Project News
May 2009 -Results just in: A descendant of Isham Thrift of North Carolina, via his son Perry, has tested 67 markers. Results show that Isham Thrift (kit #150062) is unrelated to either Nathaniel Thrift, Robert T Thrift, or the two Friths in the project. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that Isham Thrift may be related to Drury, William, Jane & David Thrift of Dinwiddie County, Virginia. See the chart Family groupings based on Y-DNA marker values which summarizes all Project results thus far. We need to test Thrifts from Dinwiddie Co, VA, and we would like to test a separate line descended from Isham Thrift of NC to confirm the present results.
Results for the descendant of John D. Frith (kit #55907) are being upgraded from 12 to 67 markers. Test results are due in early July. Currently this person has over 900(!) exact 12-marker matches, due to being near-modal for his haplogroup. This upgrade will weed out low-resolution matches who are unrelated. It is hoped that more Friths will join the project, and that eventually we can identify John D Frith's family.
December 2008: Two descendants of different sons of Robert T Thrift of GA match identically over the markers tested. Robert T Thrift must have had the same haplogroup (I1) and essentially the same DNA markers as these two descendants. We had previously tested two different descendants of the line of George Thrift of VA, and proven that George had essentially the same DNA markers as those two testees. It is now established conclusively that Robert T Thrift is NOT a descendant of George Thrift of Fairfax Co, VA.
It appears (based on best match at http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/DNA/Hg-I-subclades-FTDNA-order.shtml ) that the descendants of Robert T Thrift match the M253-EE subclade of haplogroup I1 best. The last I heard (Nov 2007, http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-11/1195079804 ), the geographical distribution of this subclade tended to be in the region of Switzerland, Germany, & nearby areas; they may have populated this area long ago, soon after the end of the last ice age. Look for more discussion at the Rootsweb Thrift message board.
October 2008: We have signed up a new member (kit #134276), a descendant of Robert T Thrift of GA, USA, in order to confirm the results obtained from the previous 12-marker test of an RT Thrift descendant. The two are descended from different sons of RT Thrift. The new member will be tested for 67-markers, which should allow unequivocal identification of relatives. If both descendants' tests agree, this will confirm the haplotype of their ancestors including RT Thrift. This should provide more specific clues to ancient ancestry (haplogroup subclade) as well. Results of this test may be available by the end of November, 2008.
August 2008: I have started a "one-name study" for the surname Thrift and variant Evilthrift, under the auspices of the Guild of One-Name Studies. (Yes, the acronym, GOONS,is Brit humor, honoring the Spike Milligan /Peter Sellers radio programme from the '50's.) A one-name study is a project researching facts about a surname and all the people who have held it, as opposed to a particular pedigree (the ancestors of one person) or descendancy (the descendants of one person or couple). Eventually we will have a web page at GOONS which will index all occurrences of Thrift, Evilthrift, and other variants that can be found in the scattered multitude of sites for free online vital records of England, Wales & Scotland, and we will have a head start in organizing these into families. An example is the Ferneyhough archive for births, marriages, deaths, and adoptions. Help in gathering data would be appreciated. I don't have resources to do this for Frith & Firth (by far the most common related surnames), however if you provide me with data for individuals with ANY of the variants, Frith, Firth, Freake, etc, it will be presented in searchable form along with the Thrift & Evilthrift data. (I find it interesting that while the Guild insists that we agree to collect data worldwide, they only provide a mechanism on their site for presenting vital data from England & Wales, with limited periods in Scotland. However this focus will be very useful.)
May 2008: I have started a web site for information that won't fit on this FTDNA-sponsored web page. The supplemental site for the DNA project is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thriftzzfrithzzfirth/.
This site now contains links to several Thrift, Frith, & Firth family trees at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thriftzzfrithzzfirth/fam_tree_list.htm. This list of family trees will be very helpful for people trying to see where they fit in, which lines they are related to, and who their earlier ancestors were. If you are interested, please send me a link to your online family tree. If it is not online, please post it, or contact me if I can help.
