Two Flavors of Cumberland

The Cumberland Cluster at the Z18 and Subgroups project comes in two flavors now, thanks to cluster wide DYS458 retesting sponsored by our Elmer and Emery brethren.

DYS458.2 does not occur in all Z14 Cumberlands. So we know it happened after Z14 (lots of other clusters are also Z14+ but in informal polling at least one does not show DYS458.2) and further we know it happened after our distinctive "Cumberland Cluster" pattern emerged (DYS390=25, DYS5385=11-11, YCAII=19-22, DYS565=11) because some cumberlands have a 458.2 and others do not.

As it has been explained to me, micro-alleles like 458.2 have a low instance of back mutation, so once you get one, you continue to pass it down through generations. The whole number changes, but the micro-allele does not (without a really rare back mutation).

It looks like given the genetic distances in our two groups, the common ancestor to the two cumberlands lived around 1300 years ago.  Literally a case of one son having a 458.2 and another not having it.

What is interesting right now is that the 458.2+ cumberland-B group is larger than the 458.2- cumberland-A group. Thinking about things in simplistic terms I would have expected the opposite. I would have expected the Cumberland B DYS458.2 to be the smaller child group to a larger DYS458 Cumberland A parent group.

Another interesting observation about the two cumberlands. The usual suspect in migrations from mainland Europe is from east to west. So in the old cumberland cluster you had members from Poland to Ireland and the general assumption is that Poland is a good start point and Ireland the end of the line.

Now 458.2+ Cumberland B (the larger group by three quarters ranges from Poland to Wales including members from Germany, Norway, Netherlands and England (and I suspect from my ancestry.com days at least one from Denmark). Cumberland A the ancestral group, only contains proven members from the Netherlands, England and Ireland.

Again, simplistic thinking, but I would have expected the two groups to cover the same range or for Cumberland A (458.2-) to cover the larger range as a parent group giving rise to the child group somewhere on the way west.

There is always a bias towards testing in England because of people from the U.S. and Britain that have been testing for some time. So it's hard to look at all those UK testers and make sense of them in context with other tests. Our Winne family from the Netherlands may represent a large contingent from the Netherlands..and we may not know.

Also taking the largest area a group inhabits may not really give you the origin place of that group. People usually migrate to get a leg up and be more successful. So you may see more results from an area that was migrated to instead of migrated from.

It's possible for "back migrations" too,  west to east or in a big loop. People don't always really care to stick to the rules when migrating.

Still we seem to be hugging the North Sea and South Baltic sea. Cumberland B seems to have done well or itself in Poland, Germany and the UK with smaller showings in the Netherlands and Norway. Cumberland A did well in the UK with smaller showings in the Netherlands.

Earlier today I was looking up Kristiansand Norway where the Lund family is from in Cumberland B and the Google map did that auto centering thing and ..of course showed me where Kristiansand is but it also gave me a perspective of the Cumberland world while it did it.

I've made a lot of maps but it was still interesting to see the canvas laid out. It made me think about maybe we're not looking at a nice east to west migration. Maybe we're looking at a migration from a center point south west and east? If you were there near Denmark, Poland and the UK would be on the radar.

That may be my bias towards the Danes though and maybe I shouldn't say Denmark but set the focus on the blue around it. Water is not a barrier, it's a highway. Could the Cumberlands find an origin in this tangle of Islands around the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark with Cumberland-A favoring a westerly route and Cumberland B heading both west and east in good measure?

DYS458.2 Cluster Bomb and a DF95 for me

Although this information is unlikely to help me find Levi Thompson's family in Pennsylvania, I'm pretty excited.

In order to get the most current data on all cumberland cluster members DYS458 results, a few of us donated money for testing and had a group retest done. The results should be out in a few months. With this test we'll be able to see if the DYS458.2 values are cluster wide or if they break the cluster into smaller groups.

Testing everyone at once will bring all of us up to the same standard and will make the results less questionable (they are questionable now due to differences in testing companies in the past). It will also make everyone's results "available" for review where as I had to individually poll people in the past.

see http://thompsonhunt.blogspot.com/2012/11/dys4582-poll-returns.html

If the value breaks our cluster up, it may give us an idea of when it happened along some projected migration path or span of time. If not, maybe it is a defining mark of our cluster.

