I have information from a Y-DNA test. I'm not sure that I have taken advantage of all that I can le
What are the benefits of Y-DNA testing?
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Hi Carolyn,
As far as the tester himself goes, which test did he take? Y-37, Y-700?
The benefits are many. It's literally a surname test. If the tester were a Webber, for example, STR results can place him into the right clan of Webber, considering that enough Webbers have tested so that such delineations can be made. An advanced SNP testing can define the fatherline with a great deal of precision. Of course, names aren't coded in the Y-DNA, but all the markers from each man in the lineage are archived. It's a matter of sorting them out. You might not know the Wedbber ancestor from 500 hundred years ago, but you can learn something about his Y-DNA. That could come in handy later in the genealogy when someone who knows the lineage crops up.
Autosomal testing is good to only about 7 generations -- and there's a lot of thinking and correspondence and analyses of different that needs to go into making any determination. The alleles have simply gotten really mixed up during the recombination with each generation. This doesn't happen with the Y. My Y-DNA is an exact copy of my 6th great-grandfather's Y. You can't do anything like this with any other testing.
I last wrote about this for a specific Pettit clan in this article: http://blog.ancestraldata.com/viewer.pl?2020-07-23-Pettit.html . If nothing else, note the graphics.
-Michael
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Michael,
I support Y-DNA testing 100%. It helped me find my 3rd GGF's family in Rutherford County, NC. He was born in 1793, not to a Walker as I expected, but to a Burnett. Without Y-DNA testing, I would never be able to trace my paternal line further back with any degree of reality. The good news is that Family Search now has it right - but Ancestry, not so much!
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Thanks for the comment Donald! Yes, I had a similar experience with my lineage. I had a strong suspicion as to who my 5th great grandfather was (in Stokes County NC), but Y-DNA nailed it. And that success nailed my interest in this. The Cooley DNA Project has several incidents of an NPE and some of them have been worked out through testing. And, if you find the appropriate cousins to test, you can also work out some of your other lineages, for an example, a first cousin with your mother's maiden name.
In regards to FS "having it right" I assume you mean the shared tree. Note that if there are stubborn fallacies associated to your lineage, they're bound to show up again. Be vigilant!
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Donald, did you also take an autosomal test? I found so many more connections with the autosomal test.
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@MichaelHCooley MichaelHCooley The YDNA test was only the Y-37. The surname indicated Yetter/Yeater. There are not many matches, and many of them do not know much about their ancestral lines. I do need to dig into this and see if I can make any discoveries for them.
I was excited about the YDNA test because it did verify that my hypothesis to the Yetter line seemed positive. I believe that I have enough evidence to prove the biological father for the tester. The clincher was that I found the suspected biological father listed in the city directory. He was living at the bio-mom's parent's home. City directories do not list all of the occupants that reside at a home in a group; like we would see in a census list. Instead, you must research individuals and discover if they share the same address. I was elated when I discovered that my suspect lived at an address that matched the testers grandparents.
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Yes I did and it works well for 2nd to 4th cousins. But it then starts to get iffy as there are so many ways to be "cross-related" to people that it doesn't help much in tracking ancestors back over 200 years. The Y-DNA test can do that in spades. But is is paternal only - ie, father to son. So women have to find male relatives on their father's side to test to trace that paternal line and both men and women have to find male relatives on their mother's side to trace that paternal line.
I suggest you join a surname group on FTDNA to learn more about what the Y-DNA test can do.
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I was able to connect through Autosomal DNA to multiple people that shared common ancestors. The first connections that I found were to very distant ancestors. I worked hard to build trees of descendancy for these ancestors until I was able to connect more people that did not have trees.
I have joined some very inactive groups on FTDNA, but there were none available that were researching this name. Yetter was grouped in with Yoder and other similar sounding names. I have not found any matches with the alternate names. At this point, I have only found connection to Yetter, Yeater, and surnames that do not seem to have any rhyme or reason. It makes me wonder if there are a lot of matches with unknown fathers due to generations of infidelity or wild oat sowers.
The direct line of the tester consists of several generations in a row of only children. This does limit the DNA matches to the line.
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Hi Carolyn,
Yes, the Y-37 is sufficient to narrow a search -- even considerably -- and especially if there is a surname match. I don't recommend testing more than that unless there are other testers with which to compare. Although one's test can provide a similar incentive to others.
Of course, a test will not prove the father-son relationship, as I mentioned. But with enough testing, it can out you in the ballpark, especially if an anchor SNP gets involved.
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A tester often needs to be proactive to find Y-DNA matches, especially in a project that doesn't have active admins. I started doing that with Cooley after I first tested in 2006, and that led to a co-admin offer eight years. I had one match in 2006 and now have about 20, not including those of closely related subclades. And anyone can start a surname project. Of course you'll want to have at least a handful of interested parties and a platform through which to group the group. I had already been in correspondence with a high number of Cooleys and had the support of the Cooley Family Association of America. Still, many of these are stalled due, I believe, to the high popularity of autosomes.
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Unfortunately there are not many matches to work with. I was able to get the surname to match up with his Y matches, but I did not find any good matches that knew much about their lineage. I do need to go back to this and maybe do some research for some of these individuals and see if I can determine who the common ancestor is. It appears that the common ancestor is probably across the pond and I don't have a strong verification that I have positively verified my family connection in Germany.
Can you share more about what you think are the most important things to do when we get results back from a Y-DNA test?
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Having a Y-37 test can be very helpful when there are matches! Not so, as you've witnessed otherwise. Like other DNA tests, everything depends on the matches. Unfortunately, when you move up the product line, the number of matches decreases. Obviously, then, there isn't a lot of incentive (unless you want to be the first on the block) to upgrade. Theoretically, looking at 25-marker and 12-marker matches increases the number of matches. (I say theoretically because FTDNA has mucked with the matching thresholds so that it doesn't always work.) The problem with that you match with a much larger population of testers. At 12-markers, for example, I match with people in India. In other words, the more markers you have, the more specific the population is. If there's a 1 to 1 match at 111 markers, then you very closely related. If there are ten differences (genetic distance) at 111, then the connection could be a few hundred years.
So, there are basically two options: proactively hunt down possible matching individuals or just wait until someone comes along. The latter generally happens -- in time.
You can also learn what you can about your haplogroup, that which is shown to the right of the "Country" field. But what you have listed presently is probably four thousand years old or so. You can join the haplogroup's project and compare your entry with those surrounding it to see where they most fit it. There are also SNP panels you can test for. They start at the top of the oldest haplogroup and work down all sides of the tree. They're limited, however, to X number of markers and most of the newer markers aren't represented. And, unlike the Big Y, they don't do discovery, that is, find new markers previously unknown. They're just a survey of what's already in their catalog -- and limited at that. But it's possible to move your terminal haplogroup several notches. That won't give you more matches, but you will have more data.
The Big Y is expensive. But it looks at about 15 million positions on the Y and catalogs all useful material. Typically, it's as deep as you can do with DNA gathering in your sample. But it won't increase the matches, except perhaps really deep into history. Still, once it's done, it's done.
When started to get interested in this, I created this to help me find potential testers: http://ancestraldata.com/ahnentafel/256/lineages/johncooley-desc.html
The red represents testers' lines, the blue are women, just for the record.
I'm not proofing this so apologies for any typos or missing words! I'm a terrible typist.
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Y DNA is passed down from father to son largely unchanged. It does mutate slowely and when it does a new subclade is formed. Therefore it allows you to reliable trace you direct paternal ancestry. This can detail the testers father and their father and so on going all the way back to the root of the human tree.
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