Focusing on your ethnicity estimate won’t get you answers.
Start sorting your matches, get the oldest living people in your family to test and then build out a tree with your shared matches so you can group them. Look up the Leeds method.
These tests are extremely accurate on the Continental level.
Where they start to lose some of their accuracy is when the algorithm tries to differentiate English from Welsh or French from German, etc.
Okay so take everything with a pinch of salt? Just questioning because my paternal side is quite expected, my grandmother is half English half Welsh so was expecting similar each side.
Basically, Ancestry and 23andMe tests are only as good as the samples in their databases.
What you see with your results is how your genome compares to their databases. These tests do not show you what ethnicities you have "in" you, just how your DNA compares to the database. This is why they do updates -- more samples come in, so your regions will keep changing over time.
The tests *are* accurate in terms of how your genome compares to the databases, but that will not necessarily be a perfect reflection of your true ancestry.
The whole Welsh/English DNA differences thing is blurry to say the least. You can be culturally Welsh and believe you are Welsh but have English parents and live close to the English border for example. So you ancestor could have legitimately thought he was "half Welsh" but his "Welsh" family might have mainly been ethnically English (but happened to move to Wales as miners for example).
As other commenters have pointed out, these are just estimates. They're guesses. There's no such thing as an English gene, an Irish gene and so forth. In fact, English and Irish people share a lot of genetic overlap from their prehistoric ancestry, and they both share a lot of genetic overlap with the rest of Western Europe as well.
I'm English, French German and Irish in my family heritage and know it to be true because I have the records. I'm not American or from a similar country where it's not unfathomable to have one immigrant cuckold another - I'm first-generation. Ancestry gives me ridiculous results which are completely different from 23andme and LivingDNA, which I've done too.
But it's not a random guess they've made, it's the best they can do knowing that all of Western Europe is effectively a soup of similar genetic profiles.
has your mum tested? You can’t really make paternity claims based on ethnicity results. If your mum tests it should be easy to go through her matches and establish common ancestors with matches on her father’s side. If none are found that match with your granddads tree then it’s likely a different man was her dad, and comparing the trees of shared matches should help narrow it down to a family level at least.
I've done his ancestry and he's from a family that's exclusively English (London and Kent) going back to the 1600s on his paternal line, that's what has got me questioning.
To me it would seem like it's a distinct possibility he's not your grandfather. However, I would go through your matches and start classifying them based on how they're related to you. You'll likely either find relatives of his or a bunch of people who you can't place but are related to one another.
Start with the closest matches. The further you dig down the harder it will be to place.
I got a really high Welsh reading as well, like 23% when I have no Welsh family that I know of. Can only assume it just overlaps with the English side. My family are from merseyside/Cheshire.
I would try to focus on your matches, see if anyone comes up that would connect to you through your maternal grandfather. Do you have any strong matches? Any hits on ThruLines (if you have a tree)? It's possible your maternal grandfather was actually 100% Welsh and your nan was mistaken (particularly if he was only in your lives briefly), or maybe he himself was an NPE (not a child of the English parent), or your mum could be an NPE, or your ethnicity estimate could just be incorrect. There are several possibilities, really, and they can only be confirmed with matches.
It isn't always easy to break down the British Isles, or even Western Europe. My paternal side is entirely English, I have 30% England & Northwestern Europe, 9% Irish, 6% Sweden and Denmark and 5% Germanic on that side, with no ancestry to back up the smaller regions. My paternal ancestry is all in the south, majority south east, some speculation that the Sweden/Denmark and Germanic could be misread Anglo Saxon, but the Irish remains a mystery. And DNA matches consistently confirm my paper trail. Meanwhile, my maternal grandmother's father was German, I have DNA confirmation of several cousins (close and distant), and yet Ancestry reports no Germanic on my maternal side... it all appears to be meshed together with Scottish, which is where my maternal grandfather was from.
So I took everyone's advice and used the DNA matches and ThruLines and turns out it's looking most likely that he IS my Mum's biological father but his paternity is not what it should be, I can find matches with my great grandmother (his mother) but not with my great grandfather (her husband, who is English). Looks like I've uncovered an affair as my grandfather was born in 1943, so possibly the man he thinks is his father was away at war or working away from home as an Essential War Worker (he was a skilled labourer). I've little doubt that he thinks he's English as he always told my Mum that and I can see my half-uncle, his son has an Ancestry account and has done his tree as if he's the English man's grandson. So yeah, all in all, pretty awkward as I know the man's family who is my biological great grandfather (we're from a small town) and I also know that my grandfather is still alive, he's 80 and still lives in the county. So potentially he's going to pass away soon never knowing his father isn't who he thinks. Or maybe he knows and hasn't told his son or daughter.
Focusing on your ethnicity estimate won’t get you answers. Start sorting your matches, get the oldest living people in your family to test and then build out a tree with your shared matches so you can group them. Look up the Leeds method.
