Yde, born 1506 in Denmark; father Scot, mother Gypsy

[Yde]

With the help from y-dna I have proved, that an old story about “The first Yde born of a gypsy on Vilsund Strand in Denmark” is true - and that the biological father was a man from Scotland and that the boy was born in 1506 and adopted by local people.

Here told chronological.
YDE, born 1506, half GORDON from SCOTLAND and half GYPSY

A: In my family an old tale says, that the first Yde was a baby “yde(d)” by some gypsies, who camped on Vilsund or Vildsund Strand in Thy, north west Jutland, Denmark. The Danish word yde means give, render, yield, pay. In a book from 1976, “Gamle Slægter fra Hundborg/Old Families from Hundborg”, we can read, page 119: In the Yde-families in Thy has from time immemorial been told a story, that the name Yde should have come from gypsies that a night stayed on Vilsund Ferry Inn. During the night one of the women gave birth to a child, and since they had nothing to pay with, they gave the baby to the owners of the inn. (And very few in our time believed in that story).

B: I have been wondering for many years, why I had no Danish dna-matches showing up. Instead a lot of names from The British Islands and the Low Countries came in. Not until July 2014 I found, that I had only seven “12/12, 23/25, 33/37”-matches, of which six were Gordon and one Douglas, apparently of Scottish ancestry. The ftdna-calculator then explains “Since Yde and Gordon do not share a common ancestor in the last 11 generations, there is 50% probability of a most recent common ancestor within 14 generations and the 75%-probability is crossed 17-18 generations back in time. A generation among my rural forefathers in Denmark is 31 years. The Gordon clan is originally from Normandy, where their ancestors are said to have had large possessions. By the early twelfth century they had settled in the village and estates of Gordon, near Kelso in the Scottish Borders under the protection of their kinsman, the Earl of Dunbar.

C: A study of History of Scotland gave an answer to A and B quite rapidly: On 3rd July 1505 the king of Scotland, James IV Stewart, wrote a letter to his mother’s brother, king Hans/John of Denmark, born in Aalborg, to “commend Anthony Gagino, a lord of Little Egypt, who, with his retinue, had a few months previously reached Scotland during a pilgrimage through the Christian world, undertaken at the command of the Apostolic See”. In 1512 count Anthony arrived to Stockholm in Sweden with many families and told they came from Klene Egifft. More than hundred years later these in Danish “sigøjnere”, now “romaer”, came to Finland where their descendants still live, now called "Finnish Kale", and maintain that their ancestors had originally come from Scotland.

My conclusion, August 2014: The people from “Little Egypt” in 1505 sailed from a port near Edinburgh to Aalborg, from where they travelled west, 100 km, and less than nine months later, around spring 1506, they arrived to Vilsund Strand, partly Stagstrup parish, partly Skjoldborg parish, once Thisted amt. So the baby, the first Yde, was probably half Gordon and half Gypsy.

For many years a horse- and merchant's market has taken place in Vilsund, 419 inhabitants. The ferry boat crossing Limfjorden was replaced by a bridge in 1939.

A book by Thomas Riis, “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, Scottish-Danish relations c. 1450-1707”, written in English, 690 pages, names 18 Gordon and 23 Douglas, but none of them seem to be the ancestor.

So the family-line goes:
Scot Gordon ~ Gypsy Woman (probably I1-Z140 L338+ AS-1 and M5a1b1a1 or a U3b1c-subgroup)
Yde 1, born 1506 on Vilsund Strand, Denmark. Adopted by local people.
Yde 2 (and 3?)
Jens Yde, born ca. 1585, estimated. The following are from church records.
Jens Jensen Yde, 1618-1688, ~ Mette Christensdatter
Jens Jensen Yde, 1651-1731, ~ Maren Madsdatter
Mads Jensen Yde, 1686-1763, ~ Anne Pedersdatter
Jens Madsen Yde, 1706-1781, ~ Friderica Schmidt
Søren Jensen Yde, 1741-1819, ~ Maren Jensdatter Svejgaard
Jens Mathias Yde, 1773-1852, ~ Maren Christensdatter
Jens Christian Jensen Yde, 1804-1856, ~ Ovens Kathrine Sørensdatter
Søren Jensen Yde, 1831-1905, ~ Petrine Mortensen
Martin A. Yde, 1874-1959, ~ Vilhelmine Jørgine Villadsen. They had a farm in Gærup only two kilometers from Vilsund Strand.
Christian Yde
Jens Yde VII

