Page 276 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

totals continue to decline until you find relationships in the low 20s centimorgans and as few as
th
th
1 segment in the 4 to 6 cousin range.
While this is true, there are other characteristics of DNA and chromosomes that can be tracked
back for countless generations. For example, as a male, I inherit my Y-chromosome through my
father and he, in turn, through his father’s fathers. This is how I was able, through the Family
Tree DNA web site and membership in their Armstrong research project, to trace my Armstrong
line back through Ireland and to the borderlands of Scotland (see Armstrong Bloodline
references 314 and 315).

One thing I noticed right away as I looked through the Mormon’s Relative Finder content, is
that by far the most frequent of my cousin linkages seemed to be with a common ancestor in
the United Kingdom. As I grew up believing that I was primarily Scottish, Irish, Swedish and
Norwegian, it was interesting to note that this primarily English linkage appeared to reinforce
the Ancestry.com DNA results shown here:

So, it appears that there is a lot more English blood in the veins than I originally believed. Even
today this accounts for approximately 46% of who I am. The Armstrong blood of my surname
ancestors has apparently diluted significantly to only about 2% of my total DNA today. Although
the separation between England and Scotland appears to be absolute in the above map, it is
known that the Armstrong’s lived right on the border of the two countries and moved pretty
freely between the two, so I suspect the Scottish/Irish total shown here may actually be a bit
higher. When you take another look at the families the Armstrong’s married into, starting with
my paternal grandfather, perhaps the English bloodline is not so difficult to understand. For
example -

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