The Family Tree DNA Black Friday Sale runs from November 20th through November 30th this year. If you are thinking about taking a DNA test, these are great prices, especially the Y-37 and Big Y-700 sale prices. If you want to take a test and have any questions, let me know. Here are the prices for all of FTDNA's DNA tests for this sale:
Before jumping into STR testing results, a little refresher on STR testing is in order. Family Tree DNA offers three levels of Short Tandem Repeat (STR) testing: Y-37, Y-67, and Y-111. It is not necessary to understand all of the science behind this testing, but a few words on the basics might be helpful for understanding how these tests are used. According to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG): “A short tandem repeat (STR) in DNA occurs when a pattern of two or more nucleotides are repeated and the repeated sequences are directly adjacent to each other.” [1] According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH): “A nucleotide is one of the structural components, or building blocks, of DNA and RNA. A nucleotide consists of a base (one of four chemicals: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C)) plus a molecule of sugar and one of phosphoric acid.” [2] STR testing counts the number of repeats on specific segments of Y DNA (called markers), which are designated by the letters “DYS” followed by a number. The marker values for two men are compared, and if the number of non-matching markers (a measure known as genetic distance) falls below established thresholds, there is a high likelihood the two men are related. We have used Y-37 STR testing in the Ackley Surname Project to determine group membership; i.e., to check if a tester is in the group of Nicholas Ackley descendants or a member of some other group.
The table below gives a list of all men in the project who have tested at the Y-37 level or higher. Although most of the members carry the Ackley surname and are descendants of Nicholas Ackley, we have a number of other men with similar surnames who have joined to see if they might be related to the Ackley surname. The testers are grouped by surname and color-coded for easy identification in later data tables. I realize the font in these pictures is quite small, but you can click on any table/picture to open a larger version. Note that the Nicholas Ackley descendants are divided into two subgroups; the men colored in darker orange are descendants whose connections to Nicholas Ackley are known, while those in lighter orange are men whose connections to Nicholas are not known, but are presumed to be descendants because they match all of the other Nicholas descendants whose relationships are known. The descendancy column shows how each tester descends from their earliest known ancestor.
Among the light orange group are men who are members of what has become known as the "New Jersey Line" (kit numbers 938425, 947514, and 950608); they are descendants of Daniel Ackley of New Jersey. While the exact line of descendancy from Nicholas is not known, we now know from Y-DNA SNP testing that they are likely descended from Nicholas's son Samuel. Likewise, kit number B16608 belongs to a man who is a descendant of Lewis Ackley, who is the progenitor of what is known as the "Ohio Line". See this post for a discussion of these two lines.
As mentioned above, relatedness between two men is measured by genetic distance. In theory, the higher the genetic distance, the less chance two men are related. The table below shows the degree of relatedness based on the number of markers tested and the calculated genetic distance.
Note that at 37 markers, any two men whose genetic distance is greater than 5 are considered "Not Related". FTDNA does not report genetic distances greater than 5, so I used a program called Still Another Phylogeny Program (SAPP) [4] to calculate genetic distances between all men in the project at 37 markers, which are shown in the table below. Note that there are many genetic distance cells that are red, indicating that the men being compared are not related. Most of these cells occur for comparisons between men who have different surnames; i.e., Ackley vs. Hackley, etc. There are a few exceptions, which will be discussed in more detail below. Also note that the genetic distances in all red cells are greater than 30, further validating the conclusion that the groups are unrelated to each other.
As mentioned above, there are a few men with the Ackley surname in the project who are not descendants of Nicholas based on their Y-37 test results. The first group of these are men who are descendants of Johan Hendrick Eckler whose ancestors changed their surname to Ackley (darker brown grouping toward the top of the table). We have three project members in this group. A more complete discussion of the Eckler-Ackler-Ackley group can be found in this blog post.
We also have two Ackley men with English heritage who have tested and are not related to the U.S. Ackley men or to each other (lighter brown grouping at the bottom of the table). One of these men was born in England and has a paper trail of English ancestors. The other was born in Australia, but his father was born in England and also has a paper trail of English ancestors. For more information on these men, see the posts here and here.
The line of descent for the second of the new testers is:
Benjamin Ackley (1758-1835) -> Benjamin Ackley (1810-1857) -> Uriah Ackley (1852-1928) -> Edward Ackley (1871-1946) -> Willard Ackley (1892-1967) -> Rexford Ackley (1913-2007) -> Private->Kit 1001089
This family lived in Bradford County, Pennsylvania for many generations. Some of the records for the earlier generations spell the name as Ackla or Acla rather than Ackley; as usual it is hard to know if those are misspellings or if the name was originally Ackla and gradually became Ackley. This tester did not match any of the other men in the project with any surname (grouped with the two UK men in the light brown group at the bottom of the table). As with the previous tester, more testing and research is needed.
While STR testing has been used to test group membership as discussed above, we have used SNP testing to define the Ackley branches on the Y haplotree (sometimes known as the "Tree of Mankind"). This approach has been helpful in defining genetic branches for the sons of Nicholas Ackley, which in turn has helped some project members refine their genealogy research. SNP testing identifies Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. From Family Search: “A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP is pronounced snip) is a DNA sequence variation occurring when a single nucleotide - adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), or guanine (G) in the genome (or other shared sequence) differs between members of a species or paired chromosomes in an individual.” [3] For example, the substitution of a C for a G in the nucleotide sequence AACGAT, producing the sequence AACCAT, is a SNP. The Big Y test examines over 700,000 locations on the Y chromosome looking for SNPs. SNPs found are compared to a known, named list of over 260,000 SNPs (named variants in FTDNA terminology), and the individual is placed in the tree at the lowest (most recent) named variant for which he has tested positive. The FTDNA SNP test is known as the Big Y-700 test.
Of the 19 men in the Nicholas Ackley group, 12 have done a Big Y test. The results of these 12 tests have created a branch on the Y haplotree for Nicholas and sub-branches for 3 of his 4 sons who had male children. We have not yet had a descendant of Nicholas's son Thomas join the project. A fifth son, Nathaniel, does not appear to have had any children. FTDNA uses a graphic known as a block tree to represent branches of the haplotree. Here is the block tree for the Nicholas Ackley branch and sub-branches:
