Project Goals
Updated 10/18/2009
Our first goal was to get standard Y-DNA test data on as many men surnamed Fox as possible to see if any common thread could be found. We now know that the Fox name has a diverse ancestry and new lines are continually being identified. Recently, however, we have been quite successful in finding matches and establishing family connections, indicating that the project has reached a certain state of maturity. While we concentrate on extending known family lines, we welcome anyone to the project who is looking for clues to their ancestry and will provide adequate family documentation.
The most efficient way to use Y-DNA testing is to start with a paper trail and a premise that can either be proven or denied. New members are advised to select the 37 or 67 marker Y-DNA tests. 37 markers are required to establish a connection within a genealogical time-frame and the last 30 markers give additional information on stable markers that may help in the analysis of deep ancestry and as a guide to Haplogroup subclade assignment. It must be remembered that the interpretation of results is a matter of statistical probabilities and, the more markers that match, the higher the probability of a recent common ancestor. More markers help improve confidence limits for the prediction of time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) and FTDNA’s markers 26 through 37 contain a number of markers that mutate frequently and are a good test of a relationship.
The group coordinator hopes to get further volunteers from descendants of Francis Fox of Wiltshire and Cornwall, England, and of Justinian Fox of Philadelphia, PA, to round out his . The whole story has been told in a book by the project administrator entitled "Growing with America - The Fox Family of Philadelphia,” available at Xlibris.com, Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble bookstores. The book is searchable at Amazon.com.
Since tradition has Francis Fox being related to Sir Stephen Fox, Lord Holland, and to the Earls of Ilchester, any possible male descendants of these gentlemen [such as the Fox-Strangeways family] are urged to join the project. Other project members have proposed a connection to Sir Stephen Fox and it would be a real project coup if the true connection could be determined.
One Fox researcher proposes that the Henry Fox/Anne West line traces back to Harold de Vaux and his son Robert de Vaux. They were Normans who came to Britain in 1066 with William the Conqueror. His conclusion is based on a presumed de Vaux to Vaux to Fox name change and the fact that a direct ancestor, William Fox (1497-1559,) is found residing at Stewkley Manor, Great Missenden, a property that William Vaux (1390-1460) acquired through his wife, Maud Lucy. . An even earlier tie in of the de Vaux family to the de Baux family of Aquitaine is given in a Vance family website. Members of the Vaux family in America are being solicited to join either the Fox or Vance projects, unfortunately without success so far.
Any Vaux who is interested would be welcomed to the Fox Project. We have a Vaux from the same line as above who once expressed an interest in the project but has yet to take action.
We continue to look for more descendants of Francis Fox and Dorothy Kekewich, Henry Fox and Anne West, William Fox of Loudoun County, VA, Thomas Fox of Concord, MA, Jacob Fuchs of Bucks County, PA, Elijah Fox of North Carolina, Richard Fox and Hannah Williamson of Virginia, Andrew Fox of Culpepper VA and Greene Co, TN. and his wife Sarah, Thomas Fox and Mary Tunstall, John Fox and Margaret Lightfoot. See the section labeled Fox Families Currently in the Project/ under Project Background/ and the Y-Results Tables/ for more ancestral names of interest.
A secondary project goal is the investigation of deep male line ancestry - particularly in Haplogroups R1b and I, where the majority of our results lie. Project Co-Administrator, Neal Fox, is a recognized expert in establishing clusters of related results, based on duplications at certain very stable markers that probably have a common founder. He has often been able to predict the subclade of R1b and confirm this with SNP testing. The Fox Project is in the forefront of such research, which may eventually lead to the identification of paths of migration, when certain clusters migrated to Britain and from whence they originally came. Bear in mind, however, that this is only the direct male line and everyone has thousands of other ancestors when going back this far in time.
While the standard STR haplotype is ideal for genealogical purposes, there is a great deal of interest these days in deep ancestry – finding where those male ancestors lived thousands or many thousands of years ago. While the broad Haplogroup can be pretty well estimated from the STR haplotype, SNP testing is the final determinant. New SNPs are now being discovered at a rapid rate, defining the Haplogroup tree in ever finer detail and getting closer and closer to a genealogical time frame. Where members wish to pursue SNP testing the administrators will provide encouragement and assistance.
