Part 3
6) We definitely know that Casey is a Irish surname - the surname according Clan history were supposed to be descendants of King Cas - a direct ancestor of King Brian Boru. This supposed to be the largest sept of the Casey clan. We are very fortunate to have Sir Conor O'Brien tested who is the 40th male descendant to hold the title of being a direct descendant of King Brian Boru. This title has been granted to each generation over the last 1,000 years. Since the South Carolina Casey line is the most closely related to King Brian Boru line, we are now pretty certain that the South Carolina Casey matches Clan history as being a descendant of King Cas. Of course this connection is around 1,100 years old but it does validate the Clan history. Also, the second largest sept of the Casey clan was supposed to be distantly related several hundred years earlier and our second largest genetic Casey cluster is around 1,400 years old.
7) We now have 560 testers at 67 markers that are known or predicted to be L226. We know that King Brian Boru was part of the Dal Cais tribe that originated primarily in County Clare. Around 40 or 50 L226 testers have traced their lines back to counties in Ireland. Around 80 % of these testers list only five southern counties in Ireland as birthplaces. These are Clare, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry and Limerick - all neighboring counties in Munster, Ireland (southern part of Ireland). We also know that the great majority of surnames in the project are Dal Cais surnames according to the history books about the Dal Cais. This information is very relevant as we can know narrow our Irish research to only five counties of Ireland.
Around one year ago, we had our second NPE (adoption, etc.) join our genetic cluster. Due to the extreme isolation of YSTR markers (and recent YSNP branches), this person immediately concluded that he must have Casey origins. But this Meredith line was born in the early 1800s in Virginia (the only line tied to Virginia). This is kind of an outlier for our cluster.
9) Around two months ago, we had another major breakthrough as we finally had our first Casey to join this cluster to have no known ties to South Carolina and the only Casey line in this cluster to have very early ties to North Carolina. However, this tester is in the same time frame as the Kersey tester and we have concluded that his line is probably not connected in the last 400 years and probably migrated from Ireland directly to North Carolina independent of the South Carolina migration from Ireland to America in the 1750s.
10) I was the first L226 tester to take the Next Generation Sequencing test which reveal 55 mutations that was unique to me. Over the last two years, eight of these private YSNPs are now permanent branches on the tree of mankind. Over the next few months, there is a very good chance to add two new branches based on my private YSNPs (one that is over 1,500 years old and one in the last 400 years old). You can either be reactive and let others advance this serious research or you can be very proactive. Two years ago, the most recent YSNP branch was L226 which became prolific in offspring around 1,500 years. As of today, we now have 52 branches under (one third are genealogical branches under 1,000 years old and mostly dominated by one surname). We are now finding a branch about every other week now.
11) For my particular part of Caseys under L226, we known have two genealogical branches - FGC5647 (400 to 600 years old) and FGC5639 (300 to 400 years old). If you test positive for FGC5647, you probably have a Casey ancestor and originate from one of five counties in the last several hundred years. With the new North Carolina Casey tester, we could soon add a third genealogical YSNP branch soon.
Many may think that this is minimal progress - but most of these discoveries would never happen with traditional genealogical research. This is just the start of very long discovery process. The long term promise of YDNA testing in truly unbelievable. In only two or three years, YSNP branches will average 1.5 generations and with 500 YSTRs added, each of our ancestors on our pedigree charts will average three or four unique mutations unique to this particular ancestor. Pretty exciting times.