Hi James V Elliott, Group Administrator, Elliott (And Border Reivers) DNA
Project
GREAT IDEA!:
"DNA Project Seeking Witherington Participants," see excerpt below, & I
will post & endorse it to mine & other various W'ton-L Lists.
( I also host the Carruthers-L List, and ask if they should also be
considered, even though it was not listed on your website. By copy of this
msg, I ask our very knowledgeable Carruthers members if they feel support
would be appropriate. I thought the Carruthers WERE quite active 'Reivers.')
I did go to your website:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/%7egallgaedhil/dna_by_surname.htm
but while Witherington WAS listed, Carruthers was not.
Also, following the discussion outline on your site, specifically the
name & US migration pattern variations, the Witheringtons that migrated
towards the states you listed, are likely now carrying surname variations of
Withington & Wethington and more than 40 other W'ton variations we all have
been subjected to (mine is Wetherington):
"3) If the ancestor lived in a state whose earliest settlers from Great
Britain with "Border" names came largely from Ulster (e.g., North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kentucky), "Scotch-Irish-USA" was assigned as "Place of
Origin"."
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/%7egallgaedhil/dna_by_surname.htm
More to come later, but want to get this off ASAP.
Barry Wetherington
PS: Of course, The Witherington Derwentwaters poem (continued to fight on
his leg stumps) is quite well known.
----- Original Message -----
From: <jvance(a)tiac.net>
To: <WITHERINGTON-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 2:00 PM
Subject: [Witherington] Border Reiver DNA Project Is Seeking Witherington
Participants
This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: WITHERINGTON
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/GFXBAIB/53
Message Board Post:
Hello,
If you are an adult male paternally descended from the Anglo-Scottish
Border family Witherington, and have ever considered getting your Y
chromosome tested, you may do so at a substantial discount by joining the
Border Reiver DNA Project at Family Tree DNA.
The Border Reiver DNA Project is a serious genetic and genealogical study
started this March by two customers of Family Tree DNA, James V. Elliott and
David B. Strong. Although it began as a study of the Elliott Border Reiver
family, it has since expanded to include members of other Border Reiver
families, including a direct descendant of the legendary Border Reiver,
Johnnie Armstrong, a senior officer of the Clan Hall Society, Dixons,
Irvings, Kerrs, Littles, Taylors, Carruthers, Davisons, Ogles, Hunters and
others. Members of all Border Reiver families are welcome now, and we
emphatically encourage your participation.
The home page for our study, which includes many links to other web pages
about the Scots, the Britons, the Border Reivers and their ancestors, may be
accessed at the URL below:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gallgaedhil/elliott_border_reive...
We are conducting our study of the Border Reiver families using Y
chromosome DNA markers, because the Y chromosome is passed, just like a
surname, from father to son with very few changes over many generations.
That makes these DNA markers an ideal tool for tracing paternal descent and,
by extension, the history of families.
The goals of the Border Reiver DNA Project are as follows:
1) James Leyburn, in his excellent book "The Scotch-Irish: A Social
History", characterized the ancestry of the Anglo-Scottish Border people as
a diverse mixture of Picts, Brythonic Celts, Scotti, Irish Gaels, both
Danish and Norwegian Vikings, Angles and Saxons, troops and settlers from
all over the Roman Empire - as well as Normans, Flemish and many others. We
intend to use Y chromosome analysis to explore the ancestral origin of
Border Reiver descendants, both individually (if we can) and as a group. We
have already done substantial reading about both the history of Europe and
the latest developments in population genetics, and have compiled a database
of more than 350 likely Border Reiver descendants obtained from public
databases at Family Tree DNA and elsewhere.
The URL below will give you some idea of the extent of our ongoing study:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gallgaedhil/dna_by_haplogroup.htm
2) The Border Reivers rode during a period of extreme chaos in the history
of the Anglo-Scottish Border. any young mothers were widowed, and many
children were orphaned. The social customs of the Reivers, affected by a
need for self-reliance and the shifting circumstances of the era, favored
trial marriages, and allowed even married women to keep their surnames. The
larger Border Reiver clans themselves were like tribes or military units as
much as families, and many born with different surnames joined these clans
for protection, eventually assuming the clan surname as their own. As a
consequence of all these factors, Border Reiver descendants are to this day
closely interrelated. Many with different surnames share the same ancestors,
and many with the same surname are descended from genetically distinct
paternal lines. Our DNA Project seeks to determine the relationships among
these descendants, both on an individual and a family level.
The URL below will give you some idea of the families already included in
our study:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gallgaedhil/dna_by_surname.htm
The group rate for joining the Border Reiver DNA Project is 99 USD for a 12
marker Y chromosome test, or 169 USD for a 25 marker test. The 12 marker
test easily suffices to determine your "deep ancestry", and can provide
enough data to suggest a shared paternal ancestry within the last 14 or 15
generations. The 25 marker test, more favored by DNA genealogists, can
identify a shared paternal ancestry within the last 7 generations.
These group rates represent a substantial savings over the cost of joining
Family
Tree alone. For instance, the cost of getting the 12 marker test is
nearly 40 percent less than what I paid for the same test last summer. Once
you join our group, you will have full privileges as a Family Tree DNA
customer. Family Tree DNA will store your genetic material with absolute
privacy and security for twenty years, and will publish information about
your Y chromosome markers, their likely ethnic origin, and the e-mail
addresses of exact matches, on your own personal, password-protected web
page. In addition, all other DNA tests you wish to order will be available
to you at a considerable discount.
Despite the foregoing discussion of cost, this is a serious study, not a
commercial venture. If you are interested in joining us, or would simply
like more info, please contact James V. Elliott at jvance(a)tiac.net.
Sincerely,
James V. Elliott
Group Administrator
Elliott (And Border Reivers) DNA Project
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