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I have uncovered various hints about James’ lineage. Based on the last name “Wilson” we can surmise that he was likely of Scottish or English heritage. According to Houseofnames.com, Wilson first emerged as a Scottish clan name in the northern Scotland territory of Berwick, where the family first settled. They are supposedly descended from Will the Crowner Gunn who in turn traced his lineage to the Earls of Orkney. The latter were Vikings who arrived there about 895 AD. Personally, I take such detailed origin information with a grain of salt, although my father’s current DNA estimate of about 34% Scottish indicates there could be a grain of truth here (no pun intended).

Wilsons also moved south into England when the Scottish border clans were disbanded in 1603. And of course, with the common name of Wilson being likely derived from “Son of Will”, it would have popped up many time across unrelated lines in numerous countries before the general formalization of surnames.

Wilsons did comprise a significant percentage of the Scots that moved to Ulster, Ireland as part of the Plantation effort by King James I to displace the Catholic Irish with Protestants. Once again according to houseofnames.com, “Wilson is by far the most numerous English [language] surname in Ireland”. Ulster Scots, whom we now tend to refer to as Scotch-Irish in the United States, migrated in droves to America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, seeking to escape famine and religious discrimination. It is that group to which believe our James Sr. belonged.

We have several good DNA connections to Scotland and Ireland. In one case, we have a shared segment on Chromosome (Chr) 3 with a researcher who has a tree with a direct male Wilson line back to Scotland. The segment is on an area that is also common with others who are either related to our Virginia Wilsons, or who have ancestors that lived in the same area of Virginia at the same time. As such, it is a fairly weak link but it does provide a significant clue. However, we have two much stronger FTDNA Y-67 matches: a Brabazon and a O.’Brollaghain still in Ireland, both descended from Brabazon men in Ulster. Although it is harder to determine time to MRCA (Most Common Recent Ancestor) with the STR tests than Big-Y SNPs, they are both with the same range (1-5 differences) as known descendants of Moses Wilson, son of James. I have corresponded with an unrelated Brabazon researcher who confirms there are Wilson-Brabazon names in the old Ulster records, and based on history in the region is fairly sure that a Wilson male took the Brabazon name at about the same time as our Wilson line emigrated to America (early to mid-1700’s). One reason for the name change might be an inheritance from the Brabazon side, or a marriage into a Brabazon family. Given the conditions at the time, with suppression of non-Anglican Protestants by the British government, trade restrictions on traditional Scottish exports, and famine, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine a man giving up the family name in favor of wealth and social acceptance.

Given that, I’m now actively pursuing possible paths from Ireland for our Wilsons into the Henry County area. The most logical route would be the well-traveled Great Wagon Road that many Scotch-Irish took into Virginia and the Carolinas – indeed, the road passed right through what became Henry County after breaking back east through the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Augusta County. There were a number of Wilsons in Augusta in the mid-1700’s and many (unsubstantiated and undocumented) family trees link our James to that County. But I need to see some direct evidence placing him there. We also have a possible link to Culpeper County (courtesy of John C. Wilson’s middle name), which is on the east side of the Appalachians and not directly on the Great Wagon Road. But that doesn’t mean we have to rule out that area — it’s entirely possible James and his family took a more easterly route into Henry County. However, I have been looking into that connection (such as in Fairfax and Prince William Counties) for quite some time and can’t find a good linkage. So, more work in Augusta County it is…

By the way, here is an interesting “mystery” to ponder. One common Scottish naming convention has the first son named after his paternal grandfather, and the 2nd after the maternal grandfather. Certainly that could fit with James presumed-eldest son Thomas, which is a common Scottish name. But his next son was Moses! Correct me if you think otherwise, but this doesn’t seem like a good Scottish name to me. But perhaps followed the “standard” naming scheme and Moses was the father of Martha, James’ wife. Not only did Moses have a son and grandsons with his name, but a Moses’ also appeared on Thomas’ side, which supports the idea of it being a family name. For a short time, I entertained the fanciful possibility that Moses was born ship-board enroute to America, and thus was named as being “of the water”. However the numerous occurrences of Moses with the entire family belies such a rather far-fetched notion. Anyway, looking for a possible marriage of James into a non-Irish, Moses-led family might be a fruitful pursuit!

