I had to chuckle at the people and all the questions about Y-DNA, because I had (have) the same questions. In general, the more markers you have tested, the more confidence you can have in the results. The 25 marker comparisons are almost useless as they give too many matches to be realistic. FTDNA diplays your matches for 12, 25, 37 and 67 markers, and I see that a number of those who matched exactly with 12 markers, fell of the list when we looked at 37 markers. Ditto for the 67 markers. I have a good paper trail of my Wilsons back to Coleraine, some from Ballywillan parish and some from Dunboe. In fact I even found their names in the records of the First Dunboe Presbyterian church and walked the old streets of Articlave and Ballywildrick - a bit spooky I'll admit, but fun in any case. So, when I had my Y-DNA analyzed by FTDNA, thought for sure it would come back as R1b1b2 as most Cletic Irish do, but I was surprised when my haplogroup turned out to be I1a - Nordic! that means my ancient ancestor probably came from Norway or Denmark and was among the Vikings that eventually stayed in Ireland (or possibly Scotland or England - the Danelaw, etc.) Using Y-SEARCH, and the matches by FTDNA, I was able to find 4 perfect matches at 37 markers and one at 67 markers with a genetic distance of 1 (we matched on 66 of 67 markers). FTDNA has some faculty at the University of Arizona who compute the probabilities of matches, and they claim that the guy I matched on the 67 markers had a common ancestor with me about 300 years ago, with a probability of about .96. That's pretty high if you're not up on probability theory. One of these days I'm going to sit down and figure out how they came up with .96! Dan

Hi Daniel, Fascinating story, and yes we all got the same questions on DNA <grin>. I do know some kinds of I are considered 'indiginous' to Ireland because they've been there for so very very long -- thousands of years. So if you seek out a guru of your kind of DNA, maybe they can tell you what type this is. There may be a list specific to it. Or ask on the genealogy DNA list. There are a couple major players in the I-world there. Did you email the guy who matched you??? I am amazed at how many do not respond! Like, this is the WHOLE POINT -- find matches. Oh well...... Linda Merle ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Wilson" <[email protected]> To: "Scotch-Irish Discussion List" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2010 11:10:34 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [S-I] More on DNA I had to chuckle at the people and all the questions about Y-DNA, because I had (have) the same questions. In general, the more markers you have tested, the more confidence you can have in the results. The 25 marker comparisons are almost useless as they give too many matches to be realistic. FTDNA diplays your matches for 12, 25, 37 and 67 markers, and I see that a number of those who matched exactly with 12 markers, fell of the list when we looked at 37 markers. Ditto for the 67 markers. I have a good paper trail of my Wilsons back to Coleraine, some from Ballywillan parish and some from Dunboe. In fact I even found their names in the records of the First Dunboe Presbyterian church and walked the old streets of Articlave and Ballywildrick - a bit spooky I'll admit, but fun in any case. So, when I had my Y-DNA analyzed by FTDNA, thought for sure it would come back as R1b1b2 as most Cletic Irish do, but I was surprised when my haplogroup turned out to be I1a - Nordic! that means my ancient ancestor probably came from Norway or Denmark and was among the Vikings that eventually stayed in Ireland (or possibly Scotland or England - the Danelaw, etc.) Using Y-SEARCH, and the matches by FTDNA, I was able to find 4 perfect matches at 37 markers and one at 67 markers with a genetic distance of 1 (we matched on 66 of 67 markers). FTDNA has some faculty at the University of Arizona who compute the probabilities of matches, and they claim that the guy I matched on the 67 markers had a common ancestor with me about 300 years ago, with a probability of about .96. That's pretty high if you're not up on probability theory. One of these days I'm going to sit down and figure out how they came up with .96! Dan ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message