The time has come to forge ahead with phase II of the Pennington Family DNA study. We have just been offered a special group rate of $115 per participant, which includes all our mailing and administrative charges (this has not yet been corrected on our website). For this we can have 12 sites on your Y chromosome tested (usually enough to find out if you are related to a given lineage). If a 12/12 match is obtained we can refine it by doing an additional 9 sites for $60 more. Now there is a great advantage to doing your test with the PRA because if you go to Family Tree DNA yourself it costs $219 for 12 sites and then you might not be able to interpret the result fully. You must either be a male with the surname Pennington (or variant), or get a relative to donate the cells scraped from their cheek for you to participate in this study (details on website below). Yes even British Pen(n)ingtons can participate but you have to send us dollars. The other advantage of going through the PRA is that the DNA testing company only gets a code number from us along with a surname and the cheek cells. The only person who can break the code is the PRA project coordinator, and I will regard this information as strictly confidential. No reference will be made to living individuals when the time comes to publish all the results in full. We will describe the various lineages up till say 1900 and provide the DNA signature with no indication of who provided it. That means that nobody has both your entire DNA and your identity. The numbers that we obtain are only of use to genealogists interested in family history, no medical information can be deduced from this DNA information. Have a look on the PRA website for DNA participation forms and two articles that describe the results of our project so far: http://penningtonresearch.org/organization/researchcmt/phasetwo.htm Note that having done this DNA test with the PRA, several Pennington lineages, that did not previously know they were related, have found that they are one and the same family. You may even find out that you are likely to be descended from Celts or from Vikings by doing this test. Some family groups have offered money to test someone from their group (notably group 32) and some have promised to find volunteers. Lets see if we can put all this together. The Graves family has over a hundred volunteers are we going to let them out do us? Nick Penington DNA project leader. Contact npenington@downstate.edu if you would like to participate.

Hi everyone, Will this save me $$ in buying certificates as well ?? ;-) I still do not have a group to officially belong to ; -( although I have a long contact list of other Lancashire researchers.. Please verify that I can take a sample from my fathers cheek , his mother was a PENNINGTON born in Lancashire...And as we are living in Australia are we included ? cheers Julie