In 2018, Mom spit in a little tube that we sent off to 23andme to have her autosomal DNA analyzed. Looking at her family tree five generations (32 direct ancestors) back, I estimated that she is 50% Swedish, 19% English, 9% Scots/Irish, 9% German and 13% unknown. Her four unknown great great great grandparents are ancestors of her grandfather James N. Ferguson, whose father is so far a mystery.
Five generations of ancestors for Ima Joyce Ferguson.
Here are the results of the 23andme analysis at the 50% confidence level.
Autosomal DNA analysis of Ima Joyce Ferguson by 23andme.
Mom's 23andme results match her actual family tree pretty well. The match for her Swedish ancestry is quite good if we add in Finnish to get 52.8%. Both are classified as a "highly likely match". It appears that only a few generations back there was a Finn in the Swedish woodpile. See my post Finnish Connections to learn more about that. 23andme further breaks down Mom's ancestry into Swedish and Finnish regions.
Swedish regions where contemporary populations most closely match Mom. Järbo, Gävleborg, Sweden is the ancestral home of Mom's Swedish ancestors.
Finnish regions where contemporary populations most closely match Mom. Järbo, Gävleborg, Sweden is the ancestral home of Mom's Swedish ancestors. Savonia was the traditional region of the Swedish Forest Finns (Skogsfinnarna).
Mom is 28% English/Scottish/Irish (Gilbert, Hicks, Rose, Gale, Fairchild, Ferguson, Kerr, Karr), which compares with 12.0% British & Irish in the 23andme analysis. I suspect that more of her English/Irish/Scottish ancestry is accounted for in the Broadly Northwestern Europe category (19.0%). The "Broadly" categories indicate that 23andme could not confidently assign a nationality to DNA, but only a regional category. Her German ancestry (Troutt, Rightnowar, Nestler) is 9%, compared with a 23andme French & German (which is the region either side of the Rhine) estimate of 17.0% in the test.
The Swedish/Finnish signal in her DNA is very strong and recent. It came from her mother, Anna Clara Jader, whose parents emigrated from Sweden in 1882. The British & Irish signal is from her father, Samuel Clifford Ferguson, who has a mixed heritage of English, Scots/Irish, Palatinate German and Swiss, most of whom came to America well before 1800.
An analysis by LM Genetics maps the similarity of Mom's autosomal DNA to contemporary regional populations. These two maps pretty much confirm the 23andme analysis. Especially interesting is how the first map (in purple) maps the strongest correlation in Sweden to Svealand. Our ancestors came from the northern border of that region.
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