Since I wrote the last note on the Mock family DNA testing, another " Mock Family Historian" has come in the mail and it has some preliminary results. Six people have their results back. Each of them identified a different ancestor who is named below. There are twelve test scores for each person.
Person 1
, from Jacob
Mock
: 12, 23, 14, 10, 13, 19, 11, 15, 12, 14, 11, 31
Person 2
, from Joel T.
Mock
: 12, 22, 14, 10, 13, 14, 11, 14, 12, 12, 11, 28
To be considered as closely related, at least eleven of the twelve scores should match. Clearly, Person 1 and Person 2 are not closely related.
Let's add Person 3
Person 3 , from J. W. Mack : 13, 23, 14, 11, 11, 14, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 29
Person 3 is not related closely to the either of the first two persons.
The next ancestor is a Germanna citizen, Daniel Mauck , born 1740 in VA.
Person 4 , from Dan Mauck : 13, 24, 14, 10, 11 15, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 29
Still no cigar, but Person 4 is more closely related to Person 3 than to Person 1 or to Person 2 .
Person 5 claims Jos. Alex. Mock as an ancestor, and he is stuck there in 1822 in VA.
Person 5 , from J. A. Mock : 13, 24, 14, 11, 11, 15, 12, 12, 12, 13, 13, 29
Comparing Person 4 and Person 5 , we see there is a good match there. They may be considered to share the same ancestor, including Daniel being an ancestor of Joseph Alexander (or the common ancestor could have been hundreds of years ago).
Person 5 should concentrate on the history of Daniel Mauck . Notice the different spellings in these two ancestral names.
Person 6 claims Hans Maag , who was born in 1594 in Switzerland.
Person 6 , from Hans Maag : 13, 24, 14, 11, 11, 16, 12, 12, 11, 13, 13, 29
I am a rank beginner at this but it looks to me as if Persons 4, 5, and 6 may have some ancestors in common, even though no two of the three spell their name the same.
Generally, a match in eleven or twelve of the scores is considered as proof of a common ancestor, but the match says nothing about how far back the common ancestor lived. A good match does not say when the two lines split apart.
An expanded set of tests can be made when closeness seems to exist. Thirteen additional tests can furnish a better clue as to the degree of the relationship between two persons.
[What this means, is that, if no closeness seems to exist, additional tests would not be worthwhile; however, if there is a match of 11 or 12 test scores (out of 12), then further testing could establish how close the degree of relationship is between two persons, and could narrow down the lines of descent.
GWD
]
(28 Aug 02)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.