What about my husband's situation?   He's a Wilson.  He's done the Y-DNA
test and FTDNA's family finder test.  On y-DNA, he matches very few
Wilsons.  One is a known 3rd cousin.  None of the matches had known
ancestors living in places where his ancestors lived.   His earliest
known Wilson ancestor is Benjamin Wilson, b. ~1770 somewhere in VA.  Our
best hypothesis now is that Benjamin Wilson is son of John Wilson, d.
1809 in Brunswick Co.,  VA.  But the DNA matches to his 37 marker test
and his cousin's 111 marker test are mostly Ireland and Downing surnames.
 There are matches in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Australia in
addition to the US.  Our best guess on this is that the common location
is probably Northern Ireland before surnames were used.

The family finder or autosomal DNA is more difficult to enterpret.  For
most of the matches, we can't figure out where the link is.  It appears
that the ones labeled 2d to 4th cousin could even be 5th cousins, and so
on.   We did have one success.  One woman who matched was adopted.  She
knew when and where she was born.  My husband had one cousin's family in
the area of her birth at the time she was born.  The family had 2 boys
and 1 girl.  The younger boy was about the right age to be her father. 
And he was in the Navy, and the adoptee had been  told that her father
was in the Navy.  His older brother was in the Army.  And her postulated
father was still living.  Our second close to success is another adoptee.
 Again we had only one cousin family in the area where he was born at the
time he was born.  The adoptee was told that his mother was from one
foreign country and his mother was an American Indian.  My husband had
also heard stories that his family was part American Indian (they look
Indian, but we have found no Indian ancestry),   and it was the part
living in the area where this adoptee was born.  We would need to confirm
that this family had a daughter born at the right time to be his mother. 
Then they can confirm their relationship by additional DNA tests.

Some people claim success with autosomal DNA by matching parts of
chromasome strings.  I haven't been able to figure out how to so this. 

Sue Wilson


On Sun, 9 Jun 2013 10:18:44 -0500 Bill Davidson <[log in to unmask]>
writes:
> The Y chromosome test (that only men can take) has certainly been the 
> "gold standard" over the years. That test is "representative" of the 
> male donor's father, his father's father, his father's father's 
> father, etc. etc. So....if the male DNA donor is a Mr. Jones, for 
> example, then the Y chromosome DNA test result would typically be 
> "representative" of his entire "Jones line." The "monkey wrench" 
> that can be thrown into this test (and into any other DNA test), 
> however, is if there was a "non-paternity event" (i.e., an adoption 
> or an out-of-wedlock birth), somewhere in the donor's line. For 
> example, my mother (who was born a Miss Brown) had a male cousin who 
> is a Mr. Brown, but his Y chromosome DNA test results were a match 
> to only three men who are all Mr. Smiths. We now know that my 
> maternal gg-grandfather named Smith W. Brown was actually an "Smith 
> infant" who was taken-in, named and reared by a Brown family in 
> Middlesex Co., VA (hence, my mother was actually a "biological 
> Smith" versus a "biological Brown"....though she went to her grave 
> in 1997 without knowing that).
> 
> The mtDNA test (which can be taken by a man or a women) is 
> "representative" of the donor's mother, that mother's mother. that 
> mother's mother's mother, etc. etc. While similar in concept to the 
> Y chromosome test, the results from this test present a much harder 
> challenge to research. That is because every time a woman marries, 
> she receives a different last name. For example, my mother was a 
> Miss Brown/Mrs. Davidson, but her mother was a Miss Roudabush/Mrs. 
> Brown, while the mother of this last woman was a Miss Messick/Mrs. 
> Roudabush. So....it can become quite complicated to "use" the 
> results of this test (plus, a lot of people have no idea what the 
> maiden name of their mother's mother's mother's mother was, for 
> example).
> 
> The third popular DNA test is called the "Family Finder" test by 
> Family Tree DNA, and other companies like "Ancestry" and "23andme" 
> have a similar test. This test can be taken by a man or a woman, and 
> it will basically show "DNA matches" to people (who have also taken 
> this same test) who share any common MALE or FEMALE ancestor with 
> the donor within the last four or five generations (this test 
> apparently can provide some "false positives"....and/or omit 
> relatives all together....once you go back more than about four or 
> five generations). People who take this test frequently have 
> hundreds of matches, since all kinds of male and female cousins can 
> "appear" (with a variety of last names). So....this test can be even 
> harder to "interpret" than the mtDNA test....but is has still proven 
> to be very valuable to some researchers. As an example of the 
> difficulty, one of the donor's "matching" relatives (who also took 
> this DNA test) could be a Mrs. Jones/Miss Smith, for example, but 
> the REASON that the donor is a match to that Mrs. Jones/Miss Smith 
> could be because both donors share a "common Brown relative" from a 
> few earlier generations....plus that "common Brown relative" could 
> have been on either donor's father's "side of the family" or on the 
> mother's "side of the family"....so you can image the effort it can 
> take to "make sense" of the results from this test.
> 
> I took the 37 marker Y chromosome test at Family Tree DNA, and I 
> have six other men named "Davidson" at this time who are an 
> "excellent DNA match" to me....and I now know how every one of them 
> connects to my "Davidson line" (and I have similar DNA test results 
> for the above-mentioned Smith/Brown family). I have "traced" all 
> three of these surnames (Davidson, Brown and Smith) to men in those 
> families who were in Virginia in the 1600s.
> 
> Comments/questions?
> 
> Bill
> 
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