Views on FTDNA project groups

[Flemming]

Thanks for all the replies and agree with views that FTDNA doesn't give the best results vs other sites but had wondered if you may get more from a project group. I'm getting the impression it's a variable thing and so perhaps best to pick one that's relevant and give it a go. Thanks again.

[JACK GEE]

Flemming you have nothing to lose.
Good luck.

Jack

[LizzieL]

I joined the Oxfordshire surname project group, after saw my maiden surname was on their interest list. It turned up 4 people I matched with. I knew they were matches before joining the group, but it has narrowed it down to them most likely matching my father's paternal line. However they could connect to any of my paternal grandfather's ancestral lines, not necessarily the surname of interest. I have messaged them all, but none responded. i am wondering whether to try to persuade my brother to do a Y-DNA test. Is that as straightforward as autosomal.?

[Ruskie]

If those people you hope your brother could match with are not male and have not taken a YDnA test, you won’t get any matches, and there is no guarantee they will be interested in making contact.

If you are trying to find which line autosomal matches fit, probably the easiest thing to do is look at their matches, and try to put them into family groups. The Autocluster tool on MyHeritage is good for this, but there are other ways.

[LizzieL]

If you are trying to find which line autosomal matches fit, probably the easiest thing to do is look at their matches, and try to put them into family groups. The Autocluster tool on MyHeritage is good for this, but there are other ways.

I've tried looking at our shared matches on FTDNA, but there are none that I can definitely identify or pin down to a particular branch..

I have used My Heritage auto cluster tool, but how can that work for matches on FTDNA?

[Ruskie]

The My Heritage cluster tool obviously can only be used for those who upload their raw data from FTDNA to My Heritage. Sorry that wasn’t clear. 

If you can afford to do so, there is no harm in having your brother test his YDnA. You might find it useful.

I had my father take a yDNA test as we know very little about his paternal line. He has many many matches, the vast majority at 12 markers, with nothing useful or traceable higher than that.

[jc26red]

My husband did a Ydna test 7 years ago at the request of surname group we belonged to. One of the members was getting nowhere due to having a uncommon haplogroup. I knew from research that there was a high probability of a match as the surname is also uncommon and both linked to the same area of Ireland.
It was a match, much to the surprise of the group administrator. My husband has since done some extra STR tests which has proved a new branch of the haplogroup C. Previously, the thought was that an NPE had occurred after the other members ancestor emigrated.

We have a about 4 matches all belonging to descendants of the ancestor who emigrated in 1764. 5x ggrandfather being the common ancestor.

We also joined the Ireland group and Haplogroup C group... neither have been particularly productive, but the Haplogroup C group has provided a likely route of immigration from Asia across Southern Europe through Spain to England/Ireland.

I know the family name came from England before settling in Ireland in the 17th century, the name group has helped eliminate possible areas in England where the name occurred around that time.

As others have said, it depends on your expectations and pocket size!

We recently had another match from the USA, different name, unfortunately the man was looking for his birth parents and we were unable to help. I did advise him to do the Ancestry dna test as they have the biggest database and more like to get a match.

[jc26red]

I should add there are no tools, you need to belong to a group and the administrator sorts out the results into groups. FDNA do the actual matching though and notify you.

[Lindy Freedman]

I've just upgraded to Big-Y on FTDNA and have joined several projects. I have one close-ish match in the US. The only person with my terminal Y-DNA group. When I looked into it further the link is probably 20 generations ago with the branch being formed about 490 years ago, around 1500 CE.

There is definitely a US bias, but I understand that over time, I can expect more DNA matches. I've come to realise that the Y-DNA aspect is much more to do with origins rather than genealogy. You can upload your autosomal DNA to the site. Some groups also raise funds and may sponsor someone to get tested. Gedmatch is another site you can upload autosomal DNA to.

I guess you really need to think about what you hope to get from joining a project on FTDNA. There are many Facebook Genealogy groups you could also consider joining whether for a Y-DNA or mtDNA group or for a family name.

By the time you go back a few hundred years many of the contributors Ancestors are from Britain or Ireland, I don't think a U.S bias is that big of a deal.  Haplogroup testing is taking you back 200,000 years.

I think where it comes into it's own is when you have broken direct lines.  For example, my 5 x great grandmother was a woman who suffered dreadful tragedy, she married a William Jordan in 1785 and they had 7 children together.  By the time my Ancestor Ann Jordan was in her early 30's she had buried 5 of her 7 children and her husband had died leaving her a widow with 2 children, one of which also died as a little boy.

Three years after her husband died she had my 4 x great grandfather 'Squire' and he was given her married name.

This was quite a surprise, my father laid great store by our Ancestral name 'Jordan' and we actually had no connection to it at all, not even down the maternal line. 

Anyway, I found out about haplogroup testing and the surname projects so I signed my brother up.  It is unfortunate that basic testing doesn't  actually don't get heaps of information about your haplogroup subclade...just the basic haplogroup and if it's the common R1b they give you M269 as well, but that is shared by 110,000,000 in Western Europe.  At Y67 markers you can put the codes you get into something called NevGen and it predicts your haplogroup subclade, unfortunately mine is pretty obscure so I didn't get a worthwhile prediction till I put in 111 markers.  Still, Y67 would probably do for most people and it's much cheaper than the big Y project.

We seem to be in the same group as hundreds of Scots and Irish men, plus a fair few in England but they are all one step away from us, not sure exactly what implication that has but we are the same away from men in Southern and Northern Europe and everywhere in between so not close. I think the back story may be interesting even if we don't retrieve the correct surname.