Gedmatch predicts my eye color...

I was reading someone's else's blog where they showed their own result from the Gedmatch Eye Color Prediction Tool so of course, I had to try it, too.  Before I started, I noticed this warning on the page, so I didn't expect the results to be perfect since, as you might remember, I had my DNA test done by Ancestry.com:

FTDNA Illumina and Ancestry.Com results may provide a prediction, but generally there are not enough of the necessary SNPs for it to be accurate.

This is what they predicted: 

 

The photo to the right is my actual eye!  I consider that close.  They also gave me a chance to rate the accuracy of the prediction.  Below were my choices.  Taking into consideration the disclaimer I quoted above, I chose #3 and mentioned in the comment box provided that my eyes are quite a bit darker than the picture.

Please rate the accuracy of this prediction. You can scroll down and leave additional explanation or comments below

• It's exactly right.
• Color is correct. It missed one or two tiny details, but it's very close.
• Came close on the color(s), and got a lot of the details.
• Got some of the colors in my eye, but missed a lot of details.
• The color is not exactly close, but it's not a complete miss either.
• The prediction missed the color completely, but it picked up a few other details.
• Completely wrong. The color's not even close.

What do you think?

#AncestryDNA Ethnicity Updated

You may have seen my previous post about the ethnicity results from my AncestryDNA test.  Not long after I posted that "interesting" pie chart, Ancestry updated the method they used to determine where my ancestors came from.  This seems more logical:

 

Or visit this link to see more.  I can't say I feel competent talking about what my DNA results mean, but I'm starting to feel a bit more familiar with some of the terms used in connection with DNA testing.  A big help has been reading some of the lessons at:

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO GENETIC GENEALOGY

I have also uploaded my data to Gedmatch. I have found the results to be really interesting, but also so intimidating that I haven't had the nerve to contact any of the people who match me there. I have had emails from others who have been matched with me, but so far, I haven't found a connection with any of them in my own database. One thing that encourages me is that I see that Gedmatch's system has found that part of my DNA matches a man who I knew thru an email list trying to connect Sutphin family members. Sutphin was my 4th great-grandmother's maiden name! It's good to see some scientific confirmation for the research that I, and others, have done in the past!

Learning about DNA

I've been meaning to write something about my DNA results for a while now. My husband got me an AncestryDNA kit for my birthday this year. Below is a screen-shot of my ethnicity pie chart that I posted to Instagram the day I was notified that the results were ready. Has anyone else seen anything like this for their own DNA?  I'm told that these Autosomal DNA tests can only find relatively close connections and that they won't show ethnic background more than a few generations back.  While it seems logical that most of my ancestors came from the British Isles, I'm pretty certain that one pair of my 6th g-grandparents was born in Germany. Ancestry adds this comment to the DNA page and they do use the word "Beta" to describe the project:

This may update over time as new genetic signatures are discovered.

I still don't understand much about DNA, and the Ancestry information is pretty minimal. They do allow the download of the raw data from my test and I have also uploaded that to GedMatch where they have lots of tools for analyzing my results.  Unfortunately, I don't understand those either, but I hope to someday! 

Ancestry has been great for finding distant cousins.  One match they made was to a relative of my paternal grandmother, so I see that connection as a confirmation that the test was accurate since those genealogies are mostly accepted as fact.  I have also made a connection to the descendants of one of my 2nd g-grandmother's 1st husband, a man she married long after her children were born.  That was exciting because I had suspected that he might be my ancestor!

Something else I have learned is that it looks pretty obvious that I am related by blood to my grandmother's husband. I had been told that my mom probably didn't have the same father as her brother and sisters and that was the reason my grandmother disappeared sometime after 1939. (Be sure to read the biography I wrote for my mom if you are interested in more information about this family story.) When I view the matches that Ancestry.com has found for me, I have several connections to people with trees that contain members of the Lilly family, which was also the family of my grandmother's husband, George Shrewsbury.  If George was not my grandfather, then it must have been a relative of his.  My mom had once mentioned the name Bedford Lilly as someone she had been told was her father.  There was a Bedford Lilly who lived with George Shrewsbury's brother's family when the 1920 census was taken.  He was listed as a boarder.  I haven't been able to find out who Bedford's parents were, though.  I'll have to keep looking and maybe I'll discover exactly who my mother's father really was! 

I will write more about this subject as I learn more!