On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 1:18:06 AM UTC+2, Stewart Baldwin wrote: > Your comment (elsewhere in this thread) indicating that 23 markers might > not be enough to get good information made me wonder if my own results > are atypical.  Among my Y-DNA matches at Family Tree DNA (none > apparently any closer than 6th cousins), my 67 marker test shows 25 > matches with "genetic distance" between 3 and 5 (none closer than that), > 19 of whose surnames are either Baldwin or one of the variants of > Maybury (Mayberry, Mabry, etc.), with many more of the latter.  My group > of Baldwins appears to have arisen from a "non-paternal event" (NPE) > with a Maybury biological father around 300 years ago, or perhaps > earlier.  (I have circumstantial evidence for a specific "suspect.")  A 67 marker cluster containing about 3 major old surname groups sounds fairly typical in English surnames. (Logically for example, highland families tend to show much more surname mixing.) In my experience though, the testing companies give guidance about expected time back to the common ancestor which UNDER estimates (possibly thinking it helps keep enthusiasm up?). This leads people to assume NPEs. But possibly the two surnames go back to the middle ages and a time when surnames were less fixed. In many examples there is enough paper trail to be confident that recent dates are not possible.

On 8/30/2017 3:01 AM, Andrew Lancaster wrote: > On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 1:18:06 AM UTC+2, Stewart Baldwin wrote: > >> Your comment (elsewhere in this thread) indicating that 23 markers might >> not be enough to get good information made me wonder if my own results >> are atypical.  Among my Y-DNA matches at Family Tree DNA (none >> apparently any closer than 6th cousins), my 67 marker test shows 25 >> matches with "genetic distance" between 3 and 5 (none closer than that), >> 19 of whose surnames are either Baldwin or one of the variants of >> Maybury (Mayberry, Mabry, etc.), with many more of the latter.  My group >> of Baldwins appears to have arisen from a "non-paternal event" (NPE) >> with a Maybury biological father around 300 years ago, or perhaps >> earlier.  (I have circumstantial evidence for a specific "suspect.") > A 67 marker cluster containing about 3 major old surname groups sounds fairly typical in English surnames. (Logically for example, highland families tend to show much more surname mixing.) In my experience though, the testing companies give guidance about expected time back to the common ancestor which UNDER estimates (possibly thinking it helps keep enthusiasm up?). This leads people to assume NPEs. But possibly the two surnames go back to the middle ages and a time when surnames were less fixed. In many examples there is enough paper trail to be confident that recent dates are not possible. In the case I was referring to, the NPE seems fairly well established.  Among the Mayburys (and obvious variant spellings) who have tested STRs on 67 (or more) markers, a large majority of them fall into a single Y-DNA cluster with paper trails going back to multiple immigrants from England and Ireland, but closely enough related that their common ancestor appears to postdate the time when surnames were first appearing.  Not surprisingly, Baldwin (being a patronymic type surname) is a multiple origin surname, containing several different Y-DNA clusters.  All of my Baldwin surnamed close Y-DNA matches either provably or arguably (in the case of a few weak paper trails) descend from the two sons (and only recorded children) of the same immigrant ancestor John Baldwin who came to Pennsylvania in 1699.  What appears to clinch the NPE in this case is that Mayburys descended from the Pennsylvania group of Mayburys have a 67 marker signature indicating that they were more closely related to my group of Baldwins than they were to Mayburys descended from other immigrants.  Circumstantial evidence which falls short of proof leads me to conjecture that a certain Thomas Maybury who arrived in Pennsylvania around 1716 was the biological father of John Baldwin's two paper-trail sons.  John Baldwin the immigrant had a brother William who also came to Pennsylvania, and still had at least a few dozen direct male line descendants living in the mid 1800's.  If that line still survives in the direct male line, hopefully some of them will have a test eventually to help narrow down things a bit. It would also help a lot of DNA studies if people in England (and Europe in general) were as enthusiastic about having DNA tests as many Americans are. Stewart Baldwin