Month: May 2022

Breaking Down a Brick Wall: a Researcher’s Thrill

by Jessica Guyer

Note: the last guest author on this blog was such a success we’re doing it again. Jessica Guyer is one of the two best Rankin data mining researchers I know. When I first “met” Jess, she wasn’t acquainted with deeds. I suggested she take a look at deeds in Pennsylvania counties relevant to her brick wall, telling her only that deed images are available at FamilySearch.Org. I didn’t explain grantor/grantee indexes, how to navigate the Family Search catalog, or what constitutes meaningless deed boilerplate. Next thing I knew, she had blitzed through deeds in a half-dozen counties looking for clues on her brick wall. This article is a story about the trail of clues that finally knocked it down. Enjoy!

Robin

 Introduction

This is a story about Don D. Rankin’s brick wall. The story includes a rich old 19TH century man who was apparently popular with the ladies, some bigotry that probably prevented sharing important information, and a clue that finally allowed me — his great-great niece — to correctly break down the brick wall and fix his very public error.

A California schoolteacher, Don had to travel cross-country to conduct family history research on his Pennsylvania Rankins in the 1970s and ’80s — the pre-internet dark ages.  His goal was to identify the parents of his great-grandfather, Chambers Rankin (1805-1835). He dubbed his trips “High Adventure Genealogical Safaris” and wrote humorous letters to relatives about his finds.

After decades of work, Don did something every family history researcher has done at least once. He identified the wrong couple as Chambers Rankin’s parents. That is usually a “so what?” Unfortunately, Don typed up his conclusions and sent copies to every relative, friend, library, genealogical association, and historical organization in Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney Phil probably received a copy.  What ensued is predictable: Don’s error became the conventional wisdom. It can now be found in 99% of the family trees on Ancestry.com or Familysearch.org that include Chambers Rankin.

We’re going to follow his excellent detective work. However, we will identify the correct parents of Chambers Rankin: David (1776-1857) and Martha Culbertson Rankin of Westmoreland County, PA.

Road to Error

   Lee Rankin in 1954 at the gravesite of his grandfather, Chambers Rankin

Don’s father, Lee Rankin, took him to visit Chambers’ grave in the Old Log Church cemetery in Schellsburg, Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Lee’s father was Franklin Rankin; Chambers was Lee’s grandfather. Chambers had died when Franklin, his only child, was about 9 months old. Above are some 1954 pictures Don took of Lee by Chambers’ tombstone.

During Don’s visit, Lee shared an old velvet photo album of family pictures. One photo in the album was a very old tintype of a woman Lee called an “Indian Lady” — a Native American. When Don asked questions, Lee refused to discuss her further. Don’s daughter Marjorie subsequently asked Lee about her. He became agitated and said only, “she is one of your great great grandmothers” and told her not to ask any more questions.

That silence was probably a result of prejudice and misplaced family shame. It is a pity on several levels. Among other things, surely Lee had some information about her.[1] After all, she was his grandmother – the mother of Chambers Rankin’s only child, Lee’s father Franklin R. Rankin.  The family has never determined whether she and Chambers were married or any other circumstances about their relationship — not even her given name.

Don didn’t have much to go on in his quest for Chambers’ parents. All he knew for certain was that Chambers (1) fathered a son (Franklin) with a Native American woman, (2) died in 1835 about 9 months after Franklin’s birth, and (3) had a brother named J. C. Rankin of Harrison City.  The brother is proved by Chambers’ gravestone, which is engraved “Chambers Rankin died Mar. 16, 1835. Aged 30 years. Erected by his brother J. C. Rankin, Harrison City.”[2] This brotherly kindness will prove to be the clue that ultimately led to breaking down Don’s brick wall.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Don connected with a mother and son from Pitcairn, Allegheny County. On his behalf, the pair visited a number of cemeteries and sent Don information and photos of Rankin gravestones they came across. One of these was J. C. Rankin’s grave in Harrison City. His stone mentions his wife, Nellie Rankin, a name that Don remembered from his father’s old photo album. At the foot of J. C.’s grave is a marker for his sister, Martha Rankin Bisel. The proved nuclear family was growing: it now including Chambers, J. C., and Martha Rankin Bisel. Her stone was also purchased by J. C. This should have been a step in the right direction for Uncle Don, who already suspected that J. C. was “the long missing link” towards uncovering the mystery.

