I received the following information from a Turner researcher concerning her work with the Turner DNA project. I am NOT related to the Turners, but lots of you our there are, so am sending this to the lists. Contact Gail R. Blancett <ablancett@atlantic.net> if interested in participating. Billie Jones --------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: Gail R. Blancett To: Lee and Billie Jones Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 11:30 AM Subject: Re: James Everett Turner Billie, my main genealogy project at the present time is the Turner DNA Project. This project is an attempt to document the DNA of Turner lines that had their roots in the mid-Atlantic region of the American colonies and then either followed a southern migration route down through the Carolinas and then westward or those that went directly westward into KY, OH, TN, etc. The use of DNA testing for genealogical purposes is a relatively new venture which has been in the works for roughly 5 years. Our Turner DNA project is almost 3 years old. It has grown fairly rapidly in the last year. My own Turner line came from the Spartanburg area and I was totally stumped on finding any Turners in the area that I could prove were related to them. When the DNA project was initiated by a gal that I'd shared research with on Turners for about 10 years, I decided to join in. I worked with her from the beginning and because I was primarily a SC Turner researcher, have worked to have people researching SC Turners join the project. The person who is tested must be a male Turner with an unbroken male line back to whatever the brick wall Turner is in the line of interest. I would love to have someone join the project descended from James Everette Turner to document that line. I gather that he goes back to an older James Turner who was married to a Caroline (believe she is said to be a Rogers). Do you know that line back farther? The DNA project is a powerful means for being able to determine which Turners can be related to the others and which cannot be related. It is probably the only way we will ever be able to sort the many Turners into "clans" in an attempt to figure out which Turners in the same county and adjoining counties are related. I haven't worked a tremendous amount on researching the Edgefield Turners but I believe part of them came out of the Newberry Turner group. But, I also think there are some in Edgefield that are not from that group. It is just not something I've spent enough time on to know if anyone else has figured them out. Are you aware of the Turner DNA project? I don't know your connection to this family so don't know if you would even know of any male Turners descended from James Everette Turner who might be a candidate to be tested. If you are at all interested, you might be interested in checking out our Turner DNA project's website. The URL for it is: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~turnerdna/ On the left side of the screen the word "Results." If you will click on that link, a chart will load that shows the lines that we currently have documented in the project. It is listed by Kit # and then oldest ancestor. Following is a long string of numbers which represents the DNA signature of the person tested. All males of the same surname which have a common ancestor should have nearly identical DNA signatures which enables us to be able to know whether they could be related or not. The real power is in being able to know who you can't be related to. I know one of our members who doesn't have any matches yet has said, "Well, I now know who I'm not (all the lines he doesn't match) but I don't know who I am!" It really helps to save time being able to rule out lines you know you can't be related to. As we gather more and more documented lines into the project, I believe it will become a valuable asset to genealogical researchers. An example of the type of success it can produce, the Spartanburg group is a good one. Those of us who were long-time researchers of the Spartanburg Turners could identify what appeared to be 3 "patriarchs" of Turner groups who were contemporaries and then one who was likely in the next generation. But, all the research in regular records could not prove whether they were related. Most of us could only say "well they probably were." When the DNA project was formed, I began to find people who had researched all of the different lines in Spartanburg and we got men descended from all of them to do the DNA test. What we proved was that the 3 "patriarchs" were NOT related. But, the 4th man was related to one of the other three although we know from research he can not be a son. Clearly, it appears he is probably a nephew. We found that just across the border with NC in Rutherford County were some others that were related to one of the Spartanburg groups. Once we established those three groups with distinct DNA signatures from the others, it was possible that someone who had traced their line back to Spartanburg Turners but couldn't tell which group they belonged to was able to identify the group by having her nephew do the test for her line. Bingo, it matched only my group of Turners and not the others. This reinforced the clues found in census. Her line was traced by regular research back to a man named John Henry Turner. He appeared to be the Henry Turner living in the household of Justin Turner (wife Esther Bishop) in 1850. Then in 1870, Esther was living with him. But she said that J. Henry Turner did not name any children Justin or Esther which may her question the relationship. We still do not know for sure that J. Henry Turner was Justin's son. He could just as well be a nephew. What we do know for sure from the DNA testing is that he belongs in this group and not in any of the others in Spartanburg County. I've worked to do a similar process on the Union and Greenville Turners and we also have some from York and Chester and Fairfield although I haven't done as thorough job on identifying all of those yet. It takes a tremendous amount of time.