Category: Butler YDNA

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FTDNA’s Time Tree for YDNA BigY Testers

FTDNA has a new Time Tree which is interesting. I have three trees that I am interested: Frazer from my father’s mother’s side, Hartley from my side and Butler from my wife’s side

Frazer Time Tree

The Time Tree is under Discover More:

Then there is a menu on the left:

Here is the Frazer Time Tree:

I didn’t take the tree all the way back. I thought that back to the time of Christ was probably far enough.

A Closer View

Here we can related more and focus in on the genealogical timeframe. I assume that between the years 1200 and 1400, the clans were forming as the top 6 BigY testers are five Frazers and on Frazier/Frasher. The Frazier tester has an American Flag as the genealogy is colonial and cannot be traced back – though it likely goes back to Ireland or Scotland. This branch of Frazers is called R-YP6489. Down from Frazier on Time Tree above is Dingman. Then there are Rick and my by cousin Paul. Then there are Rodney and Jonathan.

Here is how I have the North Roscommon Branch of BigY-tested Frazers:

Dingman on the left has the generic North Roscommon Frazer Haplogroup of R-FT421618 because no one else on his branch has tested.

This is how the ‘Block Tree” at FTDNA looks like:

Here I have Frazier also in the image. By comparing the two previous images, there are some interesting things:

  • Jonathan and Rodney share an average of 5 private branches. That would seem to indicate the potential for some branching below R-Y151390 which is the branch for Thomas Henry Frazer born 1836. There is also a spare SNP which is FT421607. This is available for branching between James Frazer born about 1720 and Archibald Frazer born about 1792.
  • Rick and Paul show an average of three Private Variants. These would be for branches below James Frazer born 1804. The Private Variants in this case and for Rodney and Jonathan are not as important as the genealogy is better known in these two lines where these Variants would be applicable.
  • Perhaps what seem unexplainable at this time is why R-Y85652 has two additional equivalents. That would imply that, if my tree is right, that Philip Frazer would have had two mutations. I don’t think that is very likely. As these are equivalent SNPs, the other potential, given the above tree would be that Philip had one mutation and James had two mutations. I posed the question to the BigY Facebook Page as to whether one man could have two variants or SNPs. Some thought that two mutations in one person was possible.
  • Dingman’s line has four Private Variants. They would have ocurred in the seven generations since Archibald Frazer born about 1743.

Hartley Time Tree

This is from my own family.

The man in red represents my father as he is the one my brother and I have as a common ancestor. The man with the blue cross is a Smith. We have a common ancestor around 500. It is not clear as to whether our ancestors were from Scotland or if his branch moved North. Going up a branch, it would seem that most of the people from this line were in the area of England. A few testers in the branch above had ancestors from Wales:

For reference, the blue circle three from the bottom of the above image is Smith.

Hartley and Mawdsley

The top tester above is a Mawdsley. There had been some question as to whether this person should have been a Hartley. If we go with this timing with a common ancestor between Hartley and Mawdsley of around 1100 AD/CE, then there would be no need to group the two as surnames were not common at that time for the average person. I like to quote FamilySearch on this topic:

The custom of applying a man’s by-name to all his children began in the late 12th century and spread slowly, with the manorial classes and the south of England leading the way. The first legal recognition of an hereditary surname is found in 1267; it was de Cantebrigg meaning ‘of Canterbury.’ By 1400 three-quarters of the population are reckoned to have borne hereditary family names, and the process was complete by about 1450 in England. Wales is an exception, in that although they had surnames they were patronymics (derived from the father’s first name) and thus changed each generation.

The Hartleys seem to fit this general statement as the first Hartley common ancestor (if FTDNA’s estimate is correct) is shown to be:

In general terms, the Hartley “Time Tree” shows two major branches of Hartleys. The first group branches off from R-A11134 and the second group branches off from R-A16717:

This branch is about 140 years more recent than R-A11134. The common ancestor of this branch was born, according to the tree in 1572. This date is about 90 years off from the to the actual genealogy. However, it could be that A16717 first ocurred in the grandfather or great-grandfather of Edward Hartley:

I call this the Quaker Branch of Hartleys. Edward Hartley from Little Marsden came to Pennslyvania and started the US branch of this Hartley family. There is another YDNA tester who is considering the BigY test who descends from the Thomas Line above. This is the line from the Hartley researcher I have corresponded with:

>Edward Hartley born 16 May 1666 married? Sarah Midgley
>Thomas Hartley b. 29 Dec. 1700 Solebury, Bucks County Pa. married Elizabeth Paxon
>Anthony Hartley b. 3 Dec. 1730 married Elizabeth Smith
>Jonathan Hartley b. 221 Octoner 1761 married Elizabeth Bunting
>David Bunting Hartley b. 28 Sep. 1786 married Phoebe Park
>Hiram J. Hartley b. 27 March 1824 NJ married Rebecca Church Lee
>Harry Lee Hartley b. 9 June 1864 married Emma Bell Leach
>Robert Hartley b. 17 June 1896 married Grace Maloney Roberts
>John Robert Hartley b. 4 August 1922 married Alice Buren Wrighy

One way to look at it, is if the Quaker Line is about 90 years too old on the tree, then perhaps we could move the other branches ahead 90 years. That wouldn’t work for my father’s branch as the timing on that is so close. Here is my tree with the John Robert line added:

Butler Time Tree

My wife is a Butler and there are a few Butlers who have taken the BigY test:

On this line, it doesn’t take much to get back to over 3,000 years ago. The Frazer lines were R1a, The Hartley lines were R1b. This line is in the I Haplogroup. Let’s start with the red Haplogroup I-FT241245. The two testers are my brother-in-law and father-in-law. In this case, my father-in-law is the common ancestor who has FY241245. The estimated date for that Haplogroup is 1907 or close enough to 1932 when my father-in-law was born.

The next person up on the tree is Butler researcher Peter:

This tree is showing that Peter and my in-law’s have a common ancestor born around 1557. In a Blog I wrote on 1 March 2021, I came up with these dates:

That’s a difference of about 125 years.

Next Branch Up

The next Branch going back in time includes a Whitson and a Batt.

The date that FTDNA gives for the common ancestor at I-BY50783 is 1449. This is interesting as it seems like only one SNP separates these two ancestors. That comes up with 108 years per SNP in this case. That is about what I was using in my guess – 100 years per SNP.  But I came up with a different result somehow.

Comparing the Three Time Trees

I am impressed with the regular branching on the Time Tree that the Frazers are on:

This is true especially starting after 900 CE with some sort of branching in every 200 year period following. This may be a result of the fact that many people with Scottish origins tend to have their YDNA tested. Another explanation would be lines that were successful and prospered.

The Hartley Time Tree does not have the same regularity in its branching:

Here we see no branching between around the years of 500 and 1100 CE. This could be due to fewer testers and/or lines that were not doing as well. Intermediary lines may have died out. This could be due to wars, famine, disease or simply famiilies have no males born.

The Butler Time Tree has even less branching:

There are two main branches that ocurred before 1,000 BCE. After that there was no addition branching until almost 1500 CE. That is about 2,500 years without branching. This line is probably severely undertested and/or went through very tough times. This is picked up somewhat at the SNP Tracker Website:

Notice that whole eras are skipped. Medieval and Iron Ages are missing.

