Y-DNA is something of a lottery, but when it has results they are good. I am involved in three projects. My brother has no matches nearer than 2,000 years ago. He is I-M253. I have bought further SNPs to no avail.
I tested my husband (I-M223) because he has a common name and I was stuck in Derbyshire. His results (nobody of the same surname) took me back firmly to North Staffordshire. More recently his closest matches are a family called Boyd, who emigrated from Scotland or Northern Ireland to America in the early to mid 1700s, yet FTDNA gives a relationship within a couple of hundred years, not pre surname as I originally assumed. So how did the Boyds come to be related to at least two different surnames in North Staffordshire? We are still working on it.
My mother's family, Broadley from Lancashire, my cousin and I had researched back to the 1650s, still in Lancashire. The Y-DNA took us back to Halifax in Yorkshire. Our branch is now back to 1490 but we know from the Y-DNA that the originator of the Broadley family was John Broadley, Constable of Ovenden in 1362, many of whose descendants, especially in America, are now called Bradley. There is much more to learn, but it has been a great success, thanks to Andrew Booth, who started the Y-DNA project. (R1B L21, etc)
