Y’all, Well, it has been awhile since I have been in touch with you about the things going on in the project. A lot has happened, many new results are in and there are some announcements I need to make. First, though, I need to apologize to everyone. As many of you no doubt know, I haven’t been answering much email lately and a couple of items in the project have slipped a bit. For the last couple of weeks, things have been a bit of a whirlwind at home and some things have come up that have needed my immediate attention. These events include both my younger siblings going through a sudden divorce, an extended visit from my mother-in-law, our yearly party on the 4^th and most important of all, we finally sold our house, which of course, opens an entirely new can of worms. The next couple of weeks are going to be wild as we finish packing and move our bustling family back to North Carolina (yes, we are FINALLY going home). We have to turn over possession on Jul 29^th and plan on being in NC by Aug 1. I am going to do my best to catch up on my email this weekend, so if you sent me an email recently, and haven’t received a reply, please be patient...I am on it! Next, as may or may not have already heard, I get to see how hard it is to bore a roomful of people (all three of them) at this year’s FTDNA Conference. I have been asked to give 2 presentations at this year’s conference on managing growth in surname projects and how to use the tools that FTDNA provides on their website for the group administrators. I bring that up in order to bring this up! I will be in Houston for the conference which is on November 3^rd & 4^th . Our project has a large number of participants from Houston and the surrounding areas…so let’s get together!! Hughes Williams has offered to be the “man on the ground” and setup some type of meeting. If you are interested, please be sure to contact him and let him know your preferences. We tried this at the 1^st conference and only one participant and I were able to meet up (thanks for the awesome steak Joe!!). Here’s your chance to corner me and ask all the questions you want and keep me pinned in until you get an answer!!! These kinds of opportunities don’t come a long very often, so let’s take advantage of it! The project hit a major milestone a couple of weeks ago…participant number 300!! On top of that, with this update, we now have over 50 matched groups of participants. And, I have noticed the definite trend of more matching vs. non-matching with new participants. In other words a new participant is more likely to match when his results come back than he is not to match, which is very positive. Many of you might remember my “official” prediction about a year ago…that I suspected we’d need 400+ participants to really make a dent in the vast number of Williams lineages out there…this is certainly being proven with our encouraging matching. Another interesting milestone is that we just got our first 67-marker results set back…and I have no idea what the heck I am going to do with it!! Because it is really only useful in very well matched folks combined with design restrictions on the website, I will probably not add the panel 4 numbers to the main results page. However, because folks want to be able to share this information, I will publish them in the printer friendly version…somehow. The additional markers present a design challenge for me…how to get an entire 67-marker result set to fit on one sheet of paper. I will keep you posted with my efforts on that and welcome any feedback you may have on what you’d like to see. Now, for the latest results!!! We are currently at 304 participants and 51 matched groups. I have updated all of the results pages with the latest information, except for the printable versions…those are next on my list. Here is the summary of the latest changes. Group 5 – Has a new member, Kenneth! Also, another participant from this Group expanded to the 25 marker kit and it resulted in another matched group! Group 6 – Michael is the latest 12 marker match in this group. The 25-marker is recommended to rule out a false-positive. Group 7 – Alva’s panel 2 numbers are in and makes for an interesting conversation...all his markers are a perfect match until you get to the 464 series, where they go haywire. Because of the volatility of this marker, I still fee quite comfortable in claiming this as a match. Group 8 – also has a new member…Dan, whose 37 markers make it very clear that he is kin with this group. Group 9 – Joseph is now a tentative member of this group…I say tentative because his results are right on the edge of acceptable mismatches. He is quite probably related to the folks in this group, but because of the number of mismatches and where they occur, the common ancestor is most likely a few more generations back than the rest of the matches in this group. Also, Marvin is the first in out project to see the 67-marker results. Group 14 – Thomas is the latest member of this group, being a perfect 25/25 match with William and Preston. Group 20 – The newest member of this group is Daniel, again with a perfect 25/25 match. Group 22 – The addition of David to this group is big news in this group as it has apparently done wonders in helping tie up their Quaker information. He is a perfect 37/37 match with most of the group. Group 42 – Memmo has a perfect 25/25 match with Joel and W.P. and is now firmly in this group. Group 43 – George’s panel 2 numbers are in. The rest of the group needs to move to the 25 marker kit to rule out false positives. Group 47 – this is a wild and wooly group. In the last update, it consisted of a panel 1 level match between Eugene and Dana. However, both have since upgraded to the 25 marker kits, the results of which were clearly different. So, I had disbanded that group and now reused it to accommodate a new group consisting of Michael and Daniel. Group 50 – this is one of the latest new groups, and is only based on 12 markers. Both Hugh and Ronald should consider upgrading to the 25-marker test to rule out a false-positive. Group 51 – This group is the poster child for upgrading to 25 markers. Nona was in Group 5 for a while with a 12/12 match with half the population. She upgraded to the 37 marker test…her 25 markers matching nicely with Harvey…a new participant. The fun doesn’t stop there…remember Eugene from Group 47…that got disbanded because of the panel 2 mismatch? Well, that same panel 2 results set (and subsequent panel 3 set) matched nicely with Nona and Harvey. So in a matter of a month, Eugene went from the no match group to Group 47, back to the no match group and finally in Group 51. Isn’t amazing how much can happen with just that 2^nd set of makers!! No Match Group – New members: Tom (61330), James (57426), Michael (59504), Richard (62544) and Jane (63032). Donald (34566) had his panel 3 numbers come in and Dana (46044) was returned from the Group 47 hiatus. Results Pending – welcome to all the new participants who have joined in the last month. As an interesting note, the 12 marker results are in for Samuel, which give him a 11/12 match with Group 7. I am awaiting his 25 marker results to be sure this isn’t a false positive, before I place him. Well, I think that is about it for now...time for me to see if I can get the overdue TNG request taken care of before I start working on email! As always, Adrian Adrian Williams Williams DNA Project Administrator http://williams.genealogy.fm/