Update on Y-37 DNA Test Recruiting Effort

We have our five participants for the Ackley surname project recruiting drive. Four of the testers are from "other" Ackley lines; i.e., lines for whom a connection to Nicholas Ackley is not clear or not known. One of these men is a descendant of Lewis Ackley of Ostego County, New York, discussed in this post. Another of the new testers is a descendant of Daniel Ackley, born in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, also discussed in this post. The third member is a descendant of James D. Ackley, born in 1799 in Ostego County, New York. Tester number 4 is a descendant of Edwin/Edmund Ackley of Springwater, Livingston County, New York. The fifth tester is a known descendant of Nicholas's son Samuel.

Test kits have been purchased and sent to each of these men, and a couple have already collected their samples and sent them back to Family Tree DNA. We look forward to receiving the results of these tests and determining how/if they are related to existing project members as well as each other. Hopefully the information we learn will be useful to these men as well as others who are descendants of the lines mentioned above.

What Are the Origins of the Ackley Surname - Part 4?

This post on the origins of the Ackley surname is the last (for now) in a series of four articles on the topic. Part 1 explored the origins of surnames in general and the meaning of the Ackley surname itself as well as its classification as a location surname. We also looked at the actual locations in England after the Norman Conquest (about the time surnames began to be adopted) that related to the definition of the name (oak lea or oak meadow). Part 2 discussed the Ackley name and some of the surnames that have been associated with it either because they sound similar, are variations of one another, have the same meaning, or look similar when written out, and the difficulties encountered in collecting data on the frequency of occurrence of these surnames from census records. Part 3 took a look at Ackley and the associated surnames and the DNA evidence that suggests that there is not a genetic and genealogical connection between the names, at least for the names for which we can find data on Family Tree DNA surname projects. This post will present the data collected on the distribution of these surnames in England in the form of surname distribution maps and attempt to draw some conclusions that could be helpful for future research.

What is a Surname Distribution Map?

We touched on surname distribution maps in part 2, but it is worth repeating some of that information here. In short, a surname distribution map is a way to display the number of occurrences of a given surname in a given geography at a certain point in time. These maps are the embodiment of the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" for surname researchers. They can take data on surname occurrences and paint a picture that might be tough to discern from raw data or a spreadsheet table.

These maps can display information in absolute terms; i.e., the raw number of occurrences in a given area, or in relative terms, meaning the data is normalized by the population of a given area in an attempt to put densely populated areas and more sparse areas on an equal footing. In either case, the goal of a surname distribution map is to give a sense of the concentration of a surname in different parts of a country. For our purposes, the hope is that such a map will give us an idea of where our Ackley surname is concentrated in England and thus where to look for our English ancestors. 

A question to ask, though, is whether it is reasonable to expect that data 19th century censuses would be a clue to the earlier origins of Ackleys. During a review of books and surname studies in her book "The Surname Handbook, A Guide to Family Name Research in the 21st Century" [1], Debbie Kennett discussed an important book, "The Surname Detective", that was published by Colin D. Rogers in 1995:

Rogers investigated the distribution of 100 English surnames from 1086 to the present day. The book is split into three parts, each of which is liberally illustrated with surname distribution maps. In the first part, Rogers studied the distribution of surnames in the present day using modern telephone directories. The second part is concerned with the historical distribution of surnames in the last 500 years in order to see how much the surnames had been affected by geographical mobility, while the final section deals with the distribution of surnames in the medieval period. At the end of the exercise Rogers was able to conclude:

With a few exceptions, common surnames of all types still appear to be concentrated where they were six hundred years ago. Furthermore, as there is nothing unusual about the hundred investigated, the expectation is that this broad generalisation is true of most of the others. [2]

So, it is not a pipe dream to think that data from the 1841 England Census might give us an idea of where the Ackley surname was concentrated in the earlier times.

