Knight McKnight Y-DNA along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road

So many delightful surprises, fulfillments and new relies by adding the paternal line y-DNA.

This is not the at-DNA or au-DNA – not autosomal DNA, not the admixture or the ethnicity.

y-DNA is the singular line carried by males only of their father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s, etc., father.

There are three main DNA tests for genetic genealogy. The yellow the the most popular autosomal DNA and this covers very well through 2nd cousin, well enough, but missing many from 3rd cousin and the farther back missing more each generation. The red is the maternal DNA with relatively zero genealogy use (yes, yes in some cases) and the magic blue line is the y-DNA. With y-DNA you can identify a male ancestor from way back, by testing male line son descendant from each of that ancestor’s sons. If the ancestor did not have two sons this cannot be done and work down until you can, or go farther back in time and over and test male cousin.

Our Knight y-DNA – has now been matched with multiple males from multiple lines and we have been able to learn about the haplogroup of our patriarchs and to some extent we have also discovered a possible New World arrival region and a possible migration route over the last couple of hundred years in America.

The y-DNA matches led us to search more records from the early years of Thomas Knight son of Samuel Knight. We found in the later Sevier County, Tennessee that Thomas Knight had dropped his Thomas McKnight and then we located his presumed father in the same place, Samuel McKnight at a time when there were only a few hundred European males in the area. Today we have matched almost a dozen males who are clearly from a recent common male ancestor and even identified a male biological Knight McKnight named Wilkerson.

Our sister site has more on the families.

Here’s Why We Test y – The Thomas Knight, Rockingham family comes into focus.

For decades and at least three generations of family genealogists we have searched every record set in every port of the Carolina Atlantic – but the migration route might be staring us in the face with mapping the y-DNA along the route of The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.

One by one I hope all our matches will add their names to this match list and then we can be more specific, but reasonable privacy is important and this illustrates how you can do this for yourself.

We began over a decade ago with the regional y-DNA project

French Broad River Families DNA Project –

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/french-broad-river-families/about

…over time we now have found our families matching male lines around the country and also learned that one of our Mrs. Knights was visited by a military officer carrying his different surname y-DNA and although we can see from the paper that this family is definitely our Knight the y-DNA is different.

But this Knight family has our son listed and we can see in the testing of others that our Knight from this singular line – was not a Knight. We do find that our Knights were living exactly where the y-DNA unnamed officer was posted. This led to added research and then found very interesting deeding of property from an (here) unnamed male to our Mrs. Knight.

y-DNA is answering so many questions. Autosomal could not have done this, the au-DNA would not have the reach. Each of us can learn all about everyone of our y-DNA lines by searching out males to represent each and every one of your ancestral lines. What ever road they migrated on. This is where the autosomal DNA is vital.

I needed a male y-DNA surrogate to test so i could learn the y-DNA of my late father. I was able to reach back through time, found a Knight 2nd cousin once removed and the autosomal proved we are cousins to the correct degree (sharing a correct amount of centimorgans (genes) for a 2nd cousin 1X and then when i see his y-DNA I can be assured it is the y-DNA signature of my late father.