Elmer A2284 and Unexpected Outcomes

Continuing from Big Y and the Dreaded No Call and Adventures in Big Y and YSEQ

The quick recap:

We're attempting to use the Big Y results from two Elmers whose most recent common ancestor is Edward Elmer 1610. Each of our testers is related to a different son of Edward. R1 is related to Samuel and L2 is related to Edward 1654.

When our results for R1 came in, it appeared that A2281 would be a divider for the group, but then we learned it was a "no call". Which, if I'm remembering correctly means it couldn't be determined whether it was positive or negative. A2281 had no calls throughout the big Y results. We could assume a positive based on the results of the other Elmers, but we want to be sure because we're down to the nitty gritty now.

Where are we now:

We're currently waiting for verification of A2281 for our Edward Elmer pillar tester "L2".

The second question about the results was, "is A2284 a real negative for R1 or is it also a no call?"

Here is a refresher for the results we have so far:

While we wait for the results for A2281 and L2, we asked to have the big Y results for R1 analyzed by one of the gurus at U106 to see if A2284 was really a solid negative. No one had a no call listed for that SNP, but again, we are down to the end of the Big Y race and we don't want to leave it to chance.

The answer we got was that it is a solid negative. That places A2284 on L2's side of the family under Edward Elmer 1654. For us, that rewrites the tree a little from what we were expecting.

Based on STRs and a genetic distance of 0, we placed M1 under Samuel with R1. They are a perfect Y37 match where as L2 and I are more similar to each other carrying a common STR mutation away from the other Elmers.

My own research leads me to believe that L2 and I share Edward 1654's son Hezekiah as our most recent common ancestor. So I was happy to see the shared STR mutation. What does it mean now that we know M1, who doesn't carry our STR mutation, does carry an SNP (A2284) in common?

I think it's reasonable to think that M1 shares a common ancestor with us after Edward Elmer 1610, but branches off before the common ancestor shared by L2 and me.

We're not talking about a lot of generations here. Edward 1610 is the root and I hypothesize that L2 and I share his grandson Hezekiah. That would leave M1 branching off at his son Edward 1654. It would also assign our STR mutation to Hezekiah. Pretty tight timing.

M1's Y37 haplotype best matches someone in another branch of the Elmer tree. I think that means they likely best represent the Y37 signature of Edward Elmer himself.  We've called them "Elmer Normal" for some time because we all seem to be a variation of their theme. Now that we have them descending from different sons, it seems we were on the right track with that designation.

In Adventures in Big Y, I put a bit in about expecting the unexpected and put up a tree with some results that were fairly different. Now that all the big Y tests are in. I have a slightly different, but still unexpected tree in mind.

For the record, here is what we thought we would find:

Here is what I think our best Y STR and SNP evidence (plus some family tree speculation on my part) shows for the time being:

Since M1 being closer to L2 came as a surprise, I've made L1 and R1 tentative companions under Samuel with a grey box. We'll know more about L1 when his YSEQ results come in.

We've effectively defined Edward Elmer 1610 SNPs and A2284 is not in them. We've also shown that R1 and L2 share several SNPs beyond the Knowlton/Elmer common ancestor. Those have become Elmer private SNPs for the time being, with the Knowlton family currently sharing the most recent common ancestor with the Elmers estimated around 1030 AD.

Now I am very curious about the SNPs for G1. it would be nice to have that third branch be the confirmation for these "Elmer" SNPs. I'm also eager to take them back to England and recruit Elmer, Elmore and Aylmer testers.

Update 8/27/2015

Results are in for L1 and he is A2284 positive as well. This puts him under Ed2 also along with his Y37 0 GD match M1. To me this is yet more evidence that these men (M1, L1 and R1) represent "Normal Elmer" and are most likely the haplotype of Ed Elmer 1610 himself. 

Here is a revised family tree with the new placements. In this graphic I've assigned the Elmer/Elmore kit numbers from FTDNA for reference. This mimics the results page on the Ed Elmer site. I apologize for the confusion. 

• JME N83174 is M1 
• L 272763 is L1 
• M T B2769 is me, Mike Thompson
• E L 369990 is L2 
• G 344982 is G1 
• R 364027 is R1 

Update 9/20/2015

The "no call" on A2281 for kit 369990 (alternately L2) has been resolved. He is positive for that like all the other Elmers. The question remains whether the Knowlton no call for that same SNP is really a positive or negative.

Common Ancestors and Speculations

While I'm waiting (which is very hard for me to do) I'm prone to fits of speculation. With another round of age estimates, I thought I would pick up where my last post, kind of, left off.

My mental questions are basically, what happens if Norway is considered a refuge where our Y waits for centuries before moving on. What if the Netherlands is such a refuge later on? What if (as the new SNPs suggest) Poland is not a source, but a destination for these people? What if England is another refuge for these Ys until they break out into the Americas?

With the earliest U106 positive human in Sweden in the early 2000s BC. R1b-Z18 being heavily Norse and DF95 being positioned by others after big Y testing as coming out of Norway (because Ireland seems unlikely). I'm feeling more comfortable with my past speculations on Scandinavia's involvement in pushing my Y around the North Sea and Baltic.