Data and Methodology

As mentioned several times already, I chose England Census data to construct the maps you'll see in the next section. It was a no-brainer -- as genealogists we know that census data is theoretically a source of information for every person living in a given country at the time the census was taken. As discussed in part 2, census data is not without its problems, especially when it comes to incorrectly indexed names, but in spite of that it is still in my opinion the most complete, accurate, and easily accessible source of surname frequency data.

I collected data for the Ackley surname as well as a list of other possibly related surnames (including misspellings of Ackley) mentioned in the first three parts of this series from every available England census [3], which includes 1841 through 1911. There are a number of different sources for this data; I have a subscription to Ancestry, so I gathered data from there. I used the exact spelling feature to get only the records that had the correct spelling for each name, but included alternate spellings in exact searches of their own. 

As discussed in part 2, I discovered when looking at the frequency data by county that there were some anomalies with the Ackley data that caused me to take a closer look at it, and in doing so I found that there were a number of common indexing errors that inflated the 1841 data. As a result, I went through all of the 1841 data for the surnames of interest record by record and made my own determination as to the correctness of the indexing (see part 2 for some examples of this). One thing I discovered in using the exact spelling search is that Ancestry will return all names that were originally indexed with a particular spelling as well as any names for which a user has submitted a correction. This creates a situation where a surname that has been corrected will appear in the results returned for two different surnames -- the one that was originally indexed and the one to which it was corrected. Using the Ackley/Arkley example again, I found a number of Arkley records that were indexed originally (incorrectly) as Ackley, but several of these records had user-submitted corrections to Arkley, so those records showed up in both the searches for Ackley and Arkley, which I had to account for in the final allocation of records to each surname. After this exercise, I was able to reallocate some of the improperly indexed records to different surnames and came up with revised numbers for each surname. I believe the end result of this process is the most accurate representation of the data that I could come up with for 1841. The process was very labor intensive (looking at every single name on the census images), so I only completed it for the 1841 data and therefore only created maps for the 1841 data.

The table below shows the original 1841 data that was collected for each surname as well as the adjustments that were made during the review process.

The table below shows the final, adjusted 1841 data by surname by county that was used to create the maps in the next section.

Maps

I used a program called GenMap UK [4] to create maps using the 1841 UK census data. The program is easy to use, and allows the user to copy and paste data from spreadsheets into the internal data table it uses to tabulate the number of people living in each county. The program has a gazetteer built into it; i.e., a sort of dictionary of location names from around the UK, so it understands place names from census data and can total up the number of people living in each county. I did not create maps for any surname that had less than 10 occurrences in the 1841 census.

Ackley

The map for the Ackley surname is below. While a total population of only 44 people with the Ackley surname is pretty small, you can see that the map gives us some pretty good information about the distribution of Ackleys in England in 1841.

The three-letter codes in each county are the standard abbreviations (known as Chapman codes; see table above) for each county, and the number in each of the blue shaded counties tell how many people with the Ackley surname lived there. The more intense the shade of blue, the more people lived in that county. You can see that about 75% of the Ackleys (31 of 44) in the UK in 1841 were concentrated in five counties in the northwest (Cumberland, Lancashire, West Riding of Yorkshire, Chesire, and Staffordshire), with Lancashire having the highest number.

Although the map is not detailed enough to show this data, it is worth drilling down into the details for the two largest counties, Lancashire and Staffordshire. In Lancashire, the highest concentration of Ackleys is in and around Salford. All 16 of the people in Lancashire live within 45 miles of each other. In Staffordshire, all 8 people live in and around Stoke Upon Trent.

