A16717 Branch of Hartleys Added to the FTDNA L513 Project Tree

R-A16717 has been part of FTDNA’s YDNA Tree since March 2022. However, this branch did not make it to  the FTDNA L513 Project tree until the end of July 2022. A16717 is a fairly recent branch and is significant as all branches of the YDNA tree are, but this branch is very significant to my particular Branch of Hartleys.

The Big Picture

This is the really big picture. Göran Runström from FTDNA updates these numbers monthly. There should be a new update within a week:

A16717 is only one branch among the 26,742 branches under R and 55,842 branches altogether. R is broken down usually between the larger R1b and smaller R1a group.

Here is the big picture of the R1b group:

At the bottom left of the tree is L513 where my branch of Hartleys are. The larger branch under L513 is S5668. Here is the tip of the iceburg view of L513:

There is an image above representing ‘Celts and other folks’ who were in the British Isles. Hartleys would be under Z16357 which shows as being in England just around or before the time of the Celts.

S5668 Tree

There used to be one L513 Tree when there were fewer branches. Now there are two trees. Here is the S5668 Tree:

This chart is more useful for genealogical purposes as it includes surnames. Hartley is near the bottom left of this tree:

Here I tried to get those under the Z16343 Branch. Under Z17911, Hartley is the only surname with multiple branches. Each branch of Hartley represents two BigY testers.

How This Part of the YDNA Tree Looks Like at FTDNA

FTDNA portrays the results in the form of a ‘block tree’. Here are the results for A11138 and down from my perspective:

This is the more detailed view. I am at FT225247 where I match my brother James. Michael and Lawrence represent a US Colonial Branch of Hartleys who moved to Pennsylvania from being persecuted as Quakers in Lancashire, England. This was the A16717 that was just added to the FTDNA L513 Project Tree above. John and Steve represent an older branch of Hartleys that the other two branches descend from.

More on Dating Haplogroups

FTDNA has come out with some new tools recently. Here is one that is helpful for dating haplogroups:

I put my Haplogroup in and get this:

This is a little small to see. Here is a larger image of the left side:

This says that our common ancestor was born around 100 years ago. My father was born in 1918, so I would say that is pretty accurate. Secondly,
A11134 is said to have branched off 450 years ago. That could also be right as that would be the year 1570. That means that the common ancestor for the six BigY tested Hartleys would be around 1570.

Dating A16717 – An Early American Quaker Hartley Branch

Here we have a date of 1600, so they seem to be subtracting the 400 from the year 2000. I actually have what I think is the actual date for the common ancestor between Michael and Lawrence:

 

I have that as 1666. This is the better-documented Branch of Hartleys. Surprisingly, the date that FTDNA has for A11134 is only 50 years earlier than A16717 or 450 years ago. If I subtract that from the year 2000 to be consistent, I get the year 1550. To me, that date seems better than subtracting 50 years from 1666 which would be 1616, but who knows?

Dating A11134 – The Hartley Umbrella Branch

But wait, there’s more. I need to add in A11134:

Two Yet Unnamed Hartley Lineages

I just noticed that the explanation for A11134 says that there are 2 yet unnamed lineages. I assume that these are Hartley Lineages for Steve and John.

The Mawdsley Surname

I have already gone over the 1600 date as being representative of the Hartleys. However, this dating goes one step further to the Mawdsley surname and seems to put it at 700 years ago or around the year 1300.

According to familysearch.org:

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.

During this early period a married woman could be known either by her maiden surname or by her husband’s surname with wyf added, as in Mary Walker, wife of Henry Field, or Mary Fieldwyf. The term Mrs. for a married woman was not used until after 1500.

Dating A11132 – Mawdsley and Hartley Ancestors

If I use the new FTDNA tool for A11132, it should include Mawdsley (A11132) and Smith (A111138):

By the way, the grayed out portion will always be grayed out as it represents the female portion of the tree and YDNA represents only the male portion.

That means that I figured out how FTDNA dates from the year 2000. I assume that 1300 was before most had surnames, so perhaps Mawdsley was never Hartley – though they do share the ‘ley’ which I take to mean field. That also means that the Smith tester’s results go back to the year 800 – very old indeed. Mawdsley must have an additional lineage since 700 years ago that is separate from the Hartley group of A11134.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Hartley Branch A16717 was added recently to the FTDNA L513 Project Web Site. I had notified the creator that it was missing and he added it.
  • I look at the bigger picture of the YDNA tree to show where my Hartley Branch fits in.
  • I looked at the new FTDNA Discover Tool. This tool takes out some of the guesswork in trying to date YDNA Haplogroups
  • This tool also gives ranges of dates. This is useful when more information is known about the genealogy.
  • I checked the dates that the tool gave for the overall Hartley Branch of A11134 as well as for its two branches.
  • I also checked the dates for Mawdsley and Smith. Assuming the dating is correct using the FTDNA Discover tool, Mawdsley from the year 1300 was most probably never a Hartley name and the upstream Smith was certainly before the age of surnames as the current Smith Haplogroup goes back to the year 800.
  • Finally, I realized that the FTDNA Discover Tool predicts haplogroups that will have additional lineages.

 

A New Match to My Hartley Part of the YDNA Tree

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.

Greenwood Hartley in the Year 1874

It seems like certain years are more filled with events than others. For my 2nd great-grandfather, Greenwood Hartley, it seems like 1874 was one busy year. I can think of four significant events that happened that year.

Greenwood’s Only Daughter Mary Ann Marries

Mary Ann Hartley Married Abel Burrows on 12 February 1874. At the time, Abel was a weaver from Fall River – originally from Burnley, Lancashire. This would be not too far from Bacup where Mary Ann was from:

Bacup was about 6 miles from Burnley. Greenwood was born in Trawden which was also close to Burnley. Abel would later become a jeweler and store owner in Fall River. Actually, upon closer look, Abel was living in Habergham Eaves in 1871:

The other interesting thing is that Abel Burrows was born in Marsden. There is a Marsden in West Yorkshire and a historical Marsden near Colne and Trawden where the Hartleys came from. So I’m not sure which this is referring to. My guess would be that they were from the Marsden in Lancashire. Marsden was taken over by Nelson in later times. Abel’s mother was from Haggate:

Haggate is to the NE of Burnley.

Here is a portion of Greenwood’s Map of Lancashire from 1818:

This shows Great Marsden which was closer to Trawden and Hag Gate which appears to be a very small place. I see another place below Little Marsden which is also called Marsden.

Here is a Newpaper notice from the Fall River Daily Evening News of 16 February 1874:

How Did Abel and Mary Ann Meet?

At the time that Abel and Mary Ann married, Abel was living in Fall River and Mary Ann was living in New Bedford. The English Census was taken on April 2, 1871. Abel’s Naturalization Papers have him coming to the US before this time:

I have come to mistrust these dates after looking at Greenwood Hartley’s Naturalization and his half brother William Wilkinson’s. I would trust the Census more than the Naturalization Papers.

We know that the Hartley family moved from Fall River to New Bedford in 1870. The 1870 Census was taken on June 1. Greenwood’s daughter Esther Hartley died in New Bedford from Typhoid Fever on 30 October 1870. The family was living at the rear of Ray Street near the Wamsutta Mills.

All this to say that May Ann was most likely living in New Bedford by the end of October 1870. Abel was in Fall River some time after April 1871. I suppose that if the Hartleys lived briefly in Fall River before moviing to Fall River that Abel could have lived briefly in New Bedford before moving to Fall River. There are other possibilities:

  • Perhaps the two families had some connections in Lancashire
  • Perhaps the two families had connections in Bristol County or a go-between
  • There could have been church connections. Greenwood’s wife Ann Emmet was from a Baptist Church in Bacup and Abel and Mary Ann apparently attended a Baptist Church in Fall River
  • When Abel’s father Samuel married, his witness was a John Hartley.