What Went Wrong?

The mother and son duo had ancestral ties to the Bisel family (Martha Rankin Bisel’s inlaws). So instead of focusing on researching J. C. and the Westmoreland County area, they followed the trail of the Bisel family, which took them to Bedford and Fulton Counties. Upon finding Rankins buried at the Big Spring Cemetery in Fulton County, they convinced themselves that those burials were Chambers’ parents – with literally zero evidence. Don accepted their conclusions and considered them his “Big Breakthrough.” In January 1985, he excitedly typed up his “case-solved-here-is-our-lineage” piece, now memorialized as the conventional wisdom.

Don claimed Chambers Rankin’s father was John Rankin (1754-1829) buried in Big Spring Cemetery in Fulton County. But he confused that John Rankin with a different John Rankin, born the same year, who married Martha Waugh, and moved to Tennessee.  Don used the Tennessee John’s lineage for the remainder of his erroneous Rankin lineage write up.

There were so many red flags (such as a father who was only 13 when a son was born) that the people in his chart might as well have been fictional. Instead, the erroneous information spread like a virus.

Uncle Don’s excitement was short lived. He passed away in May, just five months after completing and distributing his work. Perhaps he was worried about his health, which contributed to his acceptance of unvetted information to finish his life’s work before it was too late. This feeling is a relatable anxiety for researchers – hoping to “finish” our work before we die with our findings only in our minds and scribbled on mountains of notes that would make no sense to anyone else.

Setting the Record Straight

To begin, I went back to the place where evidence was pointing – Chambers’ siblings J. C. Rankin and Martha (Rankin) Bisel in Harrison City, Westmoreland County.  I spent hours of research hoping to find them in a will or deed pointing toward their family of origin. The only thing I found was another sibling – Culbertson Rankin of Somerset County, for whom J. C. also purchased a gravestone that was identical to Chambers’ marker. This find was interesting because it turns out J. C.’s given name was John Culbertson Rankin. That made two Culberson names among the siblings.

I began corresponding with one of J. C.’s descendants who shared her theory that the parents of the Rankin siblings were David and Martha (Culbertson) Rankin of Westmoreland County. Based solely on the importance of the Culbertson maiden name, the theory that they were Chambers’ parents seemed far more plausible than anything else I’d come across.  In her theory, David Rankin was the son of another David Rankin (Sr.) who died in Westmoreland County in 1790.

Our Rankin siblings didn’t fit in with any other Rankin clan in Pennsylvania, so I decided to research the David Rankins of Westmoreland County to search for clues.

David (Sr.) was a Westmoreland County innkeeper whose land was located in Unity Township along the Loyalhanna Creek. He died in 1790, leaving a will for which there are two transcriptions.[3] One leaves his estate to his “well beloved wife James” (obviously a transcription error) and which subsequently identifies his wife as Mary. The second transcription wrongly identified James as David’s son. However, estate records prove that James Rankin was actually David Sr.’s brother. Estate records also provided the names of David and Mary’s children: Daniel, David (Jr.), Jane, William, Matthew, Margaret, Martha, and Chambers.[4]YES, CHAMBERS! No, this wasn’t my Chambers, but it WAS another clue. Family names can be important circumstantial evidence, particularly in the case of unusual names such as “Chambers” and “Culbertson.”

Further down the rabbit hole, I learned that this Chambers died when he was in his teens. It seemed plausible that his brother, David Jr., would name one of his sons (my Chambers) after a deceased brother.  I gathered enough information about David Sr. and his wife Mary Cochran (and her family) to create a detailed timeline for him.[5] Unfortunately, I can’t find additional records about his son, David Jr. The only known detail about his life is that he married Martha Culbertson by 1800.[6] She and her family moved to Westmoreland County around 1785 from “Culbertson Row” in Franklin County.[7]

I changed direction to focus again on Chambers’ brother, John Culbertson Rankin. He married near Culbertson Row in Franklin County. In 1840, he moved his family to Westmoreland County, where he purchased coal and timberland and founded Harrison City. He also ran a store and a hotel. In the process, he became incredibly wealthy: many of the landowners in Westmoreland County wound up sitting atop thick seams of anthracite coal.

