Of course, Don, we do share DNA--the Y chromosome! :)
I've lost track, but I think we have at least four shared lines, including
Wright and Cooley. It's rather amazing that nothing shows up in the auDNA.
But that's the problem with that DNA. Recombination is so random that it's
really a gamble to expect matches. And then those few who I've been able
to confirm matches with, know less about those lines than I do.
Y-DNA matching, of course, is a different story. There are many successes
with that.
-Michael
> My dad Elmo Cooley is now up to 1740 DNA cousins and I'm to 1519 on
> 23andMe. Several hundred of them share their DNA info with me, but maybe
> only 75 have pedigrees of any kind; and of those, I've been able to find
> the common ancestor for about 20. A few of these people have Cooleys in
> their pedigree, but unfortunately most know only a single (female) Cooley
> ancestor - they don't know any male Cooleys. For example L. Gilley shares
> a lot of DNA with me, so she is a cousin, but the only Cooley she knows
> she
> descends from is Nancy Winnifred Ann Cooley (11 Sep 1825 South Carolina -
> 11 Jun 1891 Alabama) who married Thomas McCormick Gilley (31 Aug 1822
> Georgia - 3 Mar 1898 Alabama.) Maybe Nancy descends from the recently
> discovered South Carolina branch of our Cooleys? Anyone know?
>
> I have found many living cousins on 23andMe of people who descend from
> families my male Cooley ancestors married into, especially those with the
> surnames White, Mullenix and Youngblood.
>
> A few of the cousins I've found common ancestors for go all the way back
> to
> the 1600s (10th cousins). On the other hand, I have a few known 4th and
> 5th
> cousins that neither my dad or I share any DNA with. (For example you
> Michael and Richard Ernst.)
>
> One exciting DNA find was that I now have DNA proof, to go along with
> paper
> records and family stories, that Mark Twain is my 3rd cousin, 5x removed,
> on my mom's side. We were born less than 60 miles apart in Missouri, but
> the common ancestor was born in Virginia in the 1700s. (The common
> ancestor
> has the surname Moorman - they were Quakers.) My son Patrick is dating a
> girl who descends from the same Moorman ancestors. Small world isn't it?
>
> BTW, we of European ancestry have it relatively good regarding DNA
> testing.
> My wife, who was born in the Philippines, has only 173 cousins on 23andMe.
> (One-tenth of what my dad has.) She can't identify the common ancestors of
> any of them as none (including her) have pedigrees going past their
> great-grandparents. And very few of all the hundreds of thousands of
> people
> who have tested at 23andMe are in her F1a mtDNA haplogroup. The test did
> reveal however that she has considerable Spanish DNA, whereas she thought
> she was at least 95% Asian.
>
> Best Wishes,
> Don
>
> “Your DNA contains the greatest history book ever written.” ~ Spencer
> Wells
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 1:08 PM, <ancestr2_at_host187.hostmonster.com> wrote:
>
>> Autosomal tests aren't sex specific. The idea is that each generation
>> gets
>> half from each parent, a quarter from each grandparent, etc. The five
>> generation thing is just a generality. All of our genes, other than the
>> occasional mutation, go back many, many generations. It's just that
>> after
>> about five generations with all the halving and new mutations, sequences
>> become too fragmented to accurately compare.
>>
>> The biggest problem is that most people share insufficient information
>> in
>> their accounts to know whether a match has real significance. I have
>> nearly a thousand matches, but only three of them are confirmed.
>>
>> But 23andme tests for a lot more, including about 2500 mitochondrial DNA
>> markers, the X chromosome, and markers useful for medical history. And,
>> for men, they test about 1700 markers on the Y.
>>
>> Of course, there's no guarantee that you'd get any Cooley matches. I
>> didn't. :(
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>> > Ive thought about seeingif my mother would get tested, but its just at
>> 5
>> > generations I think, and apparently Pat Albert only had girls.. and if
>> it
>> > won't help, I don't see the point. I'm certainly willing to do
>> anything
>> > to try and ID Perrin's lineage though.
>> > Perrin > Albert > Mary > Gaye > Mom... yeah, 5
>> > If I could find Patsy's children.. they would be only 4 generations I
>> > think, since Albert's youngest daughter was younger than my
>> grandmother
--
Second VP, the Cooley Family Association of America
Administrator, the Akins DNA Project
Administrator, the Ashenhurst DNA Project
Administrator, the Bishop DNA Project
Administrator, the Eldridge DNA Project
Administrator, the alt-McDowell DNA Project
Co-Administrator, the Cooley DNA Project
Co-Administrator, the McDougall DNA Project
Instructor "Genealogy and Family History," the Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute (OLLI)
B.A. Humboldt State University, History
Received on Mon Aug 05 2013 - 14:39:12 MDT