So here are some of the more recent Big Y related age estimates for a common ancestor shared by the U106 group and some labels to help sort them out a bit:

• All U106 testers so far: 2420 BC
• All Z18 testers so far: 2100 BC
• All DF95 testers so far: 219 BC (This is the most recent ancestor with the Blue Stars)
• Unamed 16524131: 538 AD (most recent ancestor for Blue Squares and Blue Diamonds)
• Elmer/Knowlton/Lunceford: 849 AD (most recent ancestor for these families)
• Elmer/Knowlton: 1030 AD 
• Elmer: 1614 AD

Here is that map of the DF95 big Y testers (rough positioning):

Norway has deep ties to Ireland and Scotland. The Norse in Ireland are well documented. I think that is one reason that Ireland is not seen as the origin for our group. There isn't a great record of the Irish invading Norway, but we definitely know the reverse is true. The high incidence of Scandinavians in brother clades to DF95 (like Z372 and it's child L257) also add weight to a sort of  Y "patient zero" in the Scandinavian world. 

It occurred to me today that we might think of some of these locations as reservoirs for a Y if not really an "origin". Considering our Y DNA like a virus, where does it hang out between outbreaks? It may have sprung up further down the continent for all we know, but it seems to have found a safe haven in Scandinavia for a number of centuries. 

Excuse the crude drawing, but this might explain what I'm thinking about these big Y results better than words:

Blue Stars 219 BC

So we have our reserve of Y DNA, from that reserve you could pull any of the DF95 Ys except for those that are localized outside the reserve. The Y testers from Norway and Ireland didn't stop in time, they continued to create SNPs down their respective lines. You could pull a Y out of the hat that was closer to either one, it just happens at this time that we haven't. 

So while I would expect to find people closer to our Ireland tester in Ireland, we could also find people closer to him than the Norway tester back in Norway. The two lines of men may have lived side by side for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Wait, they are farther back in time as a common ancestor and diverge from there, how could both exist in the same place to be picked from?

For that, we can think about the example of the oldest known Y in the world. Found in the descendants of an African slave in the US. His Y A00 is something like 300,000 years old. It's not that his people colonized the Americas 300,000 years ago. He was pulled fairly recently from Cameroon where some other inhabitants share his very old Y. Tellingly, not all the inhabitants of this part of Cameroon share his Y, just some of them. So we have an example of a very old Y living next to younger Ys in the same village and then randomly being selected for an overseas voyage (in this case, unfortunately into slavery).

What I'm scratching at is the idea that even though everyone shares a common ancestor at about 219 BC it doesn't necessarily mean they parted company in 219 BC. SNPs aren't necessarily created by travel. We can keep going back to the well and getting Ys that diverged from each other a long time ago but continue to exist in the same village.

We're all Blue Stars after all, the rest of us just happened to get more testers on our branches to test.

I gave them an "orange-ish line to denote their differences from the "maroon lines" people.

Maroon Lines 538 AD (16524131)

Initial thoughts.

The orange-ish line runs from Norway over to Ireland. I've put the maroon line people coming out of the water and rolling basically southwards out of the common reservoir of DF95.

These maroon lines represent the 4 or 5 (one is kind of troublesome) SNPs shared by both the blue squares and blue diamonds. Although I have multiple lines, they are really a single man that the Diamonds and Squares are related to in 538. Again, we could be staring at the mark of some migration to another part of the reserve or we could be looking at someone who lived side by side with the Blue Stars and had a minor difference that he passed down to the Blue Squares and Diamonds. It could be the mark of a 700 year layover in some part of the DF95 world. We can't be sure because we have a longer run of SNPs without a geographic pin for some divergence. 

At some point the two groups diverge genetically and they eventually diverge geographically. Here is my initial map of what that might look like. Later though when looking at the Blue Diamonds more closely, I have some second thoughts and maybe some alternate timelines. 

Blue Diamonds

So my basic Idea of the Blue Diamonds is that they also represent the Scandinavian influence in both the Netherlands and Poland. My thought is both those places saw significant Scandinavian input over the centuries with the Netherlands suffering right along with France with the Viking invasions in the 700s and 800s and Poland saw norse settlement, trade and raiding like  "Jomsborg". 

The same men who bring you the "Great Heathen Army in 800s England are also invading Dorstad in the Netherlands and attacking future Belgium as well as France.

I've spent a lot of time speculating about Norse input into Poland. They have the proximity and the history. With input from both the Swedes and Danes at different times. It helps to remember that the Rus in Russia were Scandinavians. 

It isn't hard for me to imagine waves of Norse influence pulling from that common reserve over and over. So my map for the Blue Diamonds would be like the one above for the Maroon Lines. 

An Alternate Timeline?

I wondered if I hadn't really given the Blue Diamonds as much thought as they deserve. I am evaluating them based on my thoughts about the Lunsfords, Knowltons and Elmers which I've asked for age estimates on, but I didn't have estimates for the blue diamonds. 

So, they diverge from the Lunsford/Knowlton/Elmer man, but where do they go from there? 

If you look at the Elmers (regardless of the Lunsfords and Knowltons) as an example, they have about 8 SNPs different from the common ancestor of the "16524131" group. So one of the Blue Squares is about 8 SNPs away from the last ancestor of the Blue Squares and Diamonds.  

I realize that you can't just count SNPs like this, but I wanted to think about it a different way to see if there is a more meaningful explanation.

I decided I should look to see how many SNPs were shared by the two blue diamond testers to see how far they were from the same 16524131 ancestor.

Looking at them with new eyes, it seems they share about 8 SNPs with each other.  Making them roughly as distant as any two Elmers (if that is the way it works out). The Elmers are aged for a common ancestor at about 1614.  

If the SNPs stack up the same 8 and 8, then maybe the two people from Netherlands and Poland are roughly about as close to each other as the two Elmers? Even if they had a common ancestor in the 1500s that would be fairly close to the present.