Researchers originally believed that his wife died shortly after their 9th child was born. That is because J. C. was married by 1850 to a second wife with whom he had three children. She was around the same age as his oldest daughter. However, his first wife was still very much alive. That first marriage evidently ended in divorce, as did his second marriage. Around 1865, he married a third time, to a woman named Nellie who was nearly 45 years younger. He conforms to an old cliche:  a rich guy who keeps getting divorced and marrying younger women – add a silk robe and smoking pipe for a stereotypical 19th century image.

God bless his heart, though, because he did something caring and useful with his overflowing money pot. He bought gravestones for his siblings that included his own name, without which this brick wall might have stood forever. And for that, Uncle J. C., we thank you.[8]  J. C.’s gravestone itself was about to provide another clue!

After COVID allowed, I was finally able to visit J. C.’s enormous gravestone. It was engraved “J.R. Oursler, Latrobe” – presumably, the tombstone engraver. I took note, hoping it would lead to something. I still lacked any direct evidence that David (Jr.) was the same David who married Martha Culbertson. And that David and Martha’s children were John C., Chambers, Martha, and Culbertson.

Serendipity Rewards the Prepared

That proof came in a way I least expected. I happened upon a single newspaper article that tied together all the random notes and circumstantial evidence I had collected for two years.  I said out loud to my laptop, “oh my god, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME, ARTICLE!?” It conclusively proves that J. C.’s family lived along Loyalhanna Creek near Hannastown, and the only Rankin family documented in that area is David (Sr.).

The Latrobe Bulletin newspaper reported that, in 1891, J. C. Rankin was in town meeting with John R. Oursler for ordering a cemetery monument. During this visit to Latrobe, J. C. stopped to visit the newspaper, which reported this:

“In the course of conversation, we learned that Mr. Rankin was one of the pioneers of this section of the country, being at the present time 87 years of age. He is a large, fine looking specimen of manhood, and not withstanding his advanced age, is as sprightly and active as a man of 45 or 50 years. He informed us that all his relatives were raised along the Loyalhanna and that his [father was[9]] at Hannastown the time it was besieged and burned by the Indians. They were forced to flee for their lives and escaped. He said that the town or fort was thickly surrounded by hazel bushes. These were cut off, piled up and burned. The stumps of these bushes were sticking out of the ground and had been burned to needle-like sharpness by the fire. In making his escape, his father was compelled to run over these spear-like points in his bare feet and in doing so, his feet were terribly lacerated. At the time of his death having a number of holes in the soles in which Mr. Rankin said he often inserted his fingers. He is blessed with excellent eyesight and an elegant memory and related many stirring scenes of early days.”

Hannastown was attacked and burned in July 1782. David Rankin (Jr.) would have only been around 6 years old at the time. The Rankin family home along the Loyalhanna was only a few miles away from Hannastown. So … why would the David Rankin (Sr.) family have been in Hannastown that day?  More direct evidence provides the answer.

Quarterly Court was in session the day of the attack, and on the docket was business regarding tavern keepers and selling “spirituous liquors in small measure.” Twelve tavern keepers attended, although they weren’t identified. David (Sr.) had been an innkeeper since at least 1781, per court records.[10] Surely he was there with the other county innkeepers.  Perhaps he brought his son, David Jr., with him on the trip – or maybe even the whole family, since it wasn’t safe yet on the homesteads due to continuing Native American attacks.

There were no other Rankins with land along the Loyalhanna except for David Sr. and his children, who remained in the area after his death.

Good ‘ol Uncle J.C….. that “fine looking specimen of manhood”…. irresistible to the younger ladies…and with money to burn….. once again came through in our quest to break through this brick wall to tell us that the earliest known Rankin ancestor in our line is undoubtedly David Rankin (Sr.) who died in 1790.

