One of the issues I've had with Autosomal DNA results is that I seem to be looking way to far back in time to match up with anyone near my missing realtives. As an example, I have several people born in the 1800s that I struggle to place, and I have nearly a thousand genetic matches with people who probably match me in the early 1700s. There's quite a leap of time.
Needless to say, Butler Pennsylvania matches are slim to none. I have a few genetic matches with family in Washington PA, but not Butler..until now. Now I have a single match with a person whose Critchlow family is from Butler PA in the 1800s. It was an awesome find! It was also frustrating, because there is no obvious connection with my Thompson family.
Aaarrgh.
In reality this match has family in the right place at the right time, but we could still really match up in the 1700s on a totally different line in a totally different town in a different state with anyone on either side of my dad's family.
The closest I come to something familiar is an offhand relationship between this match and a Bodine from New Jersey. Not stellar.
I still have hope of finding that connection somewhere though and I'll keep picking away at it. Since this and several other larger matches at Gedmatch.com are actually tests from Family Tree DNA it may be a good idea to pay the $50 and get my dad's test over there for a while.
Also it goes without saying that getting DNA from other known Thompsons would be helpful too.
Sorting out the Puzzle Pieces in My Big Messy Family
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
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.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
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 ] 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.
.
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 ] 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.
.
Monday, November 12, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, October 22, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Set in Stone
Following up on the stonemasons that live around Levi in the 1860 Census, I found John B. Hollingsworth from Butler Pennsylvania living with a Kelso Family. He is listed under a "Smith" Kelso who is also a stonecutter. Smith Kelso actually is Smith Kelsay and is part of the Kelsay family that moves to Indiana from Ohio. I believe Smith may be Robert's much younger brother...or his son. In which case he would have been born before his parents were married.
Robert Kelsay (born around 1809 in VA) the head of the family is listed as a farmer in 1860. In 1850 when there is no Levi Thompson or John B Hollingsworth in Van Buren Indiana, Robert Kelsay is listed as a stonemason. His wife Hannah is from Pennsylvania. In family trees is shows that they were married in 1843 in Paris Ohio and gives Hannah's name as Hannah Minyoung.
Robert Kelsay has a son named Albert Kelsay. Alberts always get my attention. I attempted to find a connection for Hannah Minyoung in Pennsylvania, but couldn't find any.
At a minimum, I think this is the source for Levi's tombstone manufacturing after the civil war. It would seem to me that he and John B. Hollingsworth picked up the skill after they moved to Indiana and lived with or near Robert Kelsay and family.
Whether there is some further connection between these people, I don't know.
I was able to follow up on the Hollingsworths a bit more. John B. Hollingsworth's mother was Lucinda Burgess, in family trees she is shown as being born in Pittsburgh. John B's father William Hollingsworth born 1811 is shown in family trees to be from Chester county PA. They have a daughter Isabella who was born in 1848 and a son Gilmore who was born in 1838.
Of course, as I've probably mentioned before when looking at the John Thompson and Jane Stevenson, the Bayer family and other Thompsons all from North Butler...the name Isabella seems to repeat. The Thompsons, Bayers and Hollingsworths all seem to have Isabellas and sometimes multiple generations of them.
It's too bad Levi didn't have an Isabella in his mix of children. That would be an awesome pattern match.
Robert Kelsay (born around 1809 in VA) the head of the family is listed as a farmer in 1860. In 1850 when there is no Levi Thompson or John B Hollingsworth in Van Buren Indiana, Robert Kelsay is listed as a stonemason. His wife Hannah is from Pennsylvania. In family trees is shows that they were married in 1843 in Paris Ohio and gives Hannah's name as Hannah Minyoung.
Robert Kelsay has a son named Albert Kelsay. Alberts always get my attention. I attempted to find a connection for Hannah Minyoung in Pennsylvania, but couldn't find any.
At a minimum, I think this is the source for Levi's tombstone manufacturing after the civil war. It would seem to me that he and John B. Hollingsworth picked up the skill after they moved to Indiana and lived with or near Robert Kelsay and family.
Whether there is some further connection between these people, I don't know.
I was able to follow up on the Hollingsworths a bit more. John B. Hollingsworth's mother was Lucinda Burgess, in family trees she is shown as being born in Pittsburgh. John B's father William Hollingsworth born 1811 is shown in family trees to be from Chester county PA. They have a daughter Isabella who was born in 1848 and a son Gilmore who was born in 1838.
Of course, as I've probably mentioned before when looking at the John Thompson and Jane Stevenson, the Bayer family and other Thompsons all from North Butler...the name Isabella seems to repeat. The Thompsons, Bayers and Hollingsworths all seem to have Isabellas and sometimes multiple generations of them.
It's too bad Levi didn't have an Isabella in his mix of children. That would be an awesome pattern match.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
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.
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.
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