DNA Sale (Again)!
This month it is Family Tree DNA
Howdy Again!
Before I begin this month’s newsletter, I would like to plead that if you know somebody, anybody, who might be interested in Hatcher Family history, regardless of which Hatcher family it is, please forward them this email and ask them to subscribe. I would be very pleased if we could get everyone in the whole world who has Hatcher ancestors to subscribe to this Substack. As things are, we have very few from outside of the United States, and we have some major Hatcher families with no representation in our DNA testing program. I am particularly interested in locating descendants of the Hatcher families out of Croydon, Surrey, England back in the 16th or 17th centuries. More about this next month.
Another DNA Sale!
The DNA testing companies have sales several times each year. Last month it was Ancestry with a significant sale. This month (through August 31) it is Family Tree DNA which is having an “average” sale.
The autosomal testing from Ancestry can be useful for two reasons. First, anybody can take an autosomal test (man or woman does not matter). Ancestry has special technology which allows it to trace back through both the father and mother of the person being tested and to keep straight which cousins relate through which parent (presuming that you know the identity of at least one such cousin who has tested at Ancestry). The main limitation is that the completeness and accuracy of the test results deteriorate rapidly the further back you go in generations to the common ancestor. Identification of second cousins (common great-grandparents) is highly accurate. By the time you get to fifth cousins (common 4th-great grandparents) it is down to less than 50/50 odds you will find a useful DNA match that is an actual match as opposed to random chance. For most such matches, the common ancestor would have been born in the mid-1700s.
The Hatcher Association is focused on a particular surname (Hatcher, of course). As such, we are primarily interested in paternal ancestry, and for that a Y DNA test is most useful. The older STR tests would only tell us that we have a common ancestor somewhere in the past before most genealogy records were kept, usually about 2,000 years ago. That can tell a Hatcher from a different surname, but not much more, and always with some possibility of error.
The newest Big Y DNA test is the SNP test which can identify mutations from the beginning of the human species right up to the present. Science is sorting those mutations into which came earlier and which came more recently. Most importantly for our purposes, with enough Hatcher test results, we can match mutations to specific men in our paper trail tree. Here is the current diagram for the Hatchers out of Henrico County, Virginia:
One of our important discoveries was the mutation “FT224451” in the upper-right corner. That mutation happened in Benjamin Hatcher, son of William “the immigrant,” and it let us identify the proper parents for Major John Hatcher, correcting an error that our founder, Nel Hatcher, made based upon her interpretation of the paper trail genealogy. Our most-recent change was to move the first Samuel Hatcher (1706-1763) from under Benjamin’s son Henry, Sr. to under Henry, Sr.’s son Henry, Jr. We had a descendant of Samuel take a test and he had the Henry mutations. We might never have found this error without an appropriate DNA test result.
I know that sometimes I do sound like a broken record about asking people to take DNA tests. But the Y DNA tests represent well over half of the expansions and verifications of our 17th and 18th century tree data. It is very difficult to find and interpret new paper trail documents. But when the right man takes a Big Y test, we can make important discoveries without ever looking at a document from that time.
If you are a Hatcher man, or if you have Hatcher DNA (like the Burton descendants of William Hatcher, Jr. in the above diagram), regardless of which Hatcher family you belong to, we would like you to take at least some type of Y DNA test from Family Tree DNA. If you can afford the $399 sale price, the Big Y DNA test is highly desired and is the most useful to our needs.
We have many Hatcher families with no tests at all. William Watson created a wish list of men he and I would like to have take at least the basic Y DNA test, to be upgraded to a Big Y test as soon as we can talk you into it. Here is the list:
Any man who took a STR test before; please upgrade to a Big Y (lower cost too)
Any Hatcher man whose ancestry traces back to Croydon, Surrey, in England.
Any Hatcher man whose ancestry doesn’t connect to a known main family, which includes two known small Hatcher families from Italy or Germany.
Any Hatcher man whose family migrated from Dorset, England to Minnesota.
Any Hatcher man descending from Nancy Hatcher, daughter of Jameston, Sr.
Any Hatcher man descending from Edward’s son Seth Hatcher.
Any man who has a Y DNA test showing matches to a lot of Hatchers and Burtons, please contact us about a Big Y upgrade. (We know of at least two families of African-Americans with Hatcher DNA.)
Any Hatcher man descending from Benjamin Hatcher other than by way of Major John.
The above list isn’t complete. And we would be happy to accept any Big Y test result from any man who has Hatcher Y DNA from any Hatcher family anywhere in the world. We are committed to tracking Hatcher families wherever they exist!
The Usual Plea For Donations
I really want to thank the people who contributed to our general fund so far this year by purchasing memberships or making other donations. William Watson and I work hard to advance the gathering of data about Hatcher families and relatives all over the world and we make the information available for free. We do not pay ourselves anything. Any money we collect is set aside to strictly cover approved expenses of the Hatcher Families Genealogy Association. PLEASE BUY A MEMBERSHIP OR MAKE A DONATION! Thank you in advance for those who do contribute!