Summary and Conclusions

  • FTDNA has a new helpful representation of a timeline for BigY testers. This is not the final say, but a helpful tool to compare with other estimates and with genealogy where available.
  • I looked at the trees that I have looked into. Those are Frazer, Hartley and Butler
  • I compared the three trees to each other. I noted that the Frazer Time Tree has the most consistent and regular branching going back in time. The Butler Time Tree has the sparsesest branching going back before the time of Christ.
  • As a result, I would ten to have the most faith in the Frazer timelines. There is good branching and somewhat of a check as we believe that common Rocscommon Frazer ancestor represented by R-FT521618 was born around 1690. I feel the Hartley Time Tree is slightly less reliable due to fewer branches but we have the genealogy for the common ancestor for the ‘Quaker Line’ born in 1666. In my opinion, the Butler Time Tree could be the least reliable of the three due to no ancient genealogy to check and the fact that branching in the line is sparse – especially before the genealogical timefrane.
  • FTDNA is continuing to calibrate its age estimates. One good example of how FTDNA’s Time Tree can be calibrated is with Edward Hartley born 1666. If this person is reported to FTDNA, they will be able to use that information to correct their current estimate of a common ancestor of 1572.

 

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Big Y “Backbone Tests”

I recently noticed that a Backbone Test had been ordered for my late father-in-law. This surprised me as it was a bit dated.

I mentioned this at the BigY Facebook group and got an interesting answer from Bob:

I think you will find that this Y-HAP-Backbone was ordered as a part of a manual review process triggered by another user’s test results.
Originally, the Y-HAP-Backbone test was performed if FTDNA was unable to unambiguously predict a person’s high-level haplogroup from their STR test results. They would actually perform enough SNP testing to resolve the ambiguity.
In the case of somebody who has actually done a BigY test, there should be no necessity to predict a haplogroup from the STRs.
Normally, the automated caller will consider a result to be a no-call if there are not at least ten reads for that position. If a new kit has a result that might affect the haplogroup definitions, a manual review of the other kits assigned to the haplogroup may occur. The analyst doing the review will look at the raw data and may decide to override the no-call reported by the automated caller. To do this override, the analyst orders the Y-HAP-Backbone procedure. In this case, no actual lab work is involved. It is simply a database operation to report the new result for that SNP.
If you display the user’s Private Haplotree, you can scroll to the top of the page and click on the “SNP Results” link, you will see a list of SNPs. If there are any overridden SNP results, they should be sorted to the top of the list. The test type will be shown as Y-HAP-Backbone. The result may be positive or negative.
If you scroll down through the pages of this report, in addition to any BigY test results, if the user has done any other SNP testing, you will see those results listed. In the case of BigY test results only positive results are shown. (After all, you are negative for several hundred thousand SNPs.)
In my own surname project, until recently our haplogroup had one subclade. We had three men assigned to the main haplogroup and six men assigned to the subclade. Even though our BigY test results actually showed the three of us to be negative for the SNP defining the subclade, these negative results were not being shown in the SNP Results list in our Private Haplotree. During an early manual review, the analyst ordered the Y-HAP-Backbone procedure for the three of us. The result is that we now are shown as negative for this SNP. The color coding in the tree now indicates that we are “Tested Negative” instead of being indicated as “Downstream”. Since that time, a new kit was found to share an additional SNP with one of the three. This resulted in a second subclade being defined. The analyst creating the subclade did not bother to override the calls for the two men remaining in the main haplogroup, so we show “Downstream” for the new subclade.
By the way, the order status for the three of us with negative results for the Y-HAP-Backbone procedures for the SNP defining the original subclade still shows that order as pending. Apparently because no lab work was performed, they failed to mark the order as completed. We have other Y-HAP-Backbone procedures (with positive results) that did get reported as completed.
Does the entry in the SNP Results list for your member’s kit show negative results, or are they all positive?
I was happy to get this reply as it answered many questions I had for my Butler father-in-law’s test as well as a Frazer project I am working on. I posted this image of my father-in-law’s SNP results at the BigY Facebook  Page:
I asked Bob this clarifying question:
Sorry, though, still a bit confused. Are you saying an override does not involve SNP testing? So in this case, the Backbone means no test and the tested negative means that a test was done?
Bob’s response:
While it may be a little confusing, the answer to both is yes. FTDNA does not offer a single-SNP test for FT241245, so the backbone procedure did not involve a laboratory test. They just looked at the raw data from the BigY test. You should be able to do something similar using the chromosome browser. When looking at this user’s BigY Results (Named Variants tabs, change the Derived? filter to Show All and enter the SNP name in the SNP Name Search box.
I suspect that it will show a ? In the Derived? And Genotype columns. Click on the SNP name to bring up the chromosome browser. I suspect that you will have fewer than ten reads shown, resulting in a no-call.
By the way, the Y-HAP-Backbone procedure results in the line being added to your SNP Results list. However, it does not actually result in a change to your raw data or what is shown in the Named Variants tab.
In response, I posted this image of my father-in-law’s results for FT241245:
I wanted to memorialize Bob’s comments as they were so helpful. I have been looking at “Backbone Test” results in a Frazer YDNA Project that I am involved in and Bob’s response answered so many of my questions.

Butler and S23612

As alluded to above, S23612 shows on the SNP results as ‘tested negative’. Let’s look for those results:

 

Just as Bob predicted, this shows up as tested negative. However, I’m not sure why this particular SNP was chosen. I would think that I-S23907 would have made more sense or perhaps BY115420.

Here are my father-in-law Richard’s results for S23612:

He is already clearly negative. Plus this SNP appears to be about 4 or 5,000 years old.

Speaking of S23897

I see that I mentioned S23897 in a previous Blog on Butler YDNA.

This is for a Butler relative with common Irish roots, but we have not yet established a genealogical connection. Now, thanks to Bob, I know where to find this Butler’s secret testing results:

Well, perhaps not secret, but they were to me previously. This Butler has a surprising 7 Negative SNP results. What I am seeing is that this Butler relative must have ordered these SNP separately before he did his BigY:

Frazer Backbone Tests

I have been waiting for Frazer ‘backbone tests’ to complete. However, according to Bob, these could be manual overrides instead of actual tests. Also, confusingly, these tests may not have an end date if the reviewer forgot to put in a date.

Here is a view of the Frazer BigY testers from the view of one of the testers from the James Frazer Line who took the BigY500 test:

My labels didn’t come out too well. The first column represents the James Frazer line and the ‘Your Branch’ represents the BigY500 tester on that line. At the top of his SNP results, we see this:

From the comments from Bob, the Y-HAP-Backbone should represent a manual override for Y151390 which is the defining Haplogroup for the James Frazer Line. Here is the order history for that same tester:

This is confusing because of the batched designation which shows after the ‘completed’ designation. However, I assume that these three entries were for the one override for Y151390. Here are his test results:

Here, he only has 7 positive reads where FTDNA would like to see 10. However, the manual review said they were all positive, so let’s say he is Y151390.

BigY700 on the James Line

The same thing apparently happened for the BigY700 tester.

Here is the James Line BigY700 order history:

This takes some interpretation. I assume that the Backbone got entered twice by mistake and that only the one entry that was actually done shows as completed. Keep in mind here that ‘backbone’ means manual override of inconclusive test results. Here are the BigY700 test results for Y151390:

This is a bit surprising as the results show positive for Y151390, so there were no questionable results to override.

My guess is that the manual review took a look at these results and agreed with them.

Archibald Line Results and Frazier BigY results

The BigY500 tester had no overrides in his SNP results. The same for the BigY700 tester. That must mean that FTDNA had no questions about their results.

That leaves the Frazier BigY results. He also has no unusual results on his list of SNPs. That means that the review was completed for Frazer/Frazier BigY’s some time in early February.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It was a help for Bob from the BigY Facebook Page to show me where to find the SNP Results link at the top of the BigY Haplotree view
  • This gave more clarification to the manual review which FTDNA performed and explained why it looked like a Backbone test was outstanding
  • FTDNA has a confusing array of places where they store information and show the results of the work they have done. They also seem to do things inconsistently. However, with perserverence and help from others who have gone through the process, it is possible to get an idea of how one’s BigY test was reviewed and processed.

