Results of DNA Tests for Lynn Edwin Garn

Ethnicity of Ancestors

The table below shows the three ethnic groups that my DNA matches most closely. In the top row of the column you will see that, as expected, the results correlate 100% with themselves as calculated with the Pearson Correlation Function. In the tables that follow, I will show similar correlations between my results and the DNA of other ethnic groups using the same correlation function. In the second row the gray column on the very right is the component of DNA, 1%, that was not resolved into any particular ethnic group. It could represent the approximately 1% DNA that other evidence suggests is American Indian. Or it could be a combination of several ethnic groups. The resolution of the DNA test is 2%, meaning that it is not able to resolve a particular ethnic group that comprises less than 2% of the DNA in the test sample.

Since my cousins on both sides, the Garns and Nixons/Hollys, may be aware that their origins are largely European and most likely from the British Isles, they may look at the Mediterranean or Southwest Asian components of the chart above and presume that I have some Italian or possibly Arabic or Iranian component in my DNA that comes from the other side of the family. However, it turns out that these percentages are consistent with the DNA mix or composition of the average population of residents of the British Isles and Germany, as is shown in the charts below.

Note that there is a 99.76% correlation between my DNA and that of the average German population and that the correlation of my DNA to the DNA of the population of the British Isles is 98.70%.

I was fairly certain that the ethnicity of seven of my eight great-grandparents was mostly from the British Isles. The eighth great-grandparent, my dad's grandfather Martin Garn, was German. However, the ethnicity of the typical German is not very different from that of a typical resident of the British Isles, as shown in the charts above. Although my best match statistically is to the German population, the difference between my match to the German population and to the population of the British Isles/United Kingdom is very small.

The company that tested my DNA provided profiles for more than 40 ethnic groups in addition to the German and British Isles/United Kingdom profiles given above. Below I give the profiles for 14 other ethnic groups because they had sizable components of one or more of the Northern European, Mediterranean, and Southwest Asian components found in my DNA or because, in the case of the last two, they appear in North America and give a comparison of my DNA to the DNA of the indigenous population of North America. When mulitple genetic components other than Northern European, Mediterranean and Southwest Asian were present in these ethnic groups, these "Others" were combined and shown in the gray column on the right in the charts below.

It is clear from the charts above and the charts below that the the best matches of my DNA are to people of the British Isles/United Kingdom and Germany, which is consistent with the conclusions drawn independently from my genealogical research.