Searching for the unknown biological parents of my GGM Clorinda Consilvio, born in Buenos Aires in 1
THE “FACTS”
· My GGM, Clorinda Consilvio was “illegally adopted” or maybe kidnapped by my “legal” GGGF Angelo Nicola Consilvio in Buenos Aires in 1888.
· Her birth was registered in Buenos Aires as Aug 20, 1888. However, later on she used different birth dates. Those were a year or more earlier.
· The name of the mother was not recorded in her birth act and Angelo Nicola Consilvio was named as being her father.
· By comparing the DNA of some collateral descendants of Angelo Nicola, I discovered there is no DNA connection between me and Angelo Nicola’s relatives. I therefore supposed that Clorinda was actually “illegally adopted” or maybe kidnapped by him.
THE QUEST
I started researching for the “true family” of Clorinda, in the hope of finding her biological parents.
My plan was getting enough data to perform a DNA Triangulation or a DNA Clustering, both process well supported by GEDmatch.com
As a first step I collected the DNA of some descendants, all having Clorinda and Paolo Mondani (her husband) as their ancestors:
· Paolo (me): Clorinda >> Paola >> Emilio >> Paolo - DNA test by Ancestry
· Laura (my 1st cousin): Clorinda >> Paola >> Luisa >> Laura (maternal line) test by LivingDNA
· Mariella (my 1st cous. 1 remvd.): Clorinda >> Lidia >> Mariella (maternal line) test by LivingDNA
PUZZLING RESULTS
Once I finally managed to get the DNA reports, the results puzzled me:
1. Considering that Paolo (me) and Laura have exactly the same relationship to Mariella (1st cousin once removed), I did expect our autosomal DNA to have a similar match to her.
However the amount of DNA we were found sharing was largely different:
a. Paolo to Mariella: 487.9 cM
b. Laura to Mariella: 292.8 cM
For comparison, the shared autosomal of Paolo and Laura (1st cousins) amounts to 872.1 cM
2. Once I received the DNA results of Laura and Mariella, both made by LivingDNA, I was very surprised to realize that, despite both being on the maternal line of Clorinda, their maternal DNA, do not match:
a. Laura (H1bp): 263G 1438G 3010A 4769G 8860G 10003C
b. Mariella (H1): 263G 750G 1438G 3010A 4769G 15326G
QUESTIONS:
· Is there a "scientific explaination of why the Mt DNA is so different??
· Could it possibly be a mistake by LivingDNA?
· The Living DNA tests were taken at about one year from each other. Can this influence the results?
Thanks for your help!
Paolo - Milano (Italy)
Answers
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Looking at the autosomal DNA, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the difference in shared dna between you and Mariella and Laura and Mariella. Both are within the threshold of common shared centimorgans for 1st cousins once removed.
It just looks like you happened to inherit a larger percentage of Clorinda’s DNA than your cousin Laura, which resulted in the number of shared centimorgans between you and Mariella being higher than the number of shared centimorgans between Laura and Mariella.
I am no expert on mitochondrial DNA, but it is possible that both Mariella and Laura are part of the H1bp haplogroup, but when Mariella tested (for whatever reason) LivingTree just put her in the larger category of H1. One of my friend's haplogroup on LivingTree DNA is much less specific than her haplogroup on FamilyTreeDNA.
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First of all thanks for your reply!
Your first point on autosomal DNA is well taken!
In fact, in the meantime I did some further research and I found some very interesting data regarding cM sharing between cousins from DNAPainter https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4-beta/292.8.
Based on our cM shares:
- Paolo (me) and Mariella have 89% probability of being 1C1R, and 6% as H1C1R
- Laura and Mariella have 52% probability of being 1C1R and 45% as H1C1R
Looking then at the details of mT DNA - not just the group (H1bp vs H1) , the difference is however so large to suggest that Paola and Lidia were born to different mothers.
In fact if they had the same mother, the mtDNA of descendants on a female line should be identical, as far as I know.
All in all. despite of the autosomal suggesting a much higher probability for a 1C1R, the mT DNA seems to discard this possibility in favour of a H1C1R relationship, despite of its lower combined probability.
Any further toughts?
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