[Aperipatetic1]

I mean this kindly, and you are free to believe any account of your own ancestry that you choose to, but if what you relate in your story is all that you have to base your family story on, you have a lot more work to do until you can substantiate the tale, in my opinion.

If your paternal line is 'I1' Y-DNA, I would lean toward a more likely Scandinavian heritage than a typical Scotsman.
While MT 'M5' could very well indicate possible gypsy maternal ancestry, you would not carry that Hg if this was the parent of someone in your paternal ancestry born in 1506, unless I am missing something.

What maternal and paternal Hg do you specifically test as possessing? Obviously this is not definitive proof of your tale or evidence against it.

The reason you likely have a lot more matches to people in Scotland and the British Isles than other Danes is likely affected by the comparatively limited number of other Danes and Scandinavians who have completed the autosomal and Mt/Y tests.

A lot of people descended from Brit Isles populations have taken these tests, and many have distant connections to Scandinavia. I am primarily Brit Isles, and match people in Sweden and Norway with only very old and limited links through a specific set of families out of some Frisian Islands that technically would be Danish today, however I have no match to any Danes.

I would not assume that you are descended from a scenario as you related, without a lot more research and fact finding... unless you really want to do so for some reason.

[mollyblum]

Actually my father's birth mother was Scandinavian (through her father) and I have a pretty significant number of Scandinavian matches that include Norway, Sweden, Finland a few from Iceland and some Danes. So there are people from Scandinavia who have tested in the database.

[suttonwho]

While I agree that the British to Scandinavian ratio is heavily skewed toward British testers, I must second Molly's observation that there are plenty of Scandinavians in the database. My dad and I share a fair amount of native Swede, Finn and Norwegian hits. My son has none from his paternal side (Irish born with mainly Irish and Scottish ancestors).

Whatever the truth may be, Yde, interesting personal case study.

[Yde]

If your paternal line is 'I1' Y-DNA, I would lean toward a more likely Scandinavian heritage than a typical Scotsman.

About the technical specifications experts says:
Thegordondnaproject has placed me in The Northern Highland Branch, the descendants of Adam de Gordoun (born about 1035) through the two brothers “Jock and Tam” Gordon, which is the biggest Gordon family group with most testers seem to have wound up in Scotland.
The ftdna I1-project placed me in I1-Z140 L338+ AS-1
The I1-Z140-project placed me in I1-L338+
The Normans of Continental Europe-project placed me in I1-AS1
The Denmark-project placed me in I1-Z59 Branch Nordic Continental West
The Scandinavian project placed me in Ungrouped.

I have at this moment only seven matches "12/12,23/25,33/37", of which six have the name Gordon and the seventh is a Douglas.

From Minnesota, USA, a Mr. Gordon reports that his forefather Gordon was born in 1740 in Scotland.
From Australia a Mr. Gordon announces that his ancestor Gordon had a son born in 1844 in Scotland.
A third Mr. Gordon, eastern USA, is a descendant of a Gordon born 1759 in Scotland, he kindly tells.

What have these and the other three Gordons in common? I think everyone in this forum would say “an ancestor named Gordon, who was born before 1720”.

But then, what do I and other Yde-folks have in common with these Gordons? Is “six out of seven matches 12/12, 23/25, 33/37” too little to give the answer: "Gordon we have in common"?

The ftdna-calculators tell that the common ancestor for Yde and Gordon “for sure” lived after “1066” and that he could have lived in “1492”, par exemple.

