Where do my Elliots come from?

There is an old saying:
"The double L and single T
Descend from Minto and Woolflee.
The double T and single L
Mark the old race in Stobs that dwell,
The single L and single T
The Eliots of St Germains be,
But double T and double L
Who they are, nobody can tell."

Mine have a more recent spelling of Elliott but further back in time it is Elliot. I have found a possible brother of my earliest ancestor on an Elliot Y DNA site-this Elliot lived at the same time, in the same parish and had the same occupation that was to feature in my Elliot line for the next 150 years. He came from Scotland and had a Scottish Y haplogroup.
Speaking to a history buff and old Elliot ally, an Armstrong, he told me that when King James I decided to get rid of the Reivers, many left for Ireland, but others stayed and were made to have miserable lives or they moved to where the money was, as did most people. He told me that many were Chapmen, people who sold textiles, and many would have gone to areas where textiles were well known, including Nottingham with it's lace industry!! Another alternative would have been sheep farmers who would move their flocks from the Borders, to Carlisle, then south.
Interesting stuff!

Ancestry Finder tables

Here are the results of Ancestry Finder. It uses self reported ancestry from users of their Grandparents nationalities. So the table showing 4GP means all 4 Grandparents are the same nationality. The list can go down to 1+GP meaning it could display matches who have Grandparents from four different countries. A word of caution is that just because Grandparents were born in a certain country, it doesn't meant they are native to it. An example might be French people born in Britain. So it's best to check for more than one match. Size of cM's in important too-the closer to 5cM, the more likely it's either very old or just coincedence.

At 4GP's:Known ancestry is British and some Irish, so the first two boxes match known ancestry. Iran has featured with other people and it's only 5.1cM so either the person has some West European ancestry or it is ancient.

At 3 GPs (so 3 from same country, 1 from different) the top 5 is the same however my 7th cousin who is 1/4 Finn 3/4 Swedish now appears.

At 2GPs same top 5 but now have a match to someone who is half Swedish half Norwegian.

At 1GP same top 5 but now have a match to someone who is Danish/American/Swedish/Swedish-would love to know about them as the amount they share would make them 4th-5th cousins!!!

There are some Polish matches which seem to overlap-in one place there are two matches and they describe their Grandparents as Polish/Polish/Israel/Romania and Poland/Poland/Ukraine/Ukraine the other matches in a different place are Poland/Poland/Unknown/Unknown (half Jewish) who overlaps with an American who is English/Italian/Polish. I wonder if we all share Polish ancestors from way back as that seems to be the common country?

There is also a 7th cousin who is half southern Slavic half unknown but was born in Croatia...not sure about the migrations of the southern Slavs...I wonder if they settled in places like Hungary and mixed with central Europeans?

Relative Finder/Ancestry Finder update

There is always hope when people who don't come from melting pot country's accept your invitation! All matches (unless made public) are anonymous, usually just giving haplogroups so you don't know where these cousins come from until they accept.
Well a 5th cousin from Denmark has accepted and a 7th cousin who is Swedish/Finn! So there now seems to be some Scandinavian in the mix! Sweden is 3rd highest match on Ancestry Finder for all 4 Grandparents and there is a 50% Norwegian 50% Swedish match at 2+ Grandparents.

The Danish surname is remarkably like the family surname of my unknown ancestor too...
I wonder if there is a Baltic conection....I noticed that a 4th cousin who is 1/4 Baltic German matches in the same region with other people of German or Jewish ancestry on HIR search. The people on HIR search were the equivalent of 5th-10th cousins. The Swedes lived in Latvia, the Danes in Estonia, the Germans in Latvia together with the Jews. And this is quite weird, because the analysis at Eurogenes suggested Polish and/or Baltic ancestry!!
Incedentally, the 5th cousin who is Hungarian/Romanian matches with Poles and Lithuanians.

23andme vs HIR search

I was interested to see if there was a connection between what were deemed as cousins on 23andme and those on HIR search. For HIR search, Decodeme data was sent. The results are as follows:
HIR search top match: no connection via 23andme 9.30GD
Match 2: yet to look up 9.00GD
Match 3: no connection 8.90
Match 4: 5th cousin 8.70
Match 5: 5th cousin 8.20
Match 6: 5th cousin 8.10
Match 7: no connection 8.00
Match 8: don't know who user is 7.70
Match 9: Top match again :S 7.60
Match 10: Yet to lookup 7.60
There is also a distant cousins at 7.10.

There are other matches higher than 7GD but I will look them up later. There are two matches to the sister and cousin of match 4 on HIR but not on 23andme. So what is going on? I can only think that because the Decodeme data contains more information, HIR is picking up what 23andme simply doesn't test. I have compared the locations of these matches on the chromosomes and where they do, they match.

