history resources and create an all-new feature “Genetic Communities™,” which in turn helps me fill in missing pieces about my family’s story and how it inter-relates to the geography, times, and stories of other families.

Earlier results broke down my ethnicity origins into a mere four regions of the world. With today’s results (that will continue to grow over time since this feature is in its Beta version), I can browse over 300 Genetic Communities using MapBox open source geospatial maps that Ancestry integrated into this new feature.

So Just What Is A “Genetic Community”?  

Ancestry describes a genetic community as a group of AncestryDNA members who are connected through DNA most likely because they descend from a population of common ancestors, even if they no longer live in the area where those ancestors once lived.  The image below shows that my ancestors and I are part of two genetic communities in which our connection is very likely or possible:  Early Settlers of Lower Midwest & Virginia and Early Settlers of Tennessee and the Deep South.

And further,  below is just one of six time-line examples within the “Early Settler of the Lower Midwest & Virginia” Genetic Communities™: (1700-1775 “Into the Back Country,” 1775-1825 “Kentucky Fever,” 1825-1850 “Along the Mississippi,” 1850-1875 “War Hits Home,” 1875-1900 “The South Industrializes, 1900-1950 “An Urban Life,” in this new feature. Although not shown as links, you can click on each name from your tree and it will display this person on the MapBox map, (which you can zoom in or out of for greater or less geographic detail); and you can also click another link that will allow you to view each person’s profile details from inside your Ancestry family tree.

“Into the Backcountry 1700-1775”

By 1700 flourishing towns and small cities dotted the eastern seaboard from Massachusetts to North Carolina. Many new immigrants from England and Germany, and Scots-Irish from northern Ireland, pressed into the rugged country to the west where they could find land, religious tolerance, political freedom, and economic opportunity. They faced threats from the French on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and native peoples who resisted encroachment on their lands.

People in Your Tree

1. Elizabeth Williams Settle  B:1661 D:1724
2.  Elizabeth Frances Triplett B:1670 D:1710
3. Deborah Hearn B:1670 D:1731
4. John Powell B:1670 D:1731
5. John Bourne B:1672 D:1720
6. Ethelred Taylor B:1675 D:1716
7. William George Wharton B:1675 D:1740
8. Elizabeth Johnson B:1676 D:1760
9. Elizabeth Duke B:1677 D:1725
10. Susan Alvis B:1680 D:1735
11. William Kinchen B:1681 D:1735
12. Thomas Chowning B:1684 D:1782
13. Elizabeth Ruffin B:1685 D:1761
14. Sarah Davis B:1686 D:1721
15. William Taptico II B:1690 D:1719
16. Elizabeth Barrick B:1690 D:1724
17. Sarah or Mary Ann Lee B:1690 D:
18. William Elliott B:1692 D:1750
19. Frances Rachel Riley B:1692 D:1751
20. Lettice Bourk B:1693 D:1727
21. Mary Fellows B:1693 D:1747
22. Capt. John Higginbotham B:1695 D:1742
23. Benjamin Asbury B:1695 D:1750
24. John Jett B:1695 D:1771
25. William Guttery B:1697 D:1723
26. Frances Brown B:1698 D:1755
27. Etheldred Taylor B:1699 D:1755
28. Ann Elizabeth Wells B:1700 D:1770
29. Robert Kyle B:1702 D:1774
30. Benjamin Bowling B:1704 D:1767
31. Betty Ann Campbell B:1704 D:1779
32. Mary Williams B:1705 D:1735
33. Samuel S McGehee B:1706 D:1788
34. William Tapp B:1707 D:1791
35. Christian Bourne B:1708 D:1791
36. Mary Elizabeth Bland Blair Bolling B:1709 D:1775
37. Thomas Wharton B:1711 D:1748
38. Robert “Chowning” Chewning B:1711 D:1843
39. Mary Elizabeth Elliot B:1714 D:1745
40. Moses Higginbotham B:1714 D:1790
41. James Whitlock B:1715 D:1749
42. Aaron Garrison B:1715 D:1758
43. Patience Kinchen B:1715 D:1765
44. Agnes Christmas B:1715 D:1768
45. Elizabeth Birdwell B:1717 D:1816
46. Betty Guttery B:1718 D:1743
47. Jane Sparks Miller B:1720 D:1756
48. William Balum Dempsey B:1720 D:1777
49. John Asbury B:1720 D:1812
50. William Brown B:1722 D:1793
51. Jonathan Stanford B:1723 D:1792
52. Jean Bolling B:1724 D:1795
53. Elender Nellie Last B:1725 D:1760
54. Susanna Watson B:1728 D:1751
55. Vincent Tapp B:1729 D:1791
56. Mary Mollie Meadows B:1729 D:1800
57. Robert Bolling B:1730 D:1775
58. James Powell B:1733 D:1816
59. Frances Kyle B:1734 D:1825
60. Benjamin Bolling B:1734 D:1832
61. Mary Leavette B:1735 D:1791
62. Mary Mollie Jett B:1736 D:1823
63. Mildred “Millie” Stephens B:1739 D:1781
64. Charles Whitlock B:1739 D:1814
65. Charles “Chowning” Chewning B:1739 D:1816
66. John Wharton B:1741 D:1816
67. Esther B:1742 D:1811
68. Samuel C Mcgee McGhee B:1744 D:1814
69. Rhoda Morris B:1745 D:1827
70. William Garrison B:1746 D:1824
71. Winifred “Winnie” Elizabeth Garrison B:1747 D:1835
72. Grace Brown B:1748 D:1789
73. Mary Elizabeth Stanford B:1749 D:1828
74. Jane Bowling B:1750 D:1809
75. James Bartholomew Warren B:1750 D:1813
76. Samuel Young B:1751 D:1800
77. Susan B:1752 D:
78. George Asbury B:1756 D:1819
79. Sarah Jane Yancey B:1756 D:1820
80. Daniel Dempsey B:1759 D:1846
81. James Moses “Old Moses” Higginbotham B:1760 D:1826
82. Elizabeth Betsy Dempsey B:1760 D:1840
83. Eleanor Garrison B:1762 D:1856
84. Jarrett Bowling B:1762 D:1857
85. James Tapp B:1764 D:1860
86. Elizabeth “Betsy” Garrison B:1765 D:1826
87. Ptolemy Powell B:1767 D:1843
88. Wiley L McGee B:1769 D:1845
89. Sarah “Sallie” Chewning B:1771 D:1834
90. Andrew Austin Wharton B:1773 D:1835
91. Frances Withers B:1774 D:1850
92. Elizabeth Leavette B: D:1771
93. Thomas Leavitt B: D:1771
94. Thomas Whitlock B: D:1832

MapBox Time Period View of Ancestral BirthplacesB

Bottom line, I am enjoying browsing and navigating the “Genetic Communities” feature because I always wanted to geographically place my ancestors together along a timeline to see their proximity to each other and how their lives might have been the same or dissimilar. If you are an Ancestry.com customer, who hadn’t yet heard about Ancestry’s newest feature and its options, I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.