That brief celebration was interrupted by the realization that I’ve just left one brick wall (Chambers) only to hit another (his grandfather David.)[11]  Nevertheless – progress! I hope Uncle Don would be thrilled with this discovery, and not upset that his conclusion turned out to be error. Surely he was accustomed to the twists and turns — and errors — along our “High Adventure Genealogical Safaris.”

[1] She was probably Shawnee, the prevalent Native American tribe in the area.

[2] This gravestone was an 1890s replacement of Chambers’ original stone.

[3] Westmoreland County Pennsylvania Probate Records, Will Book Vol.1, Pg. 101.

[4] Children’s names are documented in the following records: 1.) OC Vol.A, Pg. 59   2.) OC Vol.2B, Pg.27 and Pg.31   3.) OC Vol.A, Pg.92   4.) Deed Book Vol.17, Pg.186   5.) Deed Book Vol.6, Pg.53.  6.) Undocketed estate papers for David Rankin and his father-in-law William Cochran in Records Management storage at the Westmoreland County Courthouse.

[5] This timeline document can be found on Ancestry when searching for David Rankin (1750-1790) or at this link: https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/collection/1030/tree/8318305/person/112357108913/media/943c87d8-493e-4e44-81bc-07c40a879728?_phsrc=jHG7&usePUBJs=true&sort=-created

[6] Deed Book Vol.6, Pg.35

[7] Culbertson Row refers to a large area of land in Letterkenny Township, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, settled by several members of the Scots-Irish Culbertson family in the early 1700s.

[8] There is one more very likely sibling in this family. His name was also David Rankin, and he died in 1866 in Grapeville, Westmoreland County.

[9] The article actually reads “parents were” but I believe there was slight error to the way the story was printed. His mother would have only been a baby. Further, her Culbertson family didn’t come to Hannastown until at least three years later.

[10] Documentation includes: 1.) The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Volume 7, Issues 2-3, Pg. 172-174 and 2.) History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Volume 1 Pg. 136.

[11] Information on David Rankin (d.1790) remains elusive. The lack of any documents helping to reveal the origin story for he and his brother James, has nearly convinced me they were dropped there by aliens. I kid,…

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN RANKIN FAMILY TREE – By Richard Rankin

NOTE: Robin and I are pleased to publish this article by Richard Rankin, an administrator of the Rankin DNA Project. He wrote it; I provided graphics. Everyone interested in Y-DNA testing should read it, even if you don’t have a Rankin ancestor. It’s a great illustration of what Big Y tests can do to place your surname into a genetic family tree. Enjoy! – Gary Willis

THE RANKINS – A FEW LEAVES OF A VERY LARGE TREE

The Rankin surname has only become attached to specific branches of the human family tree in very recent times. As this article will demonstrate, there are known Rankin lines from branches of the genetic tree that diverged tens of thousands of years ago. By comparison, family surnames were adopted very recently, only within the past 1,000 years or so. People adopted surnames at different times, in different circumstances, in different cultures. Originally, a family surname was less related to genetics than to external factors like geography, occupation, or tribal association, despite sons having the same Y-DNA as their fathers. Thus, members of the same family might have different surnames based on each one’s occupation. For example, John (the) Smith might have sons named John (the) Wheelwright and James (the) Miller.

The families who first adopted the Rankin surname generally lived in Ireland, Scotland, or England in 1000 AD or later. However, they came from a wide variety of genetic backgrounds. That is because those islands experienced multiple waves of in-migration from different people groups long before written history, from the early Stone Age, through the Bronze and Iron Ages. As a result, Rankins are genetically quite diverse despite sharing a surname.

Y-DNA TESTING, OR “WHY DO A BIG Y TEST”?

Advancements in genetic testing have opened a new world of discovery. In particular, Y-DNA genetic testing presents a bewildering array of choices to the interested genealogist. All of these Y-DNA tests examine the paternal Y chromosome, which is only passed from fathers to sons. The Y chromosome is inherited largely unchanged because it does not mix or recombine with anyone else’s DNA. Mutations or changes occur over very long periods of time.

