DNA News of the Week: Why Surname Project Admins. Drink

YDNA surname project administrator sounds like a pleasant little hobby/project. It would be easy if everyone with the same surname actually matched when expected. Meaning everyone descended from the same ancestors actually matched. The first half dozen men who tested in our Forgey/Forgy & Forgie DNA project all did match one another. Even those not known to have descended from the same ancestors matched. Our luck ran out a few weeks ago when someone did not match anyone in the group and actually descended from a maternal line. I thought the odds would be against this happening again with our next test results. Unfortunately, it happened again. Our batch number finally came up, our kits were in the 562 weekly batch at FTDNA. Results were posted around 8:00 pm Friday night on Good Friday/ Black Friday. I was completely floored when one of our testers didn't match anyone else. We expected him to match either our line or the line of their supposed distant cousin. Their distant cousin didn't match anyone in our group either, they had tested outside our group a few years ago. This cousin tested as I1, better known as the Viking Haplo group. The rest of  our group belongs to the I2, Scottish clade. Our last Forgy result Friday turned out to be R1. This is the most common haplo group in Europe. His STR signature is also very common with 761 perfect matches. So we had no match at all between the I1 and R1 cousin.

The Correct Forgety family

Friday we also got a result for our Forgety tester. It was thought this family had changed its name from Forgey to Forgety due to a family dispute. This turned out not to be the case with our tester testing positive for the Haplo R1. That is turning into a happy ending with this family now linking themselves to there correct line of Forgety or Forgaty. This tester didn't have a common STR signature; he only got 28 matches with 12 markers tested. 

We have one more result coming in soon. This tester is in batch 563, so should not be far behind the others. This was a 37 marker test so it may take longer.Our previous tests actually took 6-7 weeks. The kits sat unprocessed for several weeks before being check in. 

It would be great to have one confirmed Haplo group for every individual Forgey/ Forgy & Forgie line. Our phase 2 of testing hasn't not brought us any closer to this goal due to the NPE's (non paternal events). I think one of the two testers on the Robert Forgy and Elizabeth Beatty line must carry Robert's haplo based on the odds? I might be wrong and both families may have a break in the paternal line? With these two family representatives not matching we need a third descendant from a different child than these two to test. I'm hoping such a person turns up eventually. We need to do some reverse genealogy to find one. 

Last Tuesday I got my Ancestry.com results back. They came in just short of 3 weeks from the time Ancestry received them. This kit didn't sit at Ancestry waiting to be checked in so this test came back in half the time FTDNA took. I am finding the layout of the Ancestry DNA site to be outstanding with many great features. After the NPE's in our Y project I've been looking to my autosomal DNA results to verify my paper trails. I have had about 12 or so matches at FTDNA which have helped verify our family stories and paper trail. I'm finding even more cousins at Ancestry. The trees posted by my matches have been very helpful. Some people say you can't rely on these mostly unsourced trees. Well if you match the person and find a common ancestor on their tree I would say their tree is right. I have such unusual ancestry that it's easy for me to determine where I connect with most of my matches. One of my Grandmothers was Nicaraguan, and one of my Grandfathers was from Burgenland, Austria, a Great Grandmother was from County Galway Ireland, and a Great-Great Grandfather was from Quebec, Canada. One of my Grandfather's, on my maternal side, had purely early American lines. The only early American line on my father's side belonged to his Great-Grandmother. If a person's ancestors all come from the same general area it's much more difficult to determine how you connect with matches. 

Hopefully, next week the new FTDNA Population Finder will have been unveiled. Possibly by this time next week we should have our next DNA Y result. I will be completely discouraged if this person doesn't match anyone. I may then give up Genealogy and take up bird watching?