Odyssey of Y Act 9 - Option A Late Medieval villeins on Thames Valley, England. 1432 CE

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The Great Mortality of 1348 and 1349, compounded by a succession of 14th-century crises, devastated medieval English communities. The Black Death itself claimed between 30% and 50% of the population, with mortality rates in certain parishes soaring even higher. In the ensuing chaos, entire settlements were thinned to the point of abandonment.

Consequently, this pandemic created a profound 'genetic bottleneck' within the Thames Valley. Y-DNA lineages likely vanished, along with the nascent surnames and families that carried them. It is probable that my own paternal lineage—L-M20 > M22 > M317 > SK1412 > SK1414 > FGC51041 > FGC51088 > FGC51036—already a 'ghost' haplogroup in Britain, very nearly succumbed to the pestilence. Yet, it flowed through; perhaps by the narrowest of margins.

The Long Wittenham Lineage: A Hypothesis of Deep Ancestry

To understand the presence of the rare yDNA haplogroup L-FGC51036 in the lineage of John Brooker—a copyholder in Long Wittenham in 1746—we must look beyond standard genealogical records. While a late-medieval entry via trade routes remains a possibility, an alternative "Early Migration" model provides a compelling explanation for how this exotic marker became integrated into the customary tenant class of the Thames Valley.

Under this Option A hypothesis, the lineage's arrival in Britain dates to the Roman period, perhaps via a Severan-era bureaucrat entering the port of Londinium. As the Roman administration contracted, this family may have transitioned from urban officials to villa owners in the upper Thames Valley. This deep-rooted presence explains the transition from late-antique landownership to medieval tenancy; the family did not arrive as outsiders, but rather weathered the "Dark Ages" in situ. By the eighteenth century, the status of Copyholder under St John’s College was not a sign of recent arrival, but the final legal evolution of a family that had maintained a continuous, rugged attachment to the Berkshire soil for over a millennium.

The status of a Copyholder in 1746 was likely the legal culmination of a three-hundred-year struggle for land security. To understand the John Brooker of the eighteenth century, we must examine the "Customary Tenure" most probably established by his ancestors during the upheaval of the fifteenth century.

The Vocation of the Ditch

In the 15th century, the Thames Valley was a volatile environment where survival was dictated by a family’s relationship with the water. For a progenitor in Long Wittenham, this was a world where the Roman masonry of the past had long been superseded by the practical necessity of the ditch and the levee. Managing the floodwaters at Clifton Brook was more than mere manual labour; it was a socio-political act of preservation. By protecting the communal granary and the wattle-and-daub heart of the village from winter surges, a tenant proved his indispensable value to the Manor and the community at large.

From Custom to Copyhold

This physical preservation of the parish boundaries likely translated into formal recognition at the Manor Court. In this context, the surname Brooker serves as a linguistic fossil; it marks a family that occupied, defended, and ultimately mastered the "marginal" yet fertile alluvial lands by the brook.

Such an ancestor would have secured his standing not through the exchange of coin, but through "Customary Right"—a title established by generations of continuous service and occupancy. This right was eventually codified as a Copyhold, a tenure held "by copy of the court roll." It was this specific legal mechanism that ensured, three centuries later, his descendant John Brooker would still hold title to that same reclaimed ground under the stewardship of St John’s College.

The Genetic Legacy

The DNA evidence supports a narrative of endurance rather than obscurity. The distribution of the rare L-FGC51036 marker in modern charts suggests a lineage that navigated narrow "extinction events" by remaining anchored to a specific geographical niche. This was not a slide into the shadows of history, but a transition into a deeper, more rugged form of belonging—a persistence that allowed an exotic lineage to become an integral part of the English landscape.

When our actual recorded ancestor, John Brooker held his land in 1746, he was merely holding the updated version of the very parchment John atte Broke touched in 1432. The lineage remained unbroken, anchored forever to the curve of the water.


