In a previous Blog, I wrote about Michael who has Nutter ancestry and tested his YDNA with a non-FTDNA company. Those results were uploaded to YFull which showed that he was A11134 on the male YDNA Tree. I also noted that so far, all the FTDNA BigY testers who are at the A11134 level have been Hartleys.
I have also noticed that there are two other people who have had 37 STRs tests taken at FTDNA. They have matches to some of the Hartleys in the Hartley project. They have that their ancestry goes back to Ireland.
Here is the list of people in the Hartley FTDNA YDNA Project that are grouped together:
The last two on the list are my brother and me. The first person has Mawdsely ancestry and is in the slightly more distant Haplogroup of A11132. The next two who have Richard and Roger Hartley as ancestors only tested to 12 STRs, so that information is not very useful.
The estermated Yorkshire tester matches the two Nutter testers. When I use the FTDNA TiP Report, there is a 90% chance that this Hartley and the two Nutters are related within 15 generations. If I take a generation to be 30 years for a male, then that would be about 450 years ago. If we take that to be from 1950, then that would be around the year 1500.
It would be interesting if one of these Nutter testers upgraded to the BigY 700 test. Due to the way the Nutter testers match the Hartleys, it appears that they could be close relatives to each other.
Nutter Genealogy
One of the two Nutter 37 STR testers has genealogy going back to Ireland. Here is his tree:
Here I am just interested in the father to father Nutter line. I can try to build a Nutter tree myself, to see if there are other connections to England. The more recent family was from Lowell, Massachusetts, so that is easy to trace as I live in Massachusetts.
I am interested in finding out more about Robert J Nutter as he immigrated to Lowell, MA. The 1910 Census has Robert arriving around 1860:
If my caculations are right, then he would have been about 10 years old when he moved from Ireland to the US. Robert’s wedding record shows that his parents were James and Mary:
I suspect that James P could be James R. I also believe that Robert’s real first name was James:
This also gives a place of birth for James Robert in Ireland:
This place is in County Kildare:
Here is the family in 1870:
It would take a lot of research to try to get this family back to England. The next step would be to try to find a marriage record for James Nutter and Mary.
The Census records give more clues. Here the family in 1880:
The family was living on Water Street in Lowell. Youngest son was Elias. Here is the Baptismal record for Elias from St Peter Roman Catholic Church in Lowell:
This gives his mother’s name as Mary Jordan. Mary died in a railroad accident. Her parents were John and Mary. The couple appear to have married in Dublin:
Unfortunately, the marriage and death records for for James gives no parents:
That puts this line of Nutter genealogy at a dead end for now.
More Nutter YDNA STR matches to Hartleys
The person who has David Hartley as an ancestor also matches Nutters with a genealogical difference (GD) of 3.
My recollection of this David is that he was from Yorkshire. The TiP Report between the David Hartley descendant and Nutter is also 15 generations at a 90% confidence, so also probably in the early 1500’s.
Descendant of William Shephard Hartley
The descendant of William Shephard Hartley also matches the two Nutter testers but with a GD of 4. Here is the TiP Report between these two:
Interestingly, even though the GD is greater, the number of generations at the 90% confidence level is fewer at 12 generations. Assuming 30 years per generation, this comes out to 360 years. For an easy calculation, I’ll subtract that from 1960 to get around the year 1600.
Comparing STR Matches in a Spreadsheet
Here is what I have so far:
Here is an interesting thing in that the GD of 3 results in a predicted 15 generation commona ancestor. That is compared to a GD of 2 and 4 with 12 generations to a common ancestor. That is no doubt due to the variance in the mutability of the different STRs. Some STRs change very slowly while others change relatively more quickly.
Here is the finished table:
The first tester is a Mawdsley and an earlier Haplogroup than the other Hartleys, so probably the connection to him goes back before the time that surnames were used. #2 and #3 on the list only tested for 12 STRs, so I wouldn’t include them either right now. Out of the other 11 testers, 7 had a GD of 4 or less to the two Nutter testers.
Based just on the 37 STR test (which is difficult to interpret and a low level of STR testing), I would say that there is a connection between Nutter and Hartley. The three possibilities being:
- There is an early Nutter line that descended from a Hartley line and branched out
- There is a Nutter line separate from the Hartley line and the connection between Hartley and Nutter is before the time of surnames
- Our branch of Hartleys descended from an earlier branch of Nutters. Based on the number of Hartleys compared to Nutters, I would find this to be the least likely scenario.
Summary and Conclusions
- Michael who has Nutter ancestry has recently sent out for a BigY700 test
- He has an existing Haplogroup from previous testing of A11134. Previously, only Hartleys have tested positive for A11134.
- There are two Nutters who have taken the 37 STR YDNA test at FTDNA. They appear to be closely related.
- I have looked at the genealoyg of of one of the 37 STR Nutter testers. I got stuck in Dublin, Ireland for the earliest known ancestor. However, the YDNA strongly suggests ancestry in the Lancashire/Yorkshire area of England.
- 7 of 11 Hartleys in my group of Hartleys at the FTDNA Hartley YDNA Project match these two Nutter STR testers
- It would be helpful if one of the Nutter 37 STR testers were to take the BigY700 test to compare with Michael’s upcomng results.