Back to 1600s, forwards by train
Cutlock’s two DNA articles so far have only mentioned Y-DNA testing in the Notes section. Now it’s time to justify the cost of a 37 marker Y-DNA test with FamilyTreeDNA, shortly followed by an upgrade to 111 markers {1}.
The initial test {2}, actioned a little later than the more popular autosomal test from Ancestry, was done in the expectation that “the Howes one-name study group … should have quite a few tests from others with Besthorpe relations already there”. That turned out to be five people’s anonymous test results showing under “Haplogroup R1b Group 09”, but it was far from the end of the story.
The Howes of Cape Cod
The Y-DNA test focuses on the male Y chromosome, passed on father to son and not mutating very quickly, potentially producing useful data over a longer time-frame than the autosomal version. But just for the one male line. The initial results (received 13th Feb) came up with matches to seven people at the 37 marker level – meaning not a lot when taken in isolation other than the deep Besthorpe link for our Howes line looked even stronger.
The instigator of the Howes Families project (Paul Howes) was however able to provide more background knowledge to key names in the match list. As per my note:
3 steps @37 [markers] to [B C] Howes, descendant of Thomas Howes/ Mary Burr who arrived on Cape Cod in 1637 (1000’s of descendants).
Personal DNA matches notes {3}
The upgrade to 111 markers was needed to check out the possibilities further. Results came in early March but it has taken a few weeks to work through the implications, or more to the point allow Paul the time to dig through various relevant notes and data to come up with a conclusion. This duly appeared in the Howes Families March newsletter – as usual published on the last day of the month per Paul’s calendar but arriving in UK email inboxes on 1st April.
His intro to this item is worth noting:
When I set out on this quest, sixteen years ago, one of my key goals was to establish the origins of the Howes family on Cape Cod. This month we had our strongest signal yet that the family emerged from Norfolk, England.
Keeping House – March 2024 (HowesFamilies.com)
Spanning the centuries and seas
Two male descendants of the Thomas and Mary Howes (shown as BC and RG in the newsletter {3}) have taken the test as part of the one-name project:
One is directly descended from Joseph Howes, the eldest son of Thomas and Mary. The other is descended from Jeremiah, Thomas’s youngest son. They are tenth cousins. At their own expense, both have upped their testing level from the basic 37 markers to 111. Across their 111 markers and therefore twenty-two different possible mutation events, they are only 8 markers apart.
Keeping House – March 2024 (HowesFamilies.com)
And then, referencing myself as JA:
JA is only 7 markers away from RG …. Let that sink in for a moment. Thomas and Mary left the UK nearly 400 years ago and yet there is a British man alive today who is genetically more closely related to an American descendant than one of that descendant’s own known cousins!
Keeping House – March 2024 (HowesFamilies.com)
I would only add to that “genetically more closely related” doesn’t automatically mean more closely related genealogically (DNA mutations can vary in speed) {4}. The ‘Howes of Besthorpe’ tree compiled for Norfolk Family History Society some years back suggests that the father of Thomas Howes is a certain Robert (died 1618), who is also possibly the father to my likely 8th great grandfather Richard Howes (born about 1584, unfortunately that is probably the weakest link in the tree). So could be another tenth cousin connection (once removed)?
Good to know that my family tree database would see a huge percentage jump in American cousins if I managed to include all of the descendants of Thomas Howes {5}!
How far can you go – by rail?
Another DNA item in the Howes Families newsletter is much closer time-wise but rather more surprising geographically. (Cutlock & Co of course had already found plenty of Watts and Neal relatives in North America.) This time back to autosomal matching.
Off to Siberia
With the newsletter arriving on 1st April you might have wondered whether a claimed Siberian link was to be taken seriously. However Boris, the person making the claim, had already been in touch from that distant land via Cutlock & Co. Back in October he said that his ancestor “William Howes was an Englishman, born between 1818-1825. He worked at various times on the railways in England, Denmark and Russia as a railway worker, inspector, engineer and contractor. He died in Vitebsk on October 18, 1879 (as stated in the death record – at the age of 60 years).”
This was actually a key prompt for me to take an Ancestry DNA test last November, rather than wait another year as originally planned. William could clearly fit with a half-brother of that name to our 3x great grandfather James Howes (born about 1803 Besthorpe, died 1857 Besthorpe). Earlier attempts to find out where he ended up had rather drawn a blank. Indeed I made the suggestion to Boris at the time that we might share James’ father Meshach as a common 4 x great grandfather.
That was thrown into doubt however when my DNA results, on transfer over to the MyHeritage website where Boris had originally put his, didn’t produce a visible match.
The newsletter takes up the story:
We could see that this William had married Eleanor Ibbitt in Hertfordshire in 1850, moved to Denmark, had two children, sent them back to England when Eleanor died, married a Norwegian woman and then moved to Latvia, having several more children. At his initial marriage he had stated his father’s name was James. Turns out it was actually Meshach!
Keeping House – March 2024 (HowesFamilies.com)
Boris had now managed to do an Ancestry test of his own, and found other matches there who did indeed have this William in common. Here’s the updated HowesFamilies.com record for him.
Presumably there is a trace of a signal in my Ancestry DNA results for a match to Boris, but for an autosomal test with a half-brother relationship at that distance in the tree it could well be swamped by background noise. Although a small chance that the plotted line through the Besthorpe Howes ancestry is faulty shouldn’t be completely dismissed.
Notes
- Sent off on 5th January 2024, the 37 marker test kit was bought some weeks earlier with a double discount – a basic one for purchasing through the Guild of One Name Studies for use in an affiliated project (connected with HowesFamilies.com), and then a Black Friday reduction, to under seventy quid. (Ancestry is also cheapest around Black Friday, at about £50 plus a tenner p&p.) The upgrade to 111 markers, with no need to submit a new sample, is billed direct by FamilyTreeDNA in dollars, breaking the hundred pound barrier on conversion.
- As per the first Cutlock DNA article, this involved creating a set of mouth swabs and then a trip to the Post Office where airmail postage had to be paid and a customs form needed to be filled in for the American destination. More work than the Ancestry test, which had a small pre-paid box to put the sample in, then simply posted in any post box.
- Full name hidden for privacy reasons.
- According to FamilyTreeDNA data, the “Most Recent Common Ancestor Time Predictor based on Y-STR Genetic Distance” of 7 (steps) within 111 markers has:
- most likely birth year, rounded – 1500 CE.
- 95% probability of being born between 1200 and 1750 CE.
- At 37 markers at 3 steps distance, the ‘most likely’ date is the same, but with a wider 95% range of 1000 to 1800 CE.
- From HowesFamilies.com online database: Thomas Howes died 18 Oct 1665, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Massachusetts. Wife Mary died 1695.
- Other Cutlock DNA articles:
- Besthorpe items: Bottling it in Besthorpe (tracing family origins), and a page about the village.
Have something to add?