The fact that the town of Salford comes up in this discussion is of interest to me. Way back in 2016, one of the first posts I made about Nicholas Ackley discussed the fact that there are a lot of family trees around the internet that claim, without any documentation, that he was born around 1635 in Shalford, which is in Essex. It is impossible to know why, when, or how this "rumor" got started, but I have never been able to find one shred of evidence that this is true, which is why I continue to consider his birth place to be an open question. (I have questions about the date as well, but that is another topic for another day.) I don't think this information is made up -- someone had to have seen or heard some reference to this location and jotted it down without documenting where it came from, and eventually it made its way onto the internet and got spread all over the place. Having said that, isn't it reasonable to hypothesize that Nicholas was born in Salford, Lancashire rather than Shalford, Essex?  While I still need to do a whole lot of research to try to find records to support this theory, I feel that the surname distribution data at least gives us a basis for researching records in and around Salford rather than unsubstantiated entries in hundreds of family trees on the internet claiming Shalford. By the way, if anyone has any information or documentation on the Shalford claim, I would love to see it and would be happy to publish it in this blog for all to see. In the end, it shouldn't matter if Nicholas was born in Shalford, Salford, or anywhere else in England -- it would just be nice to have some kind of documentation that supports whatever claims are made.

Hackley

The Hackleys in England in 1841 were relatively spread out, although there was a healthy concentration of Hackelys in southeastern counties of Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey. About 56% of Hackleys lived in those three adjacent counties.

Hagley

Hagley definitely looks like a southwestern England family -- almost 65% of the Hagleys in the 1841 census lived in Devon and Somerset.

Oakley

Although there are some pretty high concentrations of the name Oakley in several counties, it is pretty hard to draw conclusions about any single county or group of counties where they might have originated. There were only four counties where Oakleys didn't live in 1841, and there were 11 counties where the number of Oakleys was over 100.

Ackerley

Ackerley most definitely looks like a Cheshire family. Almost 70% of them lived in Cheshire in 1841.

Atcherley

The Atcherley family also had a high concentration in a single county. Shropshire was home to two-thirds of the Atcherleys in 1841.

Atchley

There were only 14 Atchleys in the 1841 census, so it is probably not appropriate to try to draw any conclusions about where they might have been from.

Arkley

As mentioned in a previous post, the Arkley family was predominantly a northern England family. Almost 75% of the Arkleys living in England in 1841 could be found in the three adjacent northern counties of Northumberland, Durham, and North Riding of Yorkshire.

Ashley

Although the Ashley surname is similar to the Oakley surname in that there were Ashleys in almost every county in England in 1841, they do appear to be a little more concentrated in the west-central counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Shropshire. Having said that, those counties only account for about 25% of the Ashleys living in England at the time, which is not nearly as concentrated as some of the other surnames in the study.

Ockley

The Ockley surname doesn't really show any particularly high concentrations in any county or group of counties.

Conclusions

Many of the surnames studied had relatively high concentrations in selected counties, giving us some good clues on where one might conduct further research to learn about the origins of the names. While the number of Ackleys living in England was quite small in 1841, it does appear that they were concentrated in the counties of Cumberland, Lancashire, West Riding of Yorkshire, Chesire, and Staffordshire, with Lancashire having the highest number.

A general conclusion that can be drawn is that for the most part each of the surnames seems to have its own unique distribution, supporting the idea presented in previous posts that there seems to be little to no connection between the Ackley surname and the other surnames studied.

Link of the Day

A brief description of surname distribution maps on Family Search:

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Surname_Distribution_Maps

Quote of the Day

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

--Colin Powell

Sources

1. Kennett, Debbie.  The Surnames Handbook, A Guide to Family Name Research in the 21st Century. Cheltenham: The History Press, 2012.

2. Rogers, Colin D. The Surname Detective. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

3. Ancestry.com. 1841 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010. Original data: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1841. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1841. 

