Cladogram

Have you taken a genealogy class or participated in an institute? In my early years of researching my family, I had the opportunity to take a class by mail from the National Genealogical Society. That class helped me learn about the types of records used in research.

Now, I’m taking another class. This online class is about yDNA. I’ve been watching the free webinars by Diahann Southard and decided to take the plunge and enroll in the yDNA class offered by Your DNA Guide. Again I’m thankful for this opportunity and am learning lots about yDNA.

While I understand the concepts shared in the class, I’m struggling to apply them to my CRAWFORD genealogy. Basically,

I’m CONFUSED

My first step at analyzing my yDNA data was to create a Cladogram for 37 markers. Since the Crawford project is organized by genetics, it was very easy to locate the data for the R1b-01A Admillan group.

Below is the cladogram for that group.

Then I rearranged the data into a ‘tree’ format using the DYS391 marker as an organizational starting point.

The next step is to put this data onto the actual tree and push the values up. Using the guidance that a genetic mutation only happens once in a tree, my section of the Crawford tree might look as follows:

However, paper genealogy does not support William C’s line descending from James and Rebecca Crawford. If I add the BigY haplogroups to the pedigree, they also suggest a potentially different placement for William C.

Paper genealogy has confirmed that William C Crawford descends from James and Sally (Smith Duggins) Crawford. If William C is moved to that place on the pedigree and his pink value of 12 is pushed up to James, the pedigree would look as follows.

The BigY Haplogroups support this arrangement of the pedigree.

The pink boxes in the above diagram represent the DYS391 value of 12. The green box (my line) represents the DYS391 value of 10. The remaining lines (light blue) have a DYS391 value of 11. If the pink value for William C Crawford (toward the right side of the chart) is pushed up making James Crawford have a DYS391 value of 12, then how does one explain the DYS391 value of 10 for Washington M. Crawford (shaded lightgreen)?

Another possible scenario is for the James married to Sally to have the common ancestor’s DYS391 value of 11. If James Crawford (wife Sally Duggins) has a DYS391 value of 11, then it is possible that grandsons William C and Washington M both received mutations. In this scenario, William C’s DYS391 value would have increased by one to 12. And Washington M’s DYS391 value would have decreased by one to 10.

When the BigY haplogroups are added to the above pedigree, they again support this arrangment of the tree.

However, the above placement of the family shows a mutation of the DYS391 value from 11 to 12 at two different locations in the tree. This goes against the guidance that a genetic mutation only happens once in a tree.

Thus, my confusion!

While I may be confused about the DYS391 mutation in the tree, the BigY haplogrouping supports a relationship between my James Crawford line and the other two James Crawford lines. Thus, the quest continues to find that common ancestor.