I'm Larry Slavens, administrator of the Slaven/variations project at all the major labs. I'm a senior programmer/analyst at a regional electronic funds transfer network. The project is in it's fifth year and has 27 participants and we're waiting on the 28th's results to come back from dna.ancestry. This newest participant may confirm a NPE in the project. A couple years ago we got a participant who's strongly suspected to descend from one of two brothers (from a family of seven sons) who disappeared into the mists of early 19th century Tennessee. His results didn't match those of the descendants of the brothers that didn't go to Tennessee. This new participant is a second cousin to the first participant, so if he turns out to match the historic family line instead of matching his cousin, there's not many places the NPE could have occurred. As a side note, the great-grandfather of these men is supposed to have had a "second family" and a direct male line descendant of this backdoor family also may join the group to test that story. What a tangled web we weave... Larry