4. Archer, Steve. GenMap UK. Dartford, England: Archer Software, 2020.

I WANT YOU ... To Take A Y-DNA Test

If you've read this blog with any regularity, you know that I am an advocate of DNA testing as one of the many useful tools we have available to help us with our genealogy. I've tried over the years, mostly unsuccessfully, to recruit Ackley men to take Y-DNA tests in an effort to add to the pool of data in the Ackley surname project at Family Tree DNA, which I happen to manage. Right now the project is quite small -- we only have 10 members who have taken some level of Y-DNA test, ranging from a 37-marker STR test up to the more comprehensive Big Y-700 (see this post for a brief discussion of Y-DNA testing). I would like to see the numbers grow, so I am once again trying to recruit more people to test.

Our project has managed to get some donations to test additional Ackley men, so I've come up with a plan to try to get the most benefit for the dollars available. The way I see it, we need to recruit three different types of Ackley men to take Y-DNA tests:

(1) Ackley men who already know how they descend from Nicholas Ackley. We already have known descendants of Nicholas’s sons James and John – we could always use more. However, we also need descendants of Nicholas’s other sons – Thomas, Nathaniel, and Samuel. Nathaniel is not known to have had any children, but Thomas had at least two sons and Samuel had seven. As of now we have no known descendants of these men. The goal of adding to this pool is to have enough descendants of each son so that we can create subgroups of men within the project. This could potentially help future project members learn how they descend from Nicholas.

(2) Ackley men who do not know if or how they descend from Nicholas Ackley. I wrote about a couple of these lines in this post titled "Some 'Other' Ackley Lines" back in 2016. By testing, these men can either discover that they are descended from Nicholas or establish that they are not and be the foundation of a new, separate Ackley line. Either way, a valuable new piece of information can be learned that will aid in future genealogy research.

(3) Ackley men from England. While we have some bits and pieces of information about Nicholas’s ancestors in England, in my opinion we are nowhere near a definitive answer on who they are. Having Y-DNA results from English Ackley men could get us one step closer to discovering our English forebears.

So here's the deal -- we have enough money in the project to purchase five Y-37 tests if we buy them during the FTDNA summer sale, which usually begins around August 1 and runs for a few weeks. If you are an Ackley male who would like to test, at no cost to you, send me an e-mail at ackley.genealogy@gmail.com and I will consider your request. Ackley females can participate by recruiting one of their Ackley male relatives (father, brother, uncle, cousin, etc.) to test. My goal is to cover as many of the situations listed above with the five people I choose.

The five people chosen will each have to create an account on Family Tree DNA if they don't already have one. You won't have to give a credit card number or anything like that -- I'll give you instructions on how to acquire the kit and have the Ackley surname project funds pay for it. The kit will be sent directly to you, and you will need to return it in the pre-paid package that comes with it.

There are a few (small) strings attached to this offer:

1. With your request, you'll need to submit to me a minimal tree showing your line of descent from Nicholas Ackley so I can verify where you fit into one of the categories discussed above. Alternatively, if you are from one of the Ackley lines not yet proven to be descendants of Nicholas, submit a tree that shows your Ackley line as far back as you can take it.

2. You'll agree to join the Ackley surname project at FTDNA so your data can be viewed by other project members (no personal identifying information is attached to that data).

3. You'll send your sample back as soon as you get the test kit in the mail. No dilly-dallying!

That's it -- pretty simple. Hopefully there are at least five Ackley men out there who want to take a free Y-DNA test and contribute to the Ackley surname project. Since I don't know exactly when the sale is going to be yet, I am not setting a firm deadline at this time. I would recommend getting your request to me as soon as possible, and when I find out the sale dates I'll establish a cut-off so we can ensure the kits get purchased before the sale prices expire.

What Are the Origins of the Ackley Surname? - Part 3

This post is actually going to be a discussion of Y-DNA and therefore not specifically about the origins of the Ackley surname, but when this series of posts is complete I think you'll see where it fits in.

Y-DNA Review

We've discussed Y-DNA previously in several posts, including here ("How Could DNA Testing Help Us"), here ("DNA Revisited"), and here ("Update on Hackley/Ackley DNA"). To save you from having to go back and read those posts (although they are interesting if I do say so myself), here is a summary of the current state of Y-DNA testing.