Although there is nothing particularly revealing in the latest Block Tree in my FTDNA Big-Y results, there are some interesting aspects that are worth looking at in a post here. The hope is that as more men take the Big-Y, we will start to see some closer matches that narrow down our more distant Wilson ancestry.

But first, some recap and background information. As I have mentioned in other posts, the Big-Y 700 test from FTDNA (familytreedna.com) provides the most accurate grouping of testers into haplogroups based on their Y-DNA (direct male) line. As the name indicates, FTDNA examines about 700 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) on the Y-DNA chromosome. SNPs mutate at a fairly low rate from a reference chromosome (currently estimated between 83 and 144 years, or 4-5 generations) and provide a fingerprint for each tester that can be used to place him in a group of related testers. An individual may have some number of “private variants” that are only present in his mutation map, depending on how closely related he is to other testers. For example, if my father or son were to be tested, it we would likely have 0 (zero) private variants between us according to the average mutation rate. However, it is possible that one of us might have a mutation in our chromosome that makes us different from our father – after all, the mutations do have to occur sometime, but the odds of a mutation in any given generation are roughly 20-25%. I guess it is theoretically possible to have more than one mutation in a generation but I have not seen any statistics on this.

One other thing to note is that a mutation may or not be “named”. If a mutation is shared by two or more testers, it is given a name such as FT-77430 and “placed” on a master haplogroup tree (which is called the Big-Y Block Tree at FTDNA). Conversely, a variant that only occurs in 1 man is called a private variant as discussed above and is not named, only referenced by a number such as 2788335. As a result it is possible to use the number of private variants to estimate the number of years (or generations) back to a common ancestor for a group of “matched” testers. Specifically for our small haplogroup, there are four of us with James Wilson Sr. as a common ancestor; according to FTDNA, there is an average of 3 private variants among us. Using the current best estimates of 83-144 years between mutations, our common ancestor would have been born between 3*83=249 and 3*144=432 years ago. James Sr. does seem to fit in this range as he was probably born in the early 1700’s, which would have been about 250 years before the 4 of us.

Below is a snapshot of our portion of the block tree zoomed into our little family group (I have redacted the names of my matches, but they know who they are :-))

As you can see, we each have about 3 private variants among us – since they are private and thus unnamed, we know that each of our ~3 is different than the others. I believe that each of the other 3 is descended from James’ son Moses, whereas I am from Moses’ brother Thomas. Since all of the 3 likely have a common ancestor one generation closer than they do with me, it is possible they could have an extra mutation in common if such had occurred in Moses. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case since if they did they would be grouped in the own named haplogroup separate from me. This would mean that James, Moses and Thomas all had identical Y-DNA SNP’s which only mutated later in our separate lines.

Another thing to note from this segment of the block tree: there are 10 variants all 4 of us share that are different than our next closest relative who has tested (more on him below). No other tester yet has these variants, but they are named since 4 of us do. Without an additional match with some (but not all) of these mutations, FTDNA has no idea what order each of these 10 mutations were formed, and so they are grouped in a block which is given the name of one them (picked randomly? I’m not sure) – in our case, R-FT77430. What we would like to see is a more recent common relative get BigY test results which would “break up” this block, which could be particularly useful if this man had knowledge about his ancestral male Y-DNA line. We can see this type of thing in action if we move farther up the block tree:

Here you can see another tester that shared an additional 4 variants but has 12 private variants of his own. This closely matches the 13 variants we 4 James Wilson descendants share. Something particularly interesting about this tester (we’ll call him Bill) is that he has traced his male line back to a John Fairchild that was transported from London to Australia (as a convict) in 1830. Now, I have a firm belief that our James Sr. was Scottish or Scotch-Irish (which I will discuss in more detail in another post soon); at first glance a match to man in London might tend to disprove that. However, note that our common ancestor with Bill was 12-13 mutations ago, who would have been born well over 1000 years ago. Not only was this before surnames were in common use (thus the lack of a known Wilson in Bill’s line), but it could easily have been a man whose descendants spread far and wide through what is now the UK and Ireland – perhaps even a roving Viking invader! But unfortunately, Bill’s results don’t really tell us too much other than they don’t disprove my theory of Scottish/Irish ancestry.