I've also signed up for a DF95 SNP test. A few cluster mates are already positive for it, but again, it's one of those things you want to test to make sure it's cluster wide. I believe it was first identified in Wales, but it looks like one of our German cluster members is already positive as well. It may also turn out to be a defining SNP for us or a break point for the cluster.

I can't wait to speculate wildly on these two results as they come in.

http://l257.groenebeverbv.nl/index.php/test-results/y-dna-profiles-l257-min

And so this is Christmas..and what have you done

I think since I've moved my Y DNA results to FTDNA, I've been able to take advantage of a lot of good testing and research within the FTDNA groups and also take better advantage of what I got from Ancestry.com. Last year, I thought my Y was a pretty obvious dud. Now I have what I think is a clearer picture of where my Y DNA ancestor was from..or at least the journey they took.

I'm pretty resigned that we're looking at Anglo Saxon England or some later migration from Flanders or Denmark before 1500AD. I think the Anglo Saxon/Frisian thing circa 500AD is most likely at this point but I can't totally rule out Flemish weavers or Hanseatic League members.

It's not shocking because I've been building this case for a while, initially with a lot of hesitation, but more recently with actual excitement. I feel like I've been able to move from a feeling of dread in the beginning that we Thompsons were not exactly like the other Thompsons to acceptance of a sort. Now I've moved on to learning about where we may have come from outside of the general mythology of Thompson-ness. I have actually enjoyed learning about these groups of people we call "Germanic".

I think the last few days have been an enormous success in that I feel like I'm seeing a pattern emerge that incorporates the Knowltons and Elmers that I've spent so much time with. I can see in the cluster at "Z18 and subgroups" a broad migration round the bottom of the Balitc Sea and over to England...or maybe what would become England in the future. As I watch this pattern play out I'm seeing a definite area of England for us and it's southeast England and maybe more specifically East Anglia although a paper trail to Kent wouldn't be a surprise either.

When I look at autosomal DNA I'm seeing some ties to the area as well, in the many matches that have roots in Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk. By the same token though I can't ignore my father's genetic connections to Germany and Ireland which remain a bit of a mystery. I could definitely see Germany through the Finks (Thompsons) family but many Germans have X matches which means it would be carried on the Seelye side, not the Thompson side. There is also a French component that is evident in our paper trail, but not yet making itself apparent genetically.

Clearly the Y DNA move was good for boiling things down and our autosomal DNA tests require similar work. Like the move for the Y, I should transfer autosomal tests over to FTDNA. Gedmatch.com has proven that the FTDNA database holds some clues for us.

In both the Y and autosomal cases my father and I can no longer be the only representatives of our family. We'll need others beyond the level of my grandparents to help us sort and order matches. Painfully, we'll need them for both the Y (because the Y is important for continuity) AND autosomal tests (because the Thompsons need help on all their lines) which costs money. For my dad it will become important to have a Seelye representative and a Thompson for autosomal testing. Eventually, if we can establish that the Y carries through to the Indiana Thompsons and we're not looking at a more recent NPE, we'll need to look at testing Y candidates from Butler PA..which is a shot in the dark with no guarantee of participation.

It's easy to forget, in the midst of all my talk about genetic testing, that we've made some good advances in paper work too. I think the John B Hollingsworth information is an important clue and gives a good time frame for a move from Butler PA to Madison IN. It's nice to have someone I CAN follow back to Pennsylvania with clear ties to Indiana. It may mean that I should focus more on the Thompsons in Grant Indiana where the Hollingsworth family settles down. All of that is totally paper trail driven.

I've also been able to make good progress on the Hibbard (Thompson/Finks) family totally with photographic evidence and paper trails and made progress on the Finks family itself using census records and oral histories from Finks related people in Virginia. We've had excellent success on the Thompson/Williamson front as well and added a wealth of leads for that family just by using the census to leap a missing generation. I know more about the Jeffers/Jeffries family (Thompson/Finks) than I did before and I may have some genetic evidence to support the wishy washy family trees coming out of Kentucky.

So you can't have just DNA testing alone, you have to be able to find records and connect with people if you're going to be able to make anything out of this mess. I'm lucky to live in a time where most of this work can be done online and I can take advantage of all the great work done by others to fill in gaps.

