O.K. I'll try again [:-)) This is a e-mail Nancy sent to my Phillips list and with
her
permission I'm sending it to my other lists.
Cal
Message Board Post:
DNA testing for genealogical purposes has become very popular in the
last five years, and about half a dozen companies have sprung up offering
DNA testing at relatively affordable prices to the general public. The
main emphasis has been on surname projects. Men who share the same
last name or some variant of it are recruited to take a DNA test, and then
results are compared to discover which of them are related within a
genealogical time frame, which generally means within the past 600 years.
In Europe, permanent surnames only came into general use by 1400 AD.
By joining a surname DNA project, people interested in family history
with matching DNA can compare notes and make connections, perhaps
enabling them to trace back several generations further than they could
without DNA comparisons. Also, DNA analysis can reveal the general region
where the ancestor of the participant originated; ie, Scandinavia,
central Europe, the Mediterranean, the British Isles and Western Eur!
opean seaboard, etc.
The DNA tests are not cheap, but participants get a break on the cost
if they participate in a surname project. For example, at
familytreedna.com, the 12 marker test costs $99, the 25 marker test costs $148, the
37 marker test costs $189 and the 59 marker test costs $269. I think the
25 marker test is the least expensive test with the best results. The
12 marker test results in too many random matches with men who have
different last names, indicating relatedness before 1400 AD when surnames
became firmly established in most parts of Europe. The DNA test is
painless and only requires swabbing the inside of the cheek with a special
scraper. The lab mails a kit to the participant and then the
participant mails the kit back to the lab. The kit is assigned a number and the
name of the participant is never published, thereby assuring privacy and
confidentiality. Only men can be tested effectively in surname DNA
projects for two reasons: 1) the DNA markers studied are located o!
n the Y chromosome which is only found in men and 2) traditionally,
women do not retain the same surname from generation to generation.
However, women who are interested in family history can still participate
by recruiting fathers, brothers, uncles or male cousins to take the DNA
test.
I am a woman and an active volunteer in a Phillips DNA project called
Phillips Worldwide located at this site on the internet:
http://www.familytreedna.com/public/PhillipsWorldwide. If you click on
"Y Results" at the top of the page, it will take you to a DNA chart
that shows the test results of all the participants. Participants are
requested to post their earliest known Phillips ancestor on the DNA chart.
The project has attracted over 95 participants so far and 13 unrelated
families of Phillips have been identified. In addition, there are over
30 participants who do not match any other Phillips in the project.
Over 80% of the participants belong to Haplogroup R1b, which is the most
common haplogroup of the British Isles and the western seaboard of
Europe.
If you have any questions about DNA testing for genealogical purposes
(or questions about Phillips families in general, especially in the
South), please feel free to contact me at nancy_kiser(a)hotmail.com or the
administrator of the Phillips Worldwide DNA project, Harry Shannon
Phillips, at PHILLIPSDNAPROJ(a)AOL.COM. (Shannon goes by his middle name.) We
are both very excited about the possibilities of this new tool in
genealogical research. By the way, all of us at Phillips Worldwide are
volunteers and none of us are getting paid to help with this project.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message.
Sincerely,
Nancy Kiser