 

 

 

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A Different Look at the I2 Butler/Whitson BigY Results

In my previous Blog, I set out to look at the finalized results of my brother-in-law’s BigY test. While doing that, I saw that a Whitson in the I2 section of the Whitson/Butler Project had also taken a BigY Test. That test apparently helped to place a lot of my brother-in-law’s previous Private Variants onto the YDNA Tree. Here is a summary of the overall Whitson Project:

The part that I am looking at in this Blog is the green area. This is on the YDNA tree in the general area of I2. Those who have taken the BigY test are in green. My brother-in-law is the next to the last tester on the list and my father-in-law is the last. Batt, Butler tester with James Butler as ancestor and my father-in-law Richard, had the older BigY500 tests. The new Whitson tester who doesn’t show an ancestor and my brother-in-law had the new BigY 700 tests.

The BigY Block Tree for Whitson/Butler at I2

Here is the Block Tree:

The Butlers are under I-Y128364. Batt has Whitson ancestry. that means that I-BY115420 is the Whitson side. Above this is a large Block of SNPs from position 7 to position 45 (not shown) collectively named for one of the SNPs in the Block: I-Y128591. The Block tree is from my brother-in-law Ken’s perspective, so he is not shown but is in the left column under I-FT241245. Because the older tests of BigY 500 did not cover a lot of the SNPs, the two new testers (one Butler and one Whitson) have greatly helped to improve the tree. However, I think that the tree could be better. I will likely discuss that later in the Blog.

The Different Look

Here is the different look from FTDNA. I’ll start with Ken. This just focuses on the individual, where the Block tree represents 5 testers. Here are the headings for the tree:

The detail will be in the five categories of tested SNPs.

There is no need to go too far up this tree. As I mentioned above, I-Y128591 has 39 SNPs in it. This could represent about 3900 years. I-Y128364 represents the Butler with the James Butler ancestor. I-BY115420 is the Whitson group. Ken only has two colors of the dots representing ‘tested positive’ or ‘presumed negative’. I would think that he should have some yellow dots for ‘presumed positive’. For example, Ken should be presumed positive for BY48499 under A427, then he should be presumed positive for FGC70597, etc.

Here are Ken’s results for BY48499:

This shows four out of five runs came up with a mutation at this location.

My Father-In-Law’s Version of the Tree

This view is pretty much the same except that, as he had the older BigY 500 test, he has more gray dots (which I believe should be yellow dots).

Tester with James Butler Ancestor

These results introduce a few more colored dots. FT241245 has a blue dot for downstream. He also has a red dot for S23897. That confirms that he tested negative for this SNP and was not just presumed negative. Again, I believe that all the gray dots above the highlighted row should be yellow dots.

New Whitson Tester

Here I highlighted a SNP with a red shopping basket. It is noted that this SNP is part of a SNP Pack.

Batt

I would expect to see more gray dots for Batt’s BigY 500 test:

Back to Private Variants

I spend a lot of time on Private Variants as they are on the cutting edge of the BigY tests. If these are really private variants, then they should describe a future branch of the tree. If they are not, then they should be describing an upstream branch of the YDNA tree.

Ken and His Dad

Due to the closeness of the relationship, Ken’s dad should not have any SNPs that Ken does not have. Richard has no Private Variants, but he also took a less comprehensive test. As these SNPs form about every 100 years on average, it would be rare also for Ken to have Private Variants. Yet he has three:

I have Ken’s Private Variants (PVs) in yellow above. These positions were not tested for in his father, but if they were, he would most likely test positive for them. The next to test is Eng Butler or the Butler with James as his ancestor. I have that he has a ? by his results for 17140468:

Batt has the same ambiguous results and Whitson has a definite no. That means that we don’t know if Ken’s ‘Private Variants’ should show up under FT241245 or Y128364:

Ken’s PVs probably would not show up under Y128591 as Whitson tested negative for these PVs.

James Butler Ancestor Private Variants

The tester with James Butler as an ancestor has these Private Variants:

If we can trust these are truly Private Variants, then we can say that they define the James Butler Line down to the present day tester.

Here, Ken tested negative for these two positions. So the two Private Variants for the James Butler ancestor are valid. There may be other positions that were not tested for under the BigY 500 test that could be private variants also.

Whitson Private Variants

These are from the newest tester in the group:

Whitson has three Private Variants. I’ll check Whitson’s closest match who is Batt. Batt is actually negative for 12984909:

The other two positions are unclear:

That means that it is possible that the second two positions could actually be SNPs for Batt and Whitson under BY115420.

Batt Private Variants

Batt has two PVs:

My guess is that these two should be valid. Again, I’ll check Batt’s closest match who is Whitson:

Whitson does not have the first position.

Whitson has a clear ‘no’ for 19550845 also. This means that Batt has two unambiguous Private Variants.

Common Ancestor Dating

This is easier to see in the Block Tree view:

 

The places where the common ancestors are dated are in the ewhite space btween the SNPs. The common ancestor between Butler and Whitson is in the white space where the second arrow is. The common ancestor between the two Butler families is in the white space where the first arrow is.

Common Butler Ancestor

In order to get to the date for the Butler ancestor we need to assume a number of years per SNPs or Private Variant. I will use 100 as a round figure. I know that Ken has three private variants, so I will say that he shares 1.5 private variants with his father. That is assuming that FTDNA is right with the analysis. It is also possible that Ken actually shares his Private Variant with the other Butler Branch. That would put those SNPs in a Block under Y128364.

I’ll add those 1.5 private variants to the the two SNPs under FT241245 to get 3.5 SNPs. Then I’ll average those with the other Butler’s two Private Variants to get 2.75. Based on the assumption of 100 years per SNP, that would results in a common ancestor for the two Butler Lines of 275 years ago or the year 1745. That sounds pretty recent.

Common Butler/Whitson Ancestor

There are many more SNPs on the Whitson side compared to the Butler side. This means that it is possible that the Whitson SNPs came about more often than the Butler SNPs. However, the end point has to be the same for the common ancestor for these two groups. that is where the second red arrow is above. Average 2.75 with 6 to get 4.375 or 438 years. That puts the common ancestor for Butler and Whitson at the year 1582. If I come back down on the Butler side and add 100 years for Y128364, I get 1682 compared to the 1745 I previously had.

I used the 1682 date above because it was based on averaging more SNPs. For the second Butler Line, that means that a SNP was formed about once every 130 years assuming that tester was born around 1940. Also, that tester may actually find more Private Variants if the test was upgraded to BigY 700. If we use the present date, then there would be a SNP every 170 years.

On the Whitson side, there were 6 SNPs in about 440 years to present. That is a new SNP every 73 years.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I took a look at 5 BigY tests from the point of view of their individual Y-DNA Haplotrees. This look gives some extra imformation on the testing results for testers’ individual SNPs.
  • I took another stab at estimating dates to common ancestors based on the way that FTDNA has the SNPs and Private Variants for the five Butler/Whitson BigY testers. These results were very similar to what I came up with in a previous Blog.
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The Finalized Butler BigY Results for My Brother-In-Law and a New Whitson BigY

I last looked at my brother-in-law’s BigY 700 results in April of 2020. That was quite a while ago. At that time, Ken had 17 Private Variants. That was odd as his father had also tested and he shouldn’t have had that many Private Variants. He should only have one if any. The problem was that FTDNA had not yet finished their manual review and dealt with all of Ken’s Private Variants. The other problem was that Ken had done the BigY 700 and his father had taken the BigY 500 which does not have as good of coverage in identifying SNPs on the Y Chromosome. That means that Ken had extra SNPs identified that his father’s test did not cover.

