What Good Are Distant DNA Matches?

I've recently added more than a thousand people to my family tree from one town—Pesco Sannita, Italy. And I've barely begun to harvest the vital records. I'm eager to use the new families in my tree to connect to my unsolved DNA matches.

That's the exercise for today. I went to my DNA match list on Ancestry and searched for people with the name Pennucci in their trees. I chose that name because it's common in the town and my 3rd great grandmother was a Pennucci. I selected the first match who wasn't my father or someone from his 1st cousin's family.

I've looked at this match's tree before. It's a good one—46,234 people. But checking how his ethnicity compares to mine, I see that he's only a quarter Italian. That means a big chunk of his family tree has no connection to me.

My jumping-in point in his family tree is his great grandmother Immacolata. I recognize my match's last name (it's also his great grandfather's name), but it doesn't come from my target town. His grandmother falls into the sweet spot. Her 1902 Pesco Sannita birth record is available on the Italian ancestry website, Antenati. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.")

I pulled up Immacolata's birth record and discovered she's in my tree already. She and I don't have a blood relationship. Immacolata (who's mother was a Pennucci) is the 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. I've already built Immacolata's family tree back 5 or 6 generations. What more can I do to establish a true relationship to this DNA match?

I realized Immacolata is in my tree because of a previous attempt to connect to this DNA match. Now I need to search the vital records for her siblings, aunts, and uncles to see where it takes me.

I get the impression some people think the only way to use the Antenati website is to search for a name. Not true. Not every record is searchable. You need to navigate to your town and to each year's index pages to scour them for the name you want.

But I'm the lunatic who downloaded entire towns when it was possible. Then I renamed each document image on my computer to make them truly searchable. For me, it's easy to search the vital records for someone's siblings, and their parents' siblings.

Swimming in the Same Gene Pool

I built out several families related directly to Immacolata with no breakthrough. Then I looked at our original relationship: 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. Immacolata's 2nd great aunt Agnese married my 4th great uncle Giuseppe. That's something like "crossing the streams" in the Ghostbuster movies. Their marriage created people who carry DNA like mine and like my match's.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that this DNA match, the great grandson of Immacolata, is in my 5th–8th cousin range. We share only one segment of 17 cM. Our shared roots are in a remote town where families intermarried for centuries. There's a very good chance that instead of a pair of shared ancestors, we have DNA from the same community pool.

I've been thinking about this notion for a long time. I haven't put it out there because it seems evasive and hard to put into words. It started taking shape when tests showed that my parents share DNA—37 cM across 4 segments. They could be 3rd to 5th cousins. But they aren't. I can name their ancestors and they're all different. (See "When DNA Says You're Related, You Determine How.")

Here's what I think. My documented ancestors, going back to the late 1600s, lived in neighboring towns, laid out like links in a chain. Each town is small, and even with modern roads, it can be hard to get from one to the next. (I know from personal experience.) That led to centuries of intermarriage within the towns or between close towns.

Doesn't it make sense that deep roots in a small geographical area result in shared DNA?

All those neighboring towns produced generation after generation of people with shared DNA. You know how the big DNA companies compare your DNA sample to a reference panel? The panel consists of DNA from people with roots in one place for several hundred years. Well, that's me! Until my recent ancestors came to America, my people were tied to one spot for centuries.

Studies show that the characteristics of a place exist in its people's teeth and bones. Is that why you can "feel it in your bones" when you arrive at the place your ancestors came from? I believe my parents and I, and many of our distant DNA matches, share the characteristics of the place we come from. That's why we carry some identical DNA.

We've been simmering in the same pot for centuries!

My DNA match, great grandson of Immacolata, has DNA from a mixture of Pesco Sannita and a town 9 miles away—Molinara. I get all my DNA from a mixture of at least 7 towns in the same area. We have the very soil in common.

Adding Up Your Ancestral Roots

I took a tally of the birth places of my 1st through 3rd great grandparents—all 42 of them. Here's my percentage of roots in each town. (The 7th town, Circello, doesn't appear until a pair of my 4th great grandparents.)

• Colle Sannita 40.48%
• Baselice 23.81%
• Pastene 21.43%
• Pesco Sannita 7.14%
• Santa Paolina 4.76%
• Apice 2.38%

Seeing this list in order justifies the extensive research I've done. I've completely harvested the vital records of Colle Sannita and Baselice. I've worked everyone possible into my family tree. I've harvested Pastene's limited records, too. Now I'm working my way through Pesco Sannita. Obviously Santa Paolina and Apice will be next, then Circello.

