Results
Click on the Project News tab for information suggesting that some of our Cree families may have originally borne the name McCreery.
The Joseph Cree family of New Jersey, USA (#37881 in the chart on the Y-DNA Results tab), the David Cree family of Pennsylvania, USA (#37466) and the John Cree family of Pennsylvania, USA (#45002) all share a common ancestor with 99.9% certainty.
As you can see from the chart, the tested sections of Y-DNA from the Joseph and John families (#37881 and #45002) are a near-perfect 36/37 match. This indicates that Joseph and John were most likely very closely related. Statistically, there is only about a 5% chance that their most recent common ancestor is more than 11 generations back. We know there is no common ancestor within the last 7 generations, so it is very likely that John and Joseph were siblings, 1st or second cousins or some other close relationship (e.g., uncle / nephew).
The line of David Cree of Pennsylvania, USA (Kit #37466) is nearly as well matched, sharing 34 out of 37 markers with the line of John and 33 out of 37 with Joseph's line. This indicates a strong probability (75%) that the common Cree ancestor between the David line and the other two lived within the past 12 generations. David and John are believed to have been brothers. The test result means that either David and John were less closely related than John and Joseph, or a mutation occurred in David's line somewhere between the common ancestor and our test subject. We hope to locate and test a descendant of another of David's children. If he is a closer match with the descendants of John and Joseph, we know the mutation is of more recent vintage.
The testing so far places the Cree families discussed above into Haplotype R1b, which points to a western European origin. However, these Crees have an unusual 11,12 at marker DYS 385a/b. Most men in haplogroup R1b have an 11,14 or 11,13 at that marker. This rare marker should make it easier to identify related individuals as the project expands.
There are no exact (25/25) matches with other people in the FamilyTreeDNA database, so if Crees from other branches match these results across 25 markers, it will be a strong indicator that those branches are also related.
Initial results suggest that the families of William and Robert Cree of Pennsylvania, USA are not related to the other families tested thus far, including John and David of Pennsylvania. This is based on the results of a descendant of William Cree and Jane Marshall of Pennsylvania, USA (Kit #N27854). More participants are needed to confirm this result.
The results for our first non-US participant, a Cree from England whose paternal line comes from Wales (#38270 on the chart below), indicate that he is not meaningfully related to the American Cree families tested to date. Instead, his 12-marker results almost exactly match the Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype, the most common DNA signature in Western Europe. More research must be conducted in order to determine whether his results are a fair indicator of his ancestral DNA.