Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

I have traced my paternal lineage (Y-DNA Haplogroup L-M20 > M22 > M317 > SK1412 > SK1414 > FGC51041 > FGC51088 > FGC51036) back to the Zagros and South Caucasus mountain ranges of South-west Asia, approximately 25,000 years ago. From there, I have followed its journey to southern England, proposing two primary hypotheses for its arrival: the Roman occupation or the Late Medieval period.

The line is represented in my great-grandparents' generation by John Henry Brooker. Born in Deptford, he was a professional gunner in the Royal Field Artillery; Act 11 focused on his life and military campaigns. However, as the vast majority of my recorded ancestry over the last 200 to 500 years is rooted in Norfolk, a question remains: how did the L-FGC51036 clade enter an East Anglian family? This Act explores that mystery.

Above image is a colourised and restored image of an original, that I'll attach in a posthaven gallery at the bottom of this page. The boy on the far left of the image, third row bar (red circled), was my late paternal grandfather, Reginald John Brooker in 1920 at East Dereham, Norfolk.

My paternal-line great-grandparents were John Henry Brooker (born 1884 at Deptford London), and Faith Eliza Brooker nee Baxter, born 1885 at East Dereham Norfolk. Here is an AI reconstruction based on the few photos of them both, that have survived: 

But of course in real-life, Reginald's parents wouldn't have often been seen together like this! This is an AI reconstruction. Its not real. Because in life, I suspect that they were not very fond of each other. Perhaps I'm being a little cruel in putting them together in this artificial reconciliation. Allow me to explain the real story, as much as I have ascertained after years of research.  After all, it is also the story of how Y-DNA L-FGC51036 enters Norfolk and an East Anglian family. Original photos and likeness references at the bottom of this post are enclosed in a gallery.

During the early 1900s, Faith was working as a Norfolk maid in London. At Christmas in 1905, she returned home to East Dereham, Norfolk, to give birth to a daughter named Gladys. As an unmarried mother in Edwardian England, her prospects were bleak. Yet, a few months later, a young Deptford-born gunner named John Henry Brooker took leave from the Royal Field Artillery and arrived in East Dereham to marry the young mother.

The marriage, however, was fraught. When John was posted to the barracks at Ballinrobe, Mayo in Ireland, Faith reportedly followed him there, but the reunion was short-lived. Following a swift falling-out, Faith returned alone to East Dereham, where my grandfather, Reginald John Brooker, was born on 18th August 1908.

Above, an AI reconstruction of young Reginald Brooker at Northall Green, East Dereham Norfolk. He is happily playing as his own grandfather, William Bennett Baxter sits in the foreground. Based on actual photos of them both.

For years, the physical distance and the sudden estrangement cast a shadow of doubt over Reginald's paternity. But where oral history faltered, modern genetic matching has provided irrefutable clarity. DNA analysis of Reginald’s descendants reveals undeniable connections not just to John Henry’s immediate line, but deeper still into his maternal ancestry and the Edney family tree. Because these families lived on the entirely opposite side of England, the presence of these shared centimorgans can mean only one thing: John Henry Brooker was, without doubt, Reginald's biological father.

This genetic truth breathes new life into old family memories. It explains why John quietly paid a maintenance allowance for his estranged son across the miles, and it gives profound meaning to his final gesture. Many years later, John passed his silver pocket watch down to Reginald—the ultimate, timeless token of recognition from a father to his son.

With Reginald’s lineage firmly vindicated, his birth marks the moment a remarkably distinct genetic line intertwined with Norfolk’s long-established ancestry. His patrilineage, Y-DNA L-FGC51036, possessed ancient roots in the Zagros and South Caucasus mountain valleys of South-West Asia. Over millennia, it migrated through Syria and into the Levant. From there, a rare "ghost" lineage managed to evade extinction across the centuries, embarking on a long journey to Southern England. It eventually settled in the Thames Valley before moving downstream into the bustling communities of East London. Through a soldier's brief journey to Norfolk, this ancient global nomad finally found a new home in East Anglia.

A few years after Faith left John, and Reginald was born, a national census reveals old family secrets.

