Dear Poythress-List & DNA Study participants, This is a report from your volunteer Group Administrator, Barbara Poythress Neal, regarding our Poythress/Poytress-Surname Y-DNA Study. We currently have 13 participants in the Study. I really appreciate the participation of each person in the Study. It took longer than expected for the recent batch of 37-marker tests to yield results, but we finally have them. Thus we now have *some* results on all 13 of our Poythress/Poytress-Surname Group Y-DNA participants. To help understand those results, the company doing our tests, Family Tree DNA, furnishes information to help us non-scientists. The company calculates the odds (or the probability) of participants sharing a Most Recent Common Ancestor within various numbers of generations. One of our newest participants, Lee, is from the line of "Jack" Fredrick Elmo D'Auther Poythress, who we think is descended from James R. Portis/Poythress & Sarah Crowder. I know that researchers in that family line have previously indicated on our Poythress-List that they thought some ancestor(s) in their line might have been, at least in part, American Indian. Thus it may not surprise folks in that line that Lee's 37-markers' results show that in his paternal line (father's father's father's etc line) there is indeed Native American Indian ancestry. He is in "Haplo Group A," an American Indian Haplo group. His Genetic Distance Report indicates a 0.00% probability that he shares an ancestor-in-common within the last 24 generations, with any of our other 12 participants. All 12 of our other participants are in "Haplo Group R1b," indicating their paternal line's origin is in the British Isles. Our other most recent participant, from England, indeed knows his ancestry was in Britain. He is a 9g-grandson of John Poythres, who owned Ploddy House in Gloucestershire, England. Thus our English participant is 11 generations removed from John of Ploddy House. In the early 1600's, John had 2 sons christened in Newent, Gloucestershire: 1. Francis, christened in 1609, who came to America by 1632 -- about 375 years ago., and 2. Christopher, christened in 1616, who stayed in England. Thus the closest potential ancestor-in-common between our English participant and our American participants, was born more than 400 years ago. Since we know our English participant is 11 generations removed from John of Ploddy House, I've copied below the odds of sharing an ancestor within 11 generations for the eight other participants who have already gotten results on the 37-marker test: Odds are quite high that our English participant shares with Dale, David, & Karl (87.58%) an ancestor-in-common within those 11 generations. Odds are also good with Gene & Maynard (69.93%) and with Vern (65.47%), and the odds are 31.78% with Neil, and 0.00% with Lee. The newly available 59-marker test will more closely refine the number of generations (within *fewer* generations than ever before available), of how close the ancestor-in-common was. This will particularly help regarding our American participants, whose ancestor-in-common would logically be within a smaller number of generations if our theory is correct that most American Poythress folks descending from Francis. Within the past week this newly-available 59-marker test has been ordered for the majority of our participants (including our English participant). Thus when those results are available (probably in late May), we'll have more information about our American participants, and can see how closely their results match those of our English participant. From Family Tree DNA website's info about this new test, we learn that we'll be able to much more closely refine our participants' most recent ancestor-in-common (http://www.ftdna.com/faq2.html). For example, if men match on 59 of 59 markers, the odds are 95% that their most recent ancestor-in-common was within just 5 generations -- in other words that both men are 3g-grandsons of the same ancestor. Thanks again to each of you who are participating in our Y-DNA Study. We would welcome other men who are surnamed Poythress or Poytress (or similar spellings) to participate in the study. The website of the company where our Study is registered is www.familytreedna.com This reliable firm is the same one doing the worldwide genographic study with the National Geographic Society. Much information is available at their site regarding DNA and DNA testing. Cheers, Barbara Poythress Neal