Here is a look at Ken’s Private Variants now:

Ken is now down to 3 Private Variants from a previous 17. That is a big difference. Here is Ken’s Block Tree:

Ken;’s three Private Variants are averaging out to 1 Private Variant on the Block Tree. Ken’s late father had no Private Variants.

Dating the Block Tree

Now that the tree is finalized with respect to Ken’s results, let’s try to date it. SNPs form between about every 83 and 144 years. I’ll use 100 years as a round number. The common ancestor of the two Butlers, Whitson and Batt should be at the level just above what is shown on the image above. To get to that level Ken’s branch has four SNPs and the next Butler branch has three SNPs. I’ll average that at 3.5 SNPs. The Whitson/Batt Line has 6 SNPs to get to the same level. 6 averaged with 3.5 SNPs is 4.75 SNPs or 475 years. 475 years ago is about the year 1545. That is quite a while ago.

From there we can work forward. We had 3.5 SNPs on average on the Butler Lines. 475/3.5 is 135 years. That means that the common ancestor on the Butler Lines could be around 1680.

More on Dates

1680 is a possible date for a common ancestor between the two Butler Lines. Both these lines are from Ireland, so that would also be a top candidate for the location of the common ancestor of the Butler side of the Block Tree. Butler researcher Peter thinks that my wife’s branch of Butler originates in Wexford County, Ireland.

The 1545 date is more complicated. My understanding is that the Whitson side is said to be from England. Here is some information from the Batt tester’s tree:

Assuming that this information is right, then the Butler family could have been in England in 1545. So far, the Butler genealogy stalls out in Ireland in the early 1800’s. Then the other question is why there is a Butler Line and a Whitson Line. Did one Whitson Branch move to Ireland and change the name to Butler? Was the English Whitson Branch originally Butler and change the name to Whitson in England?

YDNA and SNP Tracker

There is a website called SNP Tracker that makes some guesses as to dates and places also. Here is the SNP for Whitson – BY115420:

This map misses the Roman and Iron periods. That must be the big Block of SNPs where there are no matches. So between the blue dot and orange dot on the map there is a great unknown. Here is a timeline going back 10,000 years:

SNP Tracker for the Butler SNPs

This should be a little more refined as there are three testers and one father-son pair:

This shows Butler as going through England in Medieval times.  Here is the timeline:

Here I don’t agree with the timelines – especially for FT241245. This is a SNP that both Ken and his father share. However, it was formed much earlier. In my own dating I had the date of 1680 above this SNP. That means that this SNP could have formed around 1700 – so I am  not too far off from SNP Tracker. However, before that SNP Tracker has Y128364 at 1300 CE. That should only be one SNP older than FT241245, so I don’t agree with the 300 year period between these two SNPs. As a reality check, Y128364 appears to be at the same level as the Whitson BY115420 which is dated at 1700 CE by SNP tracker. Bottom line: I like my own dates better.

SNP Tracker also has a new mapper just for Great Britain and Ireland:

This shows Butler going to County Kilkenny. I’m not sure I agree with that. I think that many of the Kilkenny Butlers may be R1b, instead of my wife’s Butlers who are in the I Haplogroup. I’m not sure if SNP Tracker accounts for that. Here is some more detail from SNP Tracker:

Where DId Ken’s Other Private Variants Go?

In my previous Blog, I had suggested that most of Ken’s Private Variants should end up here:

However, I notice another change since this image. Before the right column was just Batt. Now there are Whitson results.

A New Whitson BigY

I see by the new Whitson match list, that his test must have been finalized last October:

Here is the new Whitson Block Tree:

Here I have highlighted some of the new SNPs that have appeared in the block above since my brother-in-law Ken tested. There are now 15 new SNPs in that Block potentially representing about 1500 years of time. Also of interest is that the Batt match on the Block Tree has Whitson ancestry. That means that we can simplify this tree somewhat between Butler on the left and Whitson on the right.

The new Whitson tester had a good result for Batt. Previously, Batt’s defining SNP was I-Y128591. That was 35 SNPs from present based on the previous image with the pink arrow. That could be from around 3500 years ago or roughly 1500 BC. Now Whitson and Batt have a defining SNP of I-BY115240 which I have dated at approximately a little later than 1545. That is an improvement of 3,000 years.

Back to Ken’s Private Variants

Most of Ken’s Private Variants turned into older SNPs. These in effect moved back the I-Y128591 Block 1500 years to about 4500 years ago or 2500 BC. Here is my comparison spreadsheet of Ken’s old 17 Private Variants:

My guess is that the new Whitson BigY test was the one that moved these SNPs up to the I-Y158591 Block. In the chart above, N means that the SNP was not tested. Rich is Ken’s dad above. A question mark means that the SNP was tested but the results were inconclusive.

Comparing Ken’s Old Private Variants (PVs) to the new SNPs in the I-Y158591 Block.

As I had named 15 of Ken’s old PVs and there were 15 new SNPs in the I-Y158591, it seems like there could be a one to one match. But there wasn’t:

Three of Ken’s old PVs didn’t make it up to the Y158591 Block and three of Ken’s SNPs not previously named made it there. First, I’ll see if Ken’s first two PVs have names yet:

Ken’s first PV is the newer FT394377. I would say newer, due to the higher number of the SNP. Ken’s second previously unnamed SNP is now also named:

This gets us close to reconciling Ken’s list. Here are Ken’s present Private Variants:

I have put Ken’s current Private Variants on the table as PVs. That leaves one extra SNP not previously accounted for. Right now, of Ken’s previous 17 PVs, 14 made it up to the Y128591 Block and three remained as PVs. That leaves FT394717.

FT394717

Here are Ken’s results for FT394717:

The reason that this position or SNP did not appear previously is that the results were ambiguous. Here are the detailed test results:

Ken shows that he did have FT394717. However, he had only one read and usually 10 positive reads would be acceptable. Next, I’ll check the new Whitson BigY results.

The New Whitson Tester and the New SNPs in Y128591

It appears that the new Whitson tester matched with many of Ken’s previously Private Variants. That resulted in FTDNA adding these as SNPs to the already large block of Y128591. Here is one that the new Whitson tester tested positive for:

This is FT394777:

The new Whitson tester must have been positive for the other SNPs in the orange box also.

Ken’s New Private Variants

In order for Ken to have new Private Variants, the new Whitson tester should have tested negative for those Variants. This is a little more difficult to determine. However, partial results are in the new Whitson tester’s csv file. Here are Ken’s Private Variants;

Let’s look at the Whitson tester at position 17140468:

The reference and the genotype are both T for Whitson. For Ken, there is a mutation from T to A. However, I would question whether this is a true PV for Ken as his father did not have that position tested. It is more likely that Ken’s father is also positive for that position:

Ken’s dad’s results clearly did not have position 17,140,468 tested. It would be likely that there would be no Private Variants when a father and son test.

New Whitson Private Variants

The new Whitson tester also has three Private Variants:

I’ll check Ken to see if he has no variant at position 12984909. I will have to download his csv file to find this out:

Ken is not positive for this variant.

What about Batt?

