Surname Group Question

[marcusbgray]

There is someone that lists the same most distant ancestor as me but he is R1b1b2 and I am listed as I1. Either there is an error in the data/sample processing or one of us is incorrect? What are y'alls thoughts on this?

[Jim Barrett]

I'd say you are right and I believe the odds are in favor of the data/sample processing being correct.

[rucksack]

I had a similar situation.

It required much more work, but I discovered that the odd man out was born of the same ancestral mother as my high grade matches ancestor and my ancestor, but the odd man out came from her second husband.

The discovery was very good to find.

How did my two guys have the same surname?

Simple; it was a farm name, and the man of the house used the name of the farm. Surnames were very fluid in my region, if you moved to another farm, that name was now your new name.

Depending on your ancestry, this could explain a lot.

[JPHutchins]

Have you considered an undocumented adoption or NPE? Sometimes families have secrets that only show up at times like these. That is why I cannot match with any "Hutchins", but I know that I was adopted. My adoption was not a secret to anyone.

[mkdexter]

Another thought is that someone filled improper information into their family tree and used the same name but it was the wrong family.

If your YDNA matches a lot of other men very closely with the same surname then yours is probably testing right.

In order to really find an ancestor on paper with yDNA you'd have to have a really low genetic distance. Is that true that you have a reallly low or zero GD with this match?

[marcusbgray]

Thanks for y'alls thoughts. Not sure what to do. I am confident about the documentation of my line back to the "shared" ancestor in common.

[rucksack]

I would suggest looking at all marriage records and other land or census data to determine any legal re-marriages as well as potential clues for the extra friendly neighbor man.

[marcusbgray]

Thanks for the input everyone. The thing about the Gray surname is that it is fairly common and derived from multiple sources (i.e., place names, physical features, nicknames, former slaves) depending on the culture. People with the last name Gray are fairly diverse.

As a result, neither the man in question nor myself have a high number of matches with other members of the Gray Surname Project from what I can tell.

I do have a CLOSE match with one other man with the last name Gray and we are looking into it (exact match on 37 markers).

[Javelin]

Everyone's done a good job of explaining how this could arise. This is where triangulation comes in handy. Does the other guy have any close matches named Gray? Has he set up a Ysearch account? What surname do his closest matches have? Do you have a town/region in common? If he has an Ancestry or other tree, can you get access to verify his research is correct?

[EdwardRHill]

I join a group that has my mother maiden name. These name seems to be one of those names that gets people excited and people researching that surname a lot of times seem to find away to make a connection to that family. In this group I joined there are three Haplogroups listed R, I, and E. R and I both claim to be related to the same family and both have found away to back up their claim to the family with paper trails. The problem I see is one group of matches want let the other group check their information out and both just go on claiming to be related to that family.

[marcusbgray]

Everyone's done a good job of explaining how this could arise. This is where triangulation comes in handy. Does the other guy have any close matches named Gray? Has he set up a Ysearch account? What surname do his closest matches have? Do you have a town/region in common? If he has an Ancestry or other tree, can you get access to verify his research is correct?

I am not in contact with the man, I have no way of reaching him. We have a region in common, Southwest Virginia. He claims to be the descendant of the same man I am but we have different haplotypes (like I said initially). I have no clue if he has an ancestry.com tree.