Family history across the seas

Amidst the celebration of St Patrick’s Day, I’ve been reflecting how big a deal this was when I was a child, thanks in part to the religious divide. We would wear green ribbons to school (like the modern charity-fundraisers), little shamrock buttons, and have St Patrick’s Day concerts with all the old Irish songs.

On a  21st century note, I’ve been considering my Irish roots and how accurate I believe my DNA results are for ethnicity.

As you can see, each of the companies I’ve tested with have come up with different levels of ethnicity. At #Congress_2018 it was mentioned that Ancestry’s ethnicity estimates are based (at least in part) on the trees in their database. Surely this is a good reason to get your trees uploaded to increase accuracy?

None of the companies provide results closely consistent with my own paper trail which is 44% Irish, 31% Scottish, 19% English/Welsh and 6% German.

I’m confident of most of these lines, with the exception of my annoying James Sherry aka James McSharry whose place of origin in Ireland continues to elude me.

My other Irish family names are:

Gavin:                   Ballymore Eustace, Kildare

Murphy:               David’s Town/Dunlavin, Wicklow

O’Brien:               Broadford, Clare

Reddan:               Broadford, Clare

Furlong:               Tullamore and ?, Offaly

Sta(u)nton:         Tullamore and ?, Offaly

Callaghan:           Courtown, Wexford

How Irish are you?

Do your ethnicity projections match your paper trail?

Have you still got Irish brick walls in your research?