The DALL-E 3 image above illustrates the countless possibilities and alternatives to either of my proposed options. This concludes my fictional narrative, which explored the potential routes my rare Asian yDNA may have taken to arrive in the Thames Valley. By 1746, the records place this lineage firmly on the map: my ancestor was recorded as a copyhold tenant within an open-field system. This specific option followed a Roman Empire hypothesis; however, in Act 10, we leave speculation behind to join the actual recorded lineage as researched from parish registers and other documents.

GO TO NEXT ACT - John Brooker, 18th century copyhold tenant of Long Wittenham, Berkshire. 1746 CE.


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Odyssey of Y Act 8 - Option A Severan Bureaucrat, Romans in Londinium 230 CE

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My yDNA follows the path: L-M20 > M22 > M317 > SK1412 > SK1414 > FGC51041 > FGC51088 > FGC51036. I have been posting episodes detailing events that could have occurred during its 25,000-year journey of development. I traced a journey from its roots in the Zagros and Caucasus mountains to the Levant, culminating in a fictional temple treasurer of Byblos in 64 BCE.

From that point, I have developed two competing hypotheses regarding its leap to the open-field systems of Berkshire. Option A represents the Early Migration or Roman Empire route. In this scenario, my lineage migrates to Londinium, Britannia, via the Romano-Greek colony of Patras and Rome itself, between 180 CE and 205 CE.


A fictional descendant of Phoenician temple treasurers in Byblos had outgrown his Levantine homeland. Seizing the opportunities offered by the Roman Empire, he first relocated to the Greek colony of Patras (Achaia) to bolster his bureaucratic credentials. There, he married a daughter of his Romano-Greek patrons before travelling to Rome itself to receive a new commission.

Septimius Severus (reigned 193–211 CE) was eagerly recruiting administrators from the East to dismantle the entrenched autocracy within his empire. Our ancestor, Aurelius, was keen to advance his career. Yet, once in Rome, he found the appointment to be a formidable challenge—not only for himself but also for his wife and daughter. The posting was Britannia.


The Gateway of Londinium

Home became a town house near the Walbrook stream, a short distance from the massive stone quays of the Thames. To Aurelius’s Greek wife, the docks were a cacophony of damp timber and salted fish—a far cry from her warm home in Achaia. To Aurelius, however, they were his lifeline.

Under Septimius Severus, the province was being transformed into a supply base for the Emperor’s planned campaigns in the North. Aurelius’s days were spent at the Forum, the largest building of its kind north of the Alps, overseeing the arrival of Spanish oil, Gaulish wine, and the local grain destined to feed the legions at Eboracum (York).

On the Road: The Procurement Trail

Aurelius’s duties took him away from the comforts of the capital and onto the straight, paved arteries of Watling Street and the Ermine Way. His task was the annona militaris—the requisitioning of supplies for the army. In the South and East, he met with local civitas leaders; men who styled themselves as Roman senators but still spoke with the lilt of the Belgae or the Iceni. In the ‘palace’ at Fishbourne, he negotiated with regional administrators who were eager to prove their loyalty to the new African Emperor.

The era of independent British kings was largely over, yet the chieftains still held sway over the rural populations. Aurelius had to be a diplomat; he needed their cattle, their leather for tents, and their lead from the Mendip Hills. He carried the authority of an emperor who did not care for tradition. If a local magistrate grumbled about the grain tax, Aurelius reminded them—perhaps with a touch of Levantine wit—that Severus rewarded loyalty but had little patience for the ‘old ways’ of the Italian elite.

The Domestic Struggle

The ‘great challenge’ he had feared in Rome manifested in the small details of daily life. He likely spent a fortune on hypocaust heating, burning endless cords of wood to keep his growing family warm during the ‘perpetual mist’ of the British winter. Whilst he could procure the finest Mediterranean imports for the Governor’s table, his own family had to adapt to local butter instead of olive oil, and the heavy, hopped ales of the North instead of the sweet wines of Achaia.