The Next Movement: The Edwardian Triangle

In 1911, the official census ledger records that Faith had indeed returned to Northall Green Farm. Her parents, the Baxters, resided there as agricultural employees in a tied cottage. Faith had moved into the very next cottage, bringing with her her five-year-old daughter Gladys and her two-year-old son, my grandfather Reginald.

But this document contains far more than a simple record of residency. When combined with family lore and the cutting-edge reality of modern genetic matching, it exposes the high-stakes drama of an Edwardian love triangle.

The head of the household in that second cottage was Robert Hayes. Born in 1884 in Wigan, Lancashire, Robert had moved to Norfolk as a young child—a return for his parents to his mother’s native county and birth town. By 1911, the 27-year-old Robert was working as a labourer on the farm. Faith was right there under his roof, officially recorded under the convenient, respectable title of "Housekeeper" to satisfy the passing enumerator.

The domestic arrangement, however, was beautifully transparent. Living with them was an eight-month-old baby girl bearing the highly telling name of Winifred Hayes Brooker. While Robert was listed as single, Faith was recorded as married. Her legal husband, Gunner John Henry Brooker, was hundreds of miles away, stationed at his Royal Field Artillery barracks in County Mayo, Ireland.

For a long time, the genetic data presented a frustrating anomaly. I had noticed that a tested second cousin—descended from Faith’s eldest daughter, Gladys—shared a significantly weaker percentage of centimorgans with my sibling and me than standard inheritance charts predicted. In fact, it was about half of what we expected. At that time, before the links to John Henry’s broader tree were fully solidified, a dark worry crept in: Had my grandfather Reginald been fathered by someone else?

Then, the breakthrough arrived in the form of an incredible message from an entirely independent DNA tester—a descendant not of the Brookers, but of Robert Hayes’s family line:

"Hello Paul, I hope you don't mind me contacting you. I have an anomaly in my tree and I'm hoping you can help with it... I have a DNA match with someone whose great-grandmother is Faith E. Baxter. All the trees I have looked at, including your Norfolk tree, show that her daughter Gladys' father was J.H. Brooker. My great-grandmother's brother was Robert Hayes. Faith was shown as Robert's servant on the 1911 Census. The only way I can see that there is a DNA match is if Gladys' biological father was Robert Hayes!"

With those few sentences, the entire house of cards collapsed, giving way to a brilliant new truth. This revelation aligned perfectly with a growing number of genetic matches with the descendants of Henry and Elizabeth Rosina Brooker, firmly anchoring the lineage back into its Oxfordshire roots—connecting the branches of Brooker, Edney, Shawers, and Durran.

Gladys—born a few months before Faith’s hasty wedding to John Henry Brooker in 1906—had been fathered by Robert Hayes all along. The Deptford gunner’s "shotgun wedding" to the disgraced young maid wasn't the legitimization of his own child, but perhaps an act of profound chivalry?

Faith hadn’t simply drifted away from her soldier husband and returned to the safety of her parents' village. She had actively crossed the country to return to the arms of her original lover—the biological father of her firstborn child—and had promptly borne him a second daughter.

1921 Census of Northall Farm, Dereham, Norfolk.

What had life been like for two-year-old Reginald, living in that cottage as the child of John Henry Brooker, alongside the man who fathered his two siblings? Was there resentment? Was he well treated?

Family lore, as recounted to me by Gladys herself, reveals that Reggie was left at Northall Green to be brought up by his elderly grandparents, the Baxters. Gladys recalled fond memories of them and the farm, viewing Reggie as the fortunate one; she had remained with Faith, enduring what she described as a miserable childhood with her mother. She even confessed to feeling a pang of envy toward her half-brother. For his part, Reginald used to share fond childhood tales of the farm—including how he would dangle from the railway bridge, waiting for the steam engines to roar past beneath him.

Indeed, the 1921 census confirms this arrangement, recording a twelve-year-old Reginald living at the farm with his elderly grandparents. As for Robert Hayes. His relationship with Faith didn't last either. In 1924 he married another young woman in East Dereham. Faith headed east, to Norwich.