Let’s look at 1 final segment of the Big-Y block tree:

A few more variants away from Bill is a tester who believes he had an ancestor from England, which seems perfectly consistent with our other clues. That particular common ancestor to us and Bill would have been born around and at least 500 years before our supposed Viking invader – probably on the continent or in Scandinavia. I have no other information on this tester. However, the tester next to him is from Finland and believes his ancestors (as far as he can track) are also Finnish. Our common Gx-grandfather with this fine Finn was probably another 1000 years previous, or more than 2500 years ago! Once again, that lineage, which might well have been one of the Bronze Age tribes in central or north Europe, is not inconsistent with our idea of being of Scotch/Irish/Viking blood.

Speaking of Vikings, there is another website I use called mytrueancestry.com that provide analysis and matching of submitted DNA with known samples from ancient gravesites. Although they don’t seem to recognize haplogroups later than FGC-17519, which is a mutation earlier than the FGC-17547 at the top of our chart above, probably approaching 3000 years ago, they do show “matches” that seem to be from more recent eras. One in particular in my list is from a Viking Era sample. It is unclear from their “documentation” (I use the term loosely, as very little is explained about the so-called matches) how closely it matches me, but we likely have a common ancestor at least as late as the Bronze Age — a very long time ago nonetheless. All this tells us is that some of our ancient pre-Wilson ancestors produced lines that evolved into Vikings (as well as Longobords and Scottish clansmen, among others) which once again is consistent with my loosely supported theories.

Since I wrote my last post (“James Has a Haplogroup!) there have been some updates to our family group. First of all, we have not one, but two new relatives in our haplogroup likely descended from James Sr. — one (“M”) has established his line back to Moses Sr., son of James Sr.; the other (“JM”) is a descendant of Morgan J. Wilson of Henry County. I believe Morgan was a grandson of Moses Sr., but there isn’t a solid paper trail to establish that linkage. However, JM has a Y-DNA profile that puts him in the same haplogroup as me, “M” and other match who is also believed to be a descendant of Moses Sr. (through John Culpeper Wilson). Unfortunately, once again, as with John Culpeper, we only have circumstantial evidence of a direct connection to Moses, but the DNA evidence is mounting.

The other recent development is the appearance of a new, much more distant relative that breaks up the block of equivalent SNPs above James’. Since this new person isn’t close enough for ftDNA to consider us a match, I don’t know anything about him or his family tree. His appearance did break up the block of 21 equivalent SNP’s and reduced the number of variant SNP’s in our line to 14. This means that our common ancestor with this gentleman was born about 14*83=1162 years ago, which probably preceded the use widespread use of surnames. According to his entry, he believes his most distant known ancestor was born the UK. That doesn’t really help our search all that much, since we don’t know how far back this ancestor was nor how accurate his estimate is.

As a result of this new tester, our remaining haplogroup has a new name: R-FT76449. Since ftDNA doesn’t know which SNP in our block of 14 occurred first, it just assigns the name of one of them to our current haplogroup. The old name, R-FT75629 (which used to be the name of our block), was assigned to the new tester since it is the name of the block still common to both of us. I’ve included a screen shot of the block tree below to help make this clearer. What is significant to our group is that as new relatives get tested who have a common ancestor that is even closer, our block of 14 SNP’s will be broken up further yet and we will be assigned another new haplogroup name selected randomly (as far as I can tell) from the remaining variants of our group.