Batt is questionable for this position. That means that the Whitson Private Variant is also questionable. Whitson has it, but it may be a shared SNP with Batt and not just a Private Variant. In fact, all the Whitson Private Variants are in the same category:

Summary and Conclusions

  • When I checked on the 17 Private Variants my brother-in-law had, I was glad to see that these have been resolved.
  • I was also glad to see that there is now another Whitson BigY tester.
  • It was probably the new Whitson BigY tester that resolved my brother-in-law’s Private Variants
  • These Private Variants became older SNPs going back to the period between about 2500 BC and 1550 AD. They increased the age of the I-Y128591 Block by about 1500 years. This period is somewhat mysterious as
  • The new Whitson tester matched with the Batt tester who has Whitson ancestry and gave them both a much more recent SNP than Batt already had. Batt’s defining SNP moved up from 1500 BC to about 1550 AD.
  • I made a guess on the time and place for the common ancestors of the Butler BigY testers: about 1680 in County Wexford, Ireland
  • I also made a guess for the date common ancestors of the Butler and Whitson Lines. This was the same 1550 date mentioned above. The place could be England. However, was the original name Whitson or Butler. Which branch changed and why is unclear. A single mother could have giver her name to her child, or there could have been an adoption. Those are two possibilities.
  • I looked at the SNP Tracker to see what results were there for Butler and Whitson
  • I looked at the Butler and Whitson Private Variants. It is unlikely that Ken should have any Private Variants. Also the Whitson Private Variants are questionable. The result, if Batt and Ken’s father upgraded to the BigY 700, is that these Private Variants could turn into Butler and Whitson shared SNPs.

 

 

 

 

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More On My Butler Brother-In-Law’s BigY 700 17 Private Mutations

My brother-in-law’s BigY 700 test results came in on February 14th this year. One thing that seems strange to me is that he has 17 private variants. This leads me to believe that FTDNA has not yet finished it’s manual review. In my previous Blog, I didn’t have access to my brother-in-law’s results. Now I do.

Private Variants

Normally there should not be any private variants or perhaps one at the most between a father and son. So where did these come from? My guess is that they could be from earlier YDNA branching. Private variants show as position numbers on the Y Chromosome. Here are the first 10 belonging to my brother-in-law:

I’ll check the first position at YBrowse, to see if there is any more information there:

This is interesting, because this appears to be a new, unnamed SNP. Here are my brother-in-law’s test results:

They look like good results. I’m starting to guess now, but perhaps my brother-in-law picked up a new SNP that no one has ever tested for before.

Let’s try the next position:

This looks new also.

12,227,342

This position at least gave me a SNP number:

Here are some more details:

This tells me that this is a named SNP, but it is a new one as of 2020. This SNP was probably named as a result of my brother-in-law’s BigY test.

I’m beginning to see a trend here. Here is Richard’s csv file for that position:

Richard’s test didn’t cover as many YDNA locations as it was an older test. So the position that his son tested for is new.

Here is a spreadsheet for looking at my brother-in-law’s new private variants:

I’m going down the list. The private SNP at 26M was discovered earlier by a different company:

Summary of My Brother-In-Law’s New 17 Private Variants

Notice the last column. That is the one that says that Richard’s test never covered the position or new SNP that his son has. That explains the 17 new private variants.

Spreading the Net Wider to England

The next logical step is to check my brother-in-law’s private variants against the other BigY Butler tester in England.

Now I’m getting somewhere. The question mark means that EB was tested for the position number but that the results were inconclusive. EB was not tested for the first two position numbers, so they remain without a SNP name. I assume this is where my brother-in-law could match his father or theoretically have a new private variant. That means that my brother-in-law could end up with two private variants down from 17.

In a previous Blog, I had predicted that these new SNPs may go in the Block above Batt under I-Y128591 or even above that. This is still a good place for these 15 SNPs.

Going Up a Level To Batt

I can go one level further. This sheds some further light:

The question marks mean that there was not enough information to say that the tester was positive or negative for a mutation at the location. However, the fact that Batt had a possible mutation at every position of my brother-in-law’s private variants suggests that my brother-in-law will end up with zero private mutations. Mystery solved.

Summary and Conclusions

  • A comparison between my brother-in-law and his father showed that my brother-in-law had 17 private variants. However, that was because those 17 locations were not covered in my father-in-law Richard’s BigY test.
  • A comparison between my brother-in-law and his next closest Butler match showed that match had been tested at 15 of those locations, but the results were inconclusive.
  • I then went out another level and found that Batt had been tested at every location of my brother-in-law’s private variants, but the results were inconclusive at all of those locations.
  • It is likely that my brother-in-law’s test results will confirm each questionable test and that he will end up with no private variants.
  • I guessed where the extra 17 SNPs will end up, but I don’t have enough information to be sure that they will be in the I-Y128591 Block or above that.

 

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Update on the New Butler Haplogroup

In my previous Blog, I looked at the new Butler Haplogroup. It turned out that these were actually two new haplogroups.

The two new SNPs are both in the I2 Haplogroup. They are I-Y129564 and I-FT241564. Here is what the genealogy looks like on the Richard Butler side.

I’m not sure I did the tree right, as technically, Richard’s son should be below Richard. I just meant to show that they both had the two SNPs shown above.

These two SNPs formed between the time of birth of the common ancestor between Richard and the Butler from England. I don’t know when that common ancestor was born. I’ll say it was 1700 to be conservative. Richard was born in 1932. The means that these two SNPs formed in about 200 to 232 years. As SNPs form on average between 83 and 144 years, this time period makes sense.

English Butler Private SNPs

The English Butler who is I-Y128364 has 2 private variants:

Here they are:

If the English Butler has a close relative who does the BigY test, these two Private Variants would form their YDNA Branch.

13619832

I’ll use YBrowse to find out more about the English Butler’s private variants:

Thiss position number shows up as BY122010

This SNP was discovered when the English Butler did his BigY test in 2018:

15906031

For some reason, this SNP was discovered a year earlier:

I retyped the tree for what is a likely outcome for the English Branch of Butlers:

At the top is the Butler/Whitson ancestor. The Butler tree is on the left. Now I have Richard’s son below Richard. This shows four BigY testers. Notice, sometimes I put an I before the SNP name and sometimes not. Either way is OK. All these are within the I2 Haplogroup. There is a 30,000 year difference between I1 and I2:

The above depiction is from the Eupedia website.

Batt

The Batt Line from I-Y128591 has 5 Private Variants:

I could do the same exercise that I did for the English Butler, but I won’t. If a close relative of Batt were to take a BigY test, that would likely name the 5 SNPs that have formed in the previous 700 years.

My Brother-In-Law’s Private Variants

My Brother-in-law still has apparently about 16 private variants. I haven’t seen them yet, but his father Richard has 0 private variants and the average private variants between father and son is 8.  From Richard’s Non-Matching Variants:

These are Richard’s non-matching variants compared to his son, the Butler living in England and Batt. The fact that both my brother-in-law and EB (English Butler) have BY28891 and BY29432 seems significant. The fact that Richard doesn’t share these SNPs with his son or EB suggests that his son and EB share these SNPs with each other.

Here is Richard’s results for this SNP:

This shows Richard had only one positive read out of about 10 for this SNP. EB, on the other hand, had about 13 good reads:

Let’s take this SNP up a step to Batt:

Batt actually had 9 good reads, but because Richard had a lousy test, it was not originally included. That means that this SNP should be added to the Butler/Whitson Block:

The SNP could even be further upstream, but it is likely where I show. Putting a new SNP in this Block would not increase the distance between Butler and Batt, but would increase the number of years between Butler, Batt/Whitson and the next closest YDNA relative on the tree. These next matches are quite distantly related and have ancestors from Scotland and the Russian Federation:

BY29432

I’ll check this SNP, to see if it follows the same pattern. In this case, Richard has a much better read:

There is a little arrow at the location of the read.

EB has a bit of a wild read:

I say wild because the Genotype is C and the mutation shows as changing first to A and then to G, but mostly to G like Richard’s results.