It would be interesting to know what Church Mary  Ann and Abel married in. For some reason, I thought it was an Episcopal Church. I am guessing that if Mary Pilling Wilkinson was able she would have attended as well as other family.

According to the New Bedford Mercury, the Wilkinson boys at least attended this church:

Yesterday noon as soon as the Sunday school at Mr. Dennison’s North Mission Chapel, corner of Purchase and Pearl streets was dismissed, eleven boys of the school went to Willis Point to play on the ice, or perhaps as one account states to cross over for play on “the Isle of Marsh”, a high rocky hill connected by marshes with the Fairhaven shore.

I’ll just finish off this section with an image from my Wilkinson Web Page:

The corner of Pearl and Purchase is easy to see near the lower left corner of City Common. The M.E. Church – probably Methodist Episcopal is also a possibility. I just read up on the Mission Church and this was really a Sunday School Mission. This is from an 1869 History of the Churches of New Bedford:

The Death of Greenwood’s Mother: Mary Pilling Hartley Wilkinson


Greenwood’s daughter Mary Ann married in February. Not long after, Greenwood’s mother dies. She was listed as having weak eyes on her voyage to Massachusetts. I mention on my Hartley web page:

An asterisk by Mary’s name indicated her poor health. She was listThised as having very sore eyes and being infirm. 

Mary Pilling lived over three years past her voyage to Massachusetts from Bacup, Lancashire.

Mary died March 23, 1874. This is the building that shows on Google maps for 23 Austin Street:

My guess is that this is the same building that was there and that the Hartley family lived in in 1874. However, the building may have been remodeled since and was much newer at the time. Here is a view of the house next door to this:

Here we can see the stone foundation. Perhaps 23 Austin Street looked more like the shingled building next door. Here is a period map:

I believe that 23 Austin would be at the NW corner of Austin and Pleasant Streets.

I have an old photo which is unidentified, but may be Mary Pilling.

Mary Pilling was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in New Bedford. This is an online photo giving the sense of the Cemetery as I remember visiting it:

Here is a map:

I believe that Mary Pilling is buried in Section GG of the Cemetery along with Wilkinson and Hartley relatives. However, I was unable to find an online map with location designations. I was unable to find a grave marker for Mary Pilling, but I have found markers for other of the relatives. I see that Austin Street ends near the Northern part of the Cemetery. My son lives not too far from this Cemetery, so I could walk from his house for a visit some day.

Greenwood’s USA Citizenship

By Spring of 1874, Greenwood’s only daughter Mary Ann had married and moved to Fall River. Greenwood’s one constant throughout his life, Mary Pilling, was gone. He is now with his wife and son when he turns 42 years old in May, 1874. Greenwood works probably at the Wamsutta Mills in New Bedford and lives at 23 Austin Street. I wrote a Blog recently about Greenwood’s Naturalization here.

I need not reproduce all the information that I went over in that Blog. A pattern that I saw was that if someone was keen on getting their Naturalization, it geneally happened about 5 years after they arrived. Here is a document that I was looking for after I wrote my Blog I mentioned above:

This was Greenwood’s Declaration of Intentions from December 1872. At the time I had found this at the Massachusetts Archives, I found it ironic that it took a trip to Lancashire to find out that Greenwood was born in Trawden, when that information was in my home State already.

As I mentioned, Greenwood, William Wilkinson and John Pilling – all half  brothers to each other – headed up to Boston, apparently at the end of November. John was a witness and Greenwood and William both got their Citizenship papers that day. This completed the legal paperwork they needed and established them as permanent citizens of the United States. Perhaps Greenwood and family celebrated the American Holiday of Thanksgiving on the Thursday before going up to Boston on Monday November 30,  1874. Thanksgiving had been declared a National Holiday by Lincoln 11 years prior.

Buying the Farm in Rochester in December 1874

The fourth big event for 42 year old Greenwood in 1874 was buying a farm in Rochester. According to local historian Judy Gurney, Greenwood’s health was failing and his doctor recommended a move out of the City. Aside from this, Greenwood could have had some bad feelings about New Bedford. After all, his daughter Esther died there of Typhoid Fever in October 1870 not long after the family moved to New Bedford from Fall River:

In January 1872, two of Greenwood’s nephews drowned in New Bedford. These were 11 and 9 year old John and Robert Wilkinson.

Then, as mentioned above, Greenwood’s mother died on March 23, 1874.

It seems like the doctor gave a good recommendation to Greenwood as sanitary conditions must have been better and the chance of catching something from someone must have been less in Rochester compared to New Bedford.

Weaver to Farmer

I wonder if many people changed carreers later in life like Greenwood becoming a farmer after being a weaver?  In 1874, Greenwood’s son James was 12, so perhaps would be more helpful around a farm. Greenwood was frugal and had saved enough money to buy a farm for $1200. If Greenwood bought the farm in December, I assume that he lived there with his wife and son James that first winter. What did they do all winter? Were there animals to take care of? Did he plan for the next year? He must have had enough money to buy food to eat. I am also curious as to whether Greenwood knew much about farming. Perhaps he had observed farmers in Trawden. Little is known about Greenwood’s grandfather. Perhaps he was a farmer in Trawden? Many questions and not many answers.

It’s fun to think about what life was like for Greenwood Hartley and his family.

Summary and Conclusions

  • 1874 marked the fifth year since the Hartley family arrived in Massachusetts
  • The fact that Greenwood arrived with mother, wife, children and half-brother’s family seemed to indicate that all intended on staying in the US
  • Greenwood’s early years in Massachusetts were likely difficult adjusting to a different life-style and customs. Also the death of his daughter and two nephews made life difficult.
  • The death of Greenwood’s mother in 1874 must have been difficult also. Greenwood’s father had died when he was 4, so his recollection of him would have been very vague. Mary Pilling was Greenwood’s one constant in the 38 years since his father died.
  • This death was off-set by three positive happening to Greenwood in 1874. His daugther Mary Ann married Abel Burrows. He recieved his naturalization along with his younger half brother William Wilkinson. Then he bought a farm in Rochester and apparently moved there in December 1874.
  • Greenwood’s move to Rochester was apparently good for his health and for his family. Greenwood apparently gave a leg up to his son James who was later able to purchase a Mill which became the Hartley Saw Mill.
  • In protecting his health, Greenwood outlived his father who died at age 32. This afforded his children the father that Greenwood never had.

 

 

A Naturalization Record for Greenwood Hartley

While I was reviewing my Ancestry hints for my second great-grandfather Greenwood Hartley, I ran across this record:

This is a document signed by Greenwood Hartley on November 30, 1874. This Greenwood was said to be born very close to my Greenwood ancestor:

I have that my Greenwood was born 25 May 1831. This Greenwood was a year younger. He also came to Boston a lot sooner than my Greenwood – in 1849. I have that my Greenwood came into Boston 24 October 1869. This is starting to look suspicious. I think that this is the actual Naturalization Record for my 2nd great-grandfather Greenwood, but that some of the information got entered incorrectly.

A Rare Signature

The 1870 Census states that Greenwood and his wife could not write. However, the box is not checked that they could not read. Hear is Greenwood’s signature – apparently signed with difficulty:

This would appear to be a rare signature for Greenwood. i assume that it is authentic due to the difference in writing elsewhere on the Naturalization document.

Other Implications?

The approximate age at the time of this document would be correct. It states that Greenwood was 42 in 1874, when he was actually 43. The above document appears to be the actual naturalization based on this index card:

Interestingly, two weeks after Greenwood’s Naturalization, he buys a house in Rochester Massachusetts on what is now Snipatuit Road.

 

Here is the only photo I have of Greenwood:

Greenwood’s Two Naturalization Witnesses

Greenwood needed two people to vouch for him:

These two are Greenwood’s half brothers. I wonder if they all had to take a train up to Boston for this? I also wonder if the Judge knew that these two were Greenwood’s half brothers. Here we also have John Pilling and William Wilkinson’s signatures. They look at litte more refined than Greenwood’s signature. Technically, Greenwood had been in the US for 5 years as he arrived in Boston in October 1869. It is interesting that the place that he resided for that amount of time is left blank. The family lived in Fall River for a short while before moving to New Bedford.