Reginald is pictured here with his wife, Doris, and their children on the steps of their council house in Dereham, Norfolk. Sitting between them is the little blonde boy with the distinct white collar—my father, Wesley Reginald Brooker. This image is an AI restoration and colourisation of the original 1939 photograph. It aligns perfectly with the accompanying page from the 1939 Register, which records the entire family at this exact residence on the eve of the Second World War.

During the Second World War, Reginald was excused from active duty on account of his very poor eyesight. Instead he was sent to work in ammunition and bomb factories at Enfield.

My Grandfather was employed for many years as a heavy labourer (despite his light frame) at a small Dereham iron foundry (I believe Hobbies Iron Foundry). There were a number of humorous stories attached to his time there. I've commissioned AI to reconstruct an image of him at work at a non-descript foundry:

A later AI restoration and colourisation of a genuine snapshot of my Grandfather, at the seaside front in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Characteristically with a cigarette in his mouth, and the Brooker strut:

Finally, an AI portrait, based on a photo of him in old age. Except that I never saw him looking so smart, but I recognise that familiar cheeky grin:

I should name it Pops, for that was the name his children knew him by. In later life, Reginald worked part-time at a girls' school in Dereham. He was an incredibly popular, charismatic man, well-liked by the pupils whose minor misdeeds he was always known to cover. He passed away in 1979, but I will always remember his broad smile and the tales of his bravado in the iron foundry.

He was a man of immense grit; we once visited him only to find he had tied a bad tooth to a door, ready to kick it shut. Another foundry legend went that he had once lain across a workbench while a workmate wrenched out a diseased tooth with ironwork pliers.

I hope the future will forgive my dreadful use of 2026 AI imagery—technology doesn't always tell an entirely true story. Because of this, I have preserved all the original photographs and reference documents in the Posthaven gallery below. Pops, Granddad, I remember you. I remember you well.

GO TO NEXT ACT - The Finale. Summary of this time travel across a timeline of a Y-DNA patrilineage.

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

John Brooker of Long Wittenham, born circa 1720 in Berkshire area? My 6 x great granddaddy. Gemini AI visualised this image based on my own features and on his recorded life.

Why so much hyper-focus on my Y chromosome just recently?  I guess because I have made a few breakthroughs on other lines of the family tree. I had a long conversation with AI about my paternal line and we came to agreement that I had made an error. That had to be put right. After removing those errors, this is where I got back to on my direct paternal line (aka surname line):

1. My 6x great grandfather was named John Brooker.
2. My 6x great grandmother was named Mary Gardiner. She was born in 1717 at Hagbourne, Berkshire.
3. This couple married 1st November 1746 at Oxford College, Oxfordshire. They were both described as residing at Long Wittenham, Berkshire. I have discovered that the reason that they were married at Oxford College was that their parish had been allocated to a vicar living in Oxford College. It was cheaper for them to be married at Oxford, than to call the vicar back to their parish.
4. Following marriage, John and Mary Brooker proceeded to have at least six children born at Long Wittenham - Mary, Anne, John, Edward, Martha, and a Sarah Brooker. John was a copyhold tenant of St John's College, Oxford, who were one of the two main land holders at Long Wittenham. As a copyholder, John would have cultivated a number of strips in the open-field systems still being used at Long Wittenham. He wasn't a pauper, but neither was he likely to be particularly wealthy.
5. Before 1746, I have baptism and ancestry for his wife Mary nee Gardiner, but for John, it's the Great Genealogical Dead End.

What were these errors that I deleted for 6 x great grandad John?  I had found numerous John Brookers baptised circa 1720 in the local area. After much deliberation, I settled for the closest village to Long Wittenham, the parish from which his bride had also moved from, I chose a John Brooker baptised at East Hagbourne. But in my heart I knew that there were issues with this choice. For one thing, a lack of correlation in the names of children. Then I became convinced that the John Brooker of Hagbourne, had lived a separate existence from the John Brooker of Long Wittenham. Genealogical crisis!

I immediately recovered from the shock, and started anew with fresh 2026 research. After all, I started out on this quest in 1989, and things have moved on a tad since then. Not only with digitalised, indexed, and online genealogy, but also with genetic genealogy. This is where I shall take this discussion next.

