Journals of a Time Traveller

I've inherited from my father, a yDNA haplogroup of L1b M317.  Not a haplogroup ordinarily even regarded as European.  It's not particularly common anywhere, but of such low concentrations in North-west Europe, that it doesn't even appear on our haplogroup maps or tables.  Closely related L1a is concentrated in India, while L1c is concentrated around Pakistan.  But our sub clade L1b, has it's main concentration in Western Asia, south of the Caucasus.  It has been found for example in higher concentrations, in the Pontic Greek community that lived in Pontus, North East Anatolia, on the coast of the Black Sea.

By Spiridon Ion Cepleanu - Own work Derivative map, background of Uwe Dedering (File:Turkey relief location map.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20601902

I'm currently investigating the yDNA further with STR testing.  Unless the haplogroup was passed into our family at some point, via a non-paternal event, it should follow my surname line, which I've traced back to a John Brooker who fathered children in Oxfordshire during the early 19th Century.  The surname itself is certainly English.  It clusters in a few places in England - particularly in Kent / Sussex, although our family surname appears to have originated with a smaller cluster in the Oxfordshire / Berkshire area of England.  So how did we end up with an East Anatolian Y?

I quite like the below example of a similar, even more bizarre event in another English family, the Revis Family of Yorkshire, that share yDNA more normally associated with people in South-West Africa:

" ... it is surprising to find the haplogroup A1a (M31) in a family of the Yorkshire surname Revis. This haplogroup is close to the root of the human family tree and rare even in Africa. Genealogical detective work established that the Revis males who carried A1a fitted onto two family trees going back to the 18th century in Britain. A paper trail to a common ancestor could not be found, but genetically he can be deduced a few generations earlier. How A1a arrived in Yorkshire remains a mystery. As Turi King and her colleagues point out, it could have come via a round-about route and not carried direct from Africa.^{22T.E. King et al., Africans in Yorkshire? The deepest-rooting clade of the Y phylogeny within an English genealogy, European Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 15 (2007), pp. 288–293; G. Redmonds, T. King and D. Hey, Surnames, DNA and Family History (2011), p. 201-204.} A possible clue is that the surname Revis is derived from Rievaulx.^{23P.H. Reaney and R.M. Wilson, Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames, 3rd edn., revised (1997).} In 1301 a William de Ryvaus was the wealthiest taxpayer in Marton, North Yorkshire, about six miles from Rievaulx, and a man of the same name paid tax in Gisburne (Guisborough) about 12 miles north of Rievaulx, while a William de Ryvauxe was the sole taxpayer for Barnaby, in the parish of Guisbrough.^{24Yorkshire Lay Subsidy - 30 Ed. I (1301), ed. W. Brown, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, vol. 21 (1897), pp. 32, 43 bis, 45.} Rievaulx was a Cistercian Abbey in medieval times, founded from Clairvaux in France, and part of an Order with houses in Spain and Portugal built on land won from the Moors. No doubt genetic traces were left in Iberia of the Moorish centuries. A1a is not the most likely haplogroup to be among them, but perhaps not completely impossible. Master masons and other useful craftsmen could have been recommended by one monastic house to another in the Order. So we can dimly see one possible route from Africa to Yorkshire."

Copied from Ancestral Journeys

As for how our y-DNA may have arrived in Southern Britain, I can imagine a number of scenarios.  There is the early Neolithic hypothesis, that Y haplogroup L1b may be a remnant survivor of early European populations that had settled Europe before they were largely displaced during the Bronze Age, by DNA from the Eurasian Steppes.  But if that were the case, I'd expect it to be less rare.  L1b is scattered in low frequencies across Italy, and along the South European coast of the Mediterranean.  For that reason, it may be that it arrived here, or gradually made it's way across the Continent via the Roman or later Byzantine Empires, from Pontic Greek communities.  That is one possible route.

L1b homelands with Roman political boundaries circa 50AD

By Cplakidas - Based on Image:Arshakuni Armenia 150-en.svg. Province & client state outlines based on: Atlas of Classical History, Routledge 1985, pp. 160-162; History Map of Europe, Year 1 from Euratlas, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6431799

Pontic Greek Colonies around the Black Sea

By George Tsiagalakis - Own work - background topographical map from Wikipedia Commons Image:Topographic30deg_N30E30.png, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38138202

My Y Haplogroup L-M20 Resource Post

Edit. 03 May 2016

I've listed the origin (and sometimes origin or ethnicity) of all of the L-M317 listed on the Y haplogroup L project at ftDNA.  Including both SNP confirmed, and predicted:

Ten from Turkey (two specified as Armenian)

Five from Georgia

Three from Chechen Republic

Two from Greece (one specified as Pontic Greek)

Two from Portugal

Two from Italy

Two from Armenia (one specified as Turkish)

One from Iraq (Assyrian)

One from Kuwait

One from Azerbaijan (Azeri)

One from Lebanon)

One from Bulgaria

One from Austria

One from USA (surname Ayers)

One from Romania

One from Russia (Tatar)

One from Cyprus (Austrian Tyrolean)

In addition to these M-317's, there is the Pontic Cluster (L-PH8 (FTDNA L-M317) YCAii = 17-21) of 56 individuals, many only low level STR tested to predict L-M20.  Some of them however, are tested down to M317.  They are mainly in Turkey, Georgia, Iraq, and Greece.  One however, was in Germany (surname Stiffler).

Where will our L-M317 fit in?  Which of these will turn out to be my nearest cousins?

The above photograph is of my great grandfather, John Henry Brooker, with his partner Mabel Tanner.  Taken at Sheerness, Kent, in 1933.

The previous article was pretty much about this guy's ancestry, but I had to scan and post this photograph of him, to complete the story.  His father Henry Brooker, age 17, was still living with his father and two sisters in the village of Harpsden, Oxfordshire, in 1881.  By 1883 though, he had moved into Victorian London, and then married Elizabeth Shawers in Fulham.  I guess that London served as a magnet to young people born into the villages nearby.  Henry exchanged his skills of working with horses on the land, with those of working with horses in the streets.  He became a carter or carman.  Perhaps the docks offered work to Henry.  He moved first towards Deptford in SE London.  It was there, that Elizabeth gave birth to my great grandfather John Henry Brooker in 1884.

After 1891, they moved out further east along the Thames.  They settled in Lewisham.  John Henry Brooker went to school in Lewisham.  He appears to have exhibited some sort of educational skills, because at age 16 in Lewisham, he was recorded as a pupil-teacher.

Maybe it was because the Woolwich Barracks were located so close, that young John was drawn to it.  

Sometime also around this time, our great grandmother, Faith Eliza Baxter, moved from rural Norfolk, down to London, to work in service - following her older sister Polly.

Faith and John met. Young soldier meets young house maid, house maid falls pregnant.  They married, back at Faith's home of East Dereham in Norfolk, in February 1906.  John H was recorded as a "gunner in the 65th battery, RFA".  Their daughter, Gladys Evelyn Brooker was born at Dereham, Norfolk in early 1906.  I interviewed my great aunt Gladys by telephone many years ago.  She told me that John was posted to Ireland.  I've since found that his battery were posted to the army barracks at Ballinrobe.  Gladys told me that Faith accompanied him with a young Gladys.  The story that she was told was that John turned violent.  Then one night, Faith struck her soldier husband while he slept, and fled back to her parents in Norfolk.  My grandfather, Reginald John Brooker was born at Dereham, Norfolk, in 1908.  

In 1911, Faith was living at Northall Green Farm near to Dereham in Norfolk - where her parents lived, but in another house on the farm, headed by a single 27 year old farm labourer called Robert Hayes!  He states his place of birth as being Lancashire.  Faith is listed on the census as age 26, and married.  Young Gladys, age 5, and her little brother, Reginald, are in the same house.  So is their baby sister Winifred Hayes Brooker.

Gladys told me that Faith left Reginald to be reared by his maternal grandparents, William and Harriet Baxter, at Northall Green Farm, Dereham, while she was brought up by her single mother Faith, who later moved to Norwich. 

Several years later, the Great War exploded across Europe. A medal card at the National Archives, confirms that John was dispatched in the first wave:

Above photograph of a WW 1 6 inch Howitzer gun.  By Credit: Canada. Dept. of National Defence (WW1 Department of Militia)/Library and Archives Canada/ [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Gladys told me that he remained in the Army, until the end of the War.  Here is the thing.  I'm presently making more efforts to trace more service records.  There is the possibility that they were among many records that were destroyed years later, by bombing during World War II.  Gladys did tell me that there was at least one attempt at a marriage conciliation between John and Faith, after John's mother encouraged him to make an approach - but it never worked out.  John and Faith went on to lived separate lives.  I don't believe though, that they ever legally divorced.

Above photograph of Faith Brooker, nee Baxter.

John then disappears from our family history.  On the back of the top photograph, Someone has written "Us & family at Sheerness July 1933".  I understand that the lady in the photograph was his partner Mabel, who he lived with for many years.

