DNA tests

[john franks]

Debbie

Thanks very much for your helpful comments. I match 36/37 with my contact. My surname, Mellanby, goes back at least to the mid-1600s in the Teesside area. The Allen name is also around in that area and there is even an Allen/Mellanby marriage, showing that the families were known to each other. My matches, two cousins, live in the US and have no knowledge of any English ancestry so it would be nice to firm up on the circumstantial evidence that their origins may lie in NE England. I will give serious thought to setting up a geographical project.

Yes, I have had the deep clade tests done and have no mutations downstream of that defining Haplogroup I2. I have been in touch with the Rootsweb discussion groups but at present I feel I need to learn a lot more about the whole subject of DNA before perhaps getting involved with Haplogroup projects. I am broadly familiar with FTDNA  and ISOGG and will have a look at the other sites you mention.

I really appreciate your help.

John

[Redroger]

John, Have you read "The Origins of the British" by Phillip Openheimer? If not then I think you will find it useful regarding historic DNA origins.
Sumar, Since nobody else seems to have said it then I will. The only way that a woman can get at her paternal DNA is to have a direct male descendant in the paternal line tested, i.e. brother, uncle etc. etc.

[DevonCruwys]

John

If you do consider setting up a geographical project let me know if you want any help. The Americans do tend to be over-represented in the databases, but that will all change in time as more people in the UK understand how it all works, and realise how useful DNA testing can be.  It gets very exciting once you start getting matches!

It's actually quite difficult to find out about all the haplogroups as the science is moving at such a fast rate with new SNPs being discovered all the time. All the books are now very out of date. The Oppenheimer book was published before a lot of the new SNPs were discovered such as P312 and U106 which now subdivide R1b1b2, and there are many other new SNPs downstream of P312 and U106. If you want to keep up with the latest developments in a haplogroup you really need to belong to the appropriate project and the associated mailing list.

I see you've set up a Mellanby project at Family Tree DNA but you don't seem to have added your own results to the project. You need to go to your FTDNA personal page and click on Join Projects and then add yourself to your own project. Have you considered registering your surname with the Guild of One-Name Studies:

http://www.one-name.org/index.html

A lot of our members are now running DNA projects and we can offer support.

[john franks]

Thanks Debbie and Redroger for recommending the Oppenheimer book which I haven't read but I've browsed it in a bookshop. I have read the book by Smolenyak (another name variant there!) which is a good basic intro to DNA for genealogy.

I know the  Mellanby surname project isn't set up properly yet. I was distracted from it shortly after I started it but I'll get back to it soon.

It didn't occur to me that the GOONS might help with DNA  so I will look into that. Years ago I was put off that organisation by the the requirement, as I understand it, that members had to commit to a one-name-study as defined by GOONS. I just like to do my own thing!

Thanks for the help once again.

John

[DevonCruwys]

Another book you might enjoy is "The Journey of Man" by Spencer Wells which is much more readable than the Oppenheimer book.

You can pretty well do your own thing in GOONS. The only commitment is to answer every enquiry. You have to be working towards collecting all references to a surname worldwide but at your own pace. You can also join without registering a surname and just benefit from the expertise of the other members. The Guild mailing list is full of very knowledgeable people. The vast majority of UK-based DNA projects are run by Guild members (they're nearly all at Family Tree DNA too!).

Debbie

[Redroger]

Perhaps it's me, but I found Oppenheimers book to be an easy and enjoyable read. Take the points about it being rendered obsolete by ongoing reasearch, but that's generally the case with science.