My JAMES family comes from Old Chester county (where they lived became Delaware county). Through the Y-DNA surname project for JAMES, we have learned there were several distinct JAMES families living close to each other, sometimes even members of the same church/meetinghouse, yet not related at all through the JAMES line. Here is the website www.jamesdna.net I would urge any male with the surname of JAMES to participate. My dad did, and the DNA project has really cleared up a lot of questions for me as to which JAMES families belonged to my line, and which did not!! No amount of standard genealogical research was able to help me with that problem; it took genetic genealogy to do it. If you go to http://www.familytreedna.com/default.asp you can look up any surname and see if there is a project already established. Susan >Message: 8 >Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:55:15 -0400 >From: "E Johnson" <iris.gates@gmail.com> >Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Why test Y? >To: PA-OLD-CHESTER@rootsweb.com >Message-ID: > <70541d1e0610231555r6f21c8ap69054073dc440287@ma il.gmail.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > >Once more to make it clear about X, Y, and mitochondrial DNA: > >The father of a son passes on a copy of his only Y Chromosome, and his >mother passes on a copy of one of her two X Chromosomes, to their son. > >The father of a daughter passes on a copy of his only X Chromosome, >and her mother passes on a copy of one of her two X Chromosomes, to >their daughter. > >But almost 100% of our mitochondrial DNA comes from the mother alone. >Here is how that happens: > >"In mammals, 99.99% of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is inherited from the >mother. This is because the sperm [of the male parent] carries its >mitochondria around a portion of its tail and has only about 100 >mitochondria compared to 100,000 in the oocyte [egg of the female >parent]." > >The above quote [with my insertions] from 1998 Gwen V. Childs, Ph.D. >"The Mitochondrial Life cycle", located on a page of The University of >Texas Medical Branch website. > >So, mtDNA can carry the genetic signature of either of the two X >chromosomes which a child would inherit from his or her mother. > > >That's whY, and now... > >on to the neXt > >Liz J >