The Y-chromosome is only present in men, and can be used to trace a man's paternal lineage, as the Y-chromosome is received from your father, who got it from his father, who got it from his father's father, and so on. For this reason, Y-DNA testing is extremely useful for our goal of determining if there is a relationship between Ackley, Hackley, Hagley, Oakley, and any other possible surname variant that has been mentioned in previous posts.

STR Testing

There are two types of markers that are tested in Y-DNA tests. The more common (and less expensive) test looks at short tandem repeats (STRs) at specific locations on the Y-chromosome. Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), the major tester of Y-DNA, describes their STR testing thus:

Paternal line DNA testing uses STR markers. STR markers are places where your genetic code has a variable number of repeated parts. STR marker values change slowly from one generation to the next. Testing multiple markers gives us distinctive result sets. These sets form signatures for a paternal lineage. We compare your set of results to those of other men in our database. The range of possible generations before you share a common ancestor with a match depends on the level of test you take. A match may be recent, but it may also be hundreds of years in the past. [1]

By counting the number of differences at these markers, we can calculate a measure known as genetic distance; the value of genetic distance can be used to assess the probability that two men are related; i.e., have a common ancestor. (The "DNA Revisited" post has some more detailed discussion and examples of genetic differences if you need a refresher.) FTDNA has offered tests at 12, 25, 37, 67, and 111 markers; 12 and 25 markers are generally considered too few to draw any real conclusions. They have recently streamlined their test offerings and now sell only a 37-marker test as an entry-level test and a 111-marker test as a higher-level, more advanced test. All of the Ackley men in the Ackley surname project have tested at 37 markers or above.

SNP Testing

The other major type of Y-DNA testing used in genealogy looks at single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. A SNP is a mutation, which creates a new branch on the Y-DNA haplogroup tree. A haplogroup is a major branch on the Y-DNA tree that shares hundreds or even thousands of mutations that are unique to that group. Family Tree DNA has this to say about haplogroups [2]:

When humans left Africa tens of thousands of years ago, they departed in small groups that migrated into different parts of the world. Over many generations, each group developed distinct mutations allowing us to identify one from the other. We call these groups of mutations haplogroups, and they can tell us which migratory routes our paternal ancestors traveled.

Haplogroups are defined by letters of the alphabet, and each haplogroup can trace its origin to specific geographic areas and time periods. Mitochondrial DNA (passed from mothers to their children) also has haplogroups. The following map from National Geographic [3] shows the migration paths and development of Y-DNA (blue lines) and mitochondrial DNA (yellow lines) haplogroups.

Human Migration Map from National Geographic [3]

All Ackley men who have tested so far are members of the R haplogroup, specifically R-M269, which is the most common European haplogroup and is especially prevalent in western Europe. Two of us have taken the Big Y test offered by FTDNA, which they describe as follows:

The Big Y test is intended for expert users with an interest in advancing science. It may also be of great interest to genealogy researchers of a specific lineage. However, it is not a test for matching you to one or more men with the same surname in the way that our other Y-STR tests do, such as Y-37, Y-67 or Y-111. [4]

While I don't consider myself an "expert user" by any means, I do have an interest in advancing science and an interest in researching our specific lineage. The two of us who have done the Big Y test match each other and thus have established what I would consider the Ackley branch of the Y-DNA haplogroup tree, known as R-FGC52286. We each have a handful of what are known as novel variants, which are mutations unique to each of us and maybe the rest of our closest relatives (father, uncle, cousin, son), and are for the moment undefined since no one else who has them has tested. If we each tested one of these close relatives, these novel variants would become defined and we would establish our own sub-branches under the R-FGC52286 branch. That's probably enough background -- how can we use this information to explore the origins of the Ackley surname as related to the other surnames we are considering as possibly being related to Ackley?