I think there are still many discoveries to be made and new cultures and histories to learn about and I'm still excited to see how things unfold and we haven't been totally backed into a corner yet. Big studies are coming out of England and Ireland that may shed new light on old data and as always, I meet new people all the time who give me great ideas and fresh creative perspectives.

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.



 .

DYS458.2 Poll Returns

I asked several members of different families that I've mentioned here in the past like the Coens, Damerons, Elmers, Knowltons, Emery and Winnes if they have DYS458 with a microallele of .2 (like 15.2, 16.2, 17.2). So far everyone who has gotten back has returned true. Their results vary though. Several of us have 16.2 that reports as 16 at FTDNA. One has 15.2 that reports as 16. That was unexpected. 15.2 is a very rare value. I've heard that a mutation of a 458.2 up or down would still carry the .2 so 16.2 might mutate to 15.2...but not 15.


At SMGF 16.2 results make up 0.150% of their database. For reference the value of 16 at DYS458 is 24.022% of the SMGF database. So with that marker alone you drop from roughly a quarter of men to below 1% of men in their database. That gives you an idea of how narrow the playing field gets when you take this into account. We seem to be a fairly small group of men, but really wide spread. At SMGF and Ancestry.com the 458.2 men in my match lists are from Pomerania, Germany, England, Denmark etc...in a map it would roughly match my cluster (labelled Cumberland) at the Z18 and subgroups project where we have men from Poland to Wales and possibly Ireland.

We have fairly similar STRs with a good pattern of markers in common, but a really broad range that seems to hug the South Baltic. It's not such a surprising concept. I've spent a long time with these different results and made a lot of maps. I'm just always struck by how far apart geographically we are. Every time I think I can zoom in on a location, I'm forced to zoom out again.

458.2 A New Hope

As a quick recap. My Y DNA testing at Ancestry.com showed that I have an odd marker at DYS458. Where most people have a solid number like 16, I have decimal number like 16.2 The way the .2 happens was explained to me this way: "You have 16 repeats of 458 this DYS458=N.2 is the result of an AA-insert within the repeat section." I was also told that matches would continue to have the microallele even though they may have a different whole number. So a match who was 16.2 could mutate up to 17.2 and the microallele would remain.

At SMGF (who runs tests for Ancestry.com) the percentage of men with DYS458 of 16.2 is 0.150%. 17.2 is at 0.531%. So we're talking about less than one percent of men in their database.

You can see some of my past checking into the 458.2 in a previous post.

Since that posting, as you might see in my comments, I've transferred to FTDNA and had SNP testing done there. It has been interesting to see that many of my 16.2 matches have family over at FTDNA who match me and still more interesting to see that a few of those have also tested as Z18 positive like me. I'm particularly excited to see familiar names like the Elmers, Knowltons and Damerons who have been placed in the Cumberland cluster of the Z18 project along with me.

So what is this new hope?

At the DNA Newbies forum I saw someone answer a post by using their microallele discussion with FTDNA as an example. They have a microallele that helps define their cluster in their surname project. That would certainly be true for me if my surname was not so common and I had any matches at all among Thompsons. I don't have that, but I do have a haplogroup and a cluster within that.

What was so hopeful about it was that they routinely communicate with FTDNA to check to see if new members have this same microallele. It's enough of a part of the process that they use it to determine matches. So FTDNA doesn't display microalleles, but it knows about them and can confirm them.

To test out this theory, I took a ringer (my Elmer match) who has a known 16.2 carrying relative at SMGF and asked him to see if he could ask FTDNA specifically if he had a value of 16.2 at DYS458. He agreed and he did ask. Within a few days they answered back that they were able to confirm it.

Success!

So now I've asked a few more ringers who have family members tested at both places and a few people who are matches at FTDNA that I don't know about, to see how they turn out. My end goal would be to see if this is something common to Z18 as a whole or if it's something common to the Cumberland cluster or if it could be used to further break the cluster down into smaller groups of individuals that share that same microallele.

No matter what it is great to get a confirmation for this microallele on that Elmer match because we are so close.

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.

