One Step out

[plangley]

This may be the first of a series of queries!!
Unless a female ancestor misbehaved herself, I am back to the original Langley, a certain William, who lived at Langley in Lancashire England in 1302, and I was hoping that DNA testing might give some indication of who he was before he became Langley.
The 12 marker test has come up with 5 full matches, ( the connection, I presume, originating prior to 1302) none of the names are familiar to me. Is there any way I can get the names of the people who were one step out to see if they ring any bells with me as regards the likely families who I am considering as possible ancestors?

[bob_allison]

Since you are looking to identify people to whom you may be related prior to the 1300's you would be better off looking for those who closely match you in the 25 or 37 marker test. The chance that you could confidently identify actual relations, with a different surname, via an 11/12 one step off match is pretty small.

Also remember that you may be an exact match with someone and still not be related. This can occur by chance, two men who are unrelated with different Y-DNA thousands of years ago have descendants whose random mutations over the generations happen to converge to a match.

Finally you will, more than likely, never be able to prove any relationship without some sort of paper documentation.

All the best.

[plangley]

Thank you Bob, your three short paragraphs have explained all my queries to me in a language I was able to understand.
Thanks again
Peter.