This type of relationship to my distant DNA matches changes how I view them. I don't expect to find a common ancestor with most of them. But I do search their family trees for marriages without documentation. Immacolata and her family are in my tree, but there's no documentation of her marriage to a man from Molinara. It's my match's tree that holds that detail.

If your family tree has no non-parental events and few missing ancestors, you may ignore your DNA matches. I encourage you to review matches with decent-sized family trees. What are they good for? They may contain the marriage that brought your great aunt to a new country. They may help explain a great uncle who seemed to disappear from his hometown. They can extend your tree's dead ends.

Do Your DNA Ethnicity Results Make No Sense?

Two people contacted me lately about an odd ethnicity in their DNA results. The three of us share ancestry in my grandfather's hometown, so they wondered if I'm seeing what they're seeing. I'm not, but I have a few curious results, too.

That's why I was excited to join another Diahan Southard webinar titled "DNA Ethnicity Estimates: How to Actually Use Them!" One of the most important things I learned was, basically:

If your results show less than 5% of an unexpected ethnicity, it's probably not reliable.

Here's how to get a better idea of its reliability. I'll use AncestryDNA as an example, but most DNA websites have similar tools.

• Click on the unexpected ethnicity in your results. I chose my mother's unexpected 2% Portugal.
• This opens a panel that tells you a bit more, such as "Primarily located in Portugal; Also found in Spain." Their map tells me this ethnicity may cover Spain's whole west side.
• Now look at your percentage. In this case, it says 2% Portugal, but beneath that it says it "can range from 0% to 5%." That's right. It's as low as 0%.

I've documented my mother's ancestors in a small area of Southern Italy going back to the very early 1700s. Could someone have come from Spain or Portugal before that? Sure. And since FamilytreeDNA tells me I have 6% Iberian Peninsula, there probably is some ancient connection.

But that doesn't matter to my family tree, does it? I'll never make a documented connection to a centuries-old ancestor from Spain or Portugal.

My father's results have a laughable result of less than 1% Norway. Less than 1%! When I click it I see that his estimate is 0%, but it can range from 0% to 1%. That sounds like we can disregard it, don't you think? He has no Norway on MyHeritage.

In fact, all Mom and Dad's ethnicities but Southern Italy and Northern Italy could be as low as 0%. The same is true for me, with one exception. Even my Northern Italy could be as low as 0%.

Dig deeper into tiny, unexpected ethnicity results.

AncestryDNA says the DNA samples they test you against "divide the world into 84 overlapping regions and groups." I can see that what they're calling Southern Italy and Northern Italy overlap close to the area we come from. Taken together, this makes me confident we are Southern Italy, going back at least as far as the paper records go.

But, if you *don't* know where all your people came from for the last 300+ years, pay attention to your unexpected results. They may be the clue you need.

A Range of Ethnicity Results

Why would AncestryDNA tell me my Northern Italy is 8% but it may range from 0 to 39%? This is from their website:

"We compare your DNA to a reference panel made up of DNA from groups of people who have deep roots in one region. We look at 1,001 sections of your DNA and assign each section to the ethnicity region it looks most like."

They look at 1,001 different sections of your DNA! Your DNA isn't one homogeneous strand. Each section can show a different percentage of an ethnicity. That means that my 1,001 test results for Northern Italian DNA ranged from none to a high of 39%. The average of all the tests was 8%.

Where the Action Is

For a long time my AncestryDNA results didn't show any of what they call Communities. Now I have three that either touch or overlap one another. And they are 100% true to my documented, massive family tree.

From Mom's side:

• Avellino & Southwest Foggia Provinces
• South Benevento & North Avellino Provinces

From Dad's side:

• Campobasso & East Isernia Provinces

I can prove that our documented ancestors are from the Benevento & Avellino Provinces. AncestryDNA bases these communities on the family trees of DNA matches. And they're very accurate, according to DNA expert Diahan Southard.

My husband's AncestryDNA test has a disappointingly low number of DNA matches. But I love his community! It fits everything we know about his ancestors: "Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, Olta & Kumamoto." Here's what Ancestry says about how they determined this as his community:

"You, and all the members of this community, are linked through shared ancestors. You probably have family who lived in this area for years—and maybe still do."

I'll leave you with another great tip from Southard. Say you're trying to trace a close ancestor—a 2nd great grandparent or closer. And you have no idea where on earth they came from.