John Pilling attested to Greenwood’s good character. However a few years later, in August 1877, John took off with Co-op money, and left his famiy for England. William Wilkinson travelled to Boston with Mary Pilling, Greenwood, and Mary’s grandchildren.

Here is William Wilkinson:

I believe that this is John Pilling:

I also recall seeing a record in the Massachusetts Archives saying that Greenwood was born in Trawden. I believe that that was his Petition for Naturalization. Hopefully I have a hard copy of that somewhere.

William Wilkinson

William was born in 1840, so he was about 9 years younger than Greenwood. Here is his Naturalization:

As far as I know, his arrival in New York in 1858 is not correct. In fact, I have this as his marriage in Bacup, England in 1859:

This is interesting as I had that William married Tamar Dawson. This seems to say that she was Tamar Burus, daughter of William Burus [Burrows?]. A Mary Dawson is a witness. I see that my Ancestry tree has her father as William Barnes. I have that William arrived in Boston in 1869:

Witnesses for William’s Naturalization

First, I should point out that Wiliam and Greenwood’s Naturalizations were both on the same day. That leads to the idea that they all went up to Boston together.

Here, Greenwood’s name was in and signed and then crossed out. John Pilling was one witness. My guess is that William got his naturalization first and was able to be a witness for Greenwood. However, because of this Greenwood could not be a witness for William. The typed part says “both citizens of said United States”. If Greenwood’s Naturalzation was after William’s he wouldn’t have been a citizen yet. I don’t know who John Armstrong was.

John Pilling’s Witnesses

To complete the circle, here were John’s witnesses to his 1867 Naturalization:

This is likely John Dickey in New Bedford in 1870:

He was likely known through work or possibly through John’s Scottish wife.

This is likely Thomas Watson in New Bedford in 1870:

In 1884, Thomas apparently remarried for a third time:

This Thomas lists his birth Town as Brindle, Lancashire. This appears to be Thomas’ marriage to Elizabeth in Boston in 1852:

Summary and Conclusions

  • A discovery of a Naturalization record for Greenwood adds some detail to his life for the year 1874
  • I followed a bit in the lives of two of Greenwood’s half brothers who vouched for his trustworthiness on his Naturalization.
  • Another bonus was in seeing Greenwood’s tenuous signature which is a connection between him and us in the present time.
  • My assumption is that Greenwood and his younger half brother William dependended on their older half brother John Pilling to show them the ropes in the New World

 

 

 

Painting My Brother Jim’s DNA

For some reason, I have not gotten around to ‘painting’ my brother Jim’s DNA. This is what I have so far for Jim:

I’ve only gotten Jim up to 2% painted overall and that is just on the paternal Frazer side. It would be fairly easy to improve that.

Jim’s X Chromosome

For fun, I’ll start with Jim’s X Chromosome. This is just inherited from his mother. Jim matches our two Latvian cousins Inese and Anita. That DNA had to come from his great-grandmother Maria Elisabeth Laura Gangnus:

That is because Alexander Rathfelder only got X DNA from his mother Maria. I only painted Inese, because I believe that her sister’s match is very similar.

Jim and Cindy

Cindy is Jim’s first cousin. Normally I would not map 1st cousins as it would just give the maternal side. However, Cindy’s father is Bob and he just got his X Chromsome from his mother, who was Emma Rathfelder. It took me a little while to remember that trick. Here is the match between Jim and Cindy:

Jim is now 3% painted:

Back to Autosomal Matches

The fastest way to populate Jim’s chromosomes is by 2nd cousins. He has a lot of Hartley second cousins at Gedmatch. I’ll just go down Jim’s list of matches at Gedmatch.

Jim’s Hartley 1st Cousins Once Removed

Thes common ancestors between Jim and these older cousins go back to Jim’s great-grandparents: James Hartley and Annie Snell. First, I’ll paint in Joyce:

I picked a washed out color for Hartley/Snell as there will be so many of these. Jim is now up to 8% painted. Actually, Jim’s third Hartley match was with a second cousin. Beth brings Jim’s painted percent up to 12%:

2nd Cousin Catherine on the Rathfelder Side

So far, I have only added maternal DNA to Jim’s X Chromosome. That has Jim only 2% maternally painted. Here is the addition of Catherine in a sort of grey:

This has Jim 7% painted on his maternal side and 15% painted overall.

3 More on the Rathfelder Side

Jim is now up to 19% overall:

I haven’t used the grey color before, so this is new.

Kathy, Judy and Carolyn

I haven’t been able to figure out how I am related to Kathy. I’ll leave her out for now. She is likely a descendant of William Nicholson like Judy and Carolyn are:

However, Judy has closer common ancestors in Annie Nicholson and Jacob George Lentz.

Jim is getting more color and I have added a line between the paternal and maternal side in the key. Jim is now mapped at 21% overall.

Pat, Joan and Martin

Pat is a 2nd cousin on my Hartley side. Joan is on the Nicholson side and Martin is on the Rathfelder side. I know how Pat, Joan and Jim are related. I’ll have to look up Martin. I see that he knew little about his father due to the cold war.

Paul, Robert, Michael, Faye and Ken

Robert is on the Nicholson side, while Paul, Michael, Faye and Ken are on the Frazer side. Michael adds another Frazer ancestral couple:

This shows how Michael and I are related as Jim is not at Ancestry. Richard Frazer has an unknown wife. Ancestry has a guess at Mary Patterson. These matches bring Jim up to 25% painted using the online DNA Painter Program:

Here, I’ve sorted Jim’s key into his four grandparent groups:

Summary

With not too much effort, I have gotten Jim’s DNA Painter Map from 2% to 25%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Hartley A16717 Branch

There is now a new Branch of Hartleys near my branch called A16717. I had made the case for an A16717 Branch here. Here is the L513 Hartley Branch from my perspective:

Smith is in the oldest Haplogroup above which is A11138. Next is Mawdsley at A11132. A11134 appears to be a Hartley-only Haplogroup. This group currently has John and Steve in it. Next is my group of Hartleys which for now just has my brother Jim and me. The name of this group is FT225247. Finally the last group is A16717 and consists of Michael and Lawrence. There are now 6 Hartleys in this branch of the YDNA tree who have taken the BigY test.

There are other Hartleys which are unrelated genetically to our group of Hartleys. This is the largest group of Hartleys. I have read that there are roughly 80,000 Hartleys worldwide. I would guess that our branch accounts for at least 1/4 of those Hartleys or 20-25,000.

A16717 – The Genealogy

This is the tree I had come up with for Lawrence and Michael:

From this chart Lawrence and Michael are 7th cousins. Assuming that Lawrence and Michael were born around 1950, this shows that their common Hartley ancestor was born about 280 years before their birth. Michael and Lawrence show an average of two private variants between them, so that is about 140 years per variant. That is close to the 144 years that was used for the old BigY500 SNPs. Michael has taken the BigY500 test and Lawrence took the BigY 700. This also indicates that Michael and Lawrence may have fewer than the average Variants over that period of 280 years.

Dating the Smith/Mawdsley/Hartley Block Tree

Michael and Lawrence share a common ancestor who was born in 1666. I would place that date at this point on the YDNA Block Tree:

I would place the common ancestor for the other Hartley lines about 140 years before that for a few reasons:

  1. 140 years was what I used for the SNPs in the Michael/Lawrence Line
  2. Because Michael took the BigY500, he has fewer Private Variants than he would like have if he had taken the more comprehensive BigY700 test. Michael’s two Private Variants are verified in that Lawrence tested negatively for those two Private Variants. However, Lawrence has 6 Private Variants and Michael’s BigY500 did not cover any of the posiitions for Lawrence’s Private Variants. That means that that it is possible that Michael could share some of Lawrence’s Private Variants and that there could be more than one SNP under A16717

Basically, I’m guessing at the 140 years. That would make the common ancestor for the other Hartleys at 1526. Or roughly 1500.