Next, I’ll check Batt:

This shows some confusion in the test:

Batt’s faded reads were low quality and the mutation apparently also called the genotype came out as T. There were more than 10 reads of C > G. There is also tow more pages of results for Batt:

Above is the last page. The second page had some more faded T’s. This last page has a good read for a C > A which appears to correspond to EB’s C > A reads, though I think EB’s reads were lower quality. Bottom line is that I think that FTDNA should also add this SNP to the Butler/Whitson Block, but I don’t know all of FTDNA’s standards. If they do, my brother-in-law’s results would be the tippng point.

This is the kind of manual review that FTDNA will be doing with my brother-in-law’s new BigY 700 results. This, in addition to looking at his Private Variants.

Looking At the Butler YDNA Project and Ancestry

There are 599 members of the Butler YDNA Project. There are 5 members who mention Wexford in their ancestry:

  • Two Butlers are I1,
  • two are I2 and
  • one is R1b. R1b is traditionally Irish, though more detail would be needed as this could include England or other parts of Europe also.

Richard is not included in the Wexford Butlers, even though his ancestry probably goes back there. I have him in the YDNA Butler Project as having Kilkenny ancestry as that is as far back as I’ve gotten in the genealogy.

Butlers with Kilkenny Ancestry

I also see five Butlers who show Kilkenny Ancestry:

  • One I2 – This is Richard, but he probably will end up being listed as from Wexford.
  • One R1a – R1a could indicate Scandinatvian origin.
  • Three R1b’s – However, two of these have the Fitzpatrick name

That means that, in this unscientific survey, Wexford Butlers are more likely to be I2 or I1 but less likely R1b. Due to the results including Fitzpatricks, the results for KIlkenny seem inconclusive.

All-Ireland YDNA

When I expand the list to Ireland, I get this:

This seems to indicate that the further away from Wexford you get, the more likely it is that your Butler ancestor will be from the R1b group. There is only one R1a which I would associate more with the I1 and I2 Groups. The R1a ancestor is from Glenmore which is interesting as it seems to be in the area where my wife’s Butlers were from:

Glenmore is in the area of Kilkenny that is near Counties Waterford and Wexford.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I looked at the Private Variants for a BigY Butler tester from England. He is the closest BigY match to the two American Butler testers.
  • It is believed that the common Butler ancestor for these three BigY testers is in Wexford. I drew a BigY tree for what would likely happen if the a close relative of the English Butler BigY tester was to also do the BigY test.
  • The next closest BigY tester has the Batt surname, but can trace his ancestry back to England under the Whitson surname.
  • I looked at some non-matching Variants between my brother-in-law, father-in-law, the other Butler Tester and a Batt BigY tester and showed where they may fit in.
  • I looked at the YDNA data for the FTDNA Butler Project. This suggests that the Wexford Butlers are more likely to the I1, I2, or R1a as compared to R1b. R1b is considered a more native Irish YDNA type. I1, I2, and R1b came later in Irish history – perhaps as part of a Norman conquest.
  • I’m still waiting for FTDNA to finish their manual review of my brother-in-law’s Private Variants.

 

 

 

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A New Terminal YDNA Subclade for My Wife’s Butler Family

I have been testing my late father-in-law’s YDNA since 2015, so this has been a long journey. Recently my brother-in-law also had his YDNA tested. He went all out and got the BigY-700 test. This was good because once two people who are closely related both have this test done, then it defines the terminal subclade for that specific family.

So, What is the New Subclade?

The new Subclade is:

Here is how it looks in FTDNA’s Block Tree:

Previously my father-in-law, Richard was I-128364. The odd part about this is that the figure still shows 8 Private Variants between Richard and his son. I don’t see any private variants for Richard. That must mean that his son has about 16 private variants as this is an average of the two. My guess is that FTDNA has not updated the Private Variants yet.

SNP Tracker

The SNP Tracker has not yet tracked I-FT241245. However, this is what it now shows for I-Y128364:

This tracks the migration that the Butler family took since the dawn of time. Note that the Roman period is skipped over and this just brings us up to Medieval times. The Roman period must be bound up in the block of 23 SNPs that are listed here under I-Y128591:

I-FT241245 Is Not the Terminal SNP I Was Expecting

David Vance from the Big Y Facebook Page points out that:

By the way this also says that the father and son both share two variants that are unique to their line, FT241245 and Y129564. Those are two separate SNPs that apparently occurred on the father’s line after his most recent common ancestor with the Butler in England. FT241245 is at position 4195963 and Y129564 is at position 20968182.

This surprised me a bit as previously, I thought that Richard would have one SNP. This is based on the fact that Richard previously had one private variant. My guess is that either the manual review is not finished yet, or Richard’s son had a SNP at position 4195963 resulting in and that Richard had that also, though perhaps they weren’t sure before that Richard had it

I have found that YDNA can be full of surprises.

FT241245

I looked at Richard’s CSV file and found this:

This shows that Richard already tested for this SNP but that there was a question. this is shown as a known SNP because this is a new CSV file. I assume that the original file only showed this as a position number.

The FTDNA Y Chromosome Browsing Tool shows this for Richard:

Richard had only two reads for this SNP and several more reads are needed before they are accepted.

This was accepted based on his son being positive for this SNP:

The other question I can’t answer is why they chose this SNP to name the branch and not Y129564.  I might have chosen Y129564 due to the testing problems for Richard of FT241245.

Y129564

Here is how Richard tested for Y129564:

 

Why Do Richard and His Son Have Two Terminal Subclades?

Here is the tree I had before Richard’s son tested:

I-Y128364 appears to represent the Wexford Butlers. At least that is the opinion of the Butler researcher from England. That makes sense because my wife’s ancestor, though he was probably born in Kilkenny, was born near the Wexford border. The George Butler family from Cincinnati who my wife’s family is related to by autosomal DNA was originally from Wexford. Also the English researcher’s family was from Wexford.

Above, the 225 years before present date is important. Here is the new tree:

The English Butler and the American Butlers shared a common ancestor around 225 years ago. This date could be earlier based on known research. However, since that time, the American branch of Butlers has had 225 years or so for new SNPs to form. New SNPs form at about the rate of every 83 to 144 years depending on the coverage of the BigY test taken. So in those 225 years or more, there was time for two SNPs to develop in the American Butler Line. Unfortunately, without further testing, we don’t know which SNP formed first.

This would be a good place to look for additional BigY testers:

Richard had a Great Uncle George born about 1873. This George had 8 sons. We just need to find a surviving male Butler from that line to test. This descendant of George Butler would probably be either I-FT241245, Y129564 or less likely neither. If he was neither, that would mean that the two new SNPs happened only on the line of George’s brother Edward Henry Butler born 1875.

Private Variants

Here is the Block Tree again:

Richard

Richard’s Private Variants do not show. However, he presently has 0 private variants. Before Richard’s son tested, Richard had one private variant. However, we now know that he should have had 2 private variants. One of those private variants had ambiguous results. Those 2 private variants formed I-FT241245 and Y129564.

Richard’s Son

I can only assume that Richard’s son has about 16 Private Variants as Richard has 0 and the average private variants between the two is 8. I have asked Richard’s son for his private variants. I assume that these may be bad readings or false readings or matches with Batt or the England Butler or new SNPs from up the tree. The other issue is that Richard’s son has taken the BigY 700 which has more coverage than the other BigY testers. That means that Richard’s son may have new SNPs that were not previously discovered.

Butler (England)

This Butler has two private variants which is consistent with Richard’s two New SNPs. If this tester finds a close relative to test the BigY, he will likely have his branch named with two new SNPs. If he finds a more distant relative, he may define one out of two of his now private variants.

Batt

Batt has 5 private variants. He shows his ancestry going back to Joseph Whitson in England in 1615. If we say that the SNPs were formed every 144 years for this older BigY test, that gets us back 720 years. That is roughly the year 1300, so quite a while ago. That suggests that the common ancestor between Butler and Whitson was in England at this time. Perhaps one line stayed in England and became Whitson, while another line went to Ireland and became Butler.