What is interesting is the trends in where sharing occurs-there is a part of chromosome 1 that is very commonly shared with other users so I am discounting this as something ancient for the time being.
Also on part of chromosome 15 there is a shared segment between one person who is described as Ukrainian Jewish, one who is German and one who is partly of German descent.

A new plot!

I submitted my relatives Decodeme data to a project which plots you onto a map, just like the map of kinship at Decodeme and the global similarity at 23andme.
The person who runs the project has revealed that my relative is situated initially at first glance within the Orkney sample cluster, but when the image is viewed three dimensionally, she also appears near Poles. Similarly, she scores highly on the project genome similarity feature with Poles, Brits and Scandinavians. I think this is reflecting the fact that she is half British by placing her with Orkney samples but the fact she is drifting towards Poles, again like Decodeme, suggests to me she has Slavic ancestry too.
If you are interested in seeing where you fit on the plot, then see the site below:
http://bga101.blogspot.com/

So results from all tests so far are:
Decodeme: Matches to Britain, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Russia. Map of kinship: Between East/West Europe.

HIR search: Matches to Britain, Ireland, Germany, Ukrainian Jew.

23andme: Relative finder matches: Colonial American, Hungarian/Romanian (some Jewish), possible Ashkenazi Jew-Haplogroups/surname.
Ancestry finder: British, Irish, Swedish, Swiss, German, Norwegian. A Jewish match at 4GP and several at 1GP including Polish/Israeli/Romanian, Polish/Ukrainian and relative above from Hungary/Romania.
Global similarity: In English and Irish boxes, near Germans.

Eurogenes: Plot-Orkney/Polish, genome similarity: US, Polish, Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, English.

Actual ancestry: 50% British (of which most English and about 1% Irish! Could be some more Irish but hard to verify) 50% unknown American.

I can see a trend forming....

Relatives found!

Thanks to 23andme, it appears that I have some genuine US relatives afterall! I'm still in the process of contacting them (there's over 200 and when you can only contact 5 a day you can see what a lengthly process this will be!) still, there are some who have got back to me.
A 4th cousin has ancestors around the PA area, lots of colonial British and Germans and their surnames do not match surnames in my known British ancestry so we can assume the connection really is via the US, and one 5th cousin is Hungarian!!!
Even if surnames can't be shared to find a connection, the pattern of regions that my relatives ancestors came from will hopefully give me an idea as to my own ancestry on my US side.
I'm trying not to jump the gun, but I have noticed that some 5th cousins have Jewish and Middle Eastern haplogroups, although I know that these are only two lines (Y and MtDNA) out of many within someone's tree.
It seems that from these few contacts, they do seem to tie in with Decodeme's map of kinship and their genetic affinity feature.
I'm hoping to compile a list of every relative and their origins and will put it on here soon!

DNA tests to fill in gaps

DNA tests have come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years and what is especially pleasing is the introduction of autosomal tests that tell you about every side of your family tree not just direct male relatives from your father's side or direct female relatives from your mother's side.
A while back, one of my direct relatives did the full test from Decodeme and it revealed we have some Eastern European ancestry using it's Map of Kinship feature which places you on a map of the world and you compare your position to those of other nationalities.
The image above is a snapshot of the European view of the Map of Kinship. It is very hard to get a proper view of where each person (represented by their countries flag of origin) sit on the map 2 dimensionally because this map can be rotated 3 dimensionally. I added arrows to show the trend of countries. Western Europeans are in blue going south and Eastern Europeans are in red going north. The two people next to my relative in pink are Polish and Polish descent. When the image is rotated, it appears my relative is drifting towards Eastern Europeans.
To back this up they were able to compare themselves to other customers using the genetic similarity tool and their top matches were to Britain, Russia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine!

My relative is half British half unknown US and even more exciting was discovering on the advanced genome browser that she shares a segment with two people exactly in the same place who are of Ukrainian/Polish/Hungarian Ashkenazi descent together with another person who overlaps slightly who's ancestors lived in Hungary. They themselves have had a match to Ashkenazis but didn't think they had any Jewish ancestry.

A free database now exists where you can upload your Decodeme data. HIR search compares you to other people on it's database to find relatives. After some fiddling around with it, my relatives top matches are to people of British, German, Polish, Dutch and Ashkenazi origin! Not by massive amounts-I think we are talking 5th-10th cousins-but it's just another piece of evidence of unlocking the unknown American origins!

Fascinating stuff and even more exciting is the possibility of finding relatives through DNA testing. 23andme and FamilytreeDNA now both do a family/relative finder tool that puts you in touch with potentially fairly recent relatives. Both can also be uploaded to the HIR search site. Now I just need to decide which test to go for!
http://hirs.snpology.com/