25 Mar 2025

Estimating Joseph Ximenes’ Ethnic Origins

I thought I would take another look at the possible ethnic origins of Joseph Ximenes. Ancestry have updated their ethnicity estimates since the last time I looked at this.

The ethnicity estimates derived by Ancestry are only a guideline and so any analysis based on them can’t be taken too seriously. But it could help us steer our research into this elusive ancestor.

My maternal aunt Sheila’s ethnicity breakdown as of March 2025 is as follows:

• 51% England & Northwestern Europe
• 14% Ireland
• 13% Scotland
• 8% Spain
• 7% Indigenous Americas (Mexico)
• 3% Portugal
• 1% Sephardic Jews
• 1% Sweden
• 1% Southern Italy & the Eastern Mediterranean
• 1% Basque

I’m going to ignore anything that is 1% or less, even though those ethnicities are highly intriguing.

On Ancestry, Spain covers almost all of the Iberian peninsular including much of Portugal and secondarily extends to cover the entire area of France. People of hispanic origin in Mexico and the USA are included in this category.

Portugal is more focused on Portugal itself but includes the Azores and there is some secondary coverage of the western part of Iberia. The population of Portuguese colonial areas such as Brazil, Venezuala, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador are included as well as Asian communities in Indonesia and small parts of India.

The Indigenous Americas (Mexico) is a widespred region encompassing all of northern Mexico and southwest USA including the states of New Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas and even Utah.

Joseph was Sheila’s great grandfather so on average we can expect her to have inherited 12.5% of her DNA from him. Of all of her great grandparents, he is the one we have least information about his origins. The others we know more about with researched genealogy going back to the mid 1700s for all except one. Her great grandparents were:

Paternal:

• Joseph Ximenes - rumoured to be mexican and/or portuguese
• Bridget Dineen - parents were both born in Ireland
• William Chambers - all ancestors from Suffolk or Norfolk back to 1600s
• Rebecca Brooks - similar to William above, all ancestors from Suffolk and Norfolk

Maternal:

• John Hall - firmly in Northumberland for many generations
• Elizabeth Emma Carr - Northumberland for many generations
• Thomas Turner Peak - mainly Northumberland but origins in Lincolnshire
• Elizabeth Hinksman - Northumberland, Suffolk and Hampshire

Ancestry also attempts to break down the ethnicity estimates by parent. Sheila’s maternal side comprises just 37% for England & Northwestern Europe and 13% for Scotland which neatly corresponds with her known maternal genealogy: 100% English, mostly on the Scottish border.

This leaves her paternal distribution:

• England & Northwestern Europe: 14%
• Ireland: 14%
• Spain: 8%
• Indigenous Americas (Mexico): 7%
• Portugal: 3%
• Others : 4%

We can probably assume that the Irish proportion comes from Bridget Dineen (although we can’t discount that Joseph may have come via Ireland).

The England & Northwestern Europe presumably comes from William Chambers and Rebecca Brooks, although I would expect more like 25%.

We then ascribe the remaining ethnicity breakdown to Joseph. Ignoring the absolute percentages we have Spanish and Indigenous about equal to one another and twice as strong as the Portuguese.

Unfortunately this doesn’t cleanly divide into neat proportions that let us predict the ethnicities of Joseph’s parents. I think the best we can say is that perhaps one of Joseph’s parents was of Portuguese or western Iberian origin. The other could have been mixed Spanish and Indigenous.

Comparison with MyHeritage

MyHeritage have a slightly different breakdown of ethnicity for both myself and my aunt. For my aunt they give the following percentages:

• 32.0% English
• 28.3% Scottish and Welsh
• 15.1% Irish
• 4.8% Breton
• 4.3% Dutch
• 4.0% Portuguese
• 1.9% Danish
• 1.7% French
• 1.3% Spanish, Catalan and Basque
• 1.0% Sardinian
• 4.4% South Central America
• 1.2% Chile

(This is their v2.5 model)

The English, Welsh and Scottish percentages come to 50% which is similar to Ancestry’s and the 15% Irish lines up with the Ancestry percentage as does the Portuguese.

The rest though paints a different story. I’m not sure what to make of the Breton, Dutch and Danish amounts. The Spanish component is almost non-existent.

The indigenous portion, while roughly the same percentage has a different focus. MyHeritage places it south of Mexico around Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and includes Chile as a possible secondary location. This is all entirely south of Ancestry’s region.

Which service is more accurate? It’s impossible to say but generally Ancestry is held in fairly high regard having the largest pool of DNA results and researched trees to work from.

Chromosome maps

The Indigenous influence appears to be quite persistent in our DNA. For example, in my own ethnicity breakdown I have 3% Indigenous, and only 1% Portuguese and 1% Spanish (both of which are predicted to originate from my paternal side). My daughter has 2% Indigenous and 1% each of Portuguese and Spanish.

Ancestry provide a Chromosome painter that illustrates which sections of our chromosomes they have ascribed to each region. The Indigenous portion is spread out and although my aunt and I share some overlap there are several sections that I must have inherited from my mum that are different to my aunt’s, for example chromosomes 3, 13 and 17.

My aunt’s chromosome map:

My chromosome map:

Conclusion

Of course all of this post is ultimately speculative. Ancestry’s method for ascribing ethnicity to certain portions of DNA relies on matching sections of DNA against people who have documented grandparents from those regions. Yet my aunt’s grandparents are all from England and Wales and we know going further back makes her less “English” than her grandparents would suggest. How many of the subjects involved in Ancestry’s analysis can say their indigenous Mexican ancestry isn’t interrupted by Spanish or other colonial influences several generations back?

Intriguing as these ethnicity results are we have to treat them as suggestions and potential directions for research to find actual evidence of Joseph’s origins.