The Gordon-deoxyribonucleic acid-molecule was in Normandy, France, before it came to Scotland. People with that signature might very well have seen the Viking ships of Ragnar Lodbrok and later those of Rollo in the 9th century passing by.

It was not till the 15th century that relations between Scotland and Denmark were established, whereas contacts between Scotland and Norway had been frequent for centuries. In the mid-15th century Scots sailed to the Baltic and Scottish immigration to Denmark began at the same time, spreading along the international sailing-route through the Sound into the Baltic. It is thus due probably not only to the hazards of the survival of records that a few Scots occur at first in Aalborg, North Jutland, among the members of the Corpus Christi Guild. Many Scots came to Danish Elsinore, Copenhagen and Malmo, but even more headed for Danzig/Gdansk and by the 17th century, there were an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Scots living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Familynames and DNA in “Preussia” can in our days be traced back to Scotland.

Studying history is a must in the new dna-world. Dna-calculation itself is not enough at present.

The mentioned gypsy/sigøjner/zigenare/mustalaisia/kaale/roma, was my many-G-grandmother,and she might have been pregnant when she left Scotland.

[MitchellSince1893]

Thought I would chime in here.

My father has multiple matches on FTDNA that have Romanichal (British Roma) or Swedish Romany ancestry.

My father has no known Roma or Swedish ancestry. As my father's paternal great grandfather and family are a mystery, this might be source. My father's paternal grandfather was born in London in 1893. His father is unknown and his mother had Scottish ancestors on both her father and mother's sides).

Or the source could be my father's Scottish ancestors (via the paternal grandfather's mother mentioned above) from Montrose area, Kincardine, and Fife. Surnames in this branch include Mitchell, Rintoul, Norrie, Skinner, Myer, Ross, Marten, Bogie, Anderson, Walker, Scott, and Paterson

Your story about the Scottish immigrants to Scandinavia may explain my father's Roma and Swedish matches.

I just need to somehow connect the dots.

[Aperipatetic1]

About the technical specifications experts says: Thegordondnaproject has placed me in The Northern Highland Branch, the descendants of Adam de Gordoun (born about 1035) through the two brothers “Jock and Tam” Gordon,

I have at this moment only seven matches "12/12,23/25,33/37", of which six have the name Gordon and the seventh is a Douglas.

What have these and the other three Gordons in common? I think everyone in this forum would say “an ancestor named Gordon, who was born before 1720”.

But then, what do I and other Yde-folks have in common with these Gordons? Is “six out of seven matches 12/12, 23/25, 33/37” too little to give the answer: "Gordon we have in common"?

I am not a expert on Hg I1, however I would imagine that a modal Ht may well be a potential factor. I dont know nor can I personally interpret how modal your I1 STR markers are, but 33/37 is probably going to fall apart even more significantly at a greater marker count, and I dont personally feel that 33/37 is too impressive for a recent paternal relationship, and its too close (once again thats my opinion) for a relationship dating back 500-1000 years.

I have noted with R1b that you can match people closely or even nearly exactly at low marker resolutions, however slow mutator STRs can be useful in determining if its a ancestral population match or a actual shared paternal line. The slow mutator STRs are where a false match can often be diagnosed.

It was not till the 15th century that relations between Scotland and Denmark were established, whereas contacts between Scotland and Norway had been frequent for centuries. In the mid-15th century Scots sailed to the Baltic and Scottish immigration to Denmark began at the same time, spreading along the international sailing-route through the Sound into the Baltic. It is thus due probably not only to the hazards of the survival of records that a few Scots occur at first in Aalborg, North Jutland

Studying history is a must in the new dna-world. Dna-calculation itself is not enough at present.

I dont have a desire to convince you of anything and you know your own family history better than I or anyone else could, however the region of what was historically Scotland that this particular 'Gordon' lineage that you report linking to is apparently based out of - Berwickshire - is very familiar to my own family history and I am specifically aware of its history.

