Gathering Elmers

In trying to solidify who in the world our Thompsons are most like. It's helpful to have a nice group of very close matches...which I think I'm putting together.

Although I have two Elmers that I match very well with, only one had a tree that would reach far enough back to give us a rough European origin.

Recently though, my Elmer contact found the tree of an Elmore from the Elmore DNA project that also reaches back to the same Edward Elmer who is a founder of Hartford Connecticut. Of course then, the thing to look for is a common Y DNA. Here is how they line up:

Presumed Levi DNA (mine alone for now) is at the bottom. The top is my match at FTDNA the second in line is the new Elmore and the third is my match from SMGF who shares a family tree paper trail ancestor with number 2.

Unfortunately only the SMGF and my FTDNA match have more than 12 markers to look at. Even so, though I think you can see the pattern. Elmer 1 and 3 do have further markers that only mismatch by 1. Any STR can change at any time, so number 2 appears to have a difference on DYS393, but the rest of the markers are dead on. I've seen this level of difference among Damerons that are obviously related. I do wish there were more markers to compare, but you get what you get, and this is a great find.

The markers number 2 shows are indicative of our Z14 cluster at a really basic level, which is great, and those three 11s in a row is one of the hallmarks I look for in all my matches. It's a bikini haplotype though (12 marker matches are much more common than 25 or 37) and they can be misleading, still the pattern seems clear and worth further inspection.

At the very least, I have three Elmers that appear to be related, two of whom have intersecting family trees and a common patriarch. To me, that would be evidence that Number 1 Elmer is definitely from the English Elmer line that 2 and 3 are from. With their further matches also being southeast English (as are ours), I think these Elmers are pretty well sorted out, barring some amazing new information coming from Switzerland or Germany.

The thing for the Elmers to do now would be to recruit other known Elmers from this family and have them Y tested as well.

The same plan I need to follow with my Thompsons.