Around 12 years ago, I tested my y-DNA - the DNA that is contained in my Y Chromosome. This can only be passed from biological father to son. Trace it back, and it follows the direct paternal line, all the way back to Y-DNA Adam in Africa. You can use its variants (aka mutations) to tell a story of that one narrow line of descent, way back into prehistory. It does not ALWAYS follow the surname line perfectly, because of illegitimacy as it was previously known, adoption, affairs, and more. People sometimes change name to escape from their past. In the long term, the y-DNA surpasses the origination and adoption of surnames as they occurred during the Medieval.

I've discussed to death the route this genetic evidence tells me that my paternal ancestors must have taken in the past, and will continue to do so:

1. 28,000 years ago Ice Age hunters of ibex and mouflon in the Zagros mountains of South-West Asia.
2. 11,000  years ago, hunter-foragers still in the Zagros, or in the Caucasus mountains, who were selectively hunting wild herds, and milling gathered wild seeds in ways that would eventually evolve into the earliest agriculture.
3. 8,000 years ago my paternal ancestors were aceramic neolithic farmers, herding goats, and sheep. Keeping pigs. Growing emmer and einkorn wheat, barley and more. They may have remained in the area of the Zagros, on its foothills where they founded the ancestry of the Hurrians and Kassites. Or perhaps they had moved immediately southwest, onto the floodplains of early Sumer (Iraq) where they would give birth to a great civilisation?
4. 4,000 years ago. They would have been in contact with great cities in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia, the Indus Valley, the Levant.
5. 3,000 years ago. Perhaps swept westwards to the Levant by the fall of the Mitanni, and the dispersals of the Hurrians.
6. 600 years ago. Maybe a Genoese or Venetian galley docked at Beirut, Acre, Jaffa or Tripoli and took on my paternal ancestor as crew. My yDNA finally leaves Asia, and heads for Europe.
7. 600 years ago. A galley docks at Southampton in England, where Genoese and Venetian merchants have a permanent presence, interested in English wool. My last Asian ancestor leaves a son in England.
8. 400 years ago. Our line has taken the surname Brooker, or is it Chandler? Perhaps a child is born outside of wedlock. He takes his mother's surname. The yDNA is consequently divided among two families in the area of Basingstoke, Kingsclere, Sherfield Upon Loddon, and Newbury across the Hampshire/Berkshire border. Chandlers and Brookers.
9. 280 years ago. My 6x great grandfather, John Brooker lives in Long Wittenham, Berkshire.

The above is a hypothesis based on those variants on my Y DNA, along with the fact that it survives only in Europe, among two small families who were living only 32 miles apart during the 18th century. Thomas Chandler of Basingstoke, and John Brooker of Long Wittenham. Comparing the DNA, there is a 78% probability that the two families shared the same great grandfather line until circa 1600. Our type of DNA (L-FGC51036) is not found anywhere else in Europe. Our closest Y-DNA cousins are from Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Further back in the variants we have Y-Cousins from Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, in the Druze ethnicity, in the Parsi ethnicity.

Getting back to the documented record. Our John Brooker. Where did he come from? The DNA does keep pointing south in Berkshire, and to the Hampshire border. A meeting with the Chandlers of Basingstoke. I investigate all of the 'John Brookers' baptised circa 1720 to the south. There can't be many can there? Wrong. I found at least 9 candidates in that part of Berkshire. I have eliminated several from the search, but Berkshire genealogical records are not the best online! I'm usually limited to indexes of transcripts. Transcripts are often wrong. More dead ends.

So I turned to trying to trace back from the Chandlers of Basingstoke hoping that might put me on to the right track for the early Brooker family. I keep hitting more dead ends.

However, here is the thing. Parishes like Chieveley, Newbury, Kingcslere, Sherbourne St John, Sherfield Upon Loddon. I often see entries for baptisms, marriages, and burials for both 'Chandler' and 'Brooker' families. In same villages, registers, sometimes even same pages!

I can smell consilience. Documented trail, and Genetic trail. So close.

Comparing results from actual recorded ancestry, to that predicted by Ancestry.com, 23andme, My Heritage, Living DNA, FT-DNA and more.

