Questions....

[mikeyt]

Okay, I'm a bit confused.

I've arranged for my father to complete FF & YDNA67 testing with the additional R1b - M343 & M269v2 Backbone SNP Pack and my haplogroup shows as R-S5668

In searching my matches there are two with a genetic distance of "0" at the 37 marker
Kevin Gillis (YDNA 67) Haplogroup R-M269
Patrick Gillis (YDNA 111, FF, BigY 500) Haplogroup R-Z16337

At the 67 marker that genetic distance becomes a '2' and a number of testers with the family name 'McGuire/Maguire' shows up at '2' also. Ie: Thomas Joseph Maguire YDNA 67, FF)

The confusion lies in that i dont have any record of the name Gillis or McGuire/Maguire in my family history that I'm aware of. The only two things i can think of is that no other person named Thompson from my family line has tested or possibly a non-paternity event occurred where one of direct male ancestors may very well have been a Gillis or McGuire and were taken in by the Thompson family & given the Thompson family name. I just dont know. Just how far back could/would those connections to Gillis or Maguire be?

Oddly, when i search my FF results for the name Gillis or Maguire, none of the above individuals show up.

My 37 marker STR's show as;
Marker DYS460 Y-GATA-H4 YCAII DYS456 DYS607 DYS576 DYS570
Value 11 11 19-22 17 15 17 17

Marker CDY DYS442 DYS438
Value 35-37 12 12

My 67 marker STR's show as
Marker DYS617 DYS568 DYS487 DYS572 DYS640 DYS492 DYS565
Value 13 11 13 11 12 12 12

I'm lost on exactly what this information is telling me and at this point, any help, interpretation or guidance would be appreciated

mike thompson MI12159

[John McCoy]

If you're somewhere in the R-M269 part of the haplotree, you're definitely not alone! Seems like half of Europe is there too, and it is often very difficult to get a clear view of where exactly you fit in the tree, without a Big Y test or additional SNP testing.

One thing to consider is that, while SOME people find they end up in a group of matches who all have the same surname (a couple examples: a huge cluster of the Buchanan family; descendants of Deacon Edmund Rice of early New England), many or even most of us end up with matches having many different surnames. For the former examples, the defining SNP's evidently appeared (by mutation) after the stable surname was adopted. For the latter, the SNP's apparently occurred at a time before stable, permanent surnames became fashionable in whatever place our distant patrilineal ancestors lived, with the result that different modern descendants of this distant ancestor ended up with different surnames. Surnames, while in use in some places at least by the 13th Century, were often not stable or permanent as we often see them today. Permanent surnames in some places did not become fashionable until perhaps the 16th or 17th Century, or even later.

You should see a "TiP" icon next to your Y-67 matches. Click on it! You will see a table of cumulative probabilities (based on a number of assumptions, not all of them easily verifiable) telling you something to the effect that, with 78 percent probability, a shared patrilineal ancestor lived within the past 15 generations. In other words, you will probably find that there is no way to narrow the timeframe of a shared ancestor more recently than maybe several centuries ago, with any certainty.

One thing you can do is to watch for patterns or coincidences as you pursue your genealogical research. Where did these Gillis or Maguire families live? Did any of them happen to live in the same place and at the same time as your known patrilineal ancestors? In this way, you can treat your Y DNA results (so far) as clues, without spending a huge amount of time on them until something more definite emerges.