I've been watching with great interest (from the sidelines) all of the DNA info, and unfortunately not understanding a lot. My husband is the Payne descendant and won't agree to be tested (for now). Anyway, my biggest question is how is the DNA determining which Payne you are descended from? How do they know what the DNA is of i.e. John Payne of Westmoreland? Thank you. Kelly Hall _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx

At 11:08 AM 07/06/2002 -0500, Kelly Hall wrote: >I've been watching with great interest (from the sidelines) all of the DNA >info, and unfortunately not understanding a lot. My husband is the Payne >descendant and won't agree to be tested (for now). Anyway, my biggest >question is how is the DNA determining which Payne you are descended from? >How do they know what the DNA is of i.e. John Payne of Westmoreland? Dear Kelly, There are a number of good web sites out there that explain the process in as much detail as you'd care to know- some of those sites are linked from my page at http://home.earthlink.net/~ppayne1203. To briefly answer your question, "How do they know what the DNA is of i.e. John Payne of Westmoreland?," is really quite easy if you stop to think about it. Remember that all babies, be they male or female, receive chromosomes from their parents- in fact, one chromosome each. If a baby gets an X-chromosome from his father, the baby becomes a male. If the baby, however, gets a Y-chromosome from the father, it becomes a male. If you keep that in mind, then it is pretty straightforward to follow the rest of the story. In the case of males (babies who got the Y-chromosome from their dad), they ALL pass this very same (or nearly so) Y chromosome on to their MALE sons. The chromosome does not change. Therefore, a descendant of the immigrant John Payne of Westmoreland today carries within him the same Y chromosome of John Payne himself (as well as John Paynes grandfather, and great-grandfather, etc., on through the male history of that Payne line). Therefore, we do not need to have a DNA sample from the bones of old John Payne. His DNA lives within his descendants and makes it possible for us to compare the DNA signature of his descendants. If there is a match (see the results chart at http://papayne.rootsweb.com/dna-project) in this DNA signature (or more specifically, in the Y chromosome signature) between two individuals, then we can conclude that they were related. If you look on the result chart, for example, scroll down to the bottom of the chart and look at the RED entry for descendants of Thomas Payne and Mary Snow. This is just an example, but a good one. These two participants knew through their genealogy that they were 8th cousins, once removed. The DNA testing bears this out as their DNA signatures are identical all the way across the chart. No question they descended from a common ancestor. As I said, they knew going into the test that they were related. Others in the test did not know they were related going into the test. For example, the descendant of Isaiah Payne and Charles Payne (near the top of the chart) also share an identical DNA signature indicating they are closely related through a common ancestor. The descendants of Isaiah Payne of Maryland and Thomas Payne of Virginia (number 3 and 4 on the chart) also share a nearly identical DNA signature- but there is one difference. You will notice that under the heading DYS389II there is a value of 28 for the entry for Thomas, while the entry for Isaiah shows 29. This is simply telling us that at this particular location on the Y chromosome, their is a "mutation," whereby the descendant of Thomas has one less segment (or strand) of DNA at that location than the descendant of Isaiah at the same location. Mutations are known to occur in different Y-chromosome locations over time. If the rate of these mutations can be determined, then it can be calculated WHEN they shared a common ancestor. I hope this brief explanation clears things up for you on the testing process and the value of it. It might not replace genealogy, but its value lies in its ability to show relationships between branches of a family. In our test results, we identified two primary Payne lineages. The first Lineage consists of 10 individuals (on our chart, you can see who they are by all of the GREEN). The 2nd Lineage consists of 5 or possibly 6 individuals (5 of which have identical DNA signatures) and are represented on the chart by all of the ORANGE entries. Regards, Patrick