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Group Administrator: Delmar Asbill ASBILL@nsuok.edu

Background

Project Surnames:

Asbel	Asbell	Asbill	Asbille
Ashbyll	Aswell	Azbell	Azbill
Azwell

Project Background:

This Asbill/Azbill/Asbille/Asbyll/Asbell/Azbell Y-DNA genetic project was started in fall of 2003. Martin Asbill b. abt 1688? arrived in NC? in 1700 as an orphan from England. He is thought to be the immigrant ancestor for many of the Asbill/et al lines found today in North America. Later arrivals from Europe are included in today's Asbill population and are welcome to participate. I feel the time is ripe to begin to sort out the various family branches with our new genetic tools, in conjunction, of course, with well documented and verified genealogies.

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Project Goals:

Our project goals can be broadly stated to :
(1)determine the genetic relationship or non-relatedness of the several Asbill/et al branches living in North America in early colonial times;
(2)identify those Asbill branches who appeared on the scene in later years and, secondarily, to determine any genetic relationship with the first group.
(3)attempt to tie our immigrant ancestors back to the country of origin using unique Y-DNA chromosome markers to determine or confirm suspected relatedness. Comparison of Y-DNA test results could be of immense help in making the jump from North America back to the country of origin - and both sides of the Atlantic could gain immensely without doing a great amount of difficult research overseas.
These goals are purposely very broad in scope and will undoubtedly take a long time to be attained. Those lines with more thorough/accurate paper research backgrounds will hopefully flesh out rapidly but their value to the many 'orphan' lines should be substantial for a long time to come.

Project News:

As of 2 September, 2004 William L Harvey is serving as co-administrator for the Asbill Y-DNA Surname Group Project. I am working closely with Delmar Asbill - Administrator of this surname study group.

Contact me at : wlh@foothill.net (530-346-6370)
if you have any questions I can help with.

Project Results:

As of December 15, 2006, this project has defined eight distinctly DIFFERENT Asbill/Asbell/et al family lines.

Four of the eight family lines appear to be distantly related (R1b haplogroup) - probably in the neighborhood of at least one to several thousand years ago - possibly much further back - definitely long before surnames were of common useage.

There are 18 total participants : at this point there appears to be little reason to attempt to use name spelling as Group identifiers as there is intermingling of spelling within groups as well as between groups.

The test results are thus far classified into Y Haplogroups as follows :
thirteen - STR test results are predicted as "R1b"
two - STR test results are predicted as "R1a"
two - STR test results are predicted as "G2"
one - STR test results is predicted as "I"

Participants hail from Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Thus far the results do not substantiate the close/near-term relatedness we anticipated for our Asbill/Asbell surname considering that all/most of this name were believed to trace back to the single immigrant ancestor Martin Asbell. This does not appear to be the case, at least through the male surname Y-line. There do appear to be several lines that have the likelihood of connecting back to Martin Asbell through female Asbells of his lineage.

In fact it is becoming crystal clear that there is an abundance of erroneous "paper trail evidence" available to the ASBILL/ASBELL genealogical researching public and that many researchers have relied on non-factual connections to tie their families into lineages which are not only not proven with documentation but are disproven by Y-DNA test results.

It is my hope that more folks will see and accept these weak links for what they really are and join in with those who have led the way in using Y-DNA research to corroborate their paper trail research. We need to have many more join this intriguing project in order to unravel the erroneous ancestral lines that hve been established over the years by sincere but misguided family researchers.

DNA Test Results (mtDNA) for Project Members