Recorded Ancestry

Results

During the Black Friday sales last December, I bought two Ancestry kits. I actually mean't to order one, but made a bit of a mess of it. Still, I thought, they were as cheap as I've seen a DNA kit, so I let the order process.

Some people might exclaim - but you've tested your DNA to death!  These kits were not directly intend for myself though.  I intended them for the art of Genetic Genealogy.  To help me verify my paper tree, biologically.

Although I enjoy the kick that I get from matching segments of DNA in strangers, to shared ancestors of the past on all lines, I'm particularly interested in one line, from one great grandfather.  You see, I had a very naughty great grandmother.  I have uncovered evidence of two bigamous marriages by her, as well as other relationships.  A second cousin of mine, through her, doesn't appear to have the amount of shared DNA that I would expect for a full second cousin.  It looks worse than even the old family rumours.

As I do have an extensive family tree down to that birth certificated great grandfather, even though I know full well that biological family isn't always as good family as non-biological, which the paper trail honours, I'd still like to know.  With Genetic Genealogy, I hope to verify - or otherwise, his biological relationship.

So... I used one kit to test one of my siblings, and the other to test my mother.  I've tested my mother before on 23andme.  Mistake.  I've learned a lot about DNA testing over the past few years or so.  Ancestry.com might seem like a heavy marketing, greedy big DNA company, with some slightly dishonest sales ploys (find out if your ancestor was a Viking!), and pressure to subscribe to more services in order to get the full benefit of the test - BUT ... it 1) has an awesome family tree building website for subscribers, that link to DNA tests, 2) has the largest customer database, and 3) through it's genealogy services, as well as marketing, has the most UK testers in it's database.

Okay, it's a little dumbed down.  The messaging system sucks (so I always send my email address), It doesn't provide a chromosome browser.  It doesn't provide segment locations on chromosomes.  But - for my uses - using DNA matches to verify a family tree pedigree, it serves extremely well.  I have had almost ten times more matches on AncestryDNA, than from 23andme, FT-DNA, and GEDmatch combined.  And many have online trees!

I've received my siblings results.  Wow.  I suspected it.  That the sibling has inherited some quite different DNA from the parents mean't that although we share some DNA matches, there are many that we don't!  Up to now, I've just used a spreadsheet to keep results of verified matches.  I could see that I now need something more powerful.  Something that I could search on - and filter different lineages.  When my mother's results arrived, I'll be able to divide all of my matches into maternal, or paternal sides.  On top of that, I have a 1C1R (first cousin once removed) on my father's side, that I can sometimes use to indicate some ancestry on his side.  I can look at all of my matches and their shared matches, and triangulate, where abouts they fit into my family tree.  I built a personal database for my DNA matches.

So I'm pretty pleased that I invested in those two kits during the sales.  It's kept me busy.

I used Open Office Base to build the database:

Okay it's basic and not pretty, but I can extend on it.  I've imputed our closest 187 DNA matches, nearly all from Ancestry, plus a few verified from FT-DNA and GEDMATCH.  It's a family match - I've included forms for imputing my mother's and sibling's matching segments - not just my own.  Any genuine matches that my sibling has - are also my cousins.  Just that I don't have personally share DNA segments with them.  I've also included a yes/no check box for that 1C1R.

I've used it to query an up-to-date list of "our" shared DNA matches that share a correlating common ancestor or two on their trees with ours.  My biological "verifiers".

Using the open source GRAMPS app, I produced a fresh family pedigree fan chart.  I then used open source GIMP to colour in the ancestors that I have verified with shared DNA segments.  The darker the tone, the more matches:

It's generally looking pretty verified isn't it.  My birth certificate grandparents were all very clearly, my biological grandparents.  The great grandparents, and the majority of great great grandparents are also looking pretty verified.  But what about that great grandfather?  The birth certificate version was my surname great grandparent, and biological version was my Y-DNA great grandparent.  Were they the same?