Next Steps

  • FTDNA is likely looking at Ken’s private variants. These should get down to one or zero for Ken.
  • We will want to check the SNP Tracker to see if it picks up the new SNPs for Richard’s line. I don’t know if they wait until FTDNA’s manual review is over or not.
  • It would be nice to have additional BigY testers.

 

 

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My Butler Brother-In-Law’s New BigY 700 Results Are In

I had been looking for my brother-in-law’s new BigY 700 results. Finally I got a note from a more distant relative Peter in England that Ken’s results were in. Here is the image that Peter shared from his perspective:

The first Richard on the list above is my father-in-law. I manage his results. The second Richard is a more distant relative in a different haplogroup (I-Y128591). I’m not sure why Ken is listed third on Peter’s match list. Peter and Ken have the most Shared Variants. It looks like the list is sorted by Non-Matching Variants. Peter and Ken have more of these because Peter, and the two Richard’s took the BigY 500 test. Ken’s BigY 700 tested for 50 percent more variants than the older BigY 500 test..

Peter’s Non-Matching Variants

From looking at Peter’s list of Non-Matching Variants, I think that I can learn a few things. Non-Matching Variants are a little confusing because they could not only be a variant that Peter has and Ken does not. It could also be a variant that Ken has and that Peter does not have.

15906031 and 13619832

I note that the variants at position numbers 15906031 and 13619832 are common to all three of Peter’s matches. That likely means that Peter has these variants and the other three do not. That means that if Peter has a close relative with the same last name tested, that relative should also have 15906031 and/or 13619832 and that probably one of these two would be Peter’s terminal haplogroup.

20968182

Both Richard and Ken have 20968182. This is likely the position for the variant that will become Richard and Ken’s terminal haplogroup. I can look up this position at YBrowse:

Here is what the position looks like:

My further guess is that Richard and Ken will have the terminal haplogroup of Y129564:

This haplogroup was ‘discovered’ by YFull in 2018. That was when I tested my father-in-law Richard and uploaded the results to YFull. Here are Richard’s results at YFull:

Richard had no Novel SNP’s in the Best quality category. But he did have one in the Acceptable category which is Y129564.

What’s Next?

FTDNA will do a manual review on the results. It could take a while for them to get to the Butler results. However, I don’t see any possible outcome than the one I outlined above. Ken’s father Richard previously had one private variant. Ken matched this variant, which has the position number 20968182. It also has the name Y129564. This should be the new branch for what I would call the American Butlers. That means that Peter should remain in the now older branch of I-Y128364:

I-Y128364 should represent the now older Kilkenny/Wexford Branch of Butlers.

 

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2019 Updates on Butler DNA

I recently posted an update on Butler genealogy. Here is an update on Butler DNA. I have found that DNA matches work well to get good genealogical results. For the Butler project, the two main relevant test are YDNA and the autosomal DNA tests. I have discovered new relatives through both the YDNA tests and the autosomal DNA test results.

Butler YDNA and the BigY Test – I-Y128364

The two major YDNA tests are the Big Y and the STR testing. Two Butlers have taken the Big Y test. One is my late father-in-law. The other is Peter from England. This has placed my wife’s Butler family (and Peter’s) on the YDNA tree. That Place is called I-Y128364. This is actually an I2 Group. This is further broken down to I-M223 (or I2-M223). One way to show I-Y128364 is on FTDNA’s Block Tree:

The discovery of I-Y128364 is important as it describes the specific branch of Butlers that Peter, my father-in-law Richard’s family and other related Butlers belong to.

I-M223 was formed about 15,000 years ago. There is more branching that goes on, but this just shows the direct line from I-M223 to I-A427. At that point it shows additional branching. One way to get a rough date for the common ancestor is to take their average number of private variants (shown in the green boxes above) and multiply those by 144 years. This results in a common ancestor for Peter and Richard of about 288 years. Richard was born in the 1930’s, but we’ll use 1940 as a starting date. That would give a rough date of 1650 for a common ancestor between Peter and Richard. The average man has his middle child at age 34, so 288 years turns out to be about 8.5 generations.

Here is a migration map for the I Haplogroup:

The question is how the Butler’s got to Ireland. One possibility is through the Normans. These were Norse men who lived in France and invaded England. Some of those would have ended up in Ireland also. Other routes are possible.

Here is a more detailed look from SNP Tracker:

The Butler ancestors were in Southern Germany from the later Paleolithic to the early Neolithic. The one Bronze Age SNP is shown in the water. I take this to mean that these people could have been in Scandinavia or around the North Sea where the blue dot is. Iron and Roman Ages are missing and then we end up in Ireland in the Medieval period. The Medieval period was from 476 to 1450 AD. So between the blue dot and orange dot above, a lot of time goes by. The light dot in the North Sea represents a tester by the last name of Batt. The common ancestor between Batt and Butler was about 700 years ago.

Butler YDNA and the STR Test

Here is how Peter and Richard match on their STR test:

Peter and Richard match on all but 6 STRs out of the 111 tested. Plus they match on all but 6 STRs on the 412 STRs identified by the BigY results. Here is the TIP Report for Richard and Peter:

Richard and Peter have a 60% chance of having a common ancestor within 8 generations.

Neil – the Newest STR Match

Neil, who has Butler ancestors from Wexford has taken the 37 STR test. His results came back in July 2019. He matches my father-in-law Richard exactly at the 37 STR level. Here is the TIP Report between Neil and Richard:

I put in the report that Richard and Neil did not share an ancestor within the last three generations. The 37 STR test is not as accurate as the 111 STR test, so more variation may be expected in the results. Neil, Richard and Peter are all in the Butler YDNA Project at FTDNA:

Neil’s ancestor is Richard Butler born 1817 in Wexford. Neil and my father-in-law Richard share at value of 32 for a STR called DYS389ii. None of the other Butler testers share this value, so this value likely defines the specific branch of Butlers that Neil and Richard are in. Likewise, Peter and the descendant of Laurence Butler born 1830 Wexford share a value of 23 for a STR called DYS570. That STR likely defines their Butler Branch.

Neil is very likely a closer match to my father-in-law Richard than Peter is. He may also be a family finder match by autosomal DNA. Peter suggests that the older Butler line was from Wexford and branched out from there. It appears that the limited DNA matches would support that also. Based on the closeness of Neil’s DNA test to my wife’s Butler family, renewed effort is being made to make a genealogical connection.

Butler STR Overview

There are 576 members in the FTDNA Butler YDNA Project. These represent most of the Butlers and related families who have had STRs tested. Of those 576, most of the Butlers and associated families are R1b. These are probably what are considered traditionally as the more Celtic or native people to the British Isles. Of those 576, about 49 or 8.5% are I1. According to FTDNA, I1 has a common ancestor of about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. 25 Butlers or associated families are listed as I2 in the Butler YDNA Project. This represents 4.3% of the people in the Butler YDNA project. Of those 25 I2’s, all but three are I-M223. According to FTDNA, the I-M223 Tree is about 17,400 years old. That means that the Block tree I showed earlier in this Blog represents well over 17,000 years of “Butler” history. Of course, the Butler name was only attached to this history since some time in the last 1,000 years.

How does this compare to Ireland in general? Here is part of a Eupedia.com Chart:

From what I can tell, this represents percentages of Haplogroups. Above, I found that 4.3% of the Butlers were I2. From the above chart, it appears that about 6% of Irish are I2 (adding I2a and I2b). A review of the Butler YDNA Project results shows that the Butler’s in general were from many different Counties in Ireland and had many different Haplotypes. That means that no one Haplotype can be associated with the Butler name. However, different branches of Butlers can be associated with specific haplotypes.