Comparing the DNA of Ackley and Associated Surnames

In previous installments of this series on the origins of the Ackley surname I've thrown around several variations of names that are similar to Ackley that have been included in the analysis so far for various reasons. Some of the names don't exist anymore or maybe never did and were just misspellings of other names, but many of them can be found in records being used for this analysis and therefore may have living people who have taken DNA tests. The names I have considered so far include Ackley, Achley, Ackerley, Akeley, Arkley, Ashley, Askley, Atcherley, Atchley, Hackley, Hagley, Oakley, and Ockley. Acle, Ackly, Hackluite, and Hakluyt have also been mentioned, but those names do not appear in any more recent records and thus have little possibility of having living people who have taken DNA tests. Of the other names mentioned, besides Ackley I found surname projects on FTDNA for Ashley, Atcherley, Atchley, and Oakley. We also have Ackerley, Akeley, and Hackley men (one each) who have joined the Ackley project because they did not have projects for their own surnames.

I collected data from each of the projects I found for a total of 125 men. I found a nifty little web-based application called "Y-DNA Family Grouping App" [5] developed by Chase Ashley, the administrator of the Ashley surname project on FTDNA, that can calculate the genetic distances between all men in a given input file and then group those men together based on the criteria established by FTDNA for predicting relationships based on genetic distance. For example, at 37 markers, the predictions for relationships based on genetic distance are [6]:

 0 - Very tightly related

 1 - Tightly related

 2 - Related

 3 - Related

 4 - Probably related

 5 - Possibly related

 6 or greater - Not related

For 67 and 111 markers the idea is similar, but more differences are allowed because more markers are being tested.

Here are the numbers of each surname in the data:

Ackerley - 1

Ackley - 10

Akeley - 1

Hackley - 1

Ashley - 54

Astley - 1

Atcherley - 9

Atchley - 5

Oakley - 35

Miscellaneous (not one of the above names) - 8

The miscellaneous names were all associated with the non-Ackley projects.

The application created a total of 22 groups of men who could be grouped together based on genetic distances, plus a list of 19 men who could not be grouped with any other men; i.e., their genetic distances were too great at their level of testing to be considered a match to anyone. The results can be summarized as follows:

• Not surprisingly, all 10 Ackley men who have tested were put in the same group, and no other men with any of the other surnames were members of that group. Five of the Ackley men have done additional testing to put them on the R-FGC52286 branch mentioned above, and the other five are all R-M269 (a higher (less specific) branch on the R tree). Given the fact that all 10 Ackley men were grouped together, it is a good bet that all 10 of them would wind up on the R-FGC52286 branch if further testing was done.
• The Ackerley, Akeley, and Hackley men were all in the unassigned group, meaning they didn't match any of the other 125 men in the data. All three of them are haplogroup R.
• The Ashley men were divided into nine different groups. This would imply that there are several branches of families that are not genetically or genealogically related. Two of the Ashley groups were haplogroup I, while the other seven were haplogroup R. There were ten Ashley men in the unassigned group, and their haplogroups were I, J, and R.
• The Oakley men were divided into seven different groups. One of these groups was haplogroup I and the other six were haplogroup R. There were also four Oakley men in the unassigned group, and their haplogroups were E, I, and J. One of the Oakley groups consisted of the Astley man matched with an Oakley man; both were haplogroup R.
• Six of the Atcherley men were in a group along with one Ashley man and one Atchley man. They were haplogroup R; two of the Atcherley men and the Ashley man have done additional Y-DNA testing that puts them further down the R tree on the R-BY73511 branch. There were two Atcherley men in the unassigned group; one was haplogroup I and the other was haplogroup R.
• The one Atchley group had only two men in it who were haplogroup I. Two Atchley men were in a group that was characterized as inconclusive because they had only tested at the 12-marker level, and they were haplogroup R. As mentioned above, the other Atchley man was grouped with the Atcherley men.