There’s big news on the DNA testing front – one of John Culpeper Wilson’s descendants finally received his Big-Y DNA testing results from FamilytreeDNA.com. He and I have only 3 private variants (see my posts on Y-DNA testing for background on what this means) which is very close to what I would expect for another relative of James Sr. We are grouped together in a new terminal SNP called R-FT75629, which you can see in the image below in the middle. I feel confident that the match (whom I’ll just call “T” for privacy reasons) and I have James Sr. as a common ancestor based on the typical estimates of ~80-144 years for each mutation. This is relatively new science -as more Big-Y results are correlated with paper family trees, the estimates seem to be gravitating to the lower part of the range (and perhaps even lower than that) on average. So, if our common relative was born about 250 years before us, 3 private variants (which are mutations in the Y chromosome that have occurred in his lines since then) is just about right for James to be the most recent common ancestor.

However, since we can’t use the number of variants to precisely indicate particular generations, there is a slight possibility that John C. was not directly descended from James Sr. but rather from another of James’ family members (e.g. brother, uncle, father). But I have yet to find evidence of any other related Wilson branches in the Henry County area that weren’t spawned by James Sr. and Martha. I believe there is a very high probability that John C. was the grandson of James Sr., likely through James’ son Moses. James’ only other known son was Thomas Sr., whose own son John was still living on his land in Henry County at the time of Thomas’ death in 1816, which was well past the time that John C. had migrated westward, thus leaving Moses as the only known possible father.

So, to all you male Wilson relatives out there, welcome to the James Wilson Sr. Haplogroup R-FT75629!

I would like to encourage all of our male Wilson cousins to seriously consider taking or upgrading to the Family Tree DNA Big-Y test. As it is, I am the only one in our Y-line (direct male) going back over 2000 years to have taken this particular test — it’s lonely out there! Note that, as I have explained in another post, this is a different test than the Y-xx tests that a number of male Wilsons have taken. The “standard” Y tests measure STR’s (Short Tandem Repeats) which vary much more quickly and thus give more refined matches in genealogical times, whereas the Big-Y looks at SNP’s (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) which only mutate, on average, about once every 80-150 years. Thus, across all of James Sr’s descendants over almost 300 years, there might be only 2-3 mutations in any given line (and of course, they would all be different). However, as this level of DNA testing is still in its infancy, the frequency of SNP mutations is being debated and developed – previous estimates of 144 years/per mutation (on average) are now being reconsidered with values such as 84 and even 44 being proposed. This actually presents an opportunity for our own science experiment, which I’ll describe more later.

As I write this (June 14, 2020) Family Tree DNA is having their annual Father’s Day sale on Y-DNA tests. It is admittedly difficult to give a compelling rationale as to why anyone should spend their hard-earned bucks on more DNA testing of this type. After all, it is likely that many of us have already had at least 1 autosomal test done (such as at Ancestry or 23andme) , and several of us have also done one or more Y-xxx tests. And, in some of our cases, we know exactly how we are related — for instance, I know of a male 3rd cousin that is also related to James C. Wilson, my g-g-grandfather. If he were to upgrade to the Big-Y test, the results wouldn’t give us any more information about how were related since we already have the paper trail. For the cousins whose distant parentage is less established (such as if they were descended from one of the many Moses, or from John Culpepper or Daniel Wilson, neither of whom we know exactly how was related to James Sr.), the difference of only 2-3 SNPs that would be likely in this time-frame wouldn’t provide enough resolution to identify a specific relationship or generation.

However, we could use these results to start building our own genetic Wilson family tree and our distinct Wilson branch. Let’s assume that James Sr’s haplogroup was R-J100 (my made-up name) which would have been defined by his particular set of mutations (which he may or may not have shared with his father or any brothers or cousins). Any of his sons might have the exact same haplogroup (i.e. SNPs), or one of more of them might have their own mutations. Eventually along each of their lines, a few mutations will occur and will all be different depending on which son/grandson/greatgrandson/etc. was the patriarch of his line. However, every single one of us would have J100, plus maybe a few of our own. So, R-J100 would define the root of our own branch. That would be establish (by FTDNA) by identifying the last common SNP that all of us share, assuming enough of our branches took the Big-Y test. Then, we could group the SNP’s that belong, for instance, to Thomas Sr’s line, as well as those of John Culpepper and Daniel, and others. Even with only 2 or 3 mutations we might be able to start seeing signatures for each line, which would then help us place “newcomers” to the testing results closer to the correct lineage. See below diagram which I hope illustrates this.

