Two dozen, more or less, males all claim one patriarch. There are clearly two groups of men with two different haplogroups and so unrelated. But, what? Just sit on your hands and squabble about which is the rightful line to any patriarch? Or, fight and break up the DNA project and create a 2nd one and both claim the same ancestor and both proved with DNA? Both publish competing websites and both claim victory in genetic genealogy?

Folks who tested only for autosomal DNA, on the other hand, cannot as easily and assuredly learn their distant ancestors because autosomal reaches back only so far.  To really take the lines back you need it all – the male line y-DNA signature, collect and compare as many mt-DNA haplogroups as you can, and with the au-DNA testing (aka at-DNA, whichever you like to use) when you test extended members of your family groups for autosomal, you can sometimes learn which family has the correct DNA connection to the patriarch through the additional ancestry.

One has to have male descendants of two brothers to prove any father. Whether they all were born in 1900 or 1600. (Good luck with 1600) And if you have any dispute with different results of two testers then you need to add more men to test to prove each of those family lines. There must be a match with two sons’ descendant lines. We just cannot have one man to test and claim his results represent any patriarch father.

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These wonderful charts are made on Ancestry.com an essential website in records, in many ways, for research – check to see if they have records for your areas of research. Make any tree private if you have a research and working theories with speculative ancestors your guesses might create false positives for matching in DNA trees.

Certainly, au-DNA aka at-DNA will not reach very far back in time, but this does not mean you should throw away and not use identifying relationships from 3, 4 maybe 7… generations ago. When two groups of men claiming the same patriarch have different y-DNA haplogroups, either one group is mistaken or there has been a non-paternity event. That’s where the au-DNA can help. If you test enough of the family members, you begin to learn more about how they are related to each other and any anomalies give you clues to what’s happening. Eventually you can build a genetic picture of a family and know where a line broke.

Another reason to let the au-DNA aka at-DNA person in the project is, it might be a girl, and she personally only has au-DNA (and possibly mt-DNA) and she might be the one willing to spend the money to pay for the y-DNA tests for the boys because she is the one who is keen on learning mamma’s daddy’s y-DNA Haplogroup (R1a), besides her own daddy’s (I2a), and she wants her husband’s (G2a), or husbands’ (R1b), as the case might be, and her husband’s mother’s daddy’s (R1b WAMH) and after she has those she might want daddy’s mamma’s daddy’s (E1b) y-DNA Haplogroup. I would not be a snob about membership – I would verify what someone wants in joining, and hopefully people can use the great activity pages to post questions and ask for research ideas.

Sure, I get it, some of the projects are just too big to be part of fine tuned genealogy – but isn’t this what the DNA for genealogy is all about, and the activity page is a place for project questions? And of course Facebook groups are taking people away from project participation and even introducing testers to new and other companies, websites and methods.

But over all I believe there is a large increase in y-DNA testing and now the new and also wonderful MyHeritage (see link below) is teaming with Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage customers were offered a special price to add their haplogroups – which is fantastic!

MyHeritage, I read, I can’t swear, has and will be having more and more testers from Europe and beyond. I hear also in the genetic genealogy groups and blogs that the great LivingDNA (see link below) will be expanding in Germany . Now since my mt-DNA H10a1 was from Saalfeld, Thurengia, Germany then I am beside myself to think there is a chance a relative might turn up.

The great discoveries of who a father might have been in a non-paternity event (or to use the new label, misattributed parentage) can often be seen in who the ‘other’ surnames are in a family group thatmatches genetically.

So a bunch of men — group A — all match each other and a bunch of men — group B  — all match each other. Group A men and group B men are different, but all these men have thought they descend from the same patriarch.

Besides the autosomal DNA possibly answering some questions — if a male matches another group of men genetically but they have a different surname —  then all may have the answer to why these Mr Smiths are not the Mr Smith’s family they thought they were.

This is invaluable information for all families. Particularly if this is a misattributed parentage then family trees can be built in DNA and not just some guessing because someone married a so/n/so and they must be the same family.

I have an R1b family and the man needed his father’s identity. He matches 37 for 37 and you can place the families nearby for a couple of places, so it looked like the guy. But an autosomal test turned up someone else as the father with a different surname. So now we have several members of the surname group who find out that they are descended from someone with a different surname. Are we going to throw them out of the group?

So, let just anybody in a project? Well, no, not just anybody. And since au-DNA is not yet seen anywhere in a project except for admin eyes only, I do not see the reasoning for not allowing other relatives.

With all the results for Senator Warren recently, you will also find in the contents, blogs and links about her and her stories, and the resulting DNA stories, including this one for one of my own Native ancestries. “Of Colors” “…There are a couple of stamps on envelopes – one she way overdid the postage so I bet all those are her. …”

https://cherielynnsherstory.com/2018/10/16/of-colors-what-is-left-of-mamma-to-test/

I tested autosomal DNA quite late – it was 2011. I wanted the kinks out first and in some respects I did not wait long enough. But it was a y-DNA project administrator that first got me to test the autosomal DNA of these men who matched but there were a couple of misses (35 out of 37) and I wanted to make triple sure. We knew the paper documentation should be proof enough for this man with the miss but the au-DNA (at-DNA) proved conclusively this man was related also with autosomal DNA.

The same autosomal was used and another two men did not match. They matched exactly 37 out of 37 and we could have kept adding more STR markers but decided to first add autosomal – they did not match. So although they will have had a common paternal line ancestor some where back in time it was not two families that genealogy would likely help.

Note a comment and answer: I should have noted it was a y-DNA project administrator that got me to test two men for their autosomal. They were both R1b and matched exactly 37 for 37. The finances were tight for both and the next sale we tested the two of them for autosomal and they did not match. We had our answer. Later on both men added more STRs then we saw 64 of 67 – so the added STRs would not have given us the answer – when the autosomal did. >>>>> And with our two families both competing for the same patriarch? They may not be two families they may be a non-paternity event – we are still working to add more autosomal – but several of the men from the two groups are related via autosomal and not in any other explainable way and y-DNA can never prove this – ever. And one of their project administrators had told one family their research was wrong and they were just wannabes – but he was incorrect and I bet he is incorrect about which family actually represents that patriarch.

Surname Projects Missed The Point Of “Not” Matching ~ “1 in 10 is mistaken about father’s identity”