Berwick upon Tweed was the european equivalent of the 'Port of Long Beach' during a very significant period of History. This was Not a remote or isolated place, and would be a daily or weekly port of call for Scandinavian ships and Sailors. It was so valuable a port town that the English forcibly annexed it individually and slaughtered a lot of the population in the process.
You had German and Low-country mercenaries employed there enmasse during the sack of that region and sailors from all maritime nations from around the North Sea making routine calls at that port for centuries.

I very much doubt that all Gordon patrilines originating from lowland Scotland are I1 Hg, and suspect a lot, if not the preponderance, are R1b. Attributions like 'de Gordoun' from 'Gordon', or back to remote dates such as 1035 a.d. are huge red flags, because its doubtful anyone has real family records to make such links.

What is virtually certain is, the Scots folks bearing Gordon surnames and possessing I1 Hg, very, very likely get their paternal line ancestry from a Scandinavian or German ancestor, not the other way around, so they may be more likely to match your patriline than you are to be matching a true 'Scots' patriline, in my best observation.

The mentioned gypsy/sigøjner/zigenare/mustalaisia/kaale/roma, was my many-G-grandmother,and she might have been pregnant when she left Scotland.

Well, I wish you best of luck, in your pursuits. I would encourage you to examine things from a occams razor perspective and first eliminate what is the more likely or 'pedestrian' a route to a explanation, and then move on to the more exotic and storied possibilities.
At least for me, the end goal is to establish fact wherever that may lead in reality.

[rbmirvin]

Berwick upon Tweed was the european equivalent of the 'Port of Long Beach' during a very significant period of History. This was Not a remote or isolated place, and would be a daily or weekly port of call for Scandinavian ships and Sailors.

The trouble with that theory is the there is an existing group of Gordons already identified by the surname project as a "Northern Highland" branch with Hg I1-L338. In terms of people and costs involved it's more likely that one pregnant Gypsy was run out of town than it is for all those others up north to be descended from 16th-c. Danish sailors visiting a Borders port.

However, there is a history of Viking/Norwegian settlement in the north of Scotland, well predating Norman immigration, and I1 still runs about 10-15% in the vicinity of Aberdeenshire. Given that that also predates the widespread adoption of surnames, there's no exotic origin story needed to explain how one or more such families ended up as Gordons. By 1500, whether originally Norman or Norwegian along the patrilineal-only line of descent, those folks likely thought of themselves as Scots.

You had German and Low-country mercenaries employed there enmasse during the sack of that region and sailors from all maritime nations from around the North Sea making routine calls at that port for centuries.

There was considerable emigration from the Low Countries and the German Rhineland areas to North America - which dominates the public DNA testing population. Aside from those areas being predominately R1b, the lack of "German" over "Scottish" matches argues against that being the more likely scenario.

The conservative scenario overall would be Norway -> Scotland -> Denmark, omitting Normandy and the Scottish Lowlands for the same reasons to omit the Low Countries. It also fits the existing results from the more widely-tested emigrant population, wherein the STR matches are to a small or isolated group from Scotland while the deeper ancestry favors a Norse origin.

[Aperipatetic1]

The trouble with that theory is the there is an existing group of Gordons already identified by the surname project as a "Northern Highland" branch with Hg I1-L338. In terms of people and costs involved it's more likely that one pregnant Gypsy was run out of town than it is for all those others up north to be descended from 16th-c. Danish sailors visiting a Borders port.

I would not term the fact that Berwick Upon Tweed was a major european port and shipping destination as a theory.
I at no point stated that the Gordon I1 line was originated or needed to involve a Scandinavian sailor, I simply pointed out that there are hundreds of thousands of possibilities for explaining the matter, and I have no idea how much has been investigated or confirmed in this particular case.

