Well said!  I agree.   Do you take females (I'm assuming you're a FTDNA administrator)?  My maiden name is Ellis.  My paper trail of my Ellis line is well documented.  When I tested with family finder, I asked to join the Ellis project.  I am not allowed in, because I am female.  :-)  I complained to the management, but it fell on deaf ears apparently.   ________________________________ From: Marleen Van Horne <msvnhrn@jps.net> To: njhunter@rootsweb.com Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 3:52 PM Subject: Re: [NJHUNTER] Y chromosome DNA In my projects, I take people with both the yDNA and the surname. If a man's yDNA matches an identified family with that projects surname, I accept him into the project, not matter what his surname is. By the same token, if a man has the surname, and does not biologically match anyone else in the project, I consider this a new family line for the project, because his male descendants will have his surname and his yDNA. In the case of stranger yDNA being transferred to a family with another surname, the genealogist has to come to grips with the fact that this transfer can have taken place for socially good reasons, or for absolutely unacceptable social reasons. A yDNA transfer is often the result of an undocumented adoption.  If a child was an orphan with no assets, not much attention was paid to who raises them, as long as they did not become a financial burden on the community.  These adoptions seldom got documented.  It also depended on how socially developed was the area where the adoption happened. Parents living on the frontier often adopted the children of their married daughter who died in childbirth.  Survivors adopted the children of people who died in epidemics.  These children were often raised with the surnames of the adoptive parents. Our family histories are not pure as the driven snow, as far as socially acceptable goes.  Women became pregnant and married a man other than the father of the child.  How they became pregnant is another matter.  It could have been incest, rape or hanky panky. The point to all this is that since the beginning to time the conception of children has resulted from as many circumstances as are imaginable, and that will continue to happen until the end of species. All children are entitled to know their biological histories as well as their social family histories.  In my opinion, they are the richer for knowing both. Marleen Van Horne Marleen Van Horne Visit the Hunterdon County GenWeb page at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~njhunter ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NJHUNTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message