I have the second arrow pointing to the white space above the three Hartley Branches. The white space represents the common ancestor for the three groups of BigY-testing Hartleys. I estimate that the white space could represent a time of 70-80 years. Jared Smith estimated that there were more than the average number of SNPs in our part of the Haplogtree making the frequency of our SNP more like every 70 years. If I use 76 years, that means that the period of our common ancestors could be between 1488 and 1564.

The reason I used 140 years per SNP for Lawrence and Michael was due to the fact that Michael had the older BigY500 test and that Michael’s test didn’t cover any of Lawrence’s Private Variants. The reason that I dropped back to 76 years after that was because then we were outside of Michael and Lawrence’s branch and everyone else had tested to BigY700.

Using 1526 for the above Block tree, I get:

  • 61 years per SNP for my branch of Hartleys (Joel and James)
  • 141 years per SNP for Steve and John’s branch of Hartleys
  • This averages to 101 years per SNP for these two BigY700 Hartley Branches

Interestingly, if I use 1950 as a baseline for the Michael and Lawrence Branch (as I have for the others) I get 142 years for each of the two Private Variants shown in that Branch.

A BigY 67 STR Tree

As all Hartley BigY testers have results for 67 STRs, it should be fairly easy to draw up a fairly accurate STR Tree. Here are the results for the 6 Hartley BigY testers:

The first row is the Mode for the Hartley BigY testers. This appears to tell me that:

  • My branch of Hartleys has a distinguishing value of 23 for DYS565
  • The Roger Hartley Branch of Quaker Hartleys have a distinguising signature of 25, 32, 39 and 16 for DYS448, DYS460, DYS537 and DYS572
  • John and Steve have no distinguishing signature separate from the group as a whole, but their lines have gone their own separate ways since A11134
  • Steve’s line appears to have had a double mutation from 40 to 38 at marker DYS537

Here is the basic tree from BigY testing:

Here A16717 is representative of Edward Hartley born 1666. The blank box above Steve and John is there to put them at the right level with everyone else. Steve and John actually branch separately up from A11134.  When I put it all together, I get this:

 

The Harltey Ancestor Mode for A11134 is in the top box. From this it is easy to see why these trees are so difficult to build. I put the parallel mutations in italics and there are many of them (7 out of 11 in the bottom row).

  • I (Joel) have a parallel mutation of DYS527=16 with the Ed Hartley A16717 Branch.
  • Michael and John have parallel mutations of DYS607=16
  • Lawrence and John have parallel mutations of DYS447=12
  • Larwence and Steve have parallel mutations of DYS578=18

That means that without the BigY testing, it would have been nearly impossible to come up with the correct STR tree for this branch of Hartleys. This tree may be helpful in creating a larger STR tree for this Branch of Hartleys.

A16717 and SNP Tracker

Here is the new SNP on SNP tracker:

I was confused at first as A16717 was already taken up in the J Haplogroup. I wrote to the creator of SNP Tracker and he said I needed to add the R designation to A16717 to get the right path. Rob Spencer also said:

About 4% of Y SNP mutations have occurred more than once.

Summary and Conclusions

  • My waiting and curiosity got the best of me and I wrote to FTDNA to see what was up with a new branch of A16717 that I had predicted for Michael and Lawrence
  • I had a most satisfying response from FTDNA saying that branch would be added
  • I looked at issues of dating and how A16717 could help the dating of all Hartley Branches. This is because we know that Edward Hartley born 1666 was A16717.
  • The naming of this new Branch of A16717 is of great importance for all American Hartleys who descend from Edward Hartley
  • I looked at the implications of this new branch for creating a more accurate STR tree for Hartleys. More work could be done in this area
  • Finally, I looked at the SNP Tracker visual which has A16717. Due to this SNP being shared the designation of R-A16717 must be used at SNP Tracker to get the proper SNP path. This path shows that our Hartleys have been in Great Britain for a very long time.

Playing with the AutoKinship Tool at Gedmatch

Gedmatch has a new Tier 1 tool called AutoKinship. This is an interesting tool that creates different trees from your DNA matches, based on AutoClusters. I put down the $10 to try this new tool at Gedmatch. Roberta Estes wrote a good article on how to use the tool. I used that when I was stuck, but preferred to try to play with it on my own.

Running, Downloading and Extracting

An important step that Roberta emphasizes is the extracting part. It is easy to run the tool at the suggested levels. It was easy for me to download the zipped file. However, opening the file doesn’t work correctly unless everything that you have downloaded is unzipped. Here is what I used:

After I extracted all the files, I opened a file that gave me AutoClusters:

This is the file minus the names. There were 19 Clusters. I recognized some of the names.

Upping the Matches to 250

I am now on my laptop and will try this again with 250 matches. This report is taking a little longer. Roberta says that there is a 10 minute limit on these reports. This time I have gone from 19 Clusters to 45. Yikes.

This time I got a more interesting analysis:

Now I have 3 AutoTrees, Common Locations and about 20 of my clusters with AutoKinship. I’ll start with a known quantity. Pink Cluster 16 has some of my well known and documented Frazer relatives:

This is near the start of the gray squares. The gray squares indicate that these clusters are inter-related. That is due to my Protestant minority ancestors in Catholic Ireland. They tended to marry others from the Church of Ireland. I have three known Frazer Lines and two known McMaster Lines in my ancestry.

The AutoKinship Tree looks like this for Cluster 16:

Things are a little mixed up, but are within the right ball park. For example, Paul is my 2nd cousin once removed, but I should be more removed than he is. Paul is actually 2nd cousin with Emily, not 1st cousin once removed as shown. Here are some of the relationships shown differently from one of my Blogs from 2018:

I’m not sure why Bill was not included. I was never sure how Shelly fit in. She has no tree at Ancestry.

I’ll use Cluster 16 as a springboard to jump to Cluster 20:

This is still in my Irish Region:

I note that the probability for this tree has an E-6 which I take to be better than the previous tree which was in the vicinity of E-12. The only person I am aware of in this AutoKinship Tree is Mel who is Emily’s daughter from the previous AutoKinship Tree. I looked for Deborah at AncestryDNA, but could not find her. I found Annette at FTDNA, but my match with her is on Chromsome 20 which on my paternal side has been out of control in that there have been so many matches on that Chromosome.

Some More Known Rathfelder Relatives on Cluster 44

Cluster 44 also has an AutoKinship Tree:

Here is the DNA tree that I have for Rathfelder:

The AutoKinship Tree is off a bit. Catherine and I should be on the same level. Anita and Inese should be a generation after me. Donna is a special case. Donna is my 2nd cousin once removed. Even my chart does not show things perfectly. That is because Donna and Iain are 1/2 second cousins with Anita and Inese. Donna and Iain are also half 1st cousin once removed with Catherine. AH shows as 4th cousin once removed to me on the AutoKinship Tree and in my DNA/Genealogy Tree.

How Does Otis Fit In?

I have Otis in this Tree:

Otis is actually in this tree twice. However, I don’t think I have a tree in it with both AH and Otis. Donna and Iain should be in this tree also under Leonhard Rathfelder. If the AutoKinship Tree is correct, then I may suspect a Schwechheimer connection for AH or a Rathfelder connection for Otis.

My Cluster 1 AutoKinship Tree

So far, I am liking the AutoKinship Trees because they give context to the AutoClusters. Also there appears to be an element of triangulation in making these Trees which gives me an additional sense that these trees are based on science. However, I after reading Roberta Estes Blog, I am not sure that the trees are based on trianulation.