I decided rather than pursuing a connection directly with Denmark or Sweden to look at relations between Poland and the Netherlands in the range of the 1600s. It turns out that the Netherlands and Poland have a pretty extensive past as well and a good relationship as nations today. Apparently the Dutch had a major influence on Poland and Dutch settlers moved to Poland in the 1600s. 

Keeping in mind that I am deep in speculation territory now without any real estimates..I wondered if my last map should look more like this:

Maybe this map would better show how closely related the Netherlands tester and the Poland tester are. if we were to estimate them like the Elmers then it seems reasonable that they would branch off around 1600 too. Including myself here for a moment (dangerous because my tests aren't back). It would roughly be like considering the Elmers and Thompsons migrations here in North America with our common ancestor in 1614 only it takes place on the European continent.  

After a Rough Estimate

The age Estimate for this group came back as 1099 AD with a range of 558 to 1573 (Thanks U106 group volunteers!). So roughly 1100 AD. Not exactly as close as a simple count of SNPs would make them. I could not find much in the time period that would help me place them. Specifically, I was looking for connections between the Netherlands and Poland that might mark this geographic split. 

My idea for an alternate timeline (above) could still fit here if they hung out in the area of the Netherlands for several centuries as two lines of anciently related men and then one person from those lines happened to move on to Poland. Certainly we see something similar to this in the Blue Square group of men and the Americas.

Also my map could still fit if we consider the Viking input into the Netherlands and then the transformation of some of those vikings into regular Holy Roman Empire/Frankish/Dutch citizens. Eventually, like in Normandy, some of the vikings were just accepted as part of the empire. 

Perhaps they moved into the Netherlands with the great heathen army and set up shop like Rorik becoming part of the people of the Netherlands with time, then moved on later to Poland either with the Franks or as part of that later colonizing Netherlands to Poland effort?

As always, I think we need more layers of men that we can pin to more locations.

Blue Squares 849 AD (Lunceford - Elmer - Knowlton)

I'm making the supposition that these men are all British. The Elmers and Knowltons have some paper work that makes that reasonable. We found two Luncefords that match STRs, the big Y tester has an idea that they are British, but no good tie back to England. The matching Lunsford STR tester shows Scotland as an origin. I chucked the Lunceford square in England for ease and because there are places called Lunsford in Sussex.  

We're extremely lucky with these big Y results to have some more layers in the Blue Square area. The estimate for a common ancestor in 849 AD puts that ancestor in the middle of a pretty crazy time in English history. It's just before the Great Heathen Army runs rampant in England for 14 years. It's at about the same time as the attacks on France and the Netherlands.

This nice map, I'm stealing from Wikipedia shows some of the movements over those years. 

I'm wondering if this layer in our DNA is a product of that movement of Scandinavians. I would also be painfully curious to see if there was a similar layer for our continental testers if we could break up their 8 SNP run the way the Isles people are broken up.

I'm marking this pinpoint on the map as when we have our earliest big Y SNP in England, but really, as much as I favor this dispersal method, we don't have all the data. Several Cumberland cluster A people are also in England, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. They would have traveled right along with the big Y testers, but they are not being represented in big Y yet. What would their SNPs and origins say?

In light of that, and the dates for our big Y Blue Diamonds. Maybe it would be helpful to consider another alternate timeline with a slightly different map.

Alternate Timeline 

In this map I'm trying to illustrate would could happen if we make a couple of movements into a couple of refuges. I left our friends from Norway and Ireland as such. Pulling from the reserve of Norway for their DNA, most likely with the Vikings.

It's impossible to talk about the Blue Squares at this point without the Blue Diamonds. So you see them in purple.

I'm also imagining a migration to Denmark with a layover of several centuries and then through Denmark to the home turf of the Angles and Saxons. So 219 BC, Norway who directly contributes to Ireland well down the road in the 800s and 900s AD. Norway sends some of it's group south into the soup of Germanic peoples that is Denmark, Frisia, the Saxon Coast..etc. Around 538 AD one group of Angles or Saxons or Frisians...maybe even Jutes (squares) has lobbed itself at Britain. While another group sticks to the local program (diamonds).

In the 800s the Blue Squares and Blue Diamonds are defending their respective territories from the Vikings (who they are, ironically or not, distantly related to). In the 1100s the Blue Squares are still knocking about Southeast England as Saxons in a newly Norman world, while the Blue Diamonds have managed a move across country from each other, likely as part of the Frankish world pushing into Slavic Poland through the various Polish/German wars.

I think this also fits fairly well with the dates and SNPs we have. Really only by defining more layers with our testers will we be able to sort this early stuff out any further. There is still some debate about when and whether and what size the Germanic migration to Britain was. Poland's history with the Rus and with Scandinavians in general is...well harder for me to find easily with some google searches. Pulling this story out from the data will continue to be fun for some time to come.

In England

I have more layers to work with, also a pretty good vested interest in the outcomes here so I've saved it to talk about separately. 

Whether the product of viking incursions or Germanic migrations. I always end up here in southeast England.

Of course, in this post I'm assuming the age ranges and estimates are on the money. We could find out some surprises in the future that would revise our speculation, but for now I'll move along like we're on the right trail.

I've been talking about the Knowlton family for a long long time, but the Luncefords are new for me. They are a happy surprise of big Y. Nicely the Lunceford's give us a nice pin in space and time. Their proximity to the Knowlton and Elmer traditional homelands makes them much easier to explain. Although we're waiting for more layers from other families to come in, here we have several hundred years of habitation in England.

