New Results in the Ackley Surname Project - February 2024

We have recently had two more Big Y-700 tests complete in the Ackley surname project, and the results are quite interesting. These two tests resulted in the creation of a new branch and the splitting of a block in the Y haplotree, which will be described below.

The first test was for a U.S. man who is a descendant of Zebulon S. Ackley (1773-1813). This man's original Y-67 test matched all of the other Ackley men who are descendants of our immigrant ancestor Nicholas Ackley, but the connection between Zebulon and Nicholas is not known. He did a Big Y test hoping to learn more about how his line is connected to Nicholas. One prevalent (and most probably incorrect) theory found in many online trees is that Zebulon is the son of Jeremiah Ackley (1742-1761), who was the son of Nicholas Ackley (1708-1763). The younger Nicholas (referred to as Nicholas 2 from here on to distinguish him from the original Nicholas) was the son of James, Sr. (1677-1746). Many of the online trees with Jeremiah seem to have some of his facts confused with another Jeremiah Ackley who lived in Erie County, New York. In any case, although Zebulon's descendants are most surely descendants of Nicholas Ackley due to their Y-DNA matches with known Nicholas descendants, no clear path from Zebulon to Nicholas has been discovered yet.

The second test was for an English man who does not have the Ackley surname and who is not a descendant of Nicholas Ackley, but who matched a few of the Ackley men in the project at 67 and 111 markers. These matches were at high genetic distances, so were assumed to indicate a fairly distant relationship. Tools from Family Tree DNA indicated the common ancestor of this man and Nicholas Ackley's descendants was likely someone who lived around 1100 AD, which would pre-date Nicholas.

The results from these two tests can be summarized by looking at the block tree before and after the new tests, shown below with notes highlighting the changes.

Before and After Comparison of Ackley Branch of the Y Haplotree

Block Split

Before the English tester's test, the Ackley block (R-FGC52286, the blue block at the top of the "BEFORE" picture) contained 7 equivalent mutations (R-FGC52286 plus BY53874, FGC52295, FGC52297, FGC52298, FGC81756, and FT83233). All Ackley men were positive for these 7 mutations, and the mutations were grouped in one block because they could not be distinguished from one another.

The English tester tested positive for 4 of the 7 mutations (the 4 circled in yellow), but not the other 3 (the 3 circled in red), so the block was split into R-FGC52286 and equivalents BY53874 and FGC52298 (mutations only found in the Ackley men) and R-FGC52295 and equivalents FGC52297, FGC81756, and FT83233 (the new parent block above R-FGC52286 in the "AFTER" picture). The 4 mutations in the English tester's block were found in him plus all of the Ackley men.

This is a good thing – it refines the Ackley block and establishes a new block for the English tester and future related testers, who will likely end up in his block (or sub-blocks) if they do a Big Y test. The ancestor represented by R-FGC52295 is the most recent common ancestor for the Ackleys and the English tester.

New Branch

The new U.S. tester's results ended up creating a new sub-branch in the Ackley portion of the haplotree. Note that in the "BEFORE" picture of the block tree, project member #754287, a known descendant of Nicholas Ackley's son James, is listed in the block labeled R-FT82490, which is the general branch for all of James's descendants. Member #754287's branch could not be refined further because no other tester had matched any of the 6 private variants that he had in his results. However, the new U.S. tester (#205619), came along and matched 2 of #754287's private variants, which were then named and added as a sub-branch (R-FTD69462) under James.

Practical Implications of These Results

The value of the new branch created with the results of the new U.S. tester is straightforward; the descendant of Zebulon is placed on the "James" branch of the haplotree, and in fact the new branch under James (R-FTD69462) can be labeled as the "Nicholas 2" branch since tester #754287 is a known descendant of James's son Nicholas 2. The missing connection between the new tester and Nicholas has now been narrowed down to finding which of Nicholas 2's (1708-1763) sons could have been the father of Zebulon since there is likely only one generation missing given the birth and death dates of the men who are now known to be on the path between Zebulon and Nicholas (1630-1695). The family tree below will be used to illustrate the situation.

Nicholas had 4 sons; with his first wife Jerusha Graves he had the previously mentioned Jeremiah (1742-1761) and Abel (1746-1838), and with his second wife Sarah Wilson he had Lewis (1758-1823) and Nicholas 3 (1762-). Lewis and Nicholas 3 seem unlikely to be Zebulon's father since they would have been 15 and 9 years old at the time of Zebulon's birth in 1773, and Jeremiah could not be the father since he died in 1761. This leaves Abel or another unknown son of Nicholas 2 as the only possibilities to be the father for Zebulon, and the search has been narrowed considerably.

This situation is a great of example of traditional genealogy research and genetic genealogy coming together to solve a problem. Traditional research on the line of Zebulon Ackley reached a point where a brick wall was encountered, and DNA testing has filled in most of the gaps in the path from Zebulon to Nicholas. While the final answer has not yet been found, the descendant of Zebulon, tester #205619, has valuable information that will greatly narrow his search.

The Ackley portion of the haplotree has now developed to the point where new testers are likely to be placed on existing branches of members with known genealogies or create new sub-branches that could be helpful in solving brick wall genealogy problems. I would invite any Ackley man who has questions about his genealogy to consider joining the Ackley Surname Project at Family Tree DNA and taking a Y-DNA test.

Link of the Day

Below is link to the Ackley Surname Project for anyone who might be interested in learning more about the use of DNA testing in Ackley genealogy. 

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/ackley/about

Quote of the Day

"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." 

--Winston Churchill