This is an interesting tree. I know that my 1st cousin once removed and 2nd cousin have the correct relationships. That leaves Deb. I was able to find her on AncestryDNA. Debra and I have a shared DNA match with Rebeka:

It is difficult to figure out where the common ancestor is between Debra and myself. One pair of common ancestors is Jonathan Hatch b 1621 and Sarah Rowley. There may also be a Palmer connection in Rhode Island.

For fun, I will paint in Debra’s DNA using DNA Painter:

Debra’s DNA does not fill in any blank spots on my Chromosome 14. However, it does identify the right-hand part of Chromosome 14 in that it is Massachusetts Colonial DNA and not English Hartley DNA. I have a lot of green Hartley-Snell DNA identified, but not a lot of it is identified as to whether it is on the Hartley side or Snell side. This DNA is most assuredly on the Snell side. The top two choices for the identity of this DNA are Hatch and Palmer. Both of these connections go back to the 1600’s which is also interesting. Maury in my painted Chromosome 14 is mmg in the AutoKinship Tree and Pat is also there.

Cluster 3 AutoKinship Tree

Lee in the second row is a person that I have been following. Lee has ancestry in Colne. This is the area where my Hartleys came from. Lee also has Hartley ancestry which is not uncommon in Colne as Hartley has been one of the most popular name in that Parish over the last several centuries. The AutoKinship Tree connects myself with Lee, Geoff and Heather.

Heather tested at 23andMe.  I have written to Heather and Geoff to see if they would share their Ancestry trees with me. Now, one report at the AutoKinship Utility has Lee matching Audrey:

Audrey tested at FTDNA and has a shared match with Tracey at FTDNA. Tracey at least has a partial tree with some ancestors from Brampton, Ontario:

However, it appears that this tree only covers one side of Tracey’s ancestry. However, Tracey has a shared match at FTDNA with Amy. Amy also has Parr ancestry. Here is how Amy in blue and Tracey in red match me on Chromosome 11:

Here is part of Amy’s tree:

Amy and Tracey have the common ancestors of Joseph Parr and Calra Morrison. That means that I may have shared ancestors going back from one of these two.

Creating a Tree – But it Leads to the Wrong Line

I haven’t had much luck with these trees in the past, but I will create another tree. It turns out that this connection is on a different line:

Loughead is from County Sligo where my grandmothers Frazer and Clarke families were from. That means that either my connection with Lee is through Sligo. I do notice that Lee has Clark ancestors, but as Clark is a common name, could this be a coincidence? Lee doesn’t show any ancestors in Sligo. Lee also matches my father’s 1st cousin who has no Clarke ancestry, so I tend to think that the Lee connection is on my Hartley side.

I have heard back from Heather, so there may be a lead there.

Cluster 4 AutoKinship Tree

This is also on my Hartley side, but whereas I believe the previous tree goes back to my English Hartleys, I believe that this tree goes back to my Snell side and Colonial Massachusetts. I show a close match as a 1st cousin twice removed to two people. These are actually my second cousins. That means that I should be roughly 4th cousins with the other matches. Of course, that is based on typical matching amounts. It could be that others who matched less are not showing and that these matches could go back further in time – perhaps like the 1600’s match I mentioned above.

It helps showing these trees as it gives me hope that I may find a common ancestor or ancestors. Ned has a pretty good tree at Ancestry:

I find the Shared Surname List useful. Here is one connection:

Here we are in the early 1600’s again. Ned descends from Mary Hathaway and I descend from John Hathaway. In my previous DNA/Genealogy tree, I have gone as far back as Simon Hathaway from 1711. This is at Simon’s great-grandparent level, so back another three generations.

Adding Ned to DNA Painter

This is an interesting possibility, because Sarah Cooke’s father was on the Mayflower. Here is how Ned shows up:

This is interesting because Ned shares more DNA in this area of my paternal side Chromosome 16 than my 1st cousin once removed Maury. I didn’t paint in Jed, but he would be in about the same area.

Adding Ned to My DNA/Genealogy Tree

This should be interesting. Here is my existing Hathaway DNA matching Tree:

All I have to do is go up three generations to Arthur and Sarah Cooke and then down to Ned. Here is the connection by itself:

Of course, the connection is a bit dubious, but it is what I have. I notice that there is a Mayhew in the line which may be another connection going way back.

Cluster 6 AutoKinship Tree

This tree has an E-23 probability which seems incredibly small to me. However, of some interest to me is that there re two siblings near the top of the tree and two siblings at the bottom. If correct, then I at the 3rd cousin once removed level with Kimmy and mostly 3rd cousin level with the other DNA matches.

I found Carl at Ancestry. He has a Hannah Pontus Churchill born in Virginia in 1651. I have a Hannah Churchill in my tree born 1649 apparently in Plymouth, MA as the daughter of John Churchill and Hannah Pontus. So if my information is right John Churchill born perhaps in 1620 and Hannah Pontus would be our common ancestors. However, from above, I had that my Audrey connection was on an entirely different line going back to Ireland. Time to move on to Cluster 8

Cluster 8 Tree

Here at least I have Beth, my second cousin and the probability on this tree is not as low as the previous tree. Beth and I descend from James Hartley and Annie Snell. James Hartley had one sister. Annie was from a larger family, so my guess is that this tree could be on the Snell side. I note that GPR is a new match at Gedmatch, but I was unable to make the connection to Ancestry.

Cluster 37 Tree

This is a tree that I am familiar with:

Let’s see how accurate the AutoKinship Tree is:

 

This shows that, at least in this case, AutoKinship had each relationship closer by one-half step. The one exception is between me and Judy. The program then guesses at different possibilities:

Tree 4 seems to get it right:

The problem here is that Robert shows as a 2C2R to me where he is a 2C1R. However, the structure of the tree is more or less right. I don’t know that any of the trees got it perfect. There were just better trees and worse ones. Although this AutoKinship Tree does not give me any new information, it gives me an idea of how the Tree works.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It seems that the AutoKinship Trees help give some context to at least some of the AutoClusters
  • Looking at the AutoClusters in this way gives some hope that a common ancestor could be found some some of the unidentified clusters
  • Looking at the AutoClusters in terms of trees gives a fresh look at some old matches while also picking up some new matches that have been added to Gedmatch.
  • The real help is also in the reaching out to those I haven’t reached out to yet to try to make genealogical connections.

Nine Years of My Hartley Branch YDNA Testing

According to my FTDNA Order History, I ordered my first DNA kit on 02/24/2013. This was about 9 years ago. I took the YDNA 12 marker kit. Those results came in on 03/18/2013. At that time, I would have had many matches. A few of these would have been Hartley matches. Most were other matches with ancestry mostly in England, Scotland and Ireland. I ordered the 37 STR test on April 25, 2013.

My understanding was at this point was that I was R1b which was a pretty generic Northwestern European Haplogroup. The Hartley YDNA Project had me as R-P311:

I think that P311 is equivalent to L151.

As I  recall, the STR results were ambiguous and it was suggested that I should take the U152 test:

U152 was an important distinction. U152 as I understood it represented the Anglo Saxon portion of England. These were people that came to England after the Roman period:

For reasons I cannot explain, I did not want to be positive for U152. I wanted to be part of the earlier Celtic Britons shown in the above map. The map explained to me the confusion of names. For example why was there a Great Britain and England? I was relieved to find out in June 2013 that I was negative for U152.

My Hartley YDNA 2014 – S5668

2013 and 2014 was a time for me to learn about the world of YDNA. At this time the stress was on YDNA. Autosomal testing was not as popular. I did my first SNP testing in 2014 with a company called Briton’s DNA. This company cost less than FTDNA. I got the results in about August of 2014. As I recall, I was listed as S5668. I believe that Briton’s DNA gave a name to this group and even had a fanciful drawing of what they believed a person from this Haplogroup may have looked like.

