Hi Les, Do we have every Beatty lineage Y-DNA tested, for every line we have a living male for? Wouldn't that be a wonderful goal? For those of us on the BP2000 mailing list who primarily do paper trail genealogy, wouldn't it be wonderful to prove our paper work? That is what Y-DNA testing does for you, it can also disprove your paper trail. Which we might not like but it is very important to be correct! Let me see if I understand your groupings. You estimate a common ancestor's haplotype from an assortment of related haplotypes. Then you figure out if the person your comparing could have developed these mutations with in the time frame of the use of surnames. If not they become a different grouping? You now do this for each grouping as new men are tested. A very good system for distingushing close family groupings (close being with in about 2000- 3000 years). Keep up the good work Les! Nelda ~o~o~o~o~o0o0o0o0o0o~o~o~o~o Nelda L. Percival SSGT, E6, US ARMY ret. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://freepages.folklore.rootsweb.com/~bonsteinandgilpin/ ~o~o~o~o~o0o0o0o0o0o~o~o~o~o

Nelda, <<Do we have every Beatty lineage Y-DNA tested, for every line we have a living male for?>> Nope; not even close. I believe we have over 450 separate lineages documented in BP-2000 (with more showing up all the time). To date, we have 167 participants in our BeattyDNA Project. Those participants represent 100 of the BP lineages. Some lineages are represented by more than one participant. Some participants do not have BP-2000 lineage numbers assigned. We're making progress, but have a long way to go. And yes, 100% is a wonderful goal! <<For those of us on the BP2000 mailing list who primarily do paper trail genealogy, wouldn't it be wonderful to prove our paper work? That is what Y-DNA testing does for you, it can also disprove your paper trail. Which we might not like but it is very important to be correct!>> Those brick walls we all encounter are the primary reason for starting the BeattyDNA Project. It helps us get past those walls, suggests lineages which are related, and shows us where lineage connections might exist. We have had some notable successes thus far and expect more with additional participants. <<Let me see if I understand your groupings.>> Yep, that's about it. Except that the ancestor timeline is a little closer than 2,000 - 3,000 years. Using the estimates of mutation rates, we calculated that with 25 markers, the probability of 4 mutations within 20-30 generations is low, and the probability of 5 is very low. So, a rule developed that if a participant had a genetic distance (gd) of 5 or less from the Group 01 reference haplotype, he was included in Group 01. The other groups were created based on their genetic distance from Group 01 and from one another. Since a generation is estimated to be about 25 years (or 20, or 30 depending on who you ask), 20-30 generations would be a 500 - 750 year time line. Presently, we have those 167 participants grouped into 36 groups based on their individual 25-marker haplotypes. About 70% of those participants fall into Group 01. So, there is a high probability that the members of Group 01 share a common ancestor who lived 500-750 years ago. But, we will probably never know who he was. For the benefit of newcomers to BP-2000 -- we don't have these discussions often on BP-2000. When we started the BeattyDNA Project in 2000, the BP-2000 membership felt that the discussions arising from that project should be conducted on a separate list server. So, we set up a Yahoo eGroup and named it GenMatch. If you are not now a member of GenMatch but would like to follow the discussions there, just go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GenMatch/ and click on Join. Nelda includes the link to our DNA Project website on all BP-2000 messages. Just look at the bottom. It is http://www.beattydna.org/. Les Beaty, L-20