The most common Y-DNA test for genealogy purposes is the Y-37, or 37 marker STR (or “short tandem repeat”) test. It gives just enough information to identify other test takers who might be related through the paternal line within a time frame of several hundred years. But that’s about all it can do. There are also “reversions”, or backwards changes in these STR markers, which can result in a false positive match. When this occurs, what appears to be a close genetic match is in fact just random. This is especially possible when only 37 markers are compared, rather than 67 or 111 markers.

In contrast, Family Tree DNA’s Big Y-700 SNP test (pronounced “snip” test) examines substantially more Y-DNA than any STR test. As a result, when a member does a Big Y-700 test, there is much more information available. This genetic information reaches back before surnames, beyond the reach of traditional paper genealogy, enabling the construction of a “family tree” back to the beginnings of humanity.

Not only does the Big Y-700 test reach back into the ancient ancestry of the Rankin family tree, it also has benefits for modern genealogical research. Big Y SNP results allow placement of an individual into a specific Rankin lineage with much greater confidence than STR results alone. Even better, the SNP results accrue additional benefits as more people test. When enough distant cousins within a known lineage do SNP testing, laboratories can identify and catalogue additional SNPs specific to that group. This is why the terminal SNP or Haplotype for an individual will often change over time. In this way, the additional SNPs become both more recent, and more relevant to specific sub-branches of a Rankin lineage. With enough testers, SNPs can work alongside STRs to help identify a very particular branch of a lineage. They can even help identify a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MCRA) when those terminal SNPs are known to have developed in the past few hundred years.

Most members of the Rankin surname project at Family Tree DNA have taken a 37-marker test. Thus far, the test results have enabled Rankin project administrators to group the members into nine identifiable lineages. The members of each distinct lineage likely descend from a common ancestor of that lineage in a genealogical time frame, that is, when written records are available. Often that period is within sixteen generations or fewer. However, the nine Rankin lines are genetically diverse and are not related to each other within a genealogical time frame.

If the nine Rankin lineages are not related to each other on a genealogical time scale, how are they related to each other? We have to go back nearly 50,000 years and rely on Big Y tests to answer that question.

Fewer than a dozen Rankin Project members have done the Big Y-700 test to date. These individuals have made a great contribution to the understanding of the ancient Rankin family tree. Despite the relatively small number of Big Y-700 testers, the results enable the creation of an ancient Rankin family tree. As more people test, more Rankin SNPs will be identified, and a more detailed genetic history can be written, both ancient and modern.[1]

  THE RANKIN FAMILY TREE CHRONOLOGY

All modern humans descend from a common genetic ancestor who lived over 200,000 years ago. Not surprisingly, he is denoted “Y-Adam.” All of the identified Rankin lineages come from a descendant of Y-Adam who appeared about 47,000 BC.  He carried the SNP M523 and is the common ancestor of all the Rankins tested to date and many, many other surnames as well.  Over the millennia, present-day Rankin lines diverged from M523 in four major branches to form their own distinctive groups. Charting these branches over time creates a Rankin DNA Family Tree analogous to a traditional “paper” tree. The tree developed below identifies each SNP associated with a major Rankin lineage branch and the approximate time the branching occurred. The currently identified Rankin lineages are shown as L1 through L9.[2] The final major branch for each lineage is in a highlighted box.

First Branch – 45,000 BC: Stone Age Europeans

The Rankin family tree first branched downstream of the M523 common ancestor about 45,000 BC, when the present day Rankin Lineages 4 and 8 diverged from the other groups.

Of course, they were not called Rankins at the time. Lineages 4 and 8 have SNP M429 while the others have SNP M9. Lineages 4 and 8 then developed M170, part of genetic Haplogroup I, which is among the earliest Stone Age groups to arrive in Western Europe. Lineages 4 and 8 diverged from each other and from M170 around 25,000 BC. Lineage 4 is defined by SNP I-P215.[3] The SNP distinguishing Lineage 8 is I-Z2699.[4]

The migration maps at Family Tree DNA illustrate the Haplogroup I migration path through the Balkans and into Scandinavia. M170 is among the most frequently identified SNPs in European remains dating from the Paleolithic. The frequency of this haplogroup in early Western Europe was later reduced by waves of other migrating groups, including Haplogroup R1b in the Bronze Age and Haplogroup R1a, especially during Viking expansion.

