While we still do not have the final BYU results, I do have enough data to
put up the baseline patterns for the various Wells families.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wellsfam/dnaproje/baseline.html
For those of you who are still reluctant to give up Richard Wells and Ann
"Nancy" Brown as your ancestors, please have a look at the patterns
represented by family W008 (The Little Wells family) that is the 7th entry
from the bottom. Your family, W020 is the 3rd from the bottom.
If you compare the markers against each other (number to number) you will
note that there are 18 differences. If the numbers differ by two (14 and
16) you count this as two differences. For matching purposes it is
presumed that random changes can account for up to 3 differences between
members of a family. 4 and more pretty much eliminates one from being in a
family.
If you will compare the pattern for family W020 - Zachariah Wells to that
of W016 (Aaron Wells) and W028 (Robert Wells) you will see that the
patterns are almost exactly the same after nearly 300 years. The Robert
Wells line has one difference at marker DYS437. I will need to do some
closer inspection to see if I can identify where this might have come into
play for this family, but it may mean that Robert was NOT an ancestor of
Zachariah but may have been a brother or cousin. It gives some uniqueness
to that branch of the family.
I don't think any of you will be able to compare these patterns and stick
with the idea that Zachariah was a son of Richard Wells.
The bad news is the family does not match any of the other Wells so we are
no closer to identifying the parents of any of these three plus two more we
discovered related to the family. It should eliminate the old story that
Zachariah was found in a cabin with his dead parents and given his name by
a neighbor. I can't help wondering if that story wasn't concocted by
someone who was doing research and needed something to explain their "brick
wall".
The tracks seem to point to either Pennsylvania OR Maryland.
Keep your fingers crossed that we will come up with something in the UK
results in December.
Orin R. Wells
Wells Family Research Association
P. O. Box 5427
Kent, Washington 98064-5427
<OrinWells(a)wells.org>
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wellsfam/wfrahome.html
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