Conclusions

What does all of this say about the relationships between the Ackley surname and all of the other surnames considered in this analysis? Using the "Y-DNA Family Grouping App", which employs the genetic distance calculations and relationship predictions used by Family Tree DNA, we know that the Ackley men are in a group all by themselves, implying that there is no genetic relationship between Ackley and the other surnames studied. We also saw that in other surnames, there are multiple haplogroups among the members with that surname, which implies that there are multiple branches of that surname that are not related at all. For example, within the Ashley surname, there were some members in haplogroup I, which has its origins in Scandinavia, while there are others in haplogroup R, which is most common in western Europe and the British Isles. Similarly, the Oakley men were in haplogroups I and R, as well as E (Africa) and J (Cretan Greeks, Iraqi Jews, Moroccan Jews). For certain, men who are members of different haplogroups are not related to one another within a genealogical time frame; even members with the same high-level haplogroup, such as R-M269 might not be related within a genealogical time frame because the mutations forming the sub-branches occurred thousands of years ago. Although we did find a few instances of men with different surnames being grouped together, in general there was pretty good separation of the surnames into distinct groups that did not overlap with one another, again implying that none of these surnames are genetically and genealogically related to one another; in fact, some of the surnames may have unrelated branches with the same surname.

Having said all of that, there is a caution I want to present. The sample size is small in some of the cases; for example, we have only a single person for each of the Ackerley, Akeley, and Hackley surnames. While it is true that there is not a relationship between the ten Ackley men and each of those individuals, it is a stretch to say that in general the surnames as a whole are not related. There could be other men with those surnames who are related to the Ackley men who have not tested. Although the same could be true of the other surnames, the sample sizes are much larger (especially Ashley and Oakley), and the case for concluding that those surnames are not related is a little stronger. There is also a lot we don't know about the Ackley surname. It is entirely possible that there are separate branches of our surname as we have seen with Ashley and Oakley, and that these individuals just haven't tested yet. I have communicated with several Ackley men who haven't proven on paper they have a relationship to Nicholas Ackley; they could be members of a completely separate Ackley branch, but we won't know if that is the case unless/until they test.

The next part of this exercise is to complete the analysis needed to generate surname distribution maps for each of the surnames. It will be interesting to see if there are geographical differences between the surnames (I suspect there are). We have already seen a glimpse of this; for example, Atcherley is known to be a Shropshire name, and a preliminary look at the census data for Arkley seems to indicate they are predominantly from the northern counties of Northumberland and Durham. Hopefully the data will tell us more about the Ackley surname and the other surnames in the study.

Side Note

If you have visited this blog before, you may have noticed that the layout of the page has been altered slightly recently because I didn't like the way some of the tables were being displayed. The items that used to appear in the right sidebar have been moved to the bottom. I may continue to experiment with the appearance, but the content that was there before has not changed.

Link of the Day

This is a link to the Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree at the International Society of Genetic Genealogy website:

https://isogg.org/tree/index.html

Quote of the Day

"There is nothing impossible to him who will try."

-- Alexander the Great

Sources

1. Family Tree DNA. "Paternal Lineage Tests." https://learn.familytreedna.com/dna-basics/ydna/

2. Family Tree DNA. Explore your paternal ancestry with Y-DNA. "What is a Haplogroup?" https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna#/compare.

3. National Geographic Society. Resource Library. "Human Migration." https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/human-migration/

4. Family Tree DNA. "Big Y." https://learn.familytreedna.com/y-dna-testing/big-y/big-y/

5. Ashley, Chase. "Y-DNA Family Grouping Map." http://www.ydnagroupingapp.com/

6. Family Tree DNA. "If two men share a surname, how should the genetic distance at 37 Y-chromosome STR markers be interpreted?" https://learn.familytreedna.com/y-dna-testing/y-str/two-men-share-surname-genetic-distance-37-y-chromosome-str-markers-interpreted/