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April 8, 2021
Of our now 8 Y-DNA participants who match each other at 37 STR markers as confirmed paternal descendants of Augustine, one descendant has upgraded to Big Y-700, giving us much more detail as to Augustine's downstream Y-DNA haplogroup. FamilyTreeDNA currently reports a Y-DNA haplogroup of R-Y128954, which is downstream of R-CTS4179, which is itself downstream of R1a. This Y-DNA result makes it unlikely that Augustine Bearse had Romany/Romani origins.
Given that the only source document indicating that Augustine Bearse (b 1618) was Romany/Romani, and that his wife was Native American, was the discredited 1933 manuscript written by Franklyn Bearce, our Y-DNA and mtDNA results from documented patrilineal and matrilineal descendants strongly imply that both Augustine Bearse and the mother of his children were British nationals of British ancestry. Extraordinary claims, such as those made by Franklyn Bearce, require extraordinary evidence, and the DNA evidence uncovered through this project's efforts does not lend support to either "legend" regarding the ancestry of Augustine or of his wife.
August 28, 2018
We identified two matrilineal descendants of Priscilla Hall, widely believed to be Augustine and Mary's daughter, plus one matrilineal descendant of Sarah Hamblen (nee Bearse), Priscilla's sister. All three descendants then underwent mtDNA testing at FamilyTreeDNA's highest level of testing.
All 3 testers had identical HVR1, HVR2, and coding region mutations in their mtDNA profiles. We believe this is sufficient to show that the "Priscilla" who married John Hall was indeed Augustine and Mary Bearse's daughter, given the exact mtDNA match with the Sarah Hamblen descendant.
All 3 testers came back with the mtDNA haplogroup U5--which FamilyTreeDNA later refined to U5a1a1d. According to Eupedia.com, that haplogroup is primarily found in the British Isles and Scandinavia.
All 3 testers had identical HVR1, HVR2, and coding region mutations in their mtDNA profiles. We believe this is sufficient to show that the "Priscilla" who married John Hall was indeed Augustine and Mary Bearse's daughter, given the exact mtDNA match with the Sarah Hamblen descendant.
All 3 testers came back with the mtDNA haplogroup U5--which FamilyTreeDNA later refined to U5a1a1d. According to Eupedia.com, that haplogroup is primarily found in the British Isles and Scandinavia.
June 2, 2010
We have results so far from 5 Y-DNA participants with hg R1a/R1a1, 4 with known lineages back to Augustine through his two sons James and Joseph.
Because the overall results of our R1a participants match so closely (and they share the surname) Family Tree DNA calculates that the five men are very likely to be related to each other within the last 8-12 generations. This would be consistent with their all descending from Augustine. Since we have results from the two different sons we can say with considerable certainty that Augustine’s haplogroup was also R1a, and we also now know what 35 of Augustine’s DNA allele values were. Every value that the known descendants share, must also have been shared by Augustine, since he was their “most recent common ancestor.”
We have one participant whose link to Augustine is unknown. SOMEDAY we'll have enough data to find how his ancestor Isaac Bearse (b 1780, married Sally Hallett) is related to the others, on the basis of the DNA of his line (kit # 148857) compared to the others.
mtDNA: One candidate was T2, one was U5, and the third was X. If T2 is confirmed, we can say with a very high degree of certainty that Augustine's wife Mary was probably NOT Mary Hyanno (i.e. she was probably not Native American). If X is confirmed, it gets interesting. X is found in Native American populations (particularly Algonquian), but it is also found in parts of Europe and the Near East - i.e. it is not exclusively NA. Closer examination of our X test results is needed to try and determine which population it might be from.
If U5 is confirmed this, too, suggests Augustine's wife was European. However there are some interesting findings of U5 in NA populations that we'll follow up on.
In each case, until we get an additional participant who matches one of our existing testers, we will not know which is the right haplogroup to associate with Augustine's wife.