There are a lot of Lunsford related place names in Southeast England, I don't know where the original ford (probably over a river) was that was associated with Lun or Lund or "a" lund. It's one of those transient place names. It ties your surname to a place, but maybe the place is just unknown now.

So without really knowing exactly where to put this pin, here is Lunsfords Cross in the general neighborhood I'm thinking of:

Why don't I know where to put the pin? The Lunsfords in the U.S. are a lot like the Knowltons or the Elmers. The records tying them to England are not rock solid. Most people place them in England, but it's the "where" that gets lost in their moves to the colonial Americas.

I think you could fairly safely assign us to Southeast England at some time in proximity to 845 AD. Either arriving with or defending against the Danes.

We should be clear that it's unlikely this common ancestor would have a surname at all. As far as I know that convention was brought to us through the Normans.

Knowlton-Elmer 1030 AD

The idea has been that the Knowltons are our closest Y cousins for various reasons, mostly based on their STRs.  Big Y testing and age analysis, point to that being the truth. At some point there is a "Knowlton-Elmer" man who is born around 1030 AD. Most likely, somewhere in Southeast England in pre-Norman times.

The Knowltons have ties to Kent, the Elmers to Norfolk and Suffolk, but I wonder if they first lived in Dorset. Knowlton is a place name and there is an abandoned village in Dorset named Knowlton. 

The Knowltons have some speculation of their own about Dorset. So I'm not breaking any new ground here. Their genealogy places them in the Americas as the descendants of either of two sons of one man, but their Y DNA shows that each branch was not related to the other within any meaningful time frame. They are in totally different haplogroups. So they have a mystery in the colonies.

One goal in big Y testing was to see if the Knowltons were really just a lost branch of the Elmer family that was adopted to the Knowltons. We're still waiting on definitive results from a final Elmer tester to try and sort that out. In the meantime we have this age estimate that puts the common ancestor back in England.

So Knowlton in Dorset is on their mind, but why is it on my mind?

It's because of this Domesday book entry: http://opendomesday.org/place/SU0210/knowlton/

Aelmer (or Athelmaer) is the previous lord in Knowlton in 1066 before it's passed to Ansgar the Breton.

Image blatantly lifted from the opendomesday site. 

Knowlton is mentioned again in a second entry with a nearby town changing hands from King Edward the Confessor to King William the Conqueror. 

Again, Aelmer here is not a surname. It's a given name. Knowlton is not a surname, it's a place name. It is nicely one time the two names come together around the time of  1030 AD. 

I'm not suggesting that the Knowltons and Elmers are directly related to this Aelmer, but that they might be associated with him by others. That they might be assigned a surname later based on this association or by an association with the town they lived in. One group becoming Knowltons and one becoming Aylmers based on the convenience of the people taking the tally. At this point, where the names might diverge, it could be just that arbitrary. 

The shared SNPs with the Knowltons will be very important as we try to bridge the gap to England. We may find Knowltons still in England that are more closely related to the Elmers or we may find Elmers that are more closely related to the Knowltons. We're examining only two branches of a single family at this point. They may have lived with their newly minted surnames, knocking about England for these hundreds of years before one person from each group moved to the new world.  

Maybe that is the best example of a reserve of DNA. We can speculate that the Lunsford-Knowlton-Elmers lived in England in the 800s. About 300 years later in the 1100s AD, the men related to that man are still there. Then some 600 years later, at least three men make their way to the Americas. Their DNA can only hint at the 800 or 900 years of shared history. 

With each of these DNA strands, we're not seeing the whole story. We're not even seeing the whole story of the Y. Just bits and pieces. That's why this is speculation. I think our resolution is getting tighter though.

Elmer 1614 AD

This age estimate comes without trees. We have one Elmer pillar related to Edward 2 and one Elmer whose tree is stuck. The results we'll see this fall, should help sort both the Elmers and the Knowltons in some definitive way. 

Without other big Y Knowltons to compare to, the Elmers are representing a nearer history on their own. 

The man we expect all these Elmers to be related to is Edward Elmer born around 1610..ish who was a founder of Hartford. It was very interesting to get 1614 as a date since that is right near the estimated time of Edward's birth. It's also nice that this estimate is independent of any research we've done. The group doing the estimates was not specifically made aware of the expected relationship between these men. 

Now they are of course, so when our big Y results from the line of Samuel come in we may see an adjustment in this estimate. For today, the estimate for a most recent common ancestor is 1614 AD.

This age estimate represents the Elmer history in the Americas. 

No one is really sure where he's from in England. He's linked to Bishop Aylmer in London. He's linked to the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. He's sometimes connected to fish mongers in London. At some point he is a member of a church in Essex and leaves from there to Cambridge Mass. 

I think we're at the point of searching British census records and looking for living Elmers, Elmores and Aylmers to test. Maybe a starting point would be in Dorset. Maybe in Salisbury about 19 miles from Knowlton. 

Here is an 1881 surname map for Elmer in England. Salisbury (teal..ish in south central England) is not as popular as points further east, but it is much closer to the cluster of 1881 Knowltons (second image, just to the south east). Images from Public Profiler. 

Elmers in 1881

Knowltons in 1881

Food for further speculation and maybe some recruiting. Back to waiting.

