Hello List,
As those of you who are long-term members of the CARRICO-DNA mailing list will
have noted, things have been rather quiet lately. This is, in part, because
things actually have been quiet, but also in part, because I have been
extraordinarily busy with personal matters. I apologize for that, and I
apologize for the fact that I still haven't had time to educate myself as to how
to understand deep SNP analysis, which is a shame because we've now had two of
Peter CARRICO's descendants BigY tested. But while my knowledge is still
superficial, there are definitely some things even I can report.
We've known for a long time that the descendants of Peter CARRICO, 1674
immigrant to Maryland, are a substantial genetic distance from anyone else so
far tested. At one time we were told by a Haplogroup J2a project admin that the
time to our nearest common ancestor (TMRCA) was calculated to be some 3210 to
4530 YBP (years before present) based on our Y-DNA STR haplotype(s). At one
time - don't know if this is still true - we were the only family ever tested
who has a value of 10t at DYS425. Now, BigY deep SNP testing has affirmed our
rarity and increased our TMRCA.
Please go to this web page, which is the Haplogroup J2 branch of the Y-DNA
haplotree compiled by YFull:
http://yfull.com/tree/J2/
then please do a find in your browser on Y17067, our CARRICO's terminal SNP.
Note that we are just two steps (subclades down) from J-M67, which is where
FTDNA has long placed us. The two individuals listed under J-Y17067 are our
CARRICOs:
id: YF03978 is FTDNA Kit #143924 desc/o Charles CARRICO of MD > KY > IN
id: YF04066 is FTDNA Kit #145426 desc/o Matthew Gillaspie CARRICO of KY > TX
Note first that our subclade of J-Y17067 has "86 SNPs." This is more than any
other subclade of J-M67 and more than all but a handful of subclades of the
entire J2 haplogroup. That means there are 85 branches in the tree (85
mutations) between us and the previous branch that are missing (i.e., have no
living representatives yet tested). We are both rare and distant!
On the one hand, this discovery is a letdown because our split off the haplotree
is so far back that we're not matching anyone with a known geographic origin,
which doesn't do much to narrow down our origin - though it likely will as more
people get tested, but we're probably looking at years before we get very far on
this score. Still, there is another result that is most welcome - and really
exciting, at least for me.
Along with all these SNPs, the BigY tests over 400 STRs (markers like FTDNA's
standard 111 markers). Not surprisingly, our two CARRICOs match only each
other, just as they do at FTDNA. The exciting part is that they differ from
each other at 15 of 425 STRs. Fifteen!
This many STRs means we can finally do what we/I had hoped to do with 111
markers: trace the unique line of each and every CARRICO!
I'll have more to say in other messages, but I wanted to share at least this
much good news with you, now.
Diana