Anthropology Closing the Gap on Genealogy

I was looking at my most recent map of people who are roughly like me at FTDNA who are also U106. It looks much like my other maps but just a little more focused. Having those extra four STRs from FTDNA really culled my matches down quite a bit. Still it's broadly German and English. Many of these people are also members of R1b-Z18 and a few are part of R1b-Z14 which are both under U106.

These are again people who match my "pattern" roughly, there are some markers off but overall they seem like me. I've color coded them so that Blue are just those with my rough pattern, Red are matches from FTDNA at 25 markers and the single Yellow is my match at 37 STRs or markers..I use those interchangeably.

When I talk about people matching my pattern, it means the pattern of short tandem repeats in my YDNA. Here is an example of several people who are in R1b-Z14:

Notice number two through four from the top down. They seem to have several markers or STRs in common, while the top one has many in common but not as many as the the three below seem to share with each other. You can begin to see a pattern in those last three that the first one doesn't follow. Notice also that the second one has more differentiation from the two below it. Those last two are very similar. At this level they only have one marker different. That is a closer match for STRs. My map above would contain 2 - 4 because they seem to form a rough group. Those STRs "suggest" a relationship. The closer the STRs the closer the suspected relationship.

I also talk a lot about SNPs. Single nucleotide polymorphisms don't just suggest a relationship they are the evidence of a relationship. People who share a Y SNP are definitely related to the same man, although it may be thousands of years in the past. It happens that in my example above, all those patterns in Y DNA are also people who carry the R1b-Z14 SNP. So I am related to all of them. At some point we all share a common male ancestor...of course that ancestor could be any time between now and about 0AD when it is thought the parent SNP Z18 came into being. Z14 itself has children which are younger than it. Here is an image of the ISOGG YDNA tree for my branch of  U106 as it stands today. Keep in mind that this tree is always changing as new things are learned. So like any family tree, it grows.

So there you can see U106 which I tested for with 23 and me (23 the north sea and me). Z18 is beneath that at about 2000 years old. Then Z14 is Z18's child. Beneath Z14 is Z372 and it's child (so far) L257. I've seen L257's age estimated at 1500 years ago. So somewhere between 1500 and 2000 years ago is Z14.

An actual map of people in R1b-Z18 or R1b-Z14 would probably look remarkably like my other maps here. Broadly "Germanic" with people in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, Latvia and France. There aren't a ton of people tested in Z14 and Z18 so it appears more scattered and sparse than it actually may be. It is also basically the geographic area covered by U106 itself.

Here is an interesting map of Europe I found with rough borders for different groups about 1500 years ago:

You can see the Angles and Saxons right there on the top of Germany and eating into Denmark and then in Britain the Angles and the Saxons occupying the same sort of vertical space on the east coast. Angles are purple, Saxons..kind of puke mustard colored. U106, Z18 and Z14 would be represented in many of these groups and many that aren't on the map in Scandinavia.

What can we do to get closer than 1500 to 2000 years ago? Well, for that we go back to the STRs and suggested relationships. If I hone down my map to show just those people who match closely enough for FTDNA to list them in my matches at 25 and 37 markers I get something like this with the red dots being 25 matches and the yellow dot my 37 match:

This represents only my matches at FTDNA, both 25 and 37. All the dots except my friend in Germany there have tested Z18 positive. The yellow dot is Z14 positive.

It's possible that at the next test up I could gain or lose matches and that's the next recommended test for me. This is basically why I've picked out the Saxons for us. I don't think these groups are small enough to differentiate between an Angle and a Saxon and  I don't think the lines between people are as cut and dry as maps make them. You can get a rough idea though that people most like me are most likely in Britain, but also probably Germany. This could represent genetic evidence of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain or it could represent some later migration of "Germans" to England. Right now, given the ages of SNPs involved the consensus seems to be Anglo Saxons.

As things progress we may find further SNPs to split this group up and get tighter timeframes. Y SNPs will eventually enter the genealogical timeframe. When I started I was at cave paintings with R1b. Last year I was at 5000 years ago with prehistoric "Germanic" cultures and R1b-U106. Now I'm at 0 to 500AD, the fall of the Roman empire, Germanic migrations and the Anglo Saxon invasions with R1b-Z14. That's a huge leap in a few years.