When I hear dates going back to circa 1000 a.d., and 'De Gourdon' as the predecessor of 'Gordon', this sort of family history is often loosely documented in my own personal experience, or based on sources that were not passed down generationally from the source, but were adopted by a researcher who came across info while looking for anything related to the surname(s) they are interested in.
While some Gordon line in Berwickshire may have at one time been "De Gourdon" and have tenancy dating back to 1035 a.d., it may be harder, or impossible, to determine if that line exists today at all, and if so which is the ancestral HG/Ht.
It may also be 100% accurate for all I know, I was simply inquiring about how the connection was being determined.

I mentioned in my original reply that its quite possible I am not understanding something, however in subsequent replies nothing has added clarification. There are many, many other possibilites that do not involve pregnant Gypsies, Norwegian sailors, or historical records of the De Gourdon family, and I was seeking to clarify how the jump was being made to assert linkages in this case.

The conservative scenario overall would be Norway -> Scotland -> Denmark, omitting Normandy and the Scottish Lowlands for the same reasons to omit the Low Countries. It also fits the existing results from the more widely-tested emigrant population, wherein the STR matches are to a small or isolated group from Scotland while the deeper ancestry favors a Norse origin.

I would disagree and state the conservative scenario is
--> Scandinavia -> Scotland/UK -> modal Ht STR's?

As I told the OP, he has ever right to believe whatever he wants to, but if he wants comment on the matter that was what I offered. I simply inquired how and why he made the linkages he made. While its certainly possible someone might have a Y-line linkage that goes Scandinavia->Scotland->Scandinavia, I simply dont see a strong basis given the relayed information, for that being the only or most likely explanation.

I am no final word but his match is in my opinion, as stated before, too distant, to alone, confirm a recent paternal line divergence, and too close for a 500+ year divergence. I think the best advice to OP would be to expand his marker set and see how the match plays out after more Str's can be compared. 37 markers is frankly a smaller basic STR panel than I got 14 years ago, for less money.

The other part of my advice, take it or leave it, is to determine which are fast mutators and which STRs are more stable and limit a expanded panel comparison to only a larger panel of stable STR's, when making a blind comparison.

I have a couple very unusual STRs at certain markers for my Hg, and it looks very good at first glance to match my Y line to another colonial family based on the same matched rare values and the same local region, historically, however at a expanded marker set these are not recently related lines at all, despite the early low resolution comparisons that looked very promising.

[Yde]

Norway/Denmark->Normandy->Scotland->Thy in Denmark

As I told the OP, he has ever right to believe whatever he wants to, but if he wants comment on the matter that was what I offered. I simply inquired how and why he made the linkages he made. While its certainly possible someone might have a Y-line linkage that goes Scandinavia->Scotland->Scandinavia, I simply dont see a strong basis given the relayed information, for that being the only or most likely explanation.

Scandinavia has been mentioned more than a dozen times here, but Scandinavia is a wide term. This explanation is from German Wikipedia: ”Bekannt für die skandinavischen Länder sind die an den Dannebrog angelehnten Kreuzflaggen, die jeder heutige Staat Skandinaviens führt: Dänemark • Schweden • Norwegen • Finnland • Island • Åland • Färöer”.

Seven days ago I wrote about 15 men living in a line through more than 500 years, sons after fathers. Through 500 years they one after the other lived in the north west of the continent on a last and small “island” called Thy or older, Ty. Now I connect the family-line with Scotland, another relatively isolated part of the world in early days, and I do it in the way mentioned above in A, B and C, so that the dna-molecules in the days of king James IV were transported from Leith, Edingburgh, arriving 1505 to Aalborg, Jutland, where kong Hans/John was born in 1455.

I have 314 matches in the 25 marker system, 23/25, 24/25 and 25/25.
There are 45 persons with the name Gordon among these 314, of which 44 are 23/25.
It points towards Scotland.

A private Gordon project immediately placed me in the group of two Gordon brothers, Jock and Tam, born ca. 1360.

"The John “Jock” Gordon of Scurdargue and Thomas “Tam” Gordon of Ruthven (Jock and Tam) represent one of two unbroken lines of Gordon males back to the Laird of Gordon (died at Battle of Standard, 1138) and held its seat in the Highlands.