Second Branch – 20,000 BC: Norse Vikings

The remaining seven Rankin lineages descended from SNP M9, which developed via multiple steps into M207/Haplogroup R about 26,000 BC. The Rankin family tree then split from the downstream Haplogroup R1 about 20,000 BC.

Haplogroup R1a carries the M420 SNP, while R1b carries the M343 SNP. In Europe, the R1a/M420 group is strongly Slavic, Baltic, and Nordic. Lineage 1 is the only known Rankin line that comes from Haplogroup R1a / M420.

Lineage 1 descends from M420 through a series of interesting SNPs, including Z289, which is associated with Norse Vikings, Z284 associated with the Viking Expansion into Ireland and Scotland, and L448. The last SNP developed around 1200 BC and was found in the remains from a Viking grave in 9th century Dublin. Being strongly associated with the Viking Expansion, this group was likely among the later arrivals into the Scottish / Irish sphere.[5]

Third Branch – 3,000 BC: Germanics

The other Rankin lineages descend through R1b / M343, which is characteristic of both Celtic and Germanic peoples. They also descend from the downstream SNP M269, the Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype (WAMH). For the majority of Rankins who do an STR test only, their predicted haplotype will very likely be R-M269. Unfortunately, this SNP developed about 11,000 BC, so it isn’t terribly helpful for genealogy. It became prevalent in Western Europe in the Bronze Age.

The third major branch occurs downstream of M269 / WAMH, when Lineage 2 separated from Lineages 5, 6, 7, and 9 around 3,000 BC. Lineage 2 is defined by the distinguishing SNP U106, while the  other four lineages have SNP P312. “BritainsDNA” calls U106 descendants the “Germanic” group. At present, U106 occurs with the highest frequency in the Germanic areas of Europe but also in Britain, especially the historically Anglo-Saxon regions of southeastern England.[6] Members of this group appear more likely to have an Anglo-Saxon ancient paternal ancestry, although many are later associated with the largely Scots-Irish diaspora to the British Colonies.[7]

Celtic Branches – 2,000 BC: Britons, Irish, and Scots, Oh My!

The other Rankin lineages developed from the Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype in branches below R-P312, which is associated with a non-Germanic historical group called the Beaker Folk or Bell Beaker.[8] As part of the Bronze Age migrations westward, this group displaced or absorbed many of the earlier European arrivals.

Rankin Lineages 5, 6, 7, and 9 all carry SNP R-P312, and its downstream SNP L21, which is characteristic of the broad Celtic group in particular, and R-DF13. All four of these Rankin lineages branched from R-DF13 around 2,000 BC.

Lineage 5 branched off DF13 to its distinctive SNP R-DF21, which is closely associated with the Celtic cultures of the British Isles.[9] Interesting SNPs yet further downstream include R-S424, the “Little Scottish Cluster,” and R-S190, which is associated with certain Iron Age tribes particularly concentrated in the Clyde River valley.[10]

Lineage 6 diverged from R-DF13 with its distinctive SNP R-DF49. An interesting note about the downstream SNP R-M222 from genetichomeland.com: “Sometimes called Northwest Irish, concentrated in Ireland and western Scotland. Associated with Niall of the Nine Hostages and Ui Neill clans. Britain’s DNA labeled this branch: Ancient Irish.” Members of this lineage are likely to have a very strong Irish paternal connection.[11]

Rankin Lineage 7 branched off DF13 with its distinctive SNP R-Z253 and downstream SNP R-FGC3222, closely associated with both Scotland and Ireland.[12]

Rankin Lineage 9  carries the same SNPs as Lineages 5, 6, and 7 down to R-DF13. Additionally, Lineage 9 carries the distinctive SNP R-Z255. Downstream of this, there is an additional distinctive SNP R-L159 called “Hibernian” or Irish.[13]

