Monday, March 16, 2009

My Y-DNA Results - Post 5: FamilyTreeDNA Possible Matches

My daughters gifted me a 20-marker Y-DNA test from The DNA Ancestry Project (http://www.dnaancestryproject.com/) for Christmas. I sent it in via mail in mid-January and checked into it last week and found that my results were available on Genebase.

The first post described Getting Started on the web site. The second post described Reading the Markers - seeing my 20 Y-DNA markers for the first time. In Post 3: GeneBase Family Tree I uploaded my family tree to Genebase and showed the results. Post 4: GeneBase Possible Matches looked for other people who might match my Y-DNA markers in the Genebase database.

In this post, I'm going to look for possible matches in the FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) database. FTDNA has the largest Y-DNA database online, and hosts thousands of Y-DNA Surname Projects. I went to the www.FamilyTreeDNA.com home page:




I clicked on the Projects tab in the menu line, and this screen appeared:




I put my surname, SEAVER, in the Search box in the top right corner of the page and clicked on Search. The screen below appeared:




There is one Surname Project that has SEAVER as one of the surnames associated with a Project:


I clicked on the link to the Project and the Sevier Project appeared. Note that it has a different URL - www.worldfamilies.net/sevier/



At this point, I could apply to be invited to join the Sevier Surname Project on FamilyTreeDNA. I sent an email to the Project Administrator requesting to be included. I'm still waiting (it's been one week). I cannot input my Y-DNA markers in for comparison to the project until I am officially a member of the project with my own user ID. However, I can look at the Y-DNA markers of the persons in the Sevier Y-DNA Project (I clicked on Y-Results in the top menu) and saw:




There are 16 persons in the Sevier Y-DNA surname project, grouped by probable common ancestor (different colors). I wrote my 20 Y-DNA markers on a piece of paper, and then wrote the corresponding values from the other project persons. The closest genetic match I found was 11 markers out of 16; the second closest was 10 out of 16.

My conclusion is that none of the persons in the Sevier Y-DNA Project are remotely related to me genetically. I looked at the earliest known ancestor and location, and observed that none of the persons on the Sevier Project page are descended from Robert Seaver (who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634). I think that is good - I have no evidence of a non-paternity event in my own Seaver line yet! Only one of the 16 on the page had a surname of Seaver, but it appears his earliest known ancestor came from Germany and is not in the R Haplogroup.

In the next post, I will go to DNA Ancestry and compare my results with Y-DNA markers there.

UPDATE: I found out, via email, that the Project Administrator recently passed away. I forwarded that information to the person who assigns Project Administrators for FamilyTreeDNA via email.

4 comments:

Lee Drew said...

Randy, your results are similar to mine. No known relatives. We both must be "out standing in our field".

Valorie said...

Randy, you might get more results from "Ysearch" which has most of the FTdna tests as well as others. Those comparisons are done by the computer rather than just eye-balling. It might also catch Seavers who are not in the Sevier surname project. There are a couple of other public searches you can do: Search (or upload) DNA results or GEDCOMS at YSearch: http://www.ysearch.org/ (FTDNA database),

Sorenson search: http://www.smgf.org/ychromosome/search.jspx

Ybase, Genealogy by numbers: http://www.ybase.org/ - Search by haplotype or surname; up to 49 markers

My dad's yDNA has really helped us to find distant cousins. I think it is well worth the money to test as many markers as you can afford.

Ginger Smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ginger Smith said...

Hi Randy, isn't this fun? My Godwin family has also been tested and we use the Goodwin/Godwin surname project at worldfamilies.net. Right now Ancestry.com is running the $79 special for 33 markers. We were able to run tests at both ftDNA and Ancestry.com and upload to and from both sites. I wrote a post describing how to go from Ancestry.com to ftDNA here