Palatine DNA Project- Background

Background

Palatine DNA Project Welcome to All Direct Male Line or Direct Female Line Descendants of 1708-1710 Palatine Emigrants

The exciting new world of genetic genealogy awaits you. This DNA Project is designed specifically to encourage the testing and analysis of your DNA for genealogical purposes, especially with regard to furthering our knowledge of our Palatine ancestors and family history. Our mission statement:

"The Palatine DNA Project encourages participation by all men (and women) who have a direct ancestral line – either all male or all female -- to a man or woman whose surname appears in the index of The Palatine Families of New York 1710 by Henry Z. Jones, Jr., and who lived in the Palatinate area in the early 1700s. The goal is to reunite these families, whether they came to America, remained in Germany or were sent elsewhere in the British Empire."

We hope to determine family links between and among the families that left Germany in 1708/09 and traveled to Holland, then to England and finally to the far corners of the British Empire, including America. Theirs is a story of great hardship and deprivation, and we celebrate their strength and fortitude in making new lives in their new countries. We are their legacy. Membership in a project is free and offers many benefits, including significantly reduced prices for testing. The only requirement is that you do have a DNA test -- either Y-DNA for the paternal line (men only can test this) or mtDNA for the maternal line (both men and women can do this test). There are several kinds of projects -- surname, geographical, and haplogroup. Normally you would first join either a surname or geographic project. Later you can join additional project(s). Our DNA Project will help us find cousins scattered throughout the world. Families were often split as a brother might be sent to Ireland and the rest of his family to America, or vice versa. Long lost relatives, relatives we may not know we have, may at last be reunited. Of the 847 families found on the Hunter Subsistence Lists in America, how many were related to each other even in the old country? DNA testing can help us find the answer.

If you are a direct descendant of a Palatine emigrant in either the paternal line (son to father to father to... father emigrant) or the maternal line (daughter or son to mother to mother to... mother emigrant), you are invited to order a DNA test (Y-DNA test for males and/or mtDNA test for males and females) through this project at reduced prices from Family Tree DNA. If you have already tested your DNA with Family Tree DNA, you may join this project from your personal page at FTDNA. Click on Join Projects in the left sidebar. If you have not yet tested with FTDNA, males may join (and test their Y-DNA) by clicking on the "Request to Join this Group" tab at the top left of this page and providing your paternal line that shows your relationship (or expected relationship) to someone in the 1708-10 migration. (Notice that mtDNA tests should be ordered through Palatine Maternal Line.) If you have already joined a surname project, we hope that you will also join this project, which welcomes women as well as men. We hope to learn a great deal more about our origins as we study them in the context of this group of German emigrants.

Henry Z. Jones, Jr. has done an amazing amount of work for us in terms of developing our genealogies and determining our ancestral villages. He considers this DNA project to be an important work and will help to promote it so that we may have as wide participation as possible. If you have already tested with National Geographic/Genographic, it is a simple matter to add your results to FTDNA for free. If you have already tested with FTDNA, you may simply go to your personal page at FTDNA and click on the JOIN Projects button (top of left sidebar). Scroll down to Y-DNA (or mtDNA) Geographical Projects and look for Palatine (or Palatine mt-DNA). Click on it to join this project. If you have tested with another company, please contact me and I will explain your options. Note that this project is entirely voluntary. There is no cost except for the DNA test itself. We do require an abbreviated pedigree showing your descent from the immigrant. While we need your complete pedigree starting with yourself, we will post only non-living persons, or those born before 1900, on the Patriarchs page at: Palatine DNA Project. If we find a discrepancy in your lineage, we might ask for further details to prove your pedigree. Confidentiality is assured. Test results are posted anonymously, showing only the Palatine emigrant from whom you descend. Upon joining the project, you are assigned a unique ID that will also attach to your results and to your pedigree. Our job is to compile and analyze the results, reporting any findings as appropriate, to help you interpret them and to be your main point of contact. This is a wonderful opportunity to expand our knowledge of family history. Please don't hesitate to write to me with any questions or concerns. I am deeply committed to the success of our project and welcome your interest. To send an email, simply click on my name:. If the link does not work, copy and paste my address into an outgoing email on your computer: a_clark@ix.netcom.com or sifer@aol.com. Please also visit Palatine DNA Project for more details about male only testing and Palatine Maternal Line for information about maternal line testing -- both males and females.