DYS463 Return from Elmer

After being alerted to an anomaly in my Y DNA STRs (as compared to my cluster mates and the rest of R1b-Z18, I began to look more closely at DYS463. Here is my original post on that New Eyes on Y DNA. As you would see there the Knowltons and Elmer at SMGF share the value of 23 at DYS463. Most of Z18 has 25 there and it's used as something of a predictor for Z18+ status. So this value of 23 stands out. It's one thing to have it stand out at SMGF, but I think it will be more important to have it displayed at FTDNA where most Y DNA research is going on.

To confirm what I'm seeing at SMGF among Knowltons and Elmers I asked my Elmer match and the lead of the Knowlton Y DNA project to test DYS463 as well. The results for Elmer are in and they are DYS463=23 as expected.

It's nice because it solidifies the link between my SMGF Elmer match and my FTNDA Elmer match. At some point in the future I hope to post the same result for the Knowlton match in Z18 as well. I expect the FTDNA Knowltons to line up with the SMGF Knowltons with DYS463=23 as well.

In the cumberland cluster under Z18 Thomas, Chandler, Grundy, Slaghekke all show 25. I know from the respective projects of Pipkin, Dameron and the Winne tester that they also carry 25 at DYS463.

A posting in the DNA Newbies forum got me thinking about CDYa and b values. In the Cumberland cluster, Knowlton, Elmer and I also carry CDYa/b as 35/37. CDYa and b are fast changing positions and mismatches are to be expected there, but it's interesting to me that the three people who have a 23 at DYS463 also match at CDYa and b.

Right now there is another tester who has 35/37 at CDYa and b, Atkinson. I'd be curious to see what their DYS463 result would be to see if there is some pattern there.

Task Mastering

I was printing off my forms for death records for Rosa Blades and Henry Williamson (see task list) when it struck me that there was more I could do at the Anderson public library. In the past I ordered obituaries for Rosa Thompson and for Thompsons I thought might be related to Levi. This time around I focused on his children, I ordered obituaries for a James that could be mine..so hard to tell, Mary, Rena, Mattie and Albert. To see if they would shed some light on things. I ordered Ray Bishop Thompsons obit out of curiosity. I also ordered Ida Williamson, Henry Williamson, and Owen Williamson (Henry's brother) hoping they would shed some light on their families as well. Really it's moms I'm trying to track down with those.

So I still have to send in my death record requests for Rosa Blades Thompson and Henry Williamson, but I'm excited to see what I can find from these obituaries in the meantime. Finding moms for Rosa, Henry and Ida will help me determine where some of my genetic relatives fall.

I checked in with the genealogist at the public library in Butler PA to see if she had any Thompson resources that might identify Levi and she also could not find anything in her records. She did come across the Levi Campbell record (born 1844) who is living with James Thompson in Cherry, Butler PA in 1850, but no Levi Thompson.

I asked about orphanages in the area and I asked if it was likely that people would come to Butler to give birth (maybe the Thompsons had a son there but really lived in another county?). I also asked about possible Elmer families in the area.

On the DNA front, making note of that odd marker for my Y DNA cluster of DYS463 = 23. I asked my Elmer match at FTDNA if they would be willing to test, and they were. This will help them better match with the SMGF Elmer and the Knowltons there and it helps strengthen the case that the Elmers, Knowltons and I are in some related group within our cluster. Not a full 67 upgrade but a cheap way to get more data.

This next bit wasn't on the task list, but it's an interesting DNA/History tangent:

I was looking up Knowltons (it's a town name in England and there are a couple). The standard is that the Knowltons are from Kent, but there is another Knowlton..although it's not in Southeast England, it's in Dorset in Southwest England. In an odd coincidence, reading the wikipedia article on Knowlton Dorset I was surprised to see a familiar name in this text: "The Domesday Book also records two hides of the land of the Count of Mortain in Knowlton, named as Chenoltune in the book, held by Ansgar, which was held by Æthelmær in the time of King Edward. " Æthelmær is the name Aylmer is supposed to be linked to and Aylmer becomes Elmer. It's probably just a coincidence, but interesting all the same. Knowlton is a name you would call someone who had moved from Knowlton to your town. Bill from Knowlton would shorten up to Bill Knowlton in no time. According to a few sources the village in Dorset was struck by the black death and abandoned.  

New Eyes on Y DNA

During the course of puttering around on various DNA related forums, I began a conversation with another Z14 person who is not in my cluster. In conversing back and forth about his Y STRs and mine I asked if he would check his DYS458 to see if he had a microallele there. For all I know it is common to every Z14 person...so why not check. Truthfully I had expected that he did have one.

Interestingly though, he did not. Meanwhile other members of  my cluster do have this microallele. To me it really gives validity to the clustering that has been done by the project admins. They grouped us without knowing that we shared this oddity simply by the strength of the pattern in our other markers.

Okay so what it means to me that there is another Z14 person who does not have a microallele on DYS458:

Since I've learned that you retain the microallele through mutations it would place the mutation that caused the microallele in a period in time after the SNP Z14 came into being. I'm not sure if microalleles are a one way street, but it seems that way from what I've heard. So for me  and the people I've contacted in my cluster who have the DYS458.2 it would make the timeline something like this:

R1b -> R1b-U106 -> R1b-Z18 -> R1b-Z14 -> microallele at DYS458

I've seen the age of Z18 given as roughly 2000 years so Z14 is necessarily younger than that (although I don't know the estimates of it's age) and our shared microallele is younger than that. All it does is get you closer in time to the current date. To me that was exciting, because it really would be some sort of definition between Z14 people, creating branches in our tree and the possibility that there are SNPs that may follow these clusters that we don't know about yet.

