Someone mentioned to me recently that there was a new match to the Hartley and Mawdsley part of the YDNA tree. His last name is Wolka.
The Hartley and Mawdsley Part of the YDNA Tree
Wolka didn’t take the BigY test but if he did, this is the part of the tree he would be in. He took the 111 STR test.
Here I backed out the tree to Smith who is at A11138. Mawdsley is at A11132. After that are three flavors of Hartleys. Pulling further out, there is this tree:
This tree is half of the L513 tree. Hartley is in the lower right of this part of the tree. Actually the A16717 Branch of Hartleys is missing from this tree and I have mentioned this on Facebook to the author of this tree, so hopefully this will be corrected. There are other Hartleys in other trees, but they are not closely related by DNA to my Hartleys from the above tree.
STR Matches
Here is how I match Wolka by STRs:
At 111 STRs, Wolka is the only non-Hartley that I match. Based on that information alone, it would seem like Wolka could match me somewhere in the A11132 block and may even break up that block. At any rate, it would be interesting to see where Wolka fits on the YDNA tree.
The Wolka Name
The Wolka surname appears to be Polish. It is the name of a place in Poland, so I assume the name refers to someone from that place. The YDNA, however, points to Great Britain as the true heritage for the person who took this test. The most common way for this to happen would be due to an adoption or single mother situation. I don’t think that any other person with the Wolka surname has taken a YDNA – at least as far as I can tell.
In order to compare the Wolka results in more detail, I would need to know what his specific 111 STR results are. I do see that my brother matches Wolka at a closer level compared to my match with Wolka:
That is because I am a one step difference from my brother. Here is a proposed STR tree I drew a while back:
Here I have myself with DYS572 of 16. I also have the Michael and Lawrence branch with a 16 for the same STR. It appears to me now, that this would also be a valid STR tree:
In this scenario, my brother Jim has a back mutation at location DYS572 from 16 to 15 and what I call the Marsden branch of Michael and Lawrence share a common ancestor with my branch with a man who had a 16 value for DYS572. Either way, the fact that Wolka probably has a value of 15 for DYS572 supports the likelihood that this value is ancestral for our group. I suppose that if I was to test one of my second cousins, then it would be clear which scenario is correct.
Any Other Implications?
My brother Jim matches Wolka at one step less than four other Hartleys. This could mean that ancestors of this Wolka YDNA tester were at one time Hartleys.
Other Hartley Project Members Matching Wolka
Mawdsley’s closest 111 STR match is with Wolka:
Wolka Match to Michael and Lawrence
These two were on a well-documented Hartley Branch going back to a Hartley from the late 1600’s who was a Quaker. One branch of this family moved to Pennsylvania around the year 1700. Unfortunately, Michael took the BigY test at a time when the 111 STR test was not included, so he does not have those results. Here are the results for Lawrence (with some others):
This shows that by 111 STRs, Wolka so far is closest to the Lawrence (Quaker) branch of Hartleys. This is where Michael’s 111 STR test would have come in handy.
Other Wolka Matches
This seems to imply that Wolka is more somewhat more closely aligned with Steve and then Lawrence and Gary. The 67 STR information is not as important when the 111 STR information is available as the 111 STR information is more accurate.
TiP Report
This report gives a bit more accuracy than the genetic distance, so it is helpful. I’ll just look at the 90% confidence level. Here is the full report between myself and Wolka:
I’ll use 19 generations which is around 90%. That is far out. So if a generation is 30 years, then that would be 570 years ago or around 1452. As 90% is a pretty conservative number, I’ll subtract the generations from today rather than from when I was born which was 1956.
Here is what I come up with for the 111 STR test:
Here Steve is the clear winner at 1662. Mawdsley is back at 1452. If the date of 1662 is correct, that means that we are pretty far into the age of surnames. That also seems to imply that at some time in Wolka’s male line history, he should have some Hartley ancestors.
Here is the full report between Wolka and Steve:
Summary and Conclusions
- Wolka is an interesting new match and should fit in somewhere in the Hartley/Mawdsley YDNA branch of mankind
- Wolka took a 111 STR test which gets him into the ballpark of mostly Hartleys and one Mawdsley. SNP testing is more accurate than STR testing. That means that a BigY test would be needed to place Wolka within that YDNA tree
- The branch that Hartley and Mawdsley are go back to England and likely the Lancashire or perhaps Yorkshire area. As Wolka appears to be a Polish name, that means that there was probably a mis-attributed parentage in the Wolka line somewhere in the last 400 years or so.
- The more people that test – especially the BigY 700 test – the more defined the Hartley/Mawdsley tree is. Also the dates of each of these branches should become more clear.
- Based on STRs, Wolka appears to be more closely related to Steve’s branch of Hartleys. However, as mentioned above STRs are not the most accurate measure of relatedness.
- I did a TiP Report comparison which shows that Wolka’s connection to Steve is around 1662 at the 90% confidence level.