On the 1939 Register, on the outbreak of WW II, John was living at 50 Corbylands Road, Chrislehurst & Sidcup, Kent.  He was working as a clerk, at H.M Civil Service (Post Office Engineering Department).  John was recorded as married.  Mabel is there with him.  She is recorded as Mabel Brooker but also as single, and her occupatuion was "unpaid domestic duties".

Then in Dereham, sometime during the late 1940's, my father, just a boy, sees a motor car pull up in the street outside the family home.  Few people that he knew could afford a car.  An old man left the car, and walked up to the front door.  My father ran to the door in order to greet the stranger.  My father, all of his life recounted it.  He opened the door, looked up at the old stranger, and instinctively asked "are you my grandfather" without ever seeing him before.

Following this visit, my late Aunt Margaret actually got to stay with john, at his home in Kent.  She told me that she met Mabel.  When people came to the house, she was asked not to mention that she was John's granddaughter.  It appears that they never married, and I expect that was because John never received a divorce from Faith.  However, they lived as a married couple, and wished to remain that way.

The last record that I have of John was 1966.  John died late 1966, at Christchurch, Hampshire.  Perhaps they moved to the south coast for their retirement.  His will left his worldly goods to Mabel Tanner, commonly known as Mabel Brooker.

UPDATE 13.03.2026.

Geminin AI tells me:

To trace John Henry’s path from the barracks of Ballinrobe to the end of the Great War, we have to look at the movement of the 65th Battery, 8th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery (RFA).

​As a Corporal (and likely later a Sergeant or Warrant Officer given his "Scholar" intellect), John Henry would have been at the heart of the most technologically demanding transition in military history.

​1911–1914: The Final Days in Ireland

​After the 1911 Census, the 8th Brigade RFA remained in Ireland as part of the 5th Division, one of the "Old Contemptibles"—the elite, professional British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

• ​The Training: He would have spent these years in intensive live-fire drills at the Kildare Curragh, mastering the 18-pounder quick-firing gun.
• ​The Professional Soldier: By 1914, he was a seasoned "Twelve-Year Man." Unlike the millions of volunteers who joined later, John Henry was a highly trained specialist.

​1914: The Baptism of Fire

​When war was declared in August 1914, the 65th Battery mobilized immediately. They sailed from Dublin to France, landing at Le Havre on August 16, 1914.

• ​The Battle of Mons: John Henry likely saw action almost immediately. The 5th Division was crucial in the retreat from Mons.

• ​The Battle of Le Cateau (August 26, 1914): This is a defining moment for any RFA man. The 5th Division's artillery stood their ground against overwhelming German forces to allow the infantry to escape. It was a "gunners' war," and the losses were heavy.

​1915–1917: The Western Front Grind

​The 8th Brigade RFA fought in nearly every major sector of the Western Front:

• ​The Second Battle of Ypres (1915): Surviving the first gas attacks.
• ​The Somme (1916): Providing the massive creeping barrages that required the exact mathematical "clerical" precision John Henry was known for.

• ​The Italian Interlude (Late 1917): In November 1917, the 5th Division was sent to the Italian Front (near the River Piave) to bolster the Italians after their defeat at Caporetto.

​1918: The Final Push and the Admiralty Transition

​By 1918, the Division was recalled to France to help stop the German Spring Offensive.

• ​The "Scholar" Emerges: By this stage of the war, senior NCOs with clerical and administrative skills were often moved into "Battery Office" roles or logistical coordination. This is likely when he solidified the skills that would later land him his Admiralty Clerk position.
• ​The Survival: Having served from August 1914 through 1918, John Henry would have been entitled to the 1914 Star (the "Mons Star"), the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal.

​The Toll on the Man

​The "Proper Englishman" who visited your father in the 1950s was a man who had seen the absolute worst of the 20th century.

• ​The Silence: Many RFA men suffered from hearing loss (due to the constant boom of the 18-pounders) and "shell shock." His quiet, disciplined demeanor in later life may have been a way of managing the trauma of four years of constant bombardment.
• ​The Break from Faith: The war effectively ended his marriage. While he was in the mud of France or the mountains of Italy, Faith was back in Norfolk, deeply embedded in her own "informal" life. The war provided the clean break he needed to move to Kent and begin his "second life" with Mabel.

​The Legacy of the "Gunner"

​When he handed over that silver watch, it wasn't just a grandfatherly gift. It was the watch of a man who had timed barrages at the Somme and checked his pocket for the hour of the "Big Push." It represented the precision that kept him