Even more importantly, I think, would be our ability to better identify James Sr.’s own ancestors. For instance, if a male that was descended from one of James Scottish (I presume) ancestors were tested, we would see a branch that occurred before James’ time, and be able to to roughly identify a time-frame for the common ancestor (assuming enough of us had taken the Big-Y to establish the branching point for James Sr.). As the testing result database grows, we would perhaps start to see more and more of these “cousins”, and if and of them had good paper genealogy trails we might get a much firmer grasp on James’ ancestry and familial origins.

Finally, the really fun thing would be to establish our own dataset for the research of mutation frequency. Given that most of us already know how many generations we are removed from James Sr., give or take a generation, developing a sufficiently large set of variant values would provide an average mutation frequency we could use to add to the research. For example, once the haplogroup for James Sr. was established, if most of us had, say, around 6 variants from that, the mutation frequency would be ~42 years (250 years/6). That would be a major finding that differs greatly from the 80-150 years currently being assumed. Or, we might find we really do have 2-3 on average, which would substantiate the existing estimates. Either way, we could provide our own Wilson group contribution to genetic science. I think that would be pretty cool!

Where are the Hardy Boys when you need them?

I’ve been doing a lot of work recently to associate my DNA matches with specific segments of the various chromosomes. I think this will prove to be a valuable project in identifying some pre-James Sr. ancestors (and maybe some unknown later relatives). In addition to the various sites which provide DNA testing and matches to DNA relatives (Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, 23andme, and GEDMatch are the ones I use), there is an excellent free program called GenomeMatePro which imports and organizes all DNA matches and associated chromosome data. I use it as a master database to view all the matches together in one place, as well as to tie together the chromosome segment data from the different sites. Contact me directly if you are interested in using it yourself – it’s a very large and complex program but once you get the hang of it and what it can do it becomes the Swiss Army Knife of DNA genealogical research (and I’m talking about one of the big honkin’ knifes, not the little pocket babies).

I’ve also been using an online tool called DNA Painter to place various segments on colorized sections of DNA for each chromosome. It is a great visualization tool that help to see where descendants of various ancestors match up. Below is a picture of what I am currently working with on the mysterious (as you will see) Chromosome 3 (I have removed last names to preserve privacy, although almost all of these names are public on the DNA matching sites).

What makes this particular chromosome interesting (and cryptic!) is that the area in the right half contains known descendants of James Sr. or one of his progeny, or people with a different Wilson name, or folks that are descendants of known associated families and regions. For instance, Debbie R. (in pink) is descended from Thomas G. Wilson’s and Sally Duck’s daughter Lovisa Jane and Nathan M. from James Wilson and Delilah’s daughter Elizabeth. There are many other known Wilson relatives I haven’t yet included as they don’t really provide any new information.

OK so now, as promised, the mysteries:

1. Carolyn D has quite a bit of DNA overlap with me – 3 segments that total about 50cM (centiMorgans) on this Chromosome alone, which is enough to make her a 3rd or 4th cousin on average. To compare, a 3rd cousin would have a common g-g-grandfather of James C. Wilson of Kansas, and a 4th would be in common with his father Thomas G. Wilson. This timeline would put our common relative somewhere between the very late 1700’s and the mid 1800’s, based on probabilities. However, her family tree has *no* Wilsons in it! But it does have connections in the Henry County area (including neighboring North Carolina) up through her recent ancestors. One name that stands out is “Gilley” – two of Thomas Wilson’s (son of James Sr.) daughters (Polly first, then Libby after Polly died in 1813) were married to George Gilley. George was born in 1765 in Buckingham County, Virginia, where I have no record of any our Wilson relatives, so it is unlikely he was actually a Wilson. If there were any Wilson (or Gilley’s descended from Wilson) sources of Non-Parental-Events (known as NPE’s, also more accurately called Not Parent Expected), it would have most probably been during the 1800’s in the Henry County area. Many Wilsons (and the families of female Wilsons) stayed behind as others in the clan headed off to Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, etc. Of course, the other possibility is that one of my female ancestors, such as Delilah the wife of James II (grandson of James Sr.) was of the Gilley or some other family in Henry County. But for reasons mentioned later I believe this segment is truly Wilson DNA from long before.
2. Another fairly close match on Chr3 is Beverly D. She has also ancestors with familiar names in Henry County, VA, such as Stephens and Bailey (both families intermarried with Wilsons at various times). Some of the Stephens also moved to the Pulaski County, KY area along with or at about the same time as the Wilsons. For the same reasons as with Carolyn D. above, I believe there was an NPE in Kentucky in the 1800’s involving Wilson DNA. In both cases, we would really need Y-DNA evidence from male descendants of these families to know much more.
3. Now it gets more interesting (or at least not as sordid :-)) — two or three segments — Rhonda H., RK F., and Karen J. (which might only be 2 people) actually do have solid Wilson lines in their tree, all traced back to a James Edward Wilson, b. 1830 in Tennessee, who was the son of Edward b. 1795 in Virginia. There is no indication who his father was or in what part of Virginia he was born. The tax lists for Henry County and Franklin County do have an Edward Wilson in 1782-1785, 1795, and as late as 1803 (not all areas have complete lists for all years). It obviously isn’t a given that Edward born in 1795 would be the son of another Edward, but it’s a good place to start looking. Unfortunately, the Edward in Henry/Franklin isn’t geographically adjacent to our known Wilsons, although he is close to other Wilsons. If this Edward is truly the progenitor of this group on Chr3, then it is likely the other Wilsons in that area are related to us also. But they ended up in different parts of the old Henry County — did they migrate together and split up, or were they just distant relatives already? Once again, more Y-DNA testing might reveal answers in the years ahead.
4. Finally, we have the most interesting clue in our cryptic chromosome, which is thanks to Ralette B (who also gets today’s prize for the most interesting relative name). Ralette’s family tree has a clear and documented Wilson line going back to Lanarkshire, Scotland, with a John Wilson immigrating to Maryland in the late 1700’s. The level of DNA matching suggests a 4th cousin or so, but our common ancestor would have to be at least 1 generation prior to James Sr. given the relatively late date of Ralette’s ancestor’s arrival in the US. I will be writing up a separate blog post on this line and where there or may or may not be a match. But it throws a monkey wrench into my theory that James or his family emigrated from Ulster (see my previous post on Y-DNA results).

So to sum up our case: the DNA segment on Chromosome 3 that is definitively correlated to known descendants of James II (grandson of James Sr.) and Thomas G. Wilson (James II’s son) also match with descendants of related families in Henry County, Virginia and Pulaski County, Kentucky, suggesting a NPE (“Not Parent Expected”) from these areas, which will probably not be resolved until there is more DNA testing of those groups. We also have a new link to a relatively (!) unknown Edward Wilson who could be a product of the Henry County clan, or perhaps a related group in Virginia. And finally, for the first time we have a solid, documented connection to a Wilson directly from Scotland!

But unfortunately, we aren’t yet able to close the Case of the Cryptic Chromosome. Maybe Dad will take us to the Bayport Dairy Queen for milkshakes anyway…*

* Lame Hardy Boys reference

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.

I did a bit more searching recently through the Henry County tax lists in the early 1790’s to see if I could get a bit more clarification on the reaons for the Culpeper designation for John Wilson in 1791 and 1793. One theory I wanted to investigate was whether there was a geographic area with that name at that time. Virtually all the extraneous designations I have found in the tax lists, other than Jr. and Sr. and “son of”, were indications on which river or creek the taxpayer lived on, in order to distinguish them from others with the same name. For instance, one of our Moses Wilsons was often designated with “Home Creek”, and the aforementioned John was likely the one designated “Leatherwood”. By looking at all the taxpayers listed in the years around those with John’s Culpeper descriptor, I was hoping to either find others with the same designation, which would likely indicate it was a body of water or area that once had that name.

