While my Y-DNA test results have not yet proven particularly useful in identifying James Sr.’s ancestry, they have shown some interesting connections that may still end up being informative.
First a little DNA background is in order. There is no way I can do justice to the entire topic of DNA and DNA testing, but I will try to give just enough to help the reader understand my interpretation of my results. There are many sources of more detailed information on the internet and in books – one good place is https://learn.familytreedna.com/dna-basics/ydna/ .
The Y chromosome is one of the 2 sex chromosomes, the other being the X. Each person inherits their X chromosome mother (one of hers), and either their father’s Y (for males) or X (for females – the other X). A man thus has both X and Y chromosomes, and a woman two X’s (but no Y). So, the Y chromosome represents the unbroken male lineage of every man, back to the first “Adam” from which we are all descended. However, over time the Y-chromosome mutates slowly, and at a different rate for each section of the chromosome. As a result we all end up with completely different DNA sequences on our Y, from which we can derive information about our ancestry and relatives.
There are two types of Y mutations that are typically tested for – Single Tandem Repeats (STR’s) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP’s, referred to as “snips”). STR’s are basically markers where the genetic code repeats a certain number of times in a fairly well-known fashion — the mutation is in the number of times the code repeats (e.g. from 22 to 23). FTDNA will test anywhere from 12-700 of these known markers, and report a Genetic Distance (GD) to other testers. The GD represents the number of differences in STR counts across all tested STR’s. So, a GD of 3 could be a difference of 3 repeats in one marker, or a difference of 2 in one marker and 1 in another. To find a match within even about 8-10 generations requires at least 67 markers tested (Y-67). For example, a known 3rd cousin of mine (with a common great-great-grandfather, James C. Wilson of Kansas) has a GD of 0 at 67 markers, whereas cousins with whom I believe to have a common ancestor of James Sr. or one of his sons have a GD of 3 on a Y-67 test, and a GD of 4 on a Y-111 test. At the other end of the scale I have over 3500 matches with a GD of 0 for Y-12, most of whom do not share the Wilson surname — we are probably related back many hundreds or thousands of years before surnames were in use (or perhaps because of a few Wilson roosters in other surname hen houses along the way)! I’ll discuss some of the interesting matches later, but for genealogical purposes most of these low STR matches are useless.
The other test done by FTDNA (and others) is the SNP test, called most recently the Big-Y. This test examines thousands of points along the Y chromosome, and reports where the tested chromosome deviates from a “reference” in being positive for a particular mutation of the 4 building blocks of DNA – A, G, T, C. The combination of all these mutations across the thousands of tested spots yields a specific “haplogroup” that each male belongs to. Depending on how many other men have been tested, a haplogroup could be unique to an individual, or shared with thousands or millions of other men. These mutations could conceivably (LOL) happen every generation, giving a man a different haplogroup than his father, but on average they occur about every 80-150 years (depending on the SNP), so man is typically in the same possible haplogroup with men of a shared ancestor about 5-10 generations ago. However, any particular “terminal” haplogroup may not have been discovered depending on how many of his “close” relatives have been tested. It takes 2 men testing positive for a particular mutation for it to get a “name” and be placed in the tree. If no other men on a branch have tested positive for these mutations, they are called “private variants” and just given a number. In my case, I have 21 private variants which means that no other man on my branch of the tree within about 21*80-21*150 years (or about 1700-3200 years) has been tested. So, if nothing else I know that no other descendant of James Sr. has been tested! Actually, there is 1 other I know of, but he was tested by a different company and our results haven’t been combined. If and when they are, I expect each of us to have only 2-3 variants since our likely common ancestor is James Sr. who was born about 250 years before us.
I am going to work up some charts to explain this better, and to give some rationale for further testing by descendants of James Sr. in a subsequent post. But for now, let me share some interesting findings.
