Z14 it is

My results are in and I am Z14, along with my Elmer match(es). Z18, our parent group contains the Knowltons, Damerons, Emery and Pipkins who were in my matches at FTDNA, Ancestry.com and SMGF. I'm clustered with all these people so it is more likely that they will also be Z14 (although not absolutely known until they test for it or an SNP downstream).

As I move down the Y DNA family tree, the possibilities for matches narrow and so does the time to most recent common ancestors. R1b-U106 is thought to be roughly 5000 years old. So I share a common ancestor with everyone who is R1b-U106 about 5000 years ago. I haven't yet seen a number of years associated with Z14, but Z18 is thought to be roughly 2000 years old. Z14 would necessarily be less than that, but I wouldn't have a guess what age that is. So I share a common ancestor (one man) with everyone who is Z18 about 2000 years ago.

Z18 contains people from all over Northern Europe and especially around the North Sea but also in Switzerland and France. Z14 testers also appear to be pretty wide ranging. To me it seems the Z14 haplogroup exists in as many places as Z18 so it may not be a big divider like R1b-U106 was for R1b where you could definitely see the map change. The ranges of the parent and child SNP might be exactly the same.

In our Cluster (labelled the cumberland cluster also sometimes labelled "channel British") there are many people of European descent. Polish, Dutch, Germans, English, Irish and Welsh. So there again, even our cluster of very similar STR results is pretty spread out. The test results of the Elmer and I are wedged right in a chunk of Southeast England results. It's not definitive of course, but we're getting a lot closer to mapping out an area. These results really back up many of the maps I made based on STRs and it tells me that I'm working this end of the puzzle the right way even if accidentally. For me it still appears to be a map of a migration taking place. The easiest one to pick out would be the Germanic migrations, although it's not the only migration of "germanic" people.

I still have a lot of homework to do to see how things line up between other Thompsons in my family and the Elmers (which we're also starting to gather). It will be crucial for me to test at least one more known Thompson relative, preferably a little more removed than my immediate uncles. So that I can have a baseline for our family and compare that with (hopefully) a group of Elmers. It could help us determine how much closer than 2000 years we share a common ancestor. Right now estimates seem to range between 200 and 400 years, but that is just comparing two people.

I need to be careful because I've been down this road before with the Knowltons where it seemed highly possible there was an NPE. Now further testing has proven that to be unlikely even though we are very obviously in the same haplogroup. The relationship is just further back in time than my other tests suggested.

The next steps will require even more involvement from my family and, as ever, I'm aware of the costs of this hobby and what an imposition that can be on my relatives. It's time to put my recruiter hat back on.