Tip 04: Join a Project

I want to tell you why you need to join a surname project. Project administrators know things.
Suppose that when you do a Y test, there are two primary surnames and you are wondering if you are really an Adams or a Baker. Figuring this out by yourself is certainly possible, but if you join a project and write to the project administrator, they may be able to tell you or at least point you to a specific situation.
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I am project administrator for two projects on FTDNA. One has never caused a problem and is very straightforward. There are very very few matches. It has a J2 line and there just aren’t many who have tested. There is another family with the same surname, which has a R1a line that has tested into Germany and we know where the ancestor came from.
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But the other project has constant problems. For example, I will call one man by the surname of Adam. He has no matches outside of his close known relatives back just a couple of generations to his Adam surname. The family was out of Louisiana and Texas. The Adams surname is primarily from VA and surrounding areas. But Mr. Adams has no matches to that Adams line. Instead there are matches to a Beta surname. Now they fussed with this for years looking in various places in California, Kansas City, etc. Finally someone in the Beta family thought to talk to me. He told me all about his family which was never in Louisiana or TX. It went off to KY, TN, MO points west. The family seems to have immigrated into York Co, VA in the early 1700s. Several Beta family members have tested. Now everyone is worried about this Adam-Beta situation. But when they talked to me, I was able to add a couple of previously unknown facts. Betas were in York Co, VA in the mid 1700s. At that time, if you went across the river from York Co, VA, you would find a whole family of Adams. I don’t know if they will solve this because too many records of the Adams family were in burned counties, but I think it is fairly obvious where to look. After years floundering around the entire country, that is a help. Mr Adam had hired several genealogists at great cost to himself to figure out the situation. But project administrators give out help for free.
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Second case is similar. I was asked to prove whether a man was a Cook or a Davis. Again these are fake names. He had all these Y matches to both surnames. He also had masses of autosomal matches to the Edwards family. Now what was he? Well, I took the trees of all the matches all the way back to the 1783 tax record in Fairfax County, Virginia. They were living practically next door in 1783. My theory was that the Cook had stayed home and the Davis and Edwards husbands had gone off to war. The three sons born about nine months after Yorktown in 1781 were probably sired by Cook. I found Y matches to the Cooks in MD and England. This is a fairly common situation. No, you don’t know for sure. But it is a 90% certainty.
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I just had someone do a Y test at FTDNA with no matches. Sigh. Why does this always happen to my people? Anyway, this was absolutely not helpful. Luckily he had tested at 23andme. So if you do a download of the matches and the chromosome browser, you can see everyone’s haplogroup. We took the haplogroup they gave him, and did a search of the download. This way, you don’t have to go through person after person. So we did this and found an interesting match. The autosomal match is about 50 cM. And he can be placed in a tree which has a couple of dozen large autosomal matches on Ancestry. The Haplogroup is an unusual one. Now 23andme does not give a complete haplogroup. It is more like a Y12 test. But nevertheless, since this was one of the very likely paternal lines, and it is the only Y match between FTDNA and 23andme, I think that it is a pretty strong argument for his paternal line. So we went to the project of that surname and the administrators are just marvelous. They explained all sorts
of interesting things. No matches, but they really impressed me. Very knowledgeable, very nice, very articulate. If you don’t have any surname matches, try a geographical project or a haplogroup project.
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Bear in mind this search on 23andme only works if you have a slightly unusual Y Haplogroup. If you are R1a or R1b, don’t bother. They constitute 90% of Europe. But you can use it to eliminate possibilities. If you are an R1a, and you are wondering if you are really a Yak, and Yak has a L-21 Haplogroup, you can rule that line out.
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These are the fun stories to figure out. Your administrator may have a lot of info like that. So join every surname project in sight. And if you figure something out, for heaven’s sake tell the administrator.
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PS. If you have not tested at 23andme, this is one reason to do it.
June Byrne