These tests are extremely accurate on the Continental level. Where they start to lose some of their accuracy is when the algorithm tries to differentiate English from Welsh or French from German, etc.
Okay so take everything with a pinch of salt? Just questioning because my paternal side is quite expected, my grandmother is half English half Welsh so was expecting similar each side.
Check your matches
I have tried, I'm not finding any of the surnames from his tree in my matches but most of my matches are distant.
I mean I think it is fairly likely it was a different man then. Ancestry is pretty darn accurate.
Basically, Ancestry and 23andMe tests are only as good as the samples in their databases. What you see with your results is how your genome compares to their databases. These tests do not show you what ethnicities you have "in" you, just how your DNA compares to the database. This is why they do updates -- more samples come in, so your regions will keep changing over time. The tests *are* accurate in terms of how your genome compares to the databases, but that will not necessarily be a perfect reflection of your true ancestry.
The whole Welsh/English DNA differences thing is blurry to say the least. You can be culturally Welsh and believe you are Welsh but have English parents and live close to the English border for example. So you ancestor could have legitimately thought he was "half Welsh" but his "Welsh" family might have mainly been ethnically English (but happened to move to Wales as miners for example).
As other commenters have pointed out, these are just estimates. They're guesses. There's no such thing as an English gene, an Irish gene and so forth. In fact, English and Irish people share a lot of genetic overlap from their prehistoric ancestry, and they both share a lot of genetic overlap with the rest of Western Europe as well. I'm English, French German and Irish in my family heritage and know it to be true because I have the records. I'm not American or from a similar country where it's not unfathomable to have one immigrant cuckold another - I'm first-generation. Ancestry gives me ridiculous results which are completely different from 23andme and LivingDNA, which I've done too. But it's not a random guess they've made, it's the best they can do knowing that all of Western Europe is effectively a soup of similar genetic profiles.
has your mum tested? You can’t really make paternity claims based on ethnicity results. If your mum tests it should be easy to go through her matches and establish common ancestors with matches on her father’s side. If none are found that match with your granddads tree then it’s likely a different man was her dad, and comparing the trees of shared matches should help narrow it down to a family level at least.
I'm no contact with my Mum due to her addiction, wish it was as simple!
Maybe he was just Welsh and from England.
I've done his ancestry and he's from a family that's exclusively English (London and Kent) going back to the 1600s on his paternal line, that's what has got me questioning.
To me it would seem like it's a distinct possibility he's not your grandfather. However, I would go through your matches and start classifying them based on how they're related to you. You'll likely either find relatives of his or a bunch of people who you can't place but are related to one another. Start with the closest matches. The further you dig down the harder it will be to place.
If the guy was a quarter English and three quarters Welsh that could help solve it. You would be 3% English and that could get lost in the mist.
I got a really high Welsh reading as well, like 23% when I have no Welsh family that I know of. Can only assume it just overlaps with the English side. My family are from merseyside/Cheshire.
I would try to focus on your matches, see if anyone comes up that would connect to you through your maternal grandfather. Do you have any strong matches? Any hits on ThruLines (if you have a tree)? It's possible your maternal grandfather was actually 100% Welsh and your nan was mistaken (particularly if he was only in your lives briefly), or maybe he himself was an NPE (not a child of the English parent), or your mum could be an NPE, or your ethnicity estimate could just be incorrect. There are several possibilities, really, and they can only be confirmed with matches. It isn't always easy to break down the British Isles, or even Western Europe. My paternal side is entirely English, I have 30% England & Northwestern Europe, 9% Irish, 6% Sweden and Denmark and 5% Germanic on that side, with no ancestry to back up the smaller regions. My paternal ancestry is all in the south, majority south east, some speculation that the Sweden/Denmark and Germanic could be misread Anglo Saxon, but the Irish remains a mystery. And DNA matches consistently confirm my paper trail. Meanwhile, my maternal grandmother's father was German, I have DNA confirmation of several cousins (close and distant), and yet Ancestry reports no Germanic on my maternal side... it all appears to be meshed together with Scottish, which is where my maternal grandfather was from.
So I took everyone's advice and used the DNA matches and ThruLines and turns out it's looking most likely that he IS my Mum's biological father but his paternity is not what it should be, I can find matches with my great grandmother (his mother) but not with my great grandfather (her husband, who is English). Looks like I've uncovered an affair as my grandfather was born in 1943, so possibly the man he thinks is his father was away at war or working away from home as an Essential War Worker (he was a skilled labourer). I've little doubt that he thinks he's English as he always told my Mum that and I can see my half-uncle, his son has an Ancestry account and has done his tree as if he's the English man's grandson. So yeah, all in all, pretty awkward as I know the man's family who is my biological great grandfather (we're from a small town) and I also know that my grandfather is still alive, he's 80 and still lives in the county. So potentially he's going to pass away soon never knowing his father isn't who he thinks. Or maybe he knows and hasn't told his son or daughter.