A Man of Two Worlds

Aurelius was a ‘Severan Man’—a product of a meritocratic, globalised empire. In the morning, he might have offered incense to Mithras or the Syrian Goddess in a small shrine by the London docks; in the afternoon, he was a cold-eyed bureaucrat calculating the weight of British wool.

He was the bridge between the ancient traditions of the East and the raw, developing frontier of the West. He was not just living in Britain; he was building the Roman machinery that kept it pinned to the map of the world.


In 235 CE, on the docks of Londinium, Aurelius heard the news: the assassination of Alexander Severus.

In March of that year, the last of the Syrian line, Alexander Severus, had been murdered by his own troops at Mogontiacum (Mainz, Germany). He was killed alongside his mother, Julia Mamaea—the woman who had effectively governed the Empire. For Aurelius, this was the death of his patron. The new Emperor, Maximinus Thrax, was a career soldier who had risen from the ranks; he had no use for the sophisticated ‘Eastern’ civil administrators favoured by the Severans. To the new regime, men like Aurelius were viewed as ‘palace softies’ who had drained the treasury on bureaucracy rather than the army.

The shift would have been felt instantly in Londinium. Aurelius gathered his family—which now included two daughters and a younger son. They were in grave danger. His only advantage was being among the first to receive the news at the quayside. He acted quickly before his property could be confiscated. Prepared for such a crisis, Aurelius had already formulated an emergency plan: an escape up the Thames with his wealth to a refuge he had kept secret.

Aurelius Belicatus (the son) By 250 CE, Aurelius the senior had passed away, succeeded by his son, Aurelius Belicatus, as head of the household. The farmstead was now developing into a respectable villa. He had married a young, local British wife.


The lineage remained, surviving into the mid-18th century as copyhold tenants. No longer following the imperial bureaucratic rules of movement, the paternal line now adhered to an agricultural rule of stability.

In the villages of the Thames Valley, across the borders of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, the family held their place not by deed, but by the "custom of the manor". Their names were etched into the manorial court rolls, securing their right to the land through generations of quiet husbandry. The ancient Levantine heritage, once carried by soldiers or traders across vast distances, was now tethered to a few acres of English soil—preserved by the very permanence of the feudal tradition.


With each passing generation, the lineage becomes increasingly British, then more specifically English. Few would ever guess at the ancient Asian heritage encoded within the nucleotides of the Y-DNA. That a line of descent has its roots in the Zagros Mountains, and later among the Hurrians and Phoenicians, could remain forgotten for over 1,700 years.

Whether one prefers the "Early Migration" theory or the "Late Migration" narrative—centred on late-medieval Venetian galleys—the genetic reality remains the same. We know that Y-DNA L-M20 > M22 > M317 > SK1412 > SK1414 > FGC51041 > FGC51088 > FGC51036 originated in Western Asia (most likely the Zagros or South Caucasus). It likely moved into the Levant, where it persisted as an uncommon, narrow "ghost" haplogroup. Eventually—whether in antiquity or more recently—it reached Southern Britain, where it remains incredibly rare today.

GO TO NEXT ACT - Option A. Medieval Thames Valley villeins. 1432 CE


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Odyssey of Y Act 12 - Finale. Ghost Lineage and the Silk Road to Berkshire

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A thread of silk on an English countryside hedge. Visualised  by Gemini AI to represent a thread of Asian DNA being found in Berkshire,

Why the obsession with a few genetic markers along the string of one chromosome? I possess an autistic cast of mind that highly values truth and rules; I am adept at identifying patterns and deciphering trends. I see the errors others might overlook.

My paternal lineage, however, seems to defy standard logic. It is an improbable survivor. In Europe, yDNA haplogroup L is an incredible rarity, accounting for less than 1% of the population—an exotic outlier. Within that small bracket, men carrying the variants M317 and SK1414 constitute a tiny minority. Within L-SK1414, my own lineage is a "ghost." It has had no known cousins for the past 7,000 years. It should not have survived in such isolation for so long. Globally, there are only two confirmed instances of L-FGC51036.