Here was the Chromo2 version of where I was:

Chromo SNPs tended to use an S designation. I should have used FTDNA, but used BritainsDNA as an interim measure to find out where I belonged. Even though the drawing of my ancestral tribe was laughable, I was happy to know where I fit in on the tree of mankind. I had traced my Hartley ancestry back to a certain point in time and place in Trawden, Lancashire. Now I was able to tracke my lineage down from genetic Adam more towards modern times. However, there was still a big gap between S5668 and my Trawden Hartleys.

Later in the year 2014, FTNDA and Mike Walsh were developing this L513 Tree:

I did get honorable mention in this tree, but my name was listed below the line for individual SNP testing as I had not taken the BigY test.

67 STR Test

Meanwhile, I had ordered the 67 STR test. My analysis of my 67 STR data lead me to believe that I should also be positive for Z17911. I tested positive for this SNP at YSEQ, but that made no difference at FTDNA, so then I tested positive for an equivalent to Z17911 which was Z17912 – also at FTDNA:

That means that in 2014, I went (in the eyes of FTDNA) from R-P311 (or L151) to Z17911. That was a big jump.

Here is a closeup of the L513 Tree from October 2014:

I was not on this tree because I had not paid for the more expensive BigY test. However, I now saw that if I did, I would be most closely related to Merrick and Thomas. I also kept up with an enthusiastic group on an L513 newsgroup.

My Hartley BigY500 in 2016

I had no further YDNA testing in 2015. I kept up with updates on L513. I became increasingly frustrated that others were being added to the L513 Tree, but I was not allowed as I had not done BigY testing – even though I knew where I should belong on that tree. I ordered the BigY in April 2016. At that time, the Hartley part of the L513 had not changed much:

there was now a Smith, two Haplogroups up from Z17911. The Yahoo L513 group was trying to figure out who should be in the Z17911 group by STRs. The initial June 2016 BigY results got me onto the L513 Tree:

Of course, it discovered my variants which would be useful in future branching. Now a Goff had also joined our group. At this time, I also uploaded my BigY results to YFull.

Mike Walsh pointed out that my BigY test would result in a new branch. Not for me, but for Merrick and Thomas:

The last line shows that I was red for that SNP location (Column 4), but that Thomas and Merrick have green showing that they are positive.

In September 2016, a new L513 tree came out:

As predicted, Merrick formed a new branch, though notice that it was not yet named.

2017 and SmithPlanet

In 2017, Jared Smith got more involved with SNP testing. He also created a website and his own tree for R-Z16357:

The interesting part of this tree that Jared built is that it included estimates for the dates of the SNPs. Now the Branch for Merrick, Thomas and Bennett have the name of BY11573. These dates were for the most part before the time of surnames.

Here is my Hartley section of the L513 Tree dated January 2016 but it must be from January 2017:

The new branch is now named BY11573 and includes Bennett. I believe that the Smith at the top of this section of the tree at Z16357 is different than Jared.

More Detail from Jared

Jared looked at the individual SNPs or Variants and came up with this portion of the Hartley Tree:

Here, based on A11130, Jared shows Hartley branching off. This was true for my branch of Hartleys. However, future testing would show that A11130 was not a SNP that Hartleys other than in my specific branch tested positive for. FTDNA’s practice is to not name a branch unless more than one person tests positive for it. However I appreciated Jared’s tree that went ahead and created a branch for me. This branch would later be called A111132. It seemed like I had been at Z17911 for a long time. This was my first change in over two years since 2014 when I discovered that I was Z17911.

At this time, I was also trying to build STR trees for my branch of Hartleys but found that they were difficult to build and often in opposition to the non-ambiguous SNPs.

More Updates

We are now up to about 5 years ago. Here is what Jared has near the end of February 2017:

This put everyone on the left side of the Z17911 tree and Hartley on the right side of the tree.

A New Hartley Tester in 2017

My May 2017 Blog notes the results from a new Hartley tester. This was what was needed to create a new Haplogroup for the Hartleys:

This tree is dated March 25, 2017. I noted in that Blog that the new tester moved us down the tree past A11138 to A11132.  So after a long time at Z17911, I had a double change.  This was due to two major changes. The new tester and I are now at A11132 and Jared is now at A11138. That means that Jared’s BigY results and the new Hartley’s test results must have come out at about the same time. Here Jared also has a dotted line to two boxes that are in lighter green. I assume that these are people who tested STRs but not SNPs.

The FTDNA Block Tree in 2019

In a Blog I wrote in September 2019, I have this early Hartley Block Tree from FTDNA:

According to Roberta Estes, this Block Tree came out in January of 2019. At this time, A11132 had 7 SNPs in it. This was later to change to 10 and then go down to 8 when it split. Also, Jared now has 11 Private Variants (down from his then 13 Private Variants.

In that same Blog, I posted an analysis Dave Vance did with dates:

Vance has the common ancestor for Smith and Hartley at 900 AD and the common ancestor between the two Hartleys at 1400 AD. The analysis was based on STRs. Based on SNPs, I made an estimate that our common Hartley ancestors may be in the year 1500 AD.

In November 2019, I posted a Blog trying to triangulate the genealogy of the Hartleys who either tested as A11132 or likely were due to STR testing. Here is a portion of the L513 Tree from that Blog:

 

At this time the FTDNA L513 Administrator was trying to show by colors where the ancestors of the SNP groups came from.

In December of 2019, I noted that there was a new Hartley tester named Steve. I had convinced him to take the BigY test. At this point, only the 111 STR portion of his test had come in, but he was my closest match at 111 STRs:

This screen shot was from December 2019, but it shows that I lost a Private Variant somehow. Perhaps it was decided that these this Variant was in a location that was not reliable:

 

My Hartley YDNA Updates for 2020

The first big news of 2020 was Steve and his new BigY. I ordered an upgrade for myself also at this time to make sure that our results were compatible. In January, I noticed that the L513 tree had changed. Now there were two pages of tree and the country of origin designation was removed. I was on the S5668 side.

Recall, that when I firsted tested at BritainsDNA S5668 was the extent of my testing. The test went down deeper but not on my Z16357 branch of S5668 which is a smaller branch.

Here is SNP Tracker at that time:

In the proceses of Steve’s BigY, he is now my closest match at 111 STRs. Michael did not upgrade to 111 STRs in his BigY500 test:

The Start of Two Hartley BigY Tests – January 2020

My test was an upgrade from BigY500 to BigY700. Steve’s was new.

The obvious difference other than I now match Steve is that we share 12 Private Variants between the three of us. Michael and I previously shared 2 Private Variants. It seems that I had 17 Private Variants and Steve had 19 Private Variants. I found this confusing, because I had some named SNPs from previous testing which were also Private, that is, not shared. I didn’t ask Michael how many Private Variants he had.

February 2020

In my Blog from this Month, I mention the Rule of Three as recommended by Bill Wood at the Facebook BigY Page. I realized that I should have tested my brother instead of upgrading my own BigY. That would have saved me some money. At this time, I also posted my BigY upgrade results to Alex Williamson’s Big Tree. I noted that my Private Variants went down from 10 to six:

That means that the 17 Private Variants I mentioned above could have included named SNPs. At this point, I still assumed that Steve and I would form a new Hartley Branch.

April 2020 – More Changes in the Hartley Block Tree

Here is what the Block Tree looks like now:

The Private Variants have gone from an average of 12 to an average of 4. Two new SNPs have been added to the A11132 Block based on Steve’s testing and my upgrade. I contacted FTDNA and they said that all reviews were done. That means that Steve and I did not form a new branch. That also means that the common ancestor between Steve, Michael and myself is within a specific range of years.

The Rule of Three mentioned above recommends you test yourself of course for the BigY. One of the 2 others is a close relative that needs testing. I ordered a test for my brother, Jim later in April. I was curious to see our Private Variants named and have a branch for our own particular tribe of Hartleys. Here is what I was expecting:

I had six Private Variants which I assumed would be named when my brother tested and that block of newly named SNPs would form a new Hartley Branch.