The second thing that came about during our conversations was that I looked at some of my values that weren't as obvious at the 458.2 that I've spent so much time with.

We were talking about killer values at specific alleles. Values that almost no one shares. As an example I used my DYS463 which is 23. 

Here's an example of why this stood out to me. It has a lot to do with Ancestry.com's presentation. The highlighted values with numbers are those that differ from mine. You can see that my GATAH4 is not incredibly popular, but my DYS463 is down right offensive to other mammals. 

See it there DYS463 I have 23...nearly everyone else has 25. No one at ancestry has 23. I had never really put it together but my new Z14 person sure did. It's right on the Z18 and subgroups page labelled 

DYS463=25 or the "Root of all Evil". http://www.familytreedna.com/public/r-z18/default.aspx

Apparently if you have a 25 at DYS463 then they are 78% sure that you're going to come out R1b-Z18. So 25 is the mode for Z18 humans. It's also the mode in my cluster at FTDNA where I appear to be the only person who does not have it. I'm also one of the few people who tested for it.

That is why all of my ancestry matches seem to have this 25 value at DYS463..they are all also more likely to be R1b-Z18. I thought 25 was the value for all humans, but it turns out it's a dead giveaway for Z18 status. So the irony is that I don't have it and I'm Z18 positive. I am the odd man among my own matches.

It's odd, but how odd can it be?! Well, there are some reasons I may not see other Z14 people with my 23. One is that you would only know anything about DYS463 if you tested at SMGF or Ancestry.com for their 46 marker test or ordered the 111 test at FTDNA.

According to SMGF 23 at DYS463 is about 8% of the population. If I take that as a rough guide and look at Z18 where 25 is the mode and I'm also in a smaller subset of the population that has a DYS458.2 then the odds of finding matches at all seem pretty unlikely.

So nobody at ancestry has it, and nobody at the Z18 group had it (of those that tested for it). Time to go back to good old SMGF and have a look. 

You'll have to squint, but it's there DYS463 is 23 and who do I share it with at SMGF? The Knowltons and the Elmer. Since there are multiple Knowltons and I also have Knowltons and Elmers at FTDNA, I would imagine this is a pattern for our families. SMGF is hard because it has no haplogroup information. There are others at SMGF who have the 23 like Dester from Switzerland, Nunn from England and Burke from Ireland (apparently the name is an anglo saxon name based on burg).

I couldn't tell you who else in the cumberland cluster has it beside me the Knowltons and the Elmers, but I can say that the one Damron at Ancestry.com has 25 there. The Damerons share the DYS458 microallele, but not this really odd value at DYS463...or at least that is the case for the single Dam(e)ron test I have at Ancestry.

So to me that is exciting. if we had more 111 marker tests in our cluster it would be interesting to see who else in there has this. It's also interesting that these two families, the Knowltons and Elmers have their roots in Southeast England and maybe even more specifically East Anglia?

It makes me more confident of the work that has gone on thus far and, to me at least, it strengthens the position of England on my Y line.

It also points out how valuable another set of eyes is, even when you may not be related for the last 1500 years you can still give each other a helping hand.

DNA Wide and Thin

In the past when I've talked about the searches I've done I've been laughed at. Mainly because I accept some pretty broad results. I call them my matches but functionally at FTDNA they would not be matches. We all have this same general pattern and that is what I've homed in on to make my list, but for most people this wouldn't be a list.

I search for people at a genetic distance of 5 which most people wouldn't do, but it's the only way I could get any results at all. At best I've been looking at some pretty ancient relationships. I think at the very best I may have a good match with the Elmers in the last 200 to 500 years although estimates vary.

My name appears to be irrelevant, other than maybe I've noticed in the past a swing toward personal names rather than "task" based names in my matches. Thompson, Edwardson, Peterson, Janke (diminutive of Jan) Pipkin (diminutive of Philip I think). I've also noticed place names like Knowlton in Kent...Elmer is an anglo saxon descriptive name in England from the area of Kings Lynn but in Switzerland it denotes someone from Elms...Although the English family seems most likely. The Damerons may be from Flanders. I'm not sure what the origin of their name is (they are also not sure although they do have a patriarch from Ipswich England) although it is sometimes associated with Belgium, "West Flanders" and the Netherlands like the Winne/Winner family who actually does trace to the same area. I can't totally say there aren't job names because there is a Chandler in the mix from somewhere in England.

In my closest group there is only one Elmer 35/37, the other Elmers I would match with would be 34/37.

So in my lists of FTDNA sanctioned 25 marker matches I have Southeast Englanders, Germans and Netherlanders/Belgians...if that is a word. Right now that is Chandler, Emery, Dameron/Damron, Pipkin/Pipken, Elmer, Boettcher and Winne/Winner.

In the wider group that I claim as matches like the Coens, Knowltons, Edwardsons, Petersons, Kuhlman etc.., the range is pretty similar...although the Coens bring in Ireland, when I include Janke it edges into Poland and the Petersons swing up into Denmark.

If I widen out even more, I end up at the Z18/Z14 cumberland cluster and I gain some people from Wales, more English and more Polish people like Ralowicz, Stanuszek, Szczublewski. Since they're not in my matches, I'm not sure where their last ancestor is from although Ralowicz seems to also be popular in Belarus.

With so few people in this cluster (20 something but further testing should find more) and so much ground to cover you can't help but think of some huge migration event. The Z18 group seems to cover the "Germanic" world and to me seems to be roughly the same area as U106..if a bit more Baltic-centric, but our cluster also seems to cover most of this territory too. Like dandelion seeds blown in the wind.