As I mentioned, I have a known 3rd cousin who has tested at Y-67 with a GD of 0 (as a reminder, these are tests of STR’s and the above discussion of SNP mutation rates does not apply here – STR mutation rates vary greatly and are much more complex to calculate). On Y-67 tests, there are also a couple of descendants of John “Culpeper” Wilson at a GD of 3. As discussed in other posts, this John Wilson is likely a grandson of James Sr. so our common ancestor would be about 8 generations ago. One of these gentlemen has also tested at Y-111 with a GD of 4 to me. Both of these results are consistent with a probability of greater than 60% (using FTDNA’s calculator) that our common ancestor is James Sr., although it could be earlier than that (which I find unlikely based on other research, but it is something to keep in mind).
One other tester with a GD of 5 at Y-67 is also believed to a direct descendant of James Sr. In this case, the probability of that drops to just over 50% but is still quite likely. However, once again maybe there is another common ancestor in Henry County at that time we just haven’t identified yet.
A much stranger result is the presence of two men, once again at GD of 3-4 on Y-67, with last names of Brabazon and O.’Brollaghain, who both live in Ireland! Some correspondence with another, unrelated, Brabazon in Ireland has yielded the theory that a Wilson male in the Ulster region in the 1600’s or 1700’s took the name Brabazon (of which O.’Brollaghain is a derivative – go figure!), possibly due to marrying into a wealthy family of that name which was not uncommon at the time. Of course, there is also the possibility of a direct adoption or a child born of an infidelity.
The fact that the Brabazons are associated with the Ulster region, and still are intermingled there with Wilsons today, suggests our James or his ancestors may have come from Ulster. There definitely was a branch of Scottish Wilsons that migrated to Ulster. The challenge is in figuring out how far back our common ancestor is — it clearly is at least 1 generation before James Sr., and based on FTDNA’s calculator could easily be 4 more generations with high probability. The branch could even have happened in Scotland before the migration to Ireland, which is looking at least as likely with some more recent autosomal DNA matches I have found. Notwithstanding the new mystery provided by this match, it adds an intriguing bit of history to our line.
A footnote: speaking of roosters being in hen houses they oughtn’t be, a couple of years I talked with a gentleman in Tennessee who was a GD of 0 to me at Y-37. Both his father and grandfather were born in Pulaski County, Kentucky, which was the area many of our Wilsons migrated to from Henry County, Virginia, and where there are still many, many Wilson descendants. This man’s surname is completely different, which is somewhat unusual from such a close connection. Both his father and grandfather had multiple marriages and children late in life, such that the grandfather’s birthdate was around 1830. Since the g-grandfather of this man had migrated to Pulaski County around 1800 (from a completely different area than our Wilsons), either the father or the grandfather of my match must have been a Wilson! We can’t really tell which one (maybe someday testing more descendants of each will narrow it down), but both families (Wilson and the other surname) also intermarried several times as did many other families in the area, so it isn’t surprising there was lots of familiarity and interactions between the two (obviously some was very close!). It just goes to show what interesting finds may come from DNA testing – people need to be prepared for discovering disturbing skeletons in the family tree.
Hello! Came across this thread while researching my brick wall ancestor in my Payne tree, my brick wall ancestor is John Payne Sr 1765-1836 and his son William Billy Uriah Payne marries Diana “Dicey” Wilson Payne. Drusilla Payne and Uriah Lewis Payne wrote some Recollections that share a small detail about John Culpeper Wilson, Sarah Martin, and Diana and a couple of her other siblings that settled in Lawrence County, Ohio. I recently uploaded my autosomal DNA into the Wilson DNA project and about 15-20 matches came up, surprising because that’s more than I match with in my own surname projects. I know the families intermarried for years in Lawrence County. This inspires me to start a wordpress blog regarding my journey in finding my Payne brick wall ancestor 🙂
Hi good to hear from you – I’ve been in contact with several of John Culpeper Wilson’s descendants in Lawrence County and beyond. In fact, we’re waiting on the Big-Y results for one of them so we can form our own haplogroup soon. Your autosomal match is probably to some of them. Best of luck with your search!