November had a lot of activity within our Genealogical groups.I was contacted by a descendant of John and Nancy Vaughan who had a strong tradition of Irish ancestry, as well as a very old medicine bottle, supposedly passed down from John himself through his sons (and later a daughter).The story and the possible clues excited the Vaughan Pioneer group, but so far we’ve not had any luck in finding anything that would constitute proof of this story.I don’t want to give the impression that what has been passed down is wrong, only that as in most Genealogical research, the strongest confirmation is documentation.So this research will go on.
Also this month, I learned that Family Tree DNA has, in it’s advanced tests section, additional SNP tests for R1b positive men.Our Vaughans have the L21 mutation, and there are a handful of tests for mutations that occur downstream from L21.These tests have not been “mainstreamed” yet, so they are not part of the Deep Clade tests.Several of the tests were for SNP mutations found thus far in only one or two men and these probably constitute a “Family SNP”.Family SNPs are very wonderful to find in your own line as they provide a marker to test other prospective relatives against.I proposed to the Vaughan Pioneer group and to the Stephens/Vaughan/Hooper group that shares our genetic markers, to have some of our test subjects tested further for these downstream tests, but so far the group has not been willing to do so.It probably is a wise decision, as the advanced SNP tests will probably not be found in our genetic line.But without testing, how would we know?It all comes down to chance – is the cost justifiable for the chance of getting results.In the DNA Forums site (which I joined this month) there is much talk about utilizing DYS marker values and SNP results to calculate new sub groups of existing Haplogroups.It is possible that our Vaughan Y-DNA data has the potential to form some sort of subgroup, either through a found SNP or just by examining unusual DYS values.Sadly, this takes a lot of time and patience and I seem not to have much of either one recently, so I’m not sure when, if ever, a solid examination of our Vaughan DNA data will be done in regards to formulating a subgroup if possible.
So as it stands now, our Vaughans just might have an Irish connection, and their Y-DNA markers might have hidden traits that would enable us to more closely determine where they came from and who is connected to them.And the fishing for clues continues.