Do you have a DNA ethnicity that doesn't match what you know about your ancestry? Check your mystery DNA matches' ethnicities. (On AncestryDNA, Ethnicity is a tab, like Shared Matches.) Do any of these matches have a decent amount of that one unexpected ethnicity? Check their family tree and Shared Matches to see if their information that can help you.

Also, take a look at which ethnicities you actually share with your decent DNA matches. If they don't have small amounts of something you have, then that ethnicity has no bearing on your connection.

What's the bottom line with all these ethnicities?

• Be sure to check out the range of percentages. If it says it's as low as zero, it's may be too little to matter.
• If the average is below 5%, don't expect to find a documented ancestor from that part of the world.
• Check to see how your DNA matches' ethnic percentages compare to yours.

If some of your DNA ethnicity results simply don't make sense, give them a closer look. If you can see they're not worth pursuing, don't worry about them.

Here's a good way to look at it in mathematical terms:

• Each of your parents gave you 50% of your DNA.
• Each of your grandparents gave you 25% of your DNA.
• Each of your great grandparents gave you 12½% of your DNA.
• Each of your 2nd great grandparents gave you 6¼% of your DNA.

A tiny percentage is either a statistical error or a very distant ancestor.

I know exactly where all my 3rd great grandparents came from, as well as 55 of my 64 4th great grandparents. It's crazy to imagine that one of my nine missing 4th great grandparents walked to Southern Italy from Norway or Portugal! That gives me the confidence to ignore those trace ethnicities.

How about you?

Don't lose any sleep over tiny, unexpected DNA ethnicities.

And speaking of DNA:

• Making Sense of Your DNA Results
• Delving Deep into Your Genealogy with DNA
• The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About

How to Use a Foreign-Language Book for Family Tree Research

Last week I mentioned that I own the definitive book on the history of one of my ancestral hometowns. It's called "Storia di Pesco Sannita," by Mario D'Agostino, and of course it's written in Italian.

I have plans to translate parts of it using the Google Translate app on my phone, but it's a lot of pages. So first, I'll pick out facts that add interesting details about the lives of some people in my family tree.

I often see people saying they can't make any use of documents or books in another language. If I could, I'd grab every one of those people by the shoulders and shake them really hard.

You don't have to read or translate every single word to get meaning out of foreign text. All you have to do is:

• Look for names. The language doesn't matter if you know some of the names you're looking for.
• Pay attention to dates. If they aren't written in numerals, like 1852, they'll be in longhand. The FamilySearch Research Wiki has all kinds of help for this. Go to their website, choose your country of interest, and look for the Genealogical Word List. You'll find numbers, months, and common words on vital records.
• Use a translator app for context. If you're translating a neatly printed text, like in book, get the Google Translate app for your phone. You can select the camera within the app, point it at a page, and you'll see it change to English. Pretty amazing.

If the one and only book about your ancestral hometown is in another language, there's so much you can learn from it!

Here's a sample of the details I'm finding in my Pesco Sannita book that aren't in the vital records:

• The town had 461 inhabitants in 1697, rising steadily to 2,460 inhabitants in 1857. (There were only 1,925 in 2020.)
• Lorenzo Maria Pennucci, born in 1763, was the town mayor in 1811. I confirmed this by opening a few 1811 birth records to see his signature at the bottom. It isn't something I would have noticed otherwise.
• Town doctor Paolo Emilio Pennucci, 1800–1846, was too sick to help his patients during an 1846 epidemic of typhus. He likely died of the disease himself.
• The town made Benito Mussolini an honorary citizen in 1924. Uh oh.

You can harvest the goods from a foreign-language book.

I discovered these tidbits by:

• skimming the text for names
• locating the person in my family tree, and
• using the translation app for context.

Before this book, I bought another Italian language book about the town of Colle Sannita. My friend, Doctor Fabio Paolucci, compiled this book from the 1742 tax census of the town. It lists more than 560 households with names, ages, and relationships.

You'd better believe I wasn't going to let language slow me down. I knew I had some very early ancestors waiting for me in those pages. All I had to translate (until I memorized them) were the words for each household's belongs: sheep, oxen, pigs, mules, vineyards, vegetable gardens, houses, etc.

With so much technology at your fingertips, how can you pass up a foreign-language book about your ancestors?

If you have the chance to get your hands on a book about your ancestral hometown, take the book! You can pull facts out of it pretty easily. And there will be goodies in there you can't get anywhere else.

And speaking of reading foreign languages:

• Step Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone
• How to Deal with the Worst Document Handwriting
• The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: 'Wedding Packets'