On Friday, September 1, 2017 at 8:26:10 AM UTC-7, taf wrote: > On Thursday, August 31, 2017 at 11:26:25 PM UTC-7, Darrel Hockley wrote: > > Various Howard families that settled in Massachusetts in the 1620s to > > 1640s, including my Howard ancestor Edward Howard (1616 to about 1688) > > of Boston, MA, originally from London, England belong to Haplogroup G. > > We do not have any paper trail to connect these various Howards, but > > they all have a belief they are descendants of the Dukes of Norfolk. > > If the haplogroup of the members of the House of Howard (Dukes of > > Norfolk) is indeed G, would perhaps the father or grandfather of King > > Richard III was really a Howard? > > Or one of the early Howards was fathered by an Earl Warenne. Remember, we have no reason whatsoever, based on the DNA, to conclude it was Richard's line and not that of the Beauforts where the illegitimacy took place. > > It is not surprising that people with this surname claim descent from the Dukes of Norfolk, but if FT-DNA's Howard project is any indication, there is an extreme amount of variation, was would be expected with a patroymic. Even if one of the groups descends from the Howard Dukes, the vast majority of them do not, and it is more likely that these haplotype G Howards have nothing to do with the Dukes. > > Likewise, the few Howards in the project that are haplotype G all have differences with one or more of the 23 known markers for Richard. As I said elsewhere, G2 has been around for 7000 years, so finding any old G2 and saying 'maybe this is Richard's family' is unlikely to be productive. > > taf Very true, additionally it's perfectly possible both Richard and the Beauforts were illegtimate, or the mordern people descended from the Beauforts were as well illegitimate (maybe even a couple times over). This is where one wishes we could 1) DNA tests (Y DNA, mtDNA, and autosomal DNA) all the royal and noble remains we have access to 2) DNA test a good portion of the modern population We'd answer these questions and probably find a few more interesting ones we didn't know to ask