The Jock & Tam Gordons belong to the I1 Haplogroup, typically found in northern Scandinavian countries, which supports the theory that this branch of Gordons came from Normandy to Scotland.

Lending credibility to the French and Norman origins of the Gordons, R1b and I1 branches respectively, historians note that prior to the Scottish Gordon families, the French families of de Gourdon were already using and continue to this day to use the ivy leaf as their badge and the same base of arms as their Scotland cousins.

In line with a descent from the French and/or Norman de Gourdons, it is recorded that the following tree outlines the generally accepted Gordon family history, highlighting its three major branches:
1. Jock & Tam Gordon branch
2. Sir William Gordon branch
3. Seton-Gordon, the Ducal line branch

The Jock and Tam Gordon Branch
This is the largest, oldest documented branch of the Gordons, dating back to the 11th century and the first recorded and single male progenitor of modern Gordon lines in the Gordon surname DNA project – the Laird of Gordon – credited as the founder of the House of Gordon in Scotland. Several kits have verifiable documented pedigrees among those in the Jock and Tam branch.

While it is consistent with modern history and the DNA record that Gordons within Haplogroup R came to Britain and Scotland across the English Channel, Gordons within Haplogroup I probably came to Britain and Scotland as Viking raiders from Normandy, married, stayed, and were assimilated into Britain in the epoch between 500 and 1000 CE.

The first Gordon on record and in a pedigree, Richard of the Barony of Gordon, lived in the mid-12th Century"
(Source: Tei A. Gordon and William E. Howard III, 2011)

http://www.jogg.info/72/files/Gordon.htm

"The Normans were the masters of the lower reaches of the French river Seine and its coastal regions. They had haunted this area so often and so thoroughly that the Christians had given up all defence. The historians are in doubt as to the origins of its new masters – did they come from Denmark or from Norway?"

http://www.fortidensjelling.dk/jellinge84.htm

Or both? And Sweden? With their Danish tongue, later developing into German and English.

[rbmirvin]

I would not term the fact that Berwick Upon Tweed was a major european port and shipping destination as a theory.

You misread my post. It is indeed a theory, of your own design, that conflated Berwick's status of a port, in the area where the main/"Norman" branch of the Gordon clan established themselves on the Borders has anything to do with a Highland branch of the Gordons.

The Port's website has some nice pictures, but the capacity ranks closer to Wilmington and New Orleans than Long Beach.

I have a couple very unusual STRs at certain markers for my Hg, and it looks very good at first glance to match my Y line to another colonial family based on the same matched rare values and the same local region, historically, however at a expanded marker set these are not recently related lines at all, despite the early low resolution comparisons that looked very promising.

On the other end of the spectrum, divergences in my paternal line from 200-300 years ago still match me at 67/67. IIRC, I match decendents of representative family lines at 62/67 after 400 years of divergence. That's what being modal for an R1b SNP gets you.

Scandinavia has been mentioned more than a dozen times here, but Scandinavia is a wide term.

Yes. Yes, it is. One of my favorite cartoonists likes to point out just how wide a term it is (She's Danish).

Going by your initial post and some of the links there, I do think it would likely help to re-test at 67 markers. That would help pin down which SNPs, out of those projected to match your DNA, would be reasonable to test. And that in turn may shed more light on where your forefather's ancestors originated.

You could still end up a Gordon - which is fine by me, even if I might be a little bit biased in that regard.

[Aperipatetic1]

You misread my post. It is indeed a theory, of your own design, that conflated Berwick's status of a port, in the area where the main/"Norman" branch of the Gordon clan established themselves on the Borders has anything to do with a Highland branch of the Gordons.

The Port's website has some nice pictures, but the capacity ranks closer to Wilmington and New Orleans than Long Beach.

I am more than a little certain that no pictures of the city or port of Berwick exist from the period in question.

