Miscellaneous Welsh Odds and Ends

[rms2]

Nice work and a beautifully mapped site that is an example to us all. Interesting that Lloyd is firmly in Powys, and I can imagine the journeys of others who left Wales. I'm also really pleased to see the detail that 23andme is giving these days. They've just started selling in a big UK pharmacy chain, Boots, so hopefully you'll be adding to that Welsh database soon.

That's good news.

I wish FTDNA was a bit more popular there.

[msmarjoribanks]

If the 23andMe is getting more detailed for YDNA, that's great news.

Looking at my mom's dad's Y-line, which could be Welsh, but there's still a big question mark, the most specific result on 23andMe currently is R-P311, which is basically useless. I have two on that line on FTDNA, but only at the R-M269 level, so need more testing to get more information. I should ask the group for advice and offer to buy the tests (I haven't wanted to buy BigY, as that's so expensive).

I don't currently have a Y tester for my 100% unquestionably Welsh immigrant to the US lines (Humphreys and, of course, Jones), but should work on it.

I was all excited when I matched with a descendant of my immigrant ancestor Griffith Jones (through his son, also Griffith Jones, I am descended through his daughter Jane and her husband Owen Humphreys), as his name was Jones (as is mine). Then I realized that, like mine, it was a different Jones on his male line. Sigh.

[JonikW]

If the 23andMe is getting more detailed for YDNA, that's great news.

Looking at my mom's dad's Y-line, which could be Welsh, but there's still a big question mark, the most specific result on 23andMe currently is R-P311, which is basically useless. I have two on that line on FTDNA, but only at the R-M269 level, so need more testing to get more information. I should ask the group for advice and offer to buy the tests (I haven't wanted to buy BigY, as that's so expensive).

I don't currently have a Y tester for my 100% unquestionably Welsh immigrant to the US lines (Humphreys and, of course, Jones), but should work on it.

I was all excited when I matched with a descendant of my immigrant ancestor Griffith Jones (through his son, also Griffith Jones, I am descended through his daughter Jane and her husband Owen Humphreys), as his name was Jones (as is mine). Then I realized that, like mine, it was a different Jones on his male line. Sigh.

The perennial Welsh Jones problem! I've contacted so many in the hope that I match on my mother's paternal line only to find that isn't the case...

[Phoebe Watts]

I was all excited when I matched with a descendant of my immigrant ancestor Griffith Jones (through his son, also Griffith Jones, I am descended through his daughter Jane and her husband Owen Humphreys), as his name was Jones (as is mine). Then I realized that, like mine, it was a different Jones on his male line. Sigh.

I had supposed that the barrier to Y-line research for people of Welsh descent was the survival of the patronymic and not just the number of Joneses. My father’s most recent known ancestor on that line is his 2G grandfather born about 1780 in the Swansea Valley. He had a common patronymic-based “surname” and if, as seems likely, the family were there before industrialisation I guess that his father or grandfather was the first to adopt a surname. R-L21 in Wales with no surname... It doesn’t seem worth considering more tests.

[rms2]

I had supposed that the barrier to Y-line research for people of Welsh descent was the survival of the patronymic and not just the number of Joneses. My father’s most recent known ancestor on that line is his 2G grandfather born about 1780 in the Swansea Valley. He had a common patronymic-based “surname” and if, as seems likely, the family were there before industrialisation I guess that his father or grandfather was the first to adopt a surname. R-L21 in Wales with no surname... It doesn’t seem worth considering more tests.

Oh, I think it's worth it. Finding a sufficiently well developed terminal SNP could be quite useful. It has been for me.

[msmarjoribanks]

The perennial Welsh Jones problem! I've contacted so many in the hope that I match on my mother's paternal line only to find that isn't the case...

My dad is in the Jones project, and has no matches. I didn't have high hopes for the project given that there are so many separate sources for Jones, but it would be nice to have a match on that line.

We don't have any close Y matches at all, however, regardless of surname.

I have been trying to trace forward male descendants on that line, and once I get out of the US it's really hard. I do have some (not tested) male line descendants of my immigrant ancestor (who came here in 1870), but of his 4 brothers, one went to Australia and I don't know what happened to him after that, one died young without children, one stayed in the UK and had 2 daughters only, and another one went to the US and had only one child, a daughter. Going back a generation, the family just disappears -- they had a farm in Shropshire, oldest son is my ancestor, moves near London. Next son disappears after the 1851 census (when he was 19 and at home). Next son (John Jones) moves away from the farm but stays in the general area (labourer), but good luck finding a John Jones through census records and being at all confident about it if he gets mobile. The only reason I was able to trace them at all in earlier records was that they were in the parish records and in the same spot.

Around the turn of the century there are Joneses on basically the same land as the family was farming in 1841 and 1851, but I have no reason to assume they are the same family.

I need to do more work with the land-related records, as well as probate.

[jdean]

Around the turn of the century there are Joneses on basically the same land as the family was farming in 1841 and 1851, but I have no reason to assume they are the same family.

On my mother's side we have a Pritchard family who farmed near Trelleck (not such a big place) in the 19th C. so I was interested to meet a Pritchard family who still farmed there, however it transpired they had moved to the area (from Llanwern) within the last couple of decades : )

[rms2]

The perennial Welsh Jones problem! I've contacted so many in the hope that I match on my mother's paternal line only to find that isn't the case...

We have a Jones in my y-dna cluster whose y-dna ancestor came from Ceredigion. As I recall without looking, he is a 105/111 match for me.

He tested R1b-BY166+ from the a la carte SNP menu, but I haven't been able to talk him into the Big Y-500. That's too bad, because he is an even closer match for one of our members with the surname Samuel, who has done the Big Y-500. It would be nice to see if the two of them share an as-yet-unknown SNP downstream of BY166. (BY166 is the SNP furthest downstream shared in common by all members of our group, with branches downstream of it shared by some members.)

[rms2]

We have a Jones in my y-dna cluster whose y-dna ancestor came from Ceredigion. As I recall without looking, he is a 105/111 match for me.

He tested R1b-BY166+ from the a la carte SNP menu, but I haven't been able to talk him into the Big Y-500. That's too bad, because he is an even closer match for one of our members with the surname Samuel, who has done the Big Y-500. It would be nice to see if the two of them share an as-yet-unknown SNP downstream of BY166. (BY166 is the SNP furthest downstream shared in common by all members of our group, with branches downstream of it shared by some members.)

I should mention that we have another Jones who is a 37-marker match for everyone in our cluster. The two Joneses don't know each other, and we don't know how they might be related, because the 37-marker Jones never answered any of my emails and, naturally, hasn't joined our project.

[msmarjoribanks]

Are they in the Jones project? Assuming not, worth mentioning it -- we have a Facebook group and email list. Many like surname projects even if they aren't interested in really learning about YDNA. Many Joneses likely think it's not worth bothering, but if they know there's a large and active project maybe it will spark interest.