The results are in and, with some interesting mutations away from the modal for the cumberland cluster, they are definitely a match. Our group in cumberland (under R-Z18 -> Z14 ->DF95) has some modal STRs. We show a 25 at DYS390, 11 at DYS385b and 22 at YCAIIb. Our subgroup of Cumberland also shows a micro-allele on DYS458..in my case 16.2.
What is interesting about our new Edward Elmer descendant tester is that they show the R-Z18 modal of 24 at DYS390 and 23 at YCAIIb. They do however have the 16.2 microallele and the 11 at DYS385b. They are also one of only 4 matches for me at 37 (3 Elmer/Elmores in that list now). So I'm certain they are a good match and are definitely on for the Elmer line. They just appear to have some back mutations away from the general "cumberland" pattern.
Stack this result up with the two other results that document back to Edward Elmer, and the two Elmer families from New York that follow this same pattern and I think we have a pretty compelling case. This is exactly how Y DNA testing is supposed to work.
Ironically, the New York Elmers are so close the modal for the Cumberland cluster that I could not find a novel STR value that wasn't shared by another close-ish group..the Knowltons. The Knowltons have some interesting differences with the Cumberland cluster modal at 37 and they also for the most part share the values that make the Elmers stick out from the modal..they just go a couple of steps further. So there are some signature values at STRs that make Knowltons stand out from Elmers.
In other words: Looking at the Elmer/Elmore group I could see what would make them "not Knowltons" but it was the fact that their values were overall more vanilla "Cumberland" than the Knowltons and any variation from the norm that I found was also shared by the Knowltons.
To me, that means we have not defined an STR that just screams Elmer. There may not be one, but further 67 and 111 testing might turn something up. Of course the trick would be to get the Elmers, myself and at least a few similar DF95 candidate Knowltons up to that level to see what patterns there were.
This post calls for some illustration.
First up. These are the Elmers/Elmore results with mine listed at the bottom as Levi Thompson. You can see the Elmers have some variation from each other right in the first 12 STRs of the Y test. So too, do the Knowltons. The green bar is the modal for Cumberlands. The dark blue vertical bar is a variation all the knowltons seem to share away from the Cumberland modal. Where we usually have two 11s for DYS385 the Knowltons seem to have an 11-12.
The second image here shows another move away from the modal Cumberland for Knowltons DYS464 shows 15-15-17-18 instead of 15-15-17-17. You can also see the new Elmore test results showing 19-23 at YCA where the cumberland modal is normally 19-22. Here too you can see one of my results that separates me from the New York Elmer tests. I have an 18 at DYS576. Some of the Knowltons have an 18 there too. It's a fast moving STR so that could be expected over time. In the dark blue vertical bars to the right you can see the Elmer standard of 35-37 at CDY. Here they depart from the modal which is 35-36...but the Elmer 35-37 appears to be the base value for the Knowltons too with some variations. Finally there was DYS442 where the SMGF Elmer test did not match anyone else.
Here near the middle you can see the Elmer DYS463 = 23 carried by the New York Elmers, SMGF Elmer, me and ...the Knowltons. That is also a big move away from the modal for cumberland and also the modal for our parent group R-Z18. SMGF Elmer also mismatched me on DYS446. Only the SMGF testers in the group had that value. My test results were 13 and that matches the Knowltons and the modal. It could be that the other Elmers also mismatch me there and that would be a novel value for them. We will have to test to find out.