Well I still do not have evidence that I'd regard as overwhelming.  But I am gathering evidence that he may have been the same guy.  I have two DNA matches that strike directly through him.  Unfortunately, both were distant ancestry, with only a small shared segment each (around 7 cM).  That small, they could either belong to an undocumented relationship elsewhere, or even be identical but not by descent.  But it's evidence that I'm building, and it's more reassuring than if he'd had no DNA matches strike through his lineage to us.  The other supportive evidence was that my biological paternal line great grandfather carried an incredibly rare haplogroup: Y haplogroup L-SK1414 (L1b2c).  The only other L-SK1414 so far found in the British Isles, traced his paternal surname line back to Basingstoke, around 1740.  My documented surname line traces back in 1740 to Long Wittenham, Berkshire.  Only about 32 miles away from the Basingstoke L-SK1414 by road.  Could be a coincidence, but it supports that the Y-DNA could still correspond with the surname line back in 1740, and that my great grandaddy, was my DNA great grandaddy.

Such is the power of genetic genealogy.  Roll on the results of my mother.  That will reduce the number of matches that are likely to be on my paternal side.

I have new DNA cousin "matches".  This is a very important avenue of DNA testing for genealogy and ancestry that I have simply missed until recently.  Up to now, I've concentrated on DNA testing for general ancestry (or ethnicity as some businesses will call it).  The problem was that I first tested with 23andme, and simply, using their heavy USA customer base, and user unfriendly "experiences", I couldn't find any DNA relatives that actually had paper trails that could correlate to my own.

One of the problems is I feel, is that an awful lot of Eastern English migration to the Atlantic Coast of North America, occurred very early - late 16th to early 18th centuries AD.  As a result, although some generous matching systems (such as 23andme's) suggests much more recent shared ancestry, in reality, our links to our distant USA cousins are so old, that all they do is reflect that my distant cousins have Puritan, New England, and Virginian ancestry from Eastern England.  Even for those that do claim to trace ancestry to those pilgrim fathers - I can't.  Certainly not for the thousands of my direct ancestors for Generations 11 - 14.  I don't think any of us can.  Chuck in a bit of genetic folding, and all that these distant relationships is really telling us is, that we both have some ancestry from south east England between 300 and 600 years ago.

Then I tested with Ancestry.com, Ancestry.co.uk, AncestryDNA or whatever you want to call that genealogy mega-business.  Their matching system is dumbed down to the frustrating level.  No chromosome locations or chromosome browsers for painting.  Instead however, they have the fattest database of testers and customers - some of whom, will like myself, be subscription slaves to their family tree and documentary genealogical services.  Their matching systems may cut out chromosome data - but on the flip side, you can browse trees, surnames, ancestral locations, of your DNA matches.  As a consequence, I've found 14 matches that share DNA, with predicted relationships - that correlate to a paper trail relationship.

In addition I am now scouring GEDmatch, 23andme, and FT-DNA Family Finder for more relative DNA matches.  I'm recording everything (including chromosome locations when available) onto a spreadsheet.  The image at the top of this page demonstrates my DNA matches where they share ancestry so far.  The darker the shade, the stronger the verification.

I'm starting to see how this is a better tool to understanding, or verifying ancestry, than any stupid ethnicity / ancestry composition by DNA.  Family isn't always biological.  However, finding a genetic correlation is the ultimate evidence to strengthen a tree.  It's fascinating to see actual paper research turning up as segments of inherited DNA on matches.

This is an aspect of Genetic Genealogy that I'm sure is well known to some researchers, but that, I'm only just starting to appreciate.  I've been DNA testing for ancestry heavily for a year or two, but my prime interest has been older ancestry, admixture, and population genetics.  All of my early attempts to contact matches through 23andme and GedMatch, resulted in frustrated conversations with North American testers, that had no paper trail back before their ancestors emigrated.  Today, I matched on AncestryDNA with a third cousin.  The DNA prediction was fourth cousin, but the relationship on paper is third cousin.  This was my third match, confirmed by both shared DNA segments, and by a shared paper trail to common direct ancestors.  How cool is that?  Finding that yourself, and other researchers, share segments of the same DNA that appear to have been inherited through recent common descent.  Finding each other through the code of Life that is in our cells, and being able to see where that DNA came from in our family trees!

I know I should have smiled!  Me, myself sitting outside of the archaeology museum earlier this year, at Sofia, Bulgaria.South-West Europe.

FT-DNA Family Finder My Origins