In the Mock family DNA study which is still relatively young, two of the six participants had interesting results in ways that had not been anticipated. The two individuals who had a close match, using the ancestors Daniel Mauck and Joseph Alexander Mock, had an unexpected dividend. The lab doing the testing reported that "Jim" had an exact match to three other families other than Mock, namely Dyas, Devine, and Mitchell. "Doug" was told that he had an exact match to five other families, Mitchell, Weller (2), Pack, and Baker.
The lab maintains a data base of all of the families (individuals) that it tests and informs participants when matches are made to families other than the one being tested; however, the lab will not disclose the names of the other participants unless the party is willing that his name be given out.
Jim and Doug had perfect matches to the Mitchell family even though they did not have perfect matches between themselves on the names Daniel Mauck and Joseph Alexander Mock. This came come about in the following way.
The Y chromosome genes do not change very often. That is the whole basis of the test. Hundreds of years may go by without any change. There may have been a common ancestor hundreds of years ago, before there were surnames. As surnames were introduced, some of the people took the name Mitchell and some took the name Mock/Mauck. There are other possibilities.
The rate of change of the Y genes is probabilistic. There is an average rate of change, say one of the markers gains or loses a "point" every two centuries. That is, about every six individuals in a line of descendant there will be a small change in the gene. (I am making these numbers up for illustrative purposes.) It is possible that a gene could go unchanged for a thousand years. It is also possible that going from a grandfather to a father to a son could have two changes, though this would be rare.
This average rate of change applied to a large sample of people leads to a prediction of when Adam and Eve lived. I have read that number recently but I can't find it right now. The predicted value is measured in the tens of thousands of years. Given that we have differences now, and knowing the average rate of change of the genes, it is possible to work out the time to when there was only one Y gene, Adam's.
For another example of a family DNA study, see the web page that Sgt. George gave us yesterday morning for the
LOVETT
family. (I had some trouble using Netscape to get this but it came through on Internet Explorer.)
(29 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.