Somehow, it has endured rather than reaching a dead end. To find such a deep-time outlier—a branch of the human tree that refused to wither—is extraordinary. It traces a lonely arc from the high plateau of Khorasan to the banks of the Thames. It survived the rise of the first cities in Mesopotamia, the collapse of the West Asian Bronze Age, and the expansion of the Eastern Roman Empire—all while remaining a "Ghost Lineage.

The Zagros Mountains. Source Creative commons. By Farid Atar

We were the "late-stayers." While our genetic cousins drifted towards the Indus or the Balkans, we held the high ground of the Zagros Mountains for thousands of years longer. We were the last of the mountain ghosts to descend. By the time we stepped onto a Venetian galley, we carried a code that was already ancient and exceedingly rare. We did not arrive in England as part of a great migration; we arrived as a single, solitary thread of silk, seven millennia in the making.

I carry the STR marker DYS448=15. This roughly corresponds to the SNP L-SK1414. Most males have 19, 20, or 21 or more "stutters" at that position on the Y-chromosome; mine has been fixed at 15 for at least 7,000 years. Most European men belong to a vast, roaring river of yDNA; mine is a persistent stream that has avoided being swallowed by the earth.

When I first opened the book of my genetic code, I found 115 "pages"—private mutations—that no one else had ever read. They were the silent markers of a line that had walked in solitude for two thousand years. The only other person with a similar genetic "accent" was a man on the Makran coast of Pakistan. We are the two ends of a 7,000-year-old silk thread: one caught on a palm tree in the East, the other on a hawthorn branch in Berkshire.

My hypothesis is that this lineage found a long-term sanctuary in the Zagros Mountains or the South Caucasus. The cradle of my ghost lineage Around 7,000 years ago, several lineages radiated outwards like thin spokes to father the other L-SK1414 lines in Anatolia, the Levant, Arabia, and the Indus Valley. Each spoke was fragile; only 86 men worldwide have tested positive for SK1414 or DYS448=15. As these branches spread, I believe my own lineage was one of the last to leave the old refugia of the West Asian valleys. This explains why it has left so few recorded heirs. Its eventual arrival in Southern England—likely via late medieval galleys—suggests a slow, westward drift through the Levant before crossing the sea. A genetic stowaway on a Venetian galley, carrying a 7,000-year-old secret from the Silk Road to the English wool markets

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Odyssey of Y Act 10 To the Written Record. John Brooker, Long Wittenham, Berkshire 1746 CE

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The convergence of genetic evidence and documentary research has brought a new level of precision to my recorded genealogy, allowing me to trace the odyssey of my paternal lineage: yDNA haplogroup L-SK1414 > FGC51040 > FGC51036.

In the mid-18th century, my Brooker ancestors emerge from the shadows of surviving parish records. On November 1, 1746, my 6 x great-grandparents, John Brooker and Mary Gardiner, were married at St John’s College, Oxford. They were not scholars; rather, John was a copyhold tenant of the College. At the time, the vicar of St Mary’s in Long Wittenham was non-resident, living in Oxford. It was more practical and cost-effective for the couple to travel to Oxford for the ceremony than to pay the fees required to entice the vicar back to their home parish.

The marriage register identifies both John and Mary as residents of Long Wittenham, Berkshire. In 1746, the parish was primarily held by two landowners, including St John’s College. As tenants on this manor, John and Mary would have practiced communal farming within an open-field system—a landscape defined by individual strips allocated to various tenants, a practice that persisted long after the medieval period.

While Mary was born and raised in the nearby parish of East Hagbourne, identifying John’s origins has proven more elusive. I once hypothesized that he belonged to the Brooker family of East Hagbourne; however, rigorous genealogical research—utilizing a process of elimination to rule out other John Brookers of similar age and nomenclature in neighboring Berkshire parishes—disproved that theory. Consequently, the specific birthplace of my 6 x great-grandfather remains a mystery, as he first appears in the historical record in 1746.

My 6 x great grandfather John Brooker? As visualised by Google Gemini AI.