We had been encouraging all of our members to submit samples to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) project at smgf.org for testing at no cost as long as a pedigree of at last 4 generations could be provided. SMGF results took some time to be reported and are not reported directly but all existing Fox results (24 in all) have been identified and are being monitored by the administrators of this project. This has enabled us to add 11 additional markers to the results for some of our project members.
Unfortunately, this option is no longer available since SMGF has gone commercial. Reporting of results has slowed down since the death of James Sorenson and SMGF has recently joined forces with GeneTree and it is now possible to retrieve results (at a fee) and do additional testing using this source. Similarly Relative Genetics has been taken over by Ancestry.com. A number of Foxes tested by Relative Genetics and Ancestry.com have reported their results to the project administrators and these, as well as the SMGF results, are reported at Fox Surname Project Supplemental Website. We are monitoring these other databases as well as is possible and will notify project members when a match occurs.
The project administrators also want to put all project members into the Ysearch database along with their pedigree. This has been highly successful in recruiting new members and the database is an invaluable research tool for both genealogical and population studies. There are now over 70 project members in Ysearch, many of whom have pedigrees listed. Unfortunately, there are still gaps where project members have failed to cooperate and the project is now only admitting members who will supply ancestral information. Bear in mind that the identity of people born after 1905 are not revealed in the Ysearch database.
In general, the project keeps the identity of its members hidden from public view by using the most distant known ancestor and test kit number to identify them in our reports and tables. Within the project, however, the administrators feel free to name names and provide connections with other project members.
A listing of Fox Project ID numbers and corresponding Ysearch IDs may be useful:
14179 is YF4BT, 16564 is TU5JA, 24011 is 4K2NR, 24049 is SPDKV, 24106 is WFQJ5, 24157 is 4BPXT, 24972 is K9D3U, 25481 is 66MKR, 25549 is P6CD3, 25525 is JBEDG, 24750 is 2HWQB, 25721 is Z2CGM, 26383 is JC4XA, 26653 is 8SWEU, 27152 is 97YA4, 30540 is UABM6, 31167 is G76DV, 34505 is CJ4KA, 35689 is SZBZ4, 36120 is B36AD, 36279 is 9679E, 36288 is 7V66U, 37154 is U5B3F, 37645 is G2YTZ, 38215 is BHAMJ, 38640 is STUPY, 43080 is 622FG, 45680 is MF7QH, 46155 is JTFYX, 47889 is 7E72J, 48275 is DK924, 48348 is 45UU7, 52944 is DB2RS, 56554 is P5UT4, 56980 is RHKUH, 58674 is NH8X8, 59573 is DFBWC, 59807 is NFM3V, 60400 is UCWD6, 62776 is GC3B2, 68367 is PEU8S, 69167 is M62FS, 70474 is ZKNXP, 71539 is HDCCJ, 76361 is 47DT5, 78547 is 7JFE2, 80721 is 7468T, 85202 is XCHUK, 85639 is Y2DAS, 86766 is UM52E, 88154 is ZB6U9, 89347 is H6WZG, 93795 is GRB9D, 94524 is WH4M3, 96218 is S6J39, 96656 is VTHTS, 97877 is UTWUR, 99137 is 6R9VN, 99981 is P55TS, 107545 is A7MZ7, 108898 is MZNXE, 110488 is RDE3M, 114418 is KMTTN, 112106 is B6FS8, 121692 is FAESG and 123131 is YC6JX. 125352 is VPB4N , 125558 is UQD3Z , 130621 is Y8YVT, 131451 is JUAW6 , 131454 is MF99R, 131649 is GU929, 133409 is A6T8F, 133998 is RGPPX, 134182 is DGSZ9, 139347 is XR8HV, 140364 is SW3MG, 142427 is J2GSF, 143344 is WQ94Q, 144536 is KHZCN, 146610 is 7KYTF, 147651 is KB3NG, 153293 is NA, 153424 is SSNBF, 155575 is EE67S, 156993 is XQJFP, 157124 is UQDJJ, 159919 in N4V4U.
N16652 is 9WQKT, N23128 is YJ2UX7, N27705 is GB8QA, N30820 is P2Q9W, N34591 is SDXX8, N57084 is BMGGS, N69127 is YXSTD