When I look at the cumberland cluster I see a lot of "unknown" origin people, like myself. My Thompsons seem to be people on the move at the edge of society, with few records. They have a common name, but are not related to others in the same area that share the name. Sprawled out. Part of a major group, but oddly different from others in the group. Waxing poetic, I can see that same story echoed in the DNA results of the cumberland cluster, people who are everywhere and nowhere all at once.

I can't help but think about tying together in my mind a group of men who span the Baltic from Belarus to Ireland. Clustered together, but separated by huge distances. The first explanation I can think of is that we have a common ancestor, way back in time (more than a thousand years ago) and that what we are seeing is an undefined subclade of R1b-Z14 being played out in a cluster of similar STRs. Since Z18 doesn't seem to be that well traveled and I don't fall into it's known subclades, this seems reasonable.

I've spent a lot of time coming up with likely groups for us over the years (even before I knew there was an us) and I still fall back to those groups that epitomize sea trade and have a Germanic slant. You can't look at the territory from Germany to England and not think about the Anglo Saxons. They are still the major player in the minds of most genetic genealogists and looking at my maps and matches, I think it makes sense. I've covered a lot of that ground and given them a lot of thought, but then I wondered, who am I overlooking and how can I incorporate these new Polish people?

Saxons

Well, to an extent I've overlooked the Anglo Saxons. They are not a unified group. The definitions of people have been handed to us by the Romans largely and by the people themselves long after they migrated to England. I'm considering people in my matches that may be predate 500AD and may have been Roman transplants themselves. Would the Romans or Romano-celts have made a distinction between a Saxoni and a Warini in Britain? Would the people themselves have been able to make such a distinction?

Danes

A little more recently than the Saxons, I've focused quite a bit on the Danes, specifically around the 800-900AD mark where they are impacting England. I've made maps of matches that seem to mimic the borders of the Danelaw (and the extent of the Saxons in some areas). Given my single Danish match at Ancestry.com it seemed worth a look. England and Germany carry the bulk of people "like" me, but I can't discount the Danes for lack of testing.

I still get caught at what to do about the Polish matches. There was certainly a viking presence in the area of Poland and even further east. Thinking specifically about the Varangians who became the Rus out of Kiev. Like the Varni or Warini they were eventually assimilated into the greater Slavic ethnic group.

More recently though I ran across this interesting article about Harold Bluetooth and his army containing mercenaries from the south Baltic:  "The team of researchers examined a total of forty-eight skeletons using a new method called strontium isotope analysis. This made it possible to determine that more than half of the skeletons did not come from Denmark. The researchers were not able to trace the precise geographical origin of the deceased, but previous finds of artefacts such as pottery and weapons around Trelleborg indicate that many of them came from Norway or south of the Baltic Sea – i.e. what is now Poland."

Now that is what I'm talking about. Harald Bluetooth, whose son Sweyn Forkbeard became a Danish King of England and whose grandson Cnut conquered England with the help of Polish warriors: "Among the allies of Denmark was Boleslaw the Brave, the Duke of Poland and a relative to the Danish royal house. He lent somePolish troops,^[25] likely to have been a pledge made to Cnut and Harald when, in the winter, they "went amongst the Wends" to fetch their mother back to the Danish court. "

So we have a fairly long standing south baltic tilt to the armies of the Danish kings. I'm imagining that some of those Polish mercenaries stayed and eventually melded into the background. That would be one way to spread south balts around the Baltic and North Sea.

Hanseatic League

These guys are always on my mind because they could spread Y DNA really far in a really short timeframe. When I look at my closest match, the Elmer and see that his Elmer matches are a 1 or 2 mismatches away from him, and that it happened within the last 400 or so years, it makes me think we might be a fast mutating group. The Hanseatic league would probably be considered a little too close for comfort for our group, but if we are speed demons for mutation rates, then it could play out. Especially when I consider the coastal nature of the English matches and their proximity to the Netherlands.

The league was active from the 13th to the 17th century. Have a look at the range on this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extent_of_the_Hansa.jpg

Then have a glance at this map of the Hanseatic trade routes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haupthandelsroute_Hanse.png

It contains multiple stops along the Cumberland Cluster path. Could we differentiate this much over 700 years?

Check out the towns in the Hanseatic League in Britian:

"In addition to the major Kontors, individual Hanseatic ports had a representative merchant and warehouse. In England this happened in Boston, Bristol, Bishop's Lynn (nowKing's Lynn, which features the sole remaining Hanseatic warehouse in England), Hull,^{[disputed – discuss]} Ipswich, Norwich, Yarmouth (now Great Yarmouth), and York." 

"The league succeeded in establishing additional Kontors in Bruges (Flanders), Bergen (Norway), and London (Kingdom of England). These trading posts became significant enclaves. "

"German colonists in the 12th and 13th centuries settled in numerous cities on and near the east Baltic coast, such as Elbing (Elbląg), Thorn (Toruń), Reval (Tallinn), Riga, and Dorpat (Tartu), which became members of the Hanseatic League, and some of which still retain many Hansa buildings and bear the style of their Hanseatic days. Most were granted Lübeck law (Lübisches Recht), which provided that they had to appeal in all legal matters to Lübeck's city council. The Livonian Confederationincorporated modern-day Estonia and parts of Latvia and had its own Hanseatic parliament (diet); all of its major towns became members of the Hanseatic League. The dominant language of trade was Middle Low German, a dialect with significant impact for countries involved in the trade, particularly the larger Scandinavian languages, Estonian, and Latvian."

