Genetic Communities

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result.

Today Ancestry introduced its new Genetic Communities feature within AncestryDNA. So far it looks pretty cool. They are starting with 300 genetic communities to explore, hopefully more will be added in the near future. The image above shows the community for Settlers of the Shenandoah Valley and Northern Virginia from my Mom's results. This makes sense given the large concentration of ancestors who migrated from Northern Virginia through Kentucky and beyond. Surnames for this branch include Read, Whitley/Wheatley, Ballard, Heslopp, Grinstead, Warren, Matthews, Clark, among others.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result.

Within each genetic community you can drill into the detail as it shows people in your tree and connects them back to regions where they may have come from. It looks fairly accurate based on the information from my tree.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Ancestry landing page.

My Dad's results showed a match for Early Settlers of the Ohio River Valley, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, which certainly links with my research. I like how you can visualize results from your tree within the community and how it pulls up a photo and vital information that you can click into.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result detail.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result detail.

I think our kids will really like seeing the connections visualized this way. It is also interesting to see the little differences between my results and others in the family who have tested. My sister showed up for Mexicans in Sonora and Southern Arizona, which interestingly did not appear as a genetic community when I first started digging around but did show up when I checked again a little later.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result.

Source: Ancestry. Genetic Community result.

I will be spending more time with this new tool but so far it looks fascinating.