On the other end of the spectrum, divergences in my paternal line from 200-300 years ago still match me at 67/67. IIRC, I match decendents of representative family lines at 62/67 after 400 years of divergence. That's what being modal for an R1b SNP gets you.

Being R1b modal means that a lot of those paternal line matches you closely or exactly parallel, are not actually matches.

[Aperipatetic1]

I have 314 matches in the 25 marker system, 23/25, 24/25 and 25/25.
There are 45 persons with the name Gordon among these 314, of which 44 are 23/25.
It points towards Scotland.

A private Gordon project immediately placed me in the group of two Gordon brothers, Jock and Tam, born ca. 1360.
"The John “Jock” Gordon of Scurdargue and Thomas “Tam” Gordon of Ruthven (Jock and Tam) represent one of two unbroken lines of Gordon males

Several kits have verifiable documented pedigrees among those in the Jock and Tam branch.

O.K. this is my last post- Let me see if I am understanding what is going on correctly. To my understand, you are 'blind matching' based on STR similarity to others in the FTDNA Y database. You do not have a CONTEMPORARY linkage directly to Scotland or to any males with the Surname of Gordon. Due to the volume of those within your FTDNA match list who all share among themselves the surname of 'Gordon' you are concluding that your paternity is also drawn from or through a male Scot bearing the surname 'Gordon'. Is that all basically a correct understanding on my part?

If so, there are several issues with this conclusion that are immediately obvious. Firstly, they are close low-resolution STR matches to you, however this is not necessarily a case of your paternal line originating through them, because we can deduce that its fairly likely if not certain that their Hg originated with a immigrant to Scotland from a likely Scandinavian or Germanic culture / population, at some unk point in time.

We can have great confidence that someone who migrates to Scotland, contributed the 'Gordon' I1 Y line. We cannot, however, deduce with any confidence that this person(s) descendant later reverse-migrates to someplace of Scandinavian culture to donate the Y line to your paternal progenitor. So while the initial migration to Scotland is fairly certain for that Y line, the later reverse migration is not needed and not proven to be the case. Even if you share the exact Y line that the 'Gordon I1' testees all possess, which is not confirmed, it could simply be a branch of the line that their originator brought with him to Scotland.

The 'bubble' of Gordon surname testees is quite possibly a factor of a aggressively recruiting Y project that can be unintentionally skewed by everyone who is tested excitedly telling their uncles, cousins, nephews, fathers and grandfathers about the conclusion that they are historically significant 'Jock and Tam' descendants, and then all these related folks also enmasse submit their own samples at the urging of those recruiting for the project who are excited about what they are being told is their lineage.

If there were only 1 Gordon testee who shared a close STR match out of 314 people, you would not make any particular issue of the 'match', despite the fact that even 1 'Gordon' would have the same potential impact as 40 people with that surname, most of whom are seemingly linked to the efforts of a surname project. A pool of (blind) close Y line matches who all share a surname that you do not, does not statistically mean that they are any more significantly related to your Y line ancestry than another single match by the surname of 'Smith' or 'Johnson', who shares the same degree of matching to you- it only means that the Gordon surnamed males can all conclude that they are all related paternally along the same Y line, beyond a reasonable doubt.

The fact that you have 314 matches in the first place indicates to me that you have a fairly modal Haplotype as far as your STR values go. Because of this, it means that a lot of people within your Hg/Ht share similar STR values. The sample submitted by "Smithers", "Yde", "Gordon", etc.. all go back to a ethnically related population origin, but do not necessarily all share the same descendant or family history. Scots in particular are going to be vastly over-represented in any current Y STR database of paying participants because this demographic is dominated by people with Colonial American or British Isles ancestry. Thus, its far from a random sampling.

Lastly, I don't know how someone is substantiating that they can prove a unbroken lineage back to 1000 a.d. or 1360 a.d. in the case of the 'Jock and Tam' claim, but it would take exhuming long deceased identifiable bodies, and DNA testing them, to make such a assertion definitively, given the time frame in this case. For most of mankind, we could not actually locate a gravesite to allow a exhumation, let alone carry out the DNA testing.