May and June 2020 – Jim’s New BigY Results

The first part of the BigY results is the 111 STR test results. I wrote about those in May 2020. The news from this test was that I had a one STR difference from my brother Jim. It turned out that I had a mutation at DYS534 that the other Hartleys did not have:

At this time, I wrote out a genealogy chart connecting three YDNA testers:

 

Michael tested for BigY500 and Lawrence and Ross tested STRs. I find these trees to be useful for reference during YDNA testing. Based on this tree, it would seem that if Lawrence or Ross were to test the BigY, they would form a new branch of Hartleys.

June 2020

When Jim’s BigY results were first posted, he was listed as A11132. I also found a new STR on the extended testing where Jim and I did not match:

I didn’t know if I had the mutation at DYS548 or if Jim did. I could now probably figure that out, but have not done this yet. New tester Lawrence has a value of 12 for DYS548. For some reason, when I check my results, I don’t show a value for DYS548:

So I can’t explain this discrepancy right now.

My June 8, 2020 Blog showed this new Hartley Branch and Block Tree:

I noted that this was my first change from A11132 since 2017. The new R-FT225247 branch has 7 SNPs. After Jim and I split off from A11132, Michael and Lawrence now have an average of 2 Private Variants. This created a discrepancy between the new FT225247 Branch and the A11132 Branch. Part of this was due to the fact that Michael took the older BigY500 test.

My Hartley YDNA Branches in 2021

My next Hartley YDNA Blog was not until March 2021. At that time, there were a few changes in the Block Tree:

Some time between June 2020 and March 2021, A11132 went from 9 SNPs to 10 and the Smith Branch went from 13 Private Variants to 11. It looks like the new SNP for A11132 was FT22040. This is something I did not look at previously.

FT22040

Here is what YBrowse shows:

This SNP was discovered in 2019. Here is what the Big Tree Page shows:

For some mutations, their exact position on the tree is uncertain. The mutation may belong further upstream or all downstream branches may not be positive for it. This is often the case for SNPs/INDELs found in FGC kits or 1kG kits in regions not covered by BigY tests.

This note indicates that FT22040 has an uncertain position. Here are my results for this SNP:

I suppose that explains FT22040, but not the timing of when it was added. Also, I cannot explain Smith’s Private Variant drop from 13 to 11.

December 2021

I wrote a Blog which mentions John who agreed to take the BigY test. I am hoping to find a new Hartley Branch and get listed on the R1b Hall of Fame:

To do this requires our Hartley group to have three of more descendant subclades and we had only two (A11132 and FT225247). John was my closest match by STRs, so seemed a good candidate. In that Blog, I estimated that there should be at least 10,000 A11132 Hartley descendants in the World.

I also triangulated the earliest known ancestors for the four BigY testers plus the new BigY tester.

I gave a weighted score. My family and the Quaker family were from Trawden. So they got a 5. The Roger Hartley family is widely believed to be from Marsden. However, my understanding of the genealogy is that the Quaker place of meeting was in Marsden and his death record from there shows that he was from the “Forest of Trawden”. This is an older or fuller name for Trawden. Steve’s ancestors were below that in the Todmorden area. The new BigY tester John’s ancestors were from Healaugh near Tadcaster in Yorkshire County to the East. My analysis favored Trawden, but I am predisposed to that area as that is where my Hartleys were from (though about 175 years after the Roger Hartley Family).

Michael’s Private Variants

I had assumed that Michael had no Private Variants. I found out that this was not true. I had assumed that based on the average and number of Variants that Steve and Michael had, that Michael would have no Private Variants. I discoverd that the average was not based on the total list of Private Variants, but only the Private Variants that FTDNA deemed to be in reliable areas. Michael actually had two Private Variants. I compared the Variants of those who had tested and got this table:

At this point, I was reinforced in my feeling that someone else on the Roger Hartley Line needed to be tested to make up for deficiencies in Michael’s BigY500 test.

SNP Tracker is now tracking my new SNP family SNP of FT225247:

This brings our SNP from Medieval to Modern times.

2022 and Three Important BigY Tests: John, Lawrence and Mawdsley

John’s 111 STR results came in at the first of the year. They showed that John was more closely related to my brother and me at 111 STRs than to other Hartleys. However, the STR results can be misleading. In this Month also Robert Casey did a STR study for the Z16343 Group. This is important in finding other STR testers who may be part of the Z16343 Group. Dating was also included, but some of the dating seemed to go against the more consistant dating by using SNPs and SNP structure.

Here is an updated Z16343 Tree from the SmithPlanet web site:

It also includes the SNP above which is Z16357.

Lawrence and Mawdsley

I asked Lawrence from the Roger Hartley Line if he would take the BigY test and he agreed to take it. When Lawrence’s 111 STR test came in a new tester named Mawdsley also took the BigY test and his 111 STR test came in. Both Lawrence’s and Mawdsley’s BigY results were finalized (minus the manual review) at the end of January 2022.

A New Hartley Haplogroup – A11134

I got Steve, John and Lawrence to test for BigY hoping for a new Harltey Haplogroup. It took the testing of a non-Hartley (Mawdsley) to split up the existing A11132 Haplogroup and form a new Hartley A11134 Haplogroup.

February 2022 Lawrence’s BigY Results

I was disappointed to see that Lawrence’s 6 Private Variants did not produce a new Branch with Michael. This could be because Michael’s BigY500 test did not cover the positions where Lawrence’s Private Variants were located.

A16717

However, I was encouraged by the fact that both Lawrence and Michael tested positive for A16717 and the other Hartleys tested negative. The only problem is that this SNP is also used in the J Haplogroup. After 2 weeks from when Lawrence’s BigY results came in, I wrote to the FTDNA Help Desk to see if they would create a branch of A16717 for Michael and Lawrence.

Here is the new Block Tree as of the end of February 2022:

Here is the branching that I was hoping for:

Summary and Conclusions

  • It has been a wild ride looking into the YDNA of my Hartley Line
  • I have gone with STR testing, Chromo2 testing (BritainsDNA), single SNP testing at FTDNA and YSEQ and finally BigY testing.
  • Along the way I have learned a lot about YDNA ‘deep ancestry’.
  • Recently, two Hartley only surname branches have been discovered. These are A11134 and FT225247
  • I have also discovered the closest name to our Hartley Surname which is Mawdsley
  • I am now awaiting to see if FTDNA will create a A16717 Branch of Hartleys. This would be an important branch as it includes genealogy back to the early 1600s. Also many US Hartleys descend from this branch of early immigrants to Pennsylvania.

 

A Case for a New A16717 Branch of Hartleys

In my previous Blog on Lawrence’s new BigY test, I mentioned how Lawrence matched Michael on A16717. This was a named SNP that Michael has tested positive for since he took the older BigY500 test.

A16717 at YBrowse

I had shown this graphic in my previou Blog:

The confusing part of this graphic is that even though William Hartley named the SNP as part of R1b, it is also used by YFull in the J-HU209 Branch. If I follow the hyperlink for J-HU209, it brings me to the YFull Tree:

A16717 is shown as a 3/5 star SNP defining J-HU209. I’m not sure how FTDNA deals with SNPs that are in different Haplogroups.

Hartley Testing for A16717

Here is my Block Tree:

The Hartley testers are me and my brother James, then John, Steve, Michael and Lawrence.

As I mentioned Michael tested positive for A16717:

Here are Lawrence’s recent results for the same SNP:

These results go down another page.

Next, I just have to show that the other Hartley testers tested negative for this SNP. Here are John’s results:

His results keep going also.

Here are Steve’s results:

He is also clearly not positive for A16717.

Next, I just need to show that my brother and I are negative for A16717. Here are my brother’s results:

There are no pink A’s under the position for A16717 which indicates that my brother Jim is not positie for A6717.

Lastly, my results:

As expected, the results are the same. I already knew this, but wanted to put the proof out in a Blog.

