Jeremy, We know through ship passenger manifests that Thoroughgood emigrated to colonial Virginia from England c. 1657, though there are some indications that he may have emigrated earlier than that. Unfortunately, no one has been able to locate his genealogy in England. "Thoroughgood" is a thoroughly British name, though sometimes spelled "Thorowgood". It is a surname, so apparently his name came from a family friend or relative. There was a Thoroughgood and a Pate who worked together in the king's service at one time. There was a well-known man, Adam Thoroughgood, who came to Virginia roughly the same time as our Thoroughgood. In fact, I believe his home is the oldest home still standing in Virginia. No connections have been discovered between them. It is possible that his family origins could be discovered in English records through diligent research, perhaps within some of the documents I noted in my paper on Sir John Pate. That is why some serious Pate researchers in England could be very valuable contributors to Pate genealogy. It is a mystery why none can be located. For more distant origins, you can look at the haplogroup of the Thoroughgood group in the Pate DNA Project. One of the members of our group (I'm in it too) recently took the deep clade test by Family Tree DNA, which offers the most comprehensive deep clade testing panels available on the market. This test is designed to determine or confirm the exact subclade or branch of a haplogroup. His test confirmed that our haplogroup is the basic "I2b1", which does not breakdown into further subgroups. His results apply to us all in that group. In reviewing the information provided by FTDNA, it appears that our ancient family origin (thousands of years ago), based on our haplogroup, is between northern France and Scandinavia, with migration flows possibly in both directions. Our haplogroup is most common in Scandinavia. We likely came to England through the Viking/Norse invasions and settlements. To learn more about this history, you can go to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw A. J. Pate _____________________________________ Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 17:09:01 -0400 From: Jeremy Utt <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PATE] British Coat of Arms Unfortunately, at this point I do not know whether my Pate line was Scottish, English, Welsh, or French (or any other origin). Perhaps a fellow member of the Thoroughgood Pate DNA group could enlighten me. Jeremy Utt