While there is no definitive documentary record of John Brooker’s origins, the evidence suggests a clear migratory pattern. Based on yDNA STR markers that indicate a shared paternal lineage with the Chandler family of Basingstoke, I hypothesize that my Brooker ancestors migrated northwards across the North Wessex Downs of Hampshire and Berkshire between the 16th and 18th centuries. As explored in Act 9, I suspect that the wool trade and sheep farming may have provided a catalyst for this movement. I have mapped this target area below to illustrate the potential path of this migration.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

There are several parishes within that target zone, where I see both Brooker and Chandler entries in the same registers, even on the same page. STR comparisons of our yDNA suggests a convergence between 1540 and 1600 CE.

The story of John does not end in 1746. John and Mary had at least six children baptized at St Mary’s between 1749 and 1763, including my 5 x great-grandfather, Edward Brooker, in 1757. Edward witnessed the parliamentary enclosure of Long Wittenham's open fields in 1809. It was his son, John Brooker Jr., who—like many others dispossessed of land tenure—fell into the poverty of the agricultural laboring class. He eventually drifted landless across the river and eastward through Oxfordshire in search of work.

Our yDNA lineage—descended from Ice Age ibex hunters in the Zagros Mountains, Early Neolithic goat herders, and Chalcolithic priests—has traversed millennia. It has survived the rise of the Ur III civilization, the era of Hurrian merchants in the Mitanni Empire, and the bustle of Phoenician temples. From Levantine mariners on 15th-century Italian galleys to Tudor wool merchants in Basingstoke, our ancestors have occupied every stratum of history. Now, they toiled in the soils of Oxfordshire for others.

GO TO NEXT ACT - Royal Field Artillery. Western Front. 1916 CE.


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Odyssey of Y Act 6 Hurrians and Mitanni. Aleppo 1,500 BCE

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The Hurrian’s Homecoming

The dust of the Syrian steppe clings to the merchant’s woolên robes as his caravan crests the final ridge. Below him sits Aleppo, a city of white stone dominated by the massive Temple of Hadad.

A century ago, a man of his kin—a Hurrian from the Zagros foothills—would have approached these gates with trepidation. The old Amorite kings of Yamhad were masters here, and a mountain-man from the east was a foreigner, or a mercenary at best. But the world has turned. The Hittite storms from the north shattered the old walls, and in the vacuum, the Mitanni have risen.

As he reaches the gate, the guards do not sneer. They call out in a dialect of Hurrian that tastes of home. There is a ritual to the entry—the weighing of silver, the checking of seals, and yes, a small "gift" of fine Zagros tin to the captain of the guard to ensure his donkeys find the best stalls. He isn't an outsider anymore; he is the economic lifeblood of an empire. He carries more than just goods; he carries the gods of the mountains to the plains of the Levant.

Could this merchant be my direct ancestor? Does he carry an earlier genetic signature of the paternal yDNA haplogroup L-FGC51036—that I carry today?

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

Mitanni charioteers. The new power. Suddenly the mountain cultures of the west replace the Amorite power of Syria.

Rationale

I have chosen this Hurrian merchant entering Aleppo as the representation of my paternal line’s westward movement for several specific historical and genetic reasons.

My yDNA haplogroup L-SK1414 > FGC51040 > FGC51036 is a "ghost" lineage—rare and low-frequency throughout history. This suggests to me that my ancestors did not arrive in a massive, anonymous wave of migration, but likely persisted through a specific social or professional niche, such as a merchant family, moving along established trade corridors.

I know that for several hundred years leading up to 1500 BCE, there was a westward spread of people, DNA, beliefs, and agricultural practices identified as Hurrian. This expansion originated in the Caucasus and northern Zagros and moved into the Khabur River Triangle and Northern Syria, fundamentally changing the genetic signature of the local population.

The timing of 1500 BCE is crucial to my choice. Under the previous Amorite Kingdom of Yamhad, a Hurrian ancestor of mine would have been a linguistic and cultural outsider. However, with the rise of the Mitanni—a Hurrian-led superpower—the status of my ancestor would have shifted from "foreigner" to "imperial partner."