Its possible that everything you are saying is 100% true, but its also possible that there are many other explanations that are a lot simpler. In any event, I am done on the topic and suggest you follow the course I suggested earlier as far as upgrading your marker set and focusing on slow mutators as a means of confirming or excluding a Y line match. I would urge you to be critical of any and all claims that come your way, test them and investigate, because there are a lot of otherwise well meaning people who can be emotionally invested in certain outcomes. Best wishes.

[1798]

About the technical specifications experts says:
Thegordondnaproject has placed me in The Northern Highland Branch, the descendants of Adam de Gordoun (born about 1035) through the two brothers “Jock and Tam” Gordon, which is the biggest Gordon family group with most testers seem to have wound up in Scotland.
The ftdna I1-project placed me in I1-Z140 L338+ AS-1
The I1-Z140-project placed me in I1-L338+
The Normans of Continental Europe-project placed me in I1-AS1
The Denmark-project placed me in I1-Z59 Branch Nordic Continental West
The Scandinavian project placed me in Ungrouped.

I have at this moment only seven matches "12/12,23/25,33/37", of which six have the name Gordon and the seventh is a Douglas.

From Minnesota, USA, a Mr. Gordon reports that his forefather Gordon was born in 1740 in Scotland.
From Australia a Mr. Gordon announces that his ancestor Gordon had a son born in 1844 in Scotland.
A third Mr. Gordon, eastern USA, is a descendant of a Gordon born 1759 in Scotland, he kindly tells.

What have these and the other three Gordons in common? I think everyone in this forum would say “an ancestor named Gordon, who was born before 1720”.

But then, what do I and other Yde-folks have in common with these Gordons? Is “six out of seven matches 12/12, 23/25, 33/37” too little to give the answer: "Gordon we have in common"?

The ftdna-calculators tell that the common ancestor for Yde and Gordon “for sure” lived after “1066” and that he could have lived in “1492”, par exemple.

The Gordon-deoxyribonucleic acid-molecule was in Normandy, France, before it came to Scotland. People with that signature might very well have seen the Viking ships of Ragnar Lodbrok and later those of Rollo in the 9th century passing by.

It was not till the 15th century that relations between Scotland and Denmark were established, whereas contacts between Scotland and Norway had been frequent for centuries. In the mid-15th century Scots sailed to the Baltic and Scottish immigration to Denmark began at the same time, spreading along the international sailing-route through the Sound into the Baltic. It is thus due probably not only to the hazards of the survival of records that a few Scots occur at first in Aalborg, North Jutland, among the members of the Corpus Christi Guild. Many Scots came to Danish Elsinore, Copenhagen and Malmo, but even more headed for Danzig/Gdansk and by the 17th century, there were an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Scots living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Familynames and DNA in “Preussia” can in our days be traced back to Scotland.

Studying history is a must in the new dna-world. Dna-calculation itself is not enough at present.

The mentioned gypsy/sigøjner/zigenare/mustalaisia/kaale/roma, was my many-G-grandmother,and she might have been pregnant when she left Scotland.

In tests on LBK remains from Hungary haplogroup I1 was found.The LBK reached Normandy 7000 years ago and then entered Scotland and northern Ireland around 5,800 ybp.

[rbmirvin]

I am more than a little certain that no pictures of the city or port of Berwick exist from the period in question.

I'm sure that were much nicer places use for a landscape study back then, and still are. At least I took the time to look the port up.

Being R1b modal means that a lot of those paternal line matches you closely or exactly parallel, are not actually matches.

My point was that matching a modal signature usually pulls in not 5 or so, but a lot of close STR matches. If that means that all matches from that point on are then inherently false positives, then there is no reason at all for someone to test at more markers.


By the way, is there any level of STR and/or SNP matching you would consider adequate to show common ancestry without digging people up?