Paternal Ancestor Name

[KD146]

I am intending to get DNA testing done as soon as I can, but in the meantime, a distant cousin of a different paternal lineage had the testing done.

The whole results thing is still very confusing to me, but he did send me his chart with Kit Number, Name, Paternal Ancestor Name, Country, Haplogroup and all these markers on it.

My question is, if an individual appears on his list born in say 1820, and died in 1890, how does one verify who this person is?  How was DNA sourced for a person five or six generations old, or are these people who have been documented on another tester's family tree?  If so, how does someone else ascertain the veracity of someone so old?

Our third great grandfather shares the same name as this old individual on my cousin's DNA results, but the dates are out by about eighteen years.  I am wondering if this is our third great grandfather, and somebody somewhere else made a guess at his dates of birth and death.  Or maybe he is a different person altogether.  A distant cousin, maybe.

It's all very woolly and confusing, can anyone explain who these generations-old people on the DNA test results are, and where their names might come from?

[davidft]

deleted

[Liz_in_Sussex]

 

In the little snippy below one of the men in this Y-DNA Denmark project (which is in the public domain) is my Uncle - but I have put his earliest known male ancestor rather than him - as have the other contributors to the project.

Liz

[KD146]

Hi Liz, looking at your posted example, how can those early male ancestors be verified?

For example, if I were DNA tested, what if I had a spurious family tree, and submitted false information about my great great grandfather?  How is another tester going to look at my submission and know whether the information on my great great grandfather has been researched and verified, or simply some rough estimate I pulled out of thin air?

In my own case, my cousin has been tested, and this man appears in his results, dated 1820-1890: 

108079 Roche William Roche b1820 and d 1890 Ireland I2b
 
But who is this 1820 man?  Is he my third great grandfather (or my cousin's), who actually died in 1872?  Is he someone elses third great grandfather, who is more remotely related to me, or not related at all?  Are the dates 1820 to 1890 reliable, or are they someone's rough estimate?  Or is he a figment of someone's imagination?

I am failing to see how the results can be anything other than too vague or misleading to be of any use at all.  I still don't understand this enough.  Is it a waste of my time?

[supermoussi]

Hi Liz, looking at your posted example, how can those early male ancestors be verified?

How do you go about verifying trees people post on any genealogical website or published in pedigrees in books?

[KD146]

How do you go about verifying trees people post on any genealogical website or published in pedigrees in books?

Well, I suppose I'd have more faith in a published tree than one on a genealogical website.  I have a tree on Ancestry.  The sheer amount of rubbish I find on other people's trees - I mean, lineages that took me just two minutes to debunk using popularly available stuff like the censuses, or simply by impossible dates of birth, death, and mothers having children only a year after they have been born themselves, stuff that people obviously threw up there without even looking twice at.  Supposing those people go for DNA testing?  God knows what kind of lineage they will offer to the tree projects.

That brings me back to my example.

108079 Roche William Roche b1820 and d 1890 Ireland I2b

I see on a quick Ancestry search, there is indeed a William Roche born about 1820 and died in 1890 in Cork.  My 3rd great grandfather, also a William Roche (though not my direct paternal line) was born about 1812 and died in 1872 in Dublin.

How do I or my cousin know:

a)  Who this William Roche is (it's quite vague, isn't it?),
b)  How correct his suggested dates are (are they estimates?),
c)  Who was tested who put this William Roche on the tree project, and
d)  Whether we are related to him - there is no remote connection to Cork anywhere in my tree so far.

All of this seems so vague, and perhaps I am not understanding it well enough.  Or perhaps it is all vague anyway, in which case I would wonder whether to bother testing myself at all.

Any opinions?  Does anyone understand all this who can explain it better?

[supermoussi]

How do I or my cousin know:

a)  Who this William Roche is (it's quite vague, isn't it?),
b)  How correct his suggested dates are (are they estimates?),
c)  Who was tested who put this William Roche on the tree project, and

By trying to contact him through the project administrator. He may or may not want to speak to you though but if your Roches come from the same area I expect he will.

d)  Whether we are related to him - there is no remote connection to Cork anywhere in my tree so far.

If you match on 60 or more of your Y-DNA 67 Marker test results and have the same surname then you are from the same Roche family. See Paternal links at the top of this forum for more info about Y-DNA testing.

[KD146]

Ah, so the project administrator has these details.  That makes more sense.

God bless the slow of wit! 

[jc26red]

Once you do submit your own test kit sample, you will understand how it works.

You will be required to fill in a profile against your kit number. One of the profile questions is "name, dates and location of your paternal ancestor" you have decided is your oldest known and verified ancestor.  This is all done on trust that you are being honest and have verified the connection between the test person and his paternal ancestor.

When the results are back, fdna will notify you if there any matches and how close they match.  To be honest, its not worth "guessing" as sometimes results are surprising.  The match results will also give you contact details of the person who has submitted the test.

Hope that helps
Jc

Ps... The Roche family name is quite large in Ireland, so may not necessarily match.  Our name project in Ireland is throwing up far more variants than we first thought! We have the Known English line and a Known Irish line but suddenly we have found several unconnected lines which is raising more questions than answers.