But in all of the years I looked at every taxpayer name (roughly 1790-1795) I could find no others that contained “Culpeper” or anything other than the known standard designations — except the Wilson clan! What is even more interesting is that none of the other designations added to our Wilson taxpaying relatives such as “Big” and “Little” could be found on any other listed name (I can envision the family gatherings where they referred to “Big Moses” or “Little John” around the fire :-)). The conclusion I draw from this is that those designations were “self-assigned” – i.e. the Wilsons gave themselves those extra nicknames, if you will, and communicated them to the local deputy who was compiling the list and assessing taxes. The implication of this is that John himself probably added the moniker “Culpeper” to his name which means it could very be his middle name, or some other family name he used to distinguish himself from the other John Wilsons (at least one) in the family and county.

Of course, this doesn’t really tell us anything new since I haven’t been able to find any link to Culpeper County or other Culpepers in Virginia, but it does help to perhaps make some sense of why John, and John alone, had such an extra designation.

One of the John Wilsons in the early Henry County area was known to have owned land on the Blackwater River, as per the deed dated 25 Aug 1779: “Thomas Miller to John Wilson of the county of Botetourt for 150 pounds 150 acres  from patent at Williamsburgh (sic) 15 June 1773 … both sides of main … south of Blackwater River”. Whether this John is related to the clan of James Sr. in some way is not known, but I do not believe this is John Culpeper Wilson whom we know to be related through DNA and later proximity, for several reasons.

First of all, John Culpeper would mostly likely have been too young to buy land in those days. Based on the 1830 census in which his age was reported to be between 60 and 69, he would have been born between 1761 and 1770. Assuming this is correct (and not all census records are), he would have been only 18 at most in 1779. Not only would it have been unlikely for an 18 year old to have that kind of money, it also would not have legal for him to purchase land as the legal age to buy or sell property in 18th century Virginia was 21.

The tax records of Henry and Franklin Counties also provide strong evidence. Blackwater River was in the portion of Henry County that was taken to form part of Franklin County in 1785. We can use the tax records of the period to try to figure out whether John C. lived on the Blackwater River or not. Franklin County had separate records beginning in 1786, and in that year the only two Wilsons (Willsons) in Franklin were John and Joshua, in the district recorded by a gentleman named Renfro. There were numerous surveys done for various Renfro/Rentfros (James, Joseph, Stephen, Isaac, etc.) with surveys on the Blackwater River as far back as 1746. Since the tax record takers typically seemed to work in the same geographic region as they lived (not surprisingly), it seems reasonable to assume that Renfro’s district covered Blackwater River, and that this John Wilson lived on Blackwater also.

It is fairly clear that this same John continued in the Franklin County records for many years based on continuing to have 3-5 horses (which was the primary property recorded in the tax records), as well as being the only John Wilson in the Franklin records in this period. Now, the first time there is a definitive mention of John Culpeper Wilson in the Henry County tax records was in 1791 and again in 1793. The 1791 Franklin records are a bit sparse, but the taxpayer I believe is the Blackwater John was in the 1793 records – the same year that John Culpeper was recorded in Henry County. In 1795 there was a Henry County record for John Wilson (Leatherwood), which is likely John Culpeper as his family history says he lived on Cobb Creek, which is a tributary to Leatherwood (thank you Beth for the information!). Other Wilsons in our clan also had property deeds on Leatherwood. And, since Blackwater John appears in the Franklin records from before 1792 to 1796 (the last year I checked), it seems fairly clear that John Culpeper was not the John Willson that lived on Blackwater.

One other item to note is that the original Blackwater deed to John said he was of Botetourt County, which was Henry County’s northern neighbor at that time (1779). While it is certainly possible that a young John Culpeper might have been living in Botetourt then (depending on which branch of the family he came from), I can find no records of any of the others in that county; whereas James, Thomas and Moses (the latter two probably James’ sons) were in southern Henry County at Smith River, Leatherwood Creek and Home Creek based on 1768 surveys. So in addition to John C.’s supposed age ruling out him being the John Wilson of the Blackwater deed, his presumed family’s location also argues against it. None of this is conclusive of course, but I feel the evidence is quite strong that John Culpeper and John Wilson of Blackwater were two different John Wilsons.