What is point of projects?

[PDHOTLEN]

Getting away from the subject of project administrator, I see the person who posted the above ^ message is named Thorn. My U5b2b2 HVR1+HVR2 is very rare, up to this point. One tree I put together based on that match, ages ago, on Ancestry has a Thorn in it; in Canada. I'll have to take a peek again. I presume a common maternal ancestress with my line back in merry ole England, before the Pilgrims came over. One line in that tree moved to Canada from Massachusetts around the 1812 War era, I think it was.

Just to narrow it down a wee mite (after peeking at my old research tree on Ancestry), Samuel Thorn 1770-1850 married Phebe Esther Chase b. 1777. He was born in Poughkeepsie, NY. And she was born in Gagetown, New Brunswick. They both died in Hillier Township in Ontario. So one can guess that they met in Ontario. Her line (my U5 match) came from Massachusetts. His Thorn/Thorne line goes back to Long Island, NY.

[PDHOTLEN]

Just to narrow it down a wee mite (after peeking at my old research tree on Ancestry), Samuel Thorn 1770-1850 married Phebe Esther Chase b. 1777. He was born in Poughkeepsie, NY. And she was born in Gagetown, New Brunswick. They both died in Hillier Township in Ontario. So one can guess that they met in Ontario. Her line (my U5 match) came from Massachusetts. His Thorn/Thorne line goes back to Long Island, NY.

Poking around a bit more, I saw that Phebe's grandmother was Mary Strange. That rings a bell, since that surname is not common. Mary's dad was Lot Strange. One entry on Ancestry shows that Strange line going way back in England to where it changes to Le Strange. Aha! I have Le Strange in my maternal line back in England just a few generations down from Joan Plantagenet, although a different Le Strange person. So what does this mean? It looks like there must be some kind of mtDNA U5 connection be4tween this Massachusetts matching clade and my own. But I'm not going to try to ferret it all out.

[Maureen Hastings]

The World Fam project for my maiden name surname has been inactive since 2010. I don't see anything on RootsWeb, either. The admin did send me some historical information when I joined, but there is no discussion and no new results since 2010. Is there any other way to know if anyone with that Surname has tested?

I have no males to y-test anyway, but wonder if anyone else has discovered anything useful or gleaned helpful information by using their autosomal results in connection with y-matches or is that wishful thinking on my part so maybe it doesn't matter if the project is dead anyway?

I don't have one match for my maiden name in my 29 pages of autosomal results but it feels kind of weird not being involved with any project that is of the name I was born with and grew up with. Any suggestions? Tough luck?! It's not registered with One Name Guild, either.

Thanks.

[sammy321]

The Admins in the three projects I'm in are all very knowledgeable and helpful. One did GEDCOM for me and another helped completed my proven lineage on the maternal side. They reply to my emails and without them I'd be up the creek without a paddle.

[Wilma Wildcat]

I joined the Sutton project when I joined FTDNA two years ago. Since then, I've never seen a report from the project, no communication about anything, no matches, nothing.

When I go to the project page for the Sutton project all there is is an overview. The exact same overview that I saw before I joined the project.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but what is the point of these projects? They seem pretty useless to me. Is the data only give to the project manager?

It just dawned on me that perhaps you have not clicked the links taking you to the results page, where all your fellow members have their results. Is that the case? Because that is the reason I go to our project -- not for the overview page, for sure. But I have to go through the overview page to get there.

[JohnG]

I have had a new burst of enthusiasm for projects in the past year. I have been working my way up my family tree looking for my patriarchs in the Y trees. It gives me one more piece of information about my ancestors and has helped me figure out Family Finder matches - is their Acme line without paper really my Acme line with paper but no Y chromosome to test. In now have a captured by Indians story and a family with an odd haplotype and an ability to speak Spanish in Ireland.

I also found the select by project interesting in the Y results. It let me find a partner to take the Big Y and have a base of 250 years ago to see how much has changed since then.

I wish there were more effective autosomal projects. I have lots of clusters of matches that we keep together by email. I have never been sure how to do a project. In some cases, the logical thing would be to put the autosomal with the surname or with a region that seems to be the common denominator. The Y surname administrators do not seem excited to add autosomal.

[PDHOTLEN]

I dropped out of many of my projects. I still had one pending. I received an email saying that I was accepted, but click here to complete the process. I clicked there two different times. And FTDNA wanted me to purchase something. I mean, there was no other choice but to spend my money. I don't need projects; projects need me. Otherwise I'll go the Ancestry.com pedigree tree route.

[Jim Barrett]

When you sent the join request where you singed into your "myFTDNA" website and did you use the "Manage Projects" link on that site?