Flemish Exiles

I've heard quite a bit about Flemish exiles and the weaving trade but never looked into them too seriously. There are sporadic articles about them on the internet. Even some information taken from a book on Benjamin Franklin and the Flemish Exiles of Norwich. I also found this article on the Flemish Exiles in London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Collections-Research/Research/Your-Research/RWWC/Themes/1295/1286/

And this piece in the short history of Norwich:


"The medieval period was a prosperous one for the Norwich area and the main industry was the wool trade and weaving. (The heavy fabric called Worstead was named after the village of that name north of Norwich.) Large numbers of skilled Walloon and Flemish weavers came to Norwich from the Low Countries during this time, often to escape persecution at home."

This is a favorite group used to explain possible wayward Scots, English and Irish (like a Thompson that doesn't look so Thompsonish in their Y DNA).
Other German Migrations

I also don't want to ignore later German migrations. My own Finks family is said to have moved from the Palitinate to England and then on to the Americas. I know that Germans also lived along the Volga as I've seen Volga Germans among my autosomal DNA matches. I did some searching about German migrants to Poland and ran across this Wikipedia article about the German minority in Poland:

"German migration into the area of modern Poland began with the medieval Ostsiedlung (see also Walddeutsche). The historical regions of Lower Silesia, East Brandenburg, Pomerania and East Prussia were almost completely German-settled by the High Middle Ages, while in the other areas there were substantial German populations, most notably in the historical regions of Pomerelia, Upper Silesia, and Posen or Greater Poland."

These migrations are numerous and have many reasons, many involving the Catholic and Lutheran churches and making the Protestant "nations" inviting places to land...raise a family and possibly lose your last name.



My list is not exhaustive and it's not meant to be. It's my attempt to remind myself that I'm looking at where the leaves landed and trying to guess the wind.



 .

YDNA meandering Elmers and Thompsons

After having been accepted into the R1b-U106 yahoo group, I used my access to contact a verified U106 person who shares a lot of my more off-beat strs. He and I are in much the same boat. There are a lot of people generally like us in R1b but on closer inspection we're part of a pretty small group of individuals who are similar to each other.

He and I have discussed some of our autosomal matches in common too, which is also pretty interesting considering the nearness of Y DNA. It's near enough to make us wonder about family convergences.

He in turn sent me a close match for both of us among the Elmers. Well one Elmer in particular. I've had a match with a single Elmer at SMGF for a while and have included them in my maps. They match at about the same level as the Knowltons at SMGF.

The Elmer he was showing me is from a different branch of the same family and where the Elmer at SMGF mismatched me on 3 markers..this Elmer only mismatched on 1. Now that is very interesting.

The Elmer at SMGF is a 34/37 match and because the other (Daniel we'll call him) Elmer is tested with FTDNA we have fewer numbers to match on, but he's a 31/32 match.

31 markers isn't enough to prove a shared family without some really good paper trails but considering that this Elmer matches me where the other Elmer does not, he could well be a 36 out of 37 match.

Not too shabby.

Flipping back over to Autosomal DNA for a minute, I believe I've seen these Elmers before. One of the autosomal matches for my father who lists Thompsons also has this Elmer family in her tree. They marry into her Thompsons in New Jersey. The scary thing is that this Autosomal match also has Seeleys in her tree from the same area and I'd guess that these Seeleys are probably related to my Seeleys..although that should definitely be looked into.

These same Elmers marry into a local Seeley family.

So there are a lot of options left open by something like this. We could be Elmers who at some point became Thompsons through all the myriad ways that can happen. I could be seeing a tie to my father's Seelye family and through the interconnectedness of all things, be seeing these Elmers that we are also related to a couple different ways. I could also be seeing a group of interrelated people from the same area in Britain who came to the new world.

It turns out that the home town for the Elmers in Britain (Braintree) is something like a hundred miles from Knowlton in Britain semi-mythical home of the Knowltons who are also 34/37 DNA matches.

All of that is really interesting, but I want to take a moment to look at those Thompsons again. While researching the Elmers who are pretty well documented, I of course ran into those Thompsons from the autosomal match. They seem well documented but the problem is, there are too many documents.

I've found 3 or more different trees for the same Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer in the 1700s. One goes to Ireland and on to Yorkshire and another seems to be a mixed tree that eventually leads up to the same Thompsons who marry into the Hollingsworth family for Judith Heald's family (although a different branch). A third leads back to William Thompson, reverend in Massachusetts in the 1600s.

This is the family I'd like to look into a bit more because William Thompson has a son Benjamin Thompson who is born while William is away in Virginia. William later becomes estranged from Benjamin and his melancholia is sited as a source.

This Benjamin Thompson is not the same one who marries Elizabeth Elmer, but in some trees is his ancestor. So William Thompson leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Susannah Kirtland, who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Elizabeth (unknown) who leads to Ben Thompson who marries Anna Newcomb who then leads to Benjamin Thompson who marries Elizabeth Elmer.

This is not the most popular tree for these Thompsons by far. The Thomas Thompson 1677 from Ireland tree is more popular. The thing that interests me about it is the proximity to these other families, the story of melancholy and estrangement which can lead to uncertain trees and the fact that Reverand William Thompson is from Winwick, Lancashire England in the 1690s less than 45 miles from Malpas, England where the (top tier YDNA match at Ancestry.com) Edwardsons are from.

All very interesting and in need of more research.