Blog Update: The Big Tree

I should have checked Alex Williamson’s Big Tree. Michael has his results there. Here is a partial list of Michael’s Unique Mutations:

Here is the explanantion for the codes:

In the table above, the meaning of the confidence field depends on whether the data comes from an FTDNA kit or an FGC kit. For FTDNA kits, + implies a “PASS” result with just one possible variant, * indicates a “PASS” but with multiple variants, ** indicates “REJECTED” with just a single variant, and *** indicates “REJECTED” with multiple possible variants. ‘A*’ are heterozygous variants not called by FTDNA, but still pulled from the VCF file. For FGC kits, + indicates over 99% likely genuine (95% for INDELs); * over 95% likely genuine (90% for INDELs); ** about 40% likely genuine; *** about 10% likely genuine. Manual entries read directly from a BAM file will be either + indicating positive, or * indicating that the data show a mixture of possible variants.

For the FTDNA kits, the BED data is encoded in the background color of the cells. Those cells with a white background have coverage, those with a grey background indicate no coverage in the BED file, and those with a pink background indicate the mutation is on the edge of a coverage region. These pink regions often indicate that the individual may be positive for a SNP even if there is no corresponding entry in the vcf file.

The combBED column indicates whether or not the mutation is a SNP and falls in the combBED region defined in Defining a New Rate Constant for Y-Chromosome SNPs based on Full Sequencing Data by Dmitry Adamov, Vladimir Guryanov, Sergey Karzhavin, Vladimir Tagankin, Vadim Urasin.

The McDonald BED column indicates whether or not the mutation is a SNP and falls in the BED region used by Dr. Iain McDonald in the age analysis he does for R-U106 men.

The CombBED Region

Thanks to the link that Alex Williamson has on his Big Tree page (highlighted above), I now see where this Region is:

This is from Table 1 in the Supplement portion of the article by Adamov. A16717 is between two pages. Here is the Title of the Table:

The HG19 Position for A16717 is 7222463 which is between CombBED Regions 82 and 83. In the Adamov Paper, the CombBED Regions is where Adamov expected his samples to have SNP Variants. However, it appears that Michael and Lawrence had variants in a non-CombBED Region. I don’t know what this means.

Summary and Conclusions

  • This Blog is written to show that clearly Michael and Lawrence are positive for the SNP A16717 and the four other Hartleys are not positive for that SNP
  • I believe that FTDNA should put Michael and Lawrence into their own branch called A16717. This would also support the genealogy which shows Michael and Lawrence as 7th cousins.
  • The only confusing part is that it seems like YFull is using SNP A16717 in a branch of the J Haplogroup.
  • I finally figured out how to figure out where the CombBED Region, thanks to Alex Williamson’s Big Tree Web Site.

 

A New A11134 Hartley Tester Results Are Coming In


It has been a busy year for my branch of Hartleys. In January, a new Hartley test came in at A11132. This is where other Hartleys from the same branch had been testing. Shortly after that Hartley BigY results, a Mawdsley tested who was two SNPs removed from the other Hartley A11132 test results. That put Mawdsley at A11132 and the Hartleys at A11134.

Lawrence and Michael

The new tester is Lawrence. Here is how Lawrence and Michael show as being related by genealogy:

That would make them 7th cousins if the genealogy is right. Hopefully, the BigY test will support the genealogy. So far, it the STR results between Lawrence and Michael make the genealogy seem off. However, when there is a discrepancy between SNPs from the BigY test and STRs, the SNPs are far more reliable.

The New BigY700 Results

Michael did the BigY500 test, so the comparisons may not be exact, but let’s take a look. This morning, it was clear that FTDNA decided that Lawrence was now A11134. However, that could change. Here is Lawrence’s Block Tree as of today:

Here Lawrence is just added in under A11134. This tree will likely change in some way – especially and at least in the area of Private Variants.

Lawrence’s Private Variants

Lawrence has 6 Private Variants:

These are important as they can show either places where Lawrence may match with other BigY tester’s Private Variants and they can show how long Lawrence’s tree is from his closest tested common ancestor.

Lawrence’s Private Variants do not match up with Michael’s two Private Variants:

That means that Michael and Lawrence will not form an obvious new branch based on these Private Variants.

Checking Deeper Into Michael’s Private Variants

Unfortunately, Michael was not tested for 11503251:

Michael is missing 12197124:

Michael is missing 13636160:

Michael is missing 19708663:

Michael is missing 26634402:

Michael is missing 5742283:

That means that Michael was not tested for any of Lawrence’s Private Variants. That also means that we don’t know if Michael and Lawrence would form a new Hartley Branch based on any of Lawrence’s Private Variants.

Checking Michael’s Two Private Variants on Lawrence’s Results

Lawrence tested for 12695002 but was not positive for this Variant:

Lawrence tested for 20317042 but was not positive for this Variant either:

That means that, as far as the BigY testing goes for Private Variants, it seems as Michael and Lawrence are like ships passing in the night.

Implications of Lawrence’s Private Variants Vs Michael’s

The following implications are based on the fact, further along in the Blog, that Lawrence and Michael are positive for A16717. The further implication from this is that Lawrence and Michael are related as shown in the genealogy chart near the beginning of this Blog:

  • As Lawrence tested negative for Michael’s Private Variants, I would consider Michael’s two Private Variants to be true Private Variants
  • Lawrence has six Private Variants, but Michael’s BigY testing did not appear to cover any of Lawrence’s Private Variant locations.
  • It is possible that Michael, had he had more coverage in his BigY test, could have tested negative for all of Lawrence’s Private Variants. In this case all of Lawrence’s Private Variants would be true Private Variants.
  • It is also possible that had Michael’s BigY test covered all of Lawrence’s Private Variant Locations, that Michael could have been found positive for one or more of those variants. In that case a new Branch would have formed (those SNPs would be added to A16717 Branch).

More Variants Compared

In a previous Blog, I had compared Variants:

These Variants are Steve’s Private Variants, Michael’s Private Variants and my brother and my SNPs shared. I  should have added John to the list. Part of my reasoning for having Lawrence test the BigY was to fill in the yellow areas of Michael’s test. I may do further filling in of this chart in a subsequent Blog.

A16717

It appears that Michael and Lawrence may share A16717. Let’s take a look. I noticed that in the list of non-matching variants, A16717 showed up with Lawrence’s matches except for with Michael. That means that Lawrence and Michael must share that SNP:

I checked and both Michael and Lawrence are positive for this SNP. This SNP was named by William Hartley in 2017 – probably when Michael first tested:

Today, FTDNA does not name these until there is a match, but back then they were named sometimes.

Here is my initial idea of how the new Hartley Branch should look:

Day 2 of Lawrence’s BigY Results

A day after the Lawrence’s BigY results started coming out and the average number of Private Variants went up for the A11134 Hartley group from 2 to 3:

Now it is time to wait to see if FTDNA comes to the same conclusions. Jared Smith had this to say about the new developments:

It will be interesting to see if they create a new A16717 branch. This SNP is not in the BED region, but with them both having it I’d suspect they will form a new branch. If they don’t do so after manual review, I’ll take a closer look and see if we can make a case via Mike W. for FTDNA to give it consider forming this branch. In the past we’ve identified SNPs like this that they’ve created branches on after our request for another closer review.

Summary and Conclusions

  • After a less than patient wait on my part for Lawrence’s BigY results, the initial results are now in.
  • I wanted Lawrence to test his YDNA because of his important Hartley genealogy that goes back at least to the early 1600’s and because of his relationship with Michael who has that same genealogy.
  • I was disappointed that Lawrence’s Private Variants did not match up with areas of YDNA that Michael had tested.
  • Fortunately, Michael and Lawrence match on a previously named Private SNP that Michael had. We need to wait and see if FTDNA figures that out and puts them in a new A16717 Hartley Branch.
  • The location for A16717 is not in the most reliable area, but Michael and Lawrence are clearly positive for this SNP.