• Find
  • Surnames
  • Bookmarks
  • Places
  • Dates
  • Cemeteries
  • Search People
  • Search Families
• Media
  • Photos
  • Documents
  • Headstones
  • Histories
  • Recordings
  • Videos
  • Albums
  • All Media
• Info
  • What's New
  • Most Wanted
  • Reports
  • Statistics
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • Repositories
  • Contact Us

Home    Search    Print    Login   

Y-DNA Surname project.......... TFA project background: One of the most exciting things to develop at our 27th Annual TFA meeting in 2007 was the creation of the Towne DNA Genealogy committee. One of their first objectives was to see if there was a link between the Towne Family of the South to the Towne Family of New England. Additionally, by mapping out the markers in William's sons and their lines, the project should help all Towne test participants confirm their paper trails or break through brick walls they may be experiencing trying to find connections. With our results so far we are able to reconstruct what William's Y-DNA markers must have been, with 99% accuracy! We also know that his Haplogroup was R1b1a2a1a1b. (This has changed recently due to the nomenclature being adjusted as new haplogroups are "discovered.") To see our Y-DNA test results and how they are grouped, go to Towne DNA Project link and select the y-Results tab at the top. WHAT LINES HAVE BEEN TESTED?? Click here to view the descendant chart showing lines that have been CONFIRMED (to a high degree of statistical certainty) through DNA testing. If YOUR line shares any of these ancestors, you, too, can be pretty sure that these individuals and their ancestry back to William are genetically validated. Towne DNA Participant lineages We also welcome those interested in their maternal lines to order mtDNA tests. Especially if anyone can claim an unbroken female line from Joanna Blessing through one of their daughters! Remember too, that TFA may subsidize tests from lines that haven't yet been tested. So send us your lineage (just the string of names tying you back to William) and we'll consider you for a subsidy for a test of 37 or more markers. View our results table - and the newly-updated Descendant Chart of all participants with confirmed unbroken lines. More results will help us fill in the descendant branch-points. (Your results are kept anonymous, of course!) You can email the committee at: mlpress@nr.com ***TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE DNA TESTING go to: Towne DNA Project link Test results last updated June, 2011. Back to top

Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, MA: TFA Reunion 2007 Photography courtesy of Stablegirl Cindy

MORE ABOUT DNA ...


For those of you who are mathematically-inclined, a recent series of lectures at the University of Texas at Austin by Prof William H. Press used early results from our Towne project to illustrate various statistical models. Here are links to three webcasts that feature our project results:

The full series is at http://www.youtube.com/user/opinionatedlessons

The Towne family appears in lessons 6, 15, and 27, with these links:

opinionatedlessons: 6

opinionatedlessons: 15

opinionatedlessons: 27

Note that the Towne data was far less complete (and may contain a couple minor inaccuracies) but the points being made are still valid. This is a good explanation of how mutation rates might be determined, and how basic probability calculations enable us to predict whether a participant is in fact descended from William or not. The lectures also cover how the number of mutational differences can be used to predict how many generations back the "Most Recent Common Ancestor" might have lived.

Also note the discussion related to T-11 and the probability that he may or may not have descended from William (in lesson #15). T-11 and our other Edmund descendants have high numbers of mutations. We'll be discussing this in greater detail in an upcoming About Towne article on Edmund's history.