Butler Autosomal DNA

In general, it could be said that the YDNA tests take over at the point that the autosomal DNA tests fade away. What that means is that autosomal DNA matches may be found with this probability:

The hope is that once these matches are found that there would be a genealogical connection or possible connection. Around the point where the autosomal results fade out, say about the 5th cousin level, the YDNA tests are helpful for establishing relationships going back hundreds and thousands of years. With the BigY tests, and closest matches for the STR tests, these results may overlap.

Finding New Butler Relatives Through DNA

I have found new Butler relatives through DNA matches in the following three categories:

  • Relatives who have common Butler ancestors that we already knew about
  • Relatives who have Butler ancestors that we hadn’t known about previously. Right now, the main Butler ancestor that we found out about is George Butler born in Wexford, Ireland and died in Cincinnati. It is clear that he was related to my wife’s ancestor Edward Henry Butler. But we don’t know exactly how. They may have been first cousins.
  • Relatives who have common ancestors with Butlers, but those ancestors perhaps go back beyond the time when there were good records kept – or the connection has not yet been discovered. Therefore, the connection to a comman ancestor may not be clear, but the connection to an area may be guessed at – such as Weford, Ireland. A good example of this category would be with Peter who is a YDNA match, but we don’t know who the exact common ancestor is.

Here are some lines that were discovered by autosomal DNA Matches:

This tree represents two branches that are real branches. Some of the descendants of the Henry Branch on the left match some of the descendants of Michael Butler Branch on the right. I have put the two together as potential brothers to explain the DNA matches.

Brian and Nathan (Butler/Whitty LIne)

Brian and Nathan descend from George Butler and his first wife Mary Whitty. This couple moved from Ireland to Cincinnati where they had Mary Ann. Mary Ann moved to St John, New Brunswick where she married and had descendants including Brian and Nathan who have had their autosomal DNA tested.

Nathan is in green because he has uploaded his DNA results to Gedmatch. Here is how Nathan matches my father-in-law, Richard:

A MRCA of 4.5 suggests a third cousin, once removed. By the tree above, Richard and Nathan would be fourth cousins, twice removed.

Brian tested at AncestryDNA and has a large match with my wife’s Aunt Lorraine:

The Problem with Brian and Lorraine

Ancestry predicts that Lorraine and Brian should be third cousins by the amount of DNA they share. By my proposed chart they would be fourth cousins, once removed. It seems like Lorraine and Brian share too much DNA to be 4th cousins, once removed. Here is part of a 2017 chart showing reported ranges of DNA matching for different relationships:

The highest reported DNA match for a 4C1R is 117 cM. That seems to rule out the chart I have above unless Brian and Lorraine match on another line such as the Crowley line. If Lorraine and Brian are actually third cousins, once removed, that leads to some strange conclusions. That would mean that Henry Butler is actually Michael Butler and that Ann Russel is actually Margaret Croke. Or that Henry/Michael Butler had two wives and that Lorraine and Brian are half third cousins once removed. I don’t know of DNA statistics for 1/2 3C1R, but 147 cM seems like it would be high for that relationship also. Another possibility is that Edward Henry Butler was the son of Henry Butler and Ann Russel but adopted by Michael Butler and Margaret Croke.

Here is how Brian matches my wife’s Aunt Virginia:

Ancestry suggests a 4th cousin match which is more in line with the proposed tree that I have showing that Lorraine and Brian could be fourth cousins, once removed.

Patty and Kim (Butler/Sinnett or Sinnott Line)

Patty matches Lorraine at 39 cM and Virginia at 30 cM which is more in line with my proposed chart. My proposed chart showed Lorraine and Virginia as 4th cousins. 35 cM is an average match for a 4th cousin.

Here is Patty’s tree:

Patty has a shared match with Terri. Here is Terri’s tree:

My guess is that Elmer could be a brother of George. Based on this 1920 Marriage record, that was the case:

That means that I can expand the Butler DNA match/genealogy tree:

Terri matches Virginia by 26 cM and doesn’t match Lorraine.

Kim at gedmatch

Kim’s DNA results are at Gedmatch. Here are three of her DNA matches with people on my larger chart:

Summary and Conclusions

  • In this Blog, I tried to give an overview of all the different types of applicable DNA matching results to my wife’s Butler Line
  • These DNA matches have resulted in finding new Butler relatives and a renewed effort to find genealogical connections.
  • One surprising result is that Brian and Lorraine match by too much DNA for them to be fourth cousins, once removed. If Brian and Lorraine don’t match on other family lines, then it would appear that their ancestors George and Edward Henry would have been brothers rather than 1st cousins. One scenario would have Edward Henry as the son of Henry Butler and Ann Russel and adopted by Michael Butler and Margaret Croke. This would explain why no birth record has been found for Edward H as the son of Michael Butler and Margaret Croke.Although this explanation answers some questions, it also raises other questions. If Edward was the son of Henry Butler, then why does family tradition say that he was the son of Michael Butler?

 

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Updates to Butler YDNA

I see my last Blog on Butler YDNA was about a year ago.  A little or a lot can happen in a year. Turns out some things have happened.

Three Big Y Testers: 2 Butlers and a Batt

There are three Big Y testers that show that they have a common ancestor in the past 700 years. Here is the simplest way to show how these three are related:

Note that while Batt’s SNP is I-Y238315, I didn’t put Batt in that box. That is because Batt and Butler both descend from I-128315. In other words, Butler does not descend from Batt, but both names descend from a common ancestor. This shows that the three testers have a common ancestor who was born 700 years ago. This also shows that the two Butlers who have tested for the Big Y have a common (likely Butler) ancestor from about 225 years ago. Here is how the YTree shows it:

These are the dates that I didn’t have as of my previous Blog. Previously, we were just up to 700 years ago. This new information thanks to the new Big Y Butler tester brings us 475 years closer to the present date.

However, there is a catch to these dates.

SNPs Vs. STRs

The above trees are based on SNPs. FTDNA also tests for STRs. The STRs show that Batt is more closely related to my late father in law Richard Butler than to the other Butler. So which is right? Whenever there is a conflict between SNPs and STRs, SNPs are always right.

Here is how my father in law Richard matches Batt and the other Butler by STRs:

Based on STRs, it looks like Batt is a closer match than Butler. However, by SNPs my father in law matches Batt 700 years ago and Butler 225 years ago. This is due to the variability of STRs or back mutations. Also the Butler above could have had more STR mutations than usual and/or the 225 year estimate for common Butler ancestors could be on the low side

A New Butler STR Match

I was notified recently that there was a new Bulter 37 STR match. That is good news. Also this Butler has ancestors from County Wexford. Peter, who has been researching Butlers feels that Wexford is a likely origin for the Butlers. Here is my father in law’s match list at the 37 STR level:

The new Butler match at the top is a perfect match with my father in law at the 37 level. However, that could change as more STRs are tested. My guess is that the three Butlers on the list are I-Y128364 and the non-Butlers on the list are not. Also notice that the first two Butlers matching my father in law have Wexford roots.

Here is a partial map of Wexford:

I believe that my father in law’s family came from County Kilkenny just North of Waterford. However the distance from that area to Wexford is not far. At any rate, this new YDNA Butler match seems to suggest that a common Butler ancestor could be from Wexford.

What’s Next?

The new Butler match may want to take an Autosomal DNA test. This could be done at FTDNA or at AncestryDNA. The advantage of AncestryDNA is that they have more people who have taken that test. That means a bigger chance of finding matches. The DNA matches will be looking for genealogical connections. The new match could do further YDNA testing, but that is a bit more expensive than the autosomal DNA test.