SUMMARY -THE COMBINED TREE

Thus concludes the story of the Rankin family tree as told by Y-DNA, stretching back to a genetic Adam. Here is the complete Big Y Tree:

All Rankins who have taken the Big Y-700 test to date carry the same SNPs, inherited from genetic Adam down through a common ancestor about 47,000 years ago. Roughly then, the first branch occurred, dividing the broad group of Stone Age Europeans, from a broad group of later-arriving Bronze Age Europeans. Additional branches occurred about 20,000 BC (Nordic), about 3,000 BC (Germanic), and about 2,000 BC (Celtic including Brittonic, Irish, and Scottish). Nine distinct genetic Rankin lines have been identified so far.

The more people test at a Y-700 level, the more discoveries are made. This story will continue to develop. May those who come behind us find it helpful.

 

REFERENCES:

Genetichomeland.com

YFull.com

FamilyTreeDNA.com

https://isogg.org/wiki/Western_Atlantic_Modal_Haplotype

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britons_(ancient)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Celtic_peoples_and_tribes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britain.north.peoples.Ptolemy.jpg

[1] For those interested, new first time Y-DNA testers can order the Family Tree Big Y-700 test at https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna. An existing Y-DNA kit can be upgraded from the “Add Ons & Upgrades” button in your account, or go to https://www.familytreedna.com/my/upgrades. An additional DNA sample is usually NOT required for an upgrade. FTDNA frequently offers discounts on these products around  main holidays including Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Please note that the Rankin DNA Project and its administrators have no financial interest in test purchases.

[2] Lineage 3 is not shown because no member of that line has taken a Big Y test.

[3] Only one member of Lineage 4 has done a Big Y test, though two others have done limited SNP testing that places them along the same SNP tree downstream of I-P215.

[4] No members of Lineage 8 have done a Big Y SNP test. But the one current member of this line has done a more limited test, which confirmed a SNP I-L22, downstream of the distinctive I-Z2699.

[5] Three members of Lineage 1 have taken a deep subclade or Big Y test, with two distinct terminal SNPs at present.

[6] For more information about the SNP U106, consider reviewing or joining the U106 group project at Family Tree DNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/u106/about/background). According to this group page, “R-U106 …  rose to significance in the area of present Germany and the surrounding areas probably a bit before 3000 BC.  Although U106 is found all over Europe, and in countries that Europeans have migrated to, it is most significant in Germany and surrounding countries, Scandinavia, and Britain. In its time-frame of 3000 BC, U106 likely arose in the Corded Ware culture. Depending on which branch of U106 a member descends from, the people on that branch adapted to a variety of different cultures along the way….”

[7] Only one member of Lineage 2 has taken a deep SNP test, although three others have taken lower level SNP tests that place them definitively along the same SNP tree downstream from U106.

[8] An early Bronze Age culture that lasted in Britain from about 2,800-1,800 BC, so named for distinctive inverted bell-shaped drinking vessels.

[9] Only one member of the Rankin Lineage 5 has taken a Big Y-700 test. But there are numerous members of the Little Scottish Cluster project who have also taken the Big Y and carry the same SNP tree. These Sloan, Chambers, and other Big Y test results are also helping to shape the understanding of the Rankin L5 genetic history.

[10] These Brittonic tribes were known to the Romans as Damnonii, and later a confederation of tribes called Maeatae. These are not the Caledonii or the Picts, nor the Gaelic Scots (Scotii) nor Irish (Hibernii), but lived in close proximity to them near present day Ayrshire. These were a Celtic people, speaking a Brythonic language, possibly Cumbric, closely related to Welsh. These were later known as Strathclyde Britons.

[11] Rankin Lineage 6 has no members with Big Y-700 results. However, of the four members of the lineage, one member has done a limited SNP test. His confirmed SNP R-M222 allows for a good placement in the Rankin tree.

[12] Although 4 members have tested Big Y, they all happen to be part of the same 2 terminal SNPs. Not much more is known without some additional members and tests.

[13] Only one member of this lineage has tested Big Y-700, so once again this line is in particular need of additional testing in order to develop a more robust genetic storyline.