I chose Aleppo because it was a holy city and a strategic gateway. It represents the pivot point where my lineage transitioned from the eastern highlands into the Levant. By placing my ancestor here at this moment, I am capturing the likely point of entry where my specific genetic signature established itself in the region, bridging the gap between my Zagros origins and my Levantine history.

GO TO THE NEXT ACT - Temple of Baalat Gebal, Byblos. 64 BCE


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Odyssey of Y Act 5 Bakr Awa, Zagros 2050 BCE

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Journey of the Zagros Smith (c. 2050 BCE)

In the fading light of the Ur III Empire, a master bronze metallurgist tends his forge at Bakr Awa. Here, on the Sharizor Plain of the Zagros Mountains, the air is thick with the scent of charcoal and molten ore. His ancestors have walked these highlands for millennia, their history etched into the stone and soil.

Could this man be my direct ancestor? Does he carry an earlier genetic signature of the paternal yDNA haplogroup L-FGC51036—that I carry today?

To the scribes of the lowland city-states, he is merely a "Lullubian" or an early "Hurrian"—a mountain barbarian living on the fringe of civilization. Yet, he commands the Great Khorasan Highway. As a master of the "Tin Road," he is the vital link in a global chain, transforming raw minerals into the bronze that fuels the engines of war and trade. He may be a man of the mountains, but he is the architect of the lowlands' wealth.


The Descent: The Great Zagros Gate (c. 2050 BCE)

My hypothetical ancestor traverses the Pa-yi-Tak Pass, where the limestone escarpments of the Zagros drop away in a dramatic, vertical plunge toward the Mesopotamian alluvials. As he descends into the Diyala River basin, he leaves behind the cool, familiar air of his highland home for a world defined by sun-baked silt and endless irrigation channels.

Beyond the Wall of Martu, he enters the territory of the Ur III Empire—a civilization that feels alien and structured compared to the mountain passes. Here, he is viewed as a "Lullubian," a barbaric outsider from the fringes of the known world. Yet, the prejudice of the lowlanders ends at the mouth of his forge. To the city-states, he is the master of a rare and essential magic: the secret of Bronze.


The City of Eshnunna: Festival of Tishpak (c. 2050 BCE)

The smith enters Eshnunna through the dust of the Great Khorasan Road. This is the gateway to the Tigris—the threshold of Mesopotamian civilization. He finds himself in a dense urban square, a labyrinth of sun-dried mud brick where the air hangs heavy, a stifling mix of yellow desert silt and the cloying blue smoke of temple incense. Looming over the chaos is the E-sikil, the great ziggurat of Tishpak, a multi-tiered mountain of brick that asserts the suffocating bureaucratic and religious weight of the Ur III Empire.

The city is mid-rite, caught in the fervor of a religious festival. A procession for Tishpak, the patron god, snakes through the streets. Cult statues sway atop ornate litters, accompanied by the rhythmic drone of reed pipes and the sharp pluck of lyres. Amidst a sea of bleached Sumerian linen and urban clamor, the smith stands as a pillar of the rugged Zagros. Clad in heavy mountain wool and a sweat-stained leather apron, he is a figure carved from a different world.

Beside him, his pack animals are laden with the true wealth of the age: high-purity bronze ingots and master-forged tools. His presence is purely, starkly functional. He is here to barter the "magic" of the highlands—the metal that tips their spears and shears their grain—for the surplus of the plains: textiles, silver, and barley.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

He is a high-status outsider, tolerated but never truly integrated. As the citizens of Eshnunna chant to their divine protectors, the smith looks toward the horizon. He yearns for the thin air and familiar peaks of Bakr Awa. He is a man of the heights, but as he watches the city bustle, the thought lingers: how long before his descendants descend from the Zagros not as traders, but as heirs to these very plains?

GO TO THE NEXT ACT - The Hurrian in Aleppo. 1,500 BCE


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Genetic Genealogy - who was my great grandfather?

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.