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.

Z14 Waiting Again...Anxiously

I ordered the Z14 test today as that seemed like the most likely group for me to fit in. I've had my eye on Z18 for some time and planned on testing for that, but it turns out that quite  a few people in the group within Z18 that I have watched, are Z14. So my Elmer match and I ordered ours at the same time.

Although these results may not be exciting in the Y DNA community, or to anyone really, they are of particular interest to me. If the Elmer match and I are both Z14 then I continue to pursue the NPE. If we both aren't, then I continue to pursue the NPE. If one of us is but the other is not, then I'll move forward on the assumption that we are incredibly similar Y chromosomes, but probably unrelated in a genealogical timeframe.

Like the Emperor in StarWars, I'm on both sides of this fight. Either way I win and either way I'm going to suffer some form of "loss".

On the one hand, I've been a Thompson all my life. I don't know any other way (you Thompsons will understand this because we DO have a way). I got into this to try to find my roots and specifically to find my Thompson family and learn about them. I have learned a lot, but I've also been snagged for quite a while. Am I ready and willing to concede defeat in the face of overwhelming unknown-itude? So, some part of me hopes that we're Thompsons from the beginning and that there were no Thompsons before us and that everyone else has been using our name without paying any royalties. Part of me wants to be THE Thompsons and to be able to say I did it. I did what people said I could not do. I found them and completed my mission!

Then there is the other part of me. This part is excited because there is something new to learn and it may mean an answer to why this entire process has been sort of an uphill battle. This part of me is excited to have a close match no matter how it plays out. I want to show that I was right to group all these Knowltons and Coens and Damrons and Elmers together because we are really part of a group and that group is labelled Z14 and it's particularly common near the channel in England. This part of me is seeking answers to my questions and learning to adapt to what is returned.

So when I look at most recent common ancestor models and I see that it's likely the Elmer and I share an ancestor within 200 to 300 years, which makes a crossover in the 1700s a viable option, I am at once excited and fearful. That is a lot closer than 2000 years ago as an estimate for Z18. 200 to 300 years is within record keeping here in the U.S.

Of course for those estimates to really play out, we have to be within the same haplogroup, which is where the Z14 test comes in. If we're both Z14 then we know we're related sometime between 2000 years ago and now and then we look at those STR values and the 200 to 300 year TMRCA and take it as a marker to look for such a crossover.

That evidence of SNPs and TMRCA plus the evidence of another Elmer at SMGF who is one away from the FTDNA Elmer and three away from me means that if the SMGF Elmer had chosen FTDNA, he would be in my match list as well. That creates a pattern of similar Elmers and at this point they would be the only people anywhere to match me at this level.

How could this all fall apart? Several ways I can think of and probably several more I'm not thinking of. The quickest way would be to have two different SNPs like I said above. He's Z14 and I'm not, something like that.

The next way I can think of is that our STR match is a fluke. We may well both be Z14, but if I'm reading all the results correctly, he and the Elmer from SMGF (utah to connecticut) are more closely related than he and I are. That leaves open the possibility that I've randomly mutated to have a closer match with this particular Elmer than I should, or that he's mutated away from that Elmer enough that he now matches me. At the very least, it would make me think that he and the other Elmer are closer to each other in time than he an I are. Of course it would be better if we were all FTDNA at this point, but I've got what I've got.

This is where it would be best for me to get some Thompson ringers to test. If I match with my other Thompson relatives at all, then we could figure out a modal and see how close the Elmers are to that. It would also be excellent to find the SMGF Elmer and get him tested with FTDNA so that we are looking at apples to apples comparisons.

The third way is if we upgrade to 67 markers and don't remain close.

Other ways revolve around actual genealogical records. What if the SMGF Elmer was wrong about their family tree and they don't go back to England and intertwine with Thompsons at all? That could blow my theory out of the water, although in truth it wouldn't make us any less related.

For the next month or so, waiting for results, I'm sure I'll waffle back and forth between disappointment and excitement as the possibilities in either camp grow in my mind. I'll probably see more pitfalls and find more holes in my own logic. That's good though. No matter what, this is a learning experience and even if we are Elmers, all that means is I have another cool family to learn about and people to work with in putting the pieces together.