Updated 10 June 2016:

Two families (Gilbert & Word) have been found to share common ancestors with the main US Cecil/Cissell families and with the William Cecil (Lord Burghley) line in the UK. These families likely split from the Cecil line shortly before their surnameswere adopted in England.

Initial next-generation testing of Gilbert, Cissell, Cecil, and theUK line shows that the Gilbert branch did separate early from this family group.  Sometime later the Cissell line (of St.Mary’s County, MD) branched off and then finally the Cecil line of PrinceGeorge’s County, MD. separated from the UK line. 

It would be nice to know if the PG County Cecil’s separated fromthe UK line before of after William Cecil.  We continue to try to collect the data that could answer this question.

Updated15 December 2015:

Next generation (BigY) testing of three project members as been started.  The testing will provide information on SNPs (Single nucleotide polymorphisms) to locate member’s location on the branches (or twigs) of the Human tree.  Analysis of the test data will also provide over 300 additional markers and so help with Project efforts.

Several individuals with other surnames have joined the Project.  It is suspected that their common ancestors are most likely sometime before the 1500s and so before each of the families began to use their surname. This will be checked as the next generation testing results are received.

Update 27 August 2008:

Greg Cissell has kindly provided us the test results he received from Ancestry. He is a descendant of Silas (or George Silas) Cissell, born about 1821 in Union County, Kentucky. [One suggested father for Silas is William Cissell, born in Washington County, Kentucky, but there are apparently no clear records to prove this.]

Of the 24 Ancestry markers that are also tested by FTDNA, he matches 22 markers with kit 31919 and 23 markers with kit 54035. His values for DYS-464 (14,15,17,17) differ slightly from kit 31919 (14,14,17,17) and kit 54035 (14,14,16,17). His converted value for marker Y-GATA-H4 is 11, while the value for kit 31919 is 10; he matches both kits 54035 and 57787 at this marker.

Overall it is clear that his family is related in some way with that of the John Cecill (d. 1698) in Maryland and/or the “Exeter Line” represented by kit 57787. If anyone has any suggestions for him, please pass them to the Administrator of this group [or contact him directly at gregcissell@comcast.net].



Update 19 August 2008:

The Results data have been re-grouped slightly to more clearly show the test data for individuals descended from the 1st Earl of Exeter (UK-3 Earl of Exeter) and for individuals descended from the John Cecil, who died in St. Mary's County Maryland in 1698 (US-1 John Cecil 1698).


Updated 1 August 2008:

Our DNA testing has now shown a match between the descendents of the John Cecil (Cissell) who came to St. Mary’s County Maryland in 1658 and a descendent of Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter. [Thomas was born 5 Mar 1542 and died 8 Feb 1623.]

Kits 31919 and 54035 are from descendents of the John Cecil (Cissell) and Kit 57787 is from a descendent of Thomas Cecil.

Estimates of the time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) are not specific enough to tell us exactly where on the Cecil Exeter line, John Cecil was connected. We will attempt to find this connection using both standard Genealogy approaches and DNA testing, but a quick answer is not anticipated. Any help anyone can provide in this effort would be appreciated.


Updated 6 June 2007:

Kits 31919 and 54035 are from descendents of the John Cecil (Cissell) who came to St. Mary’s County Maryland in 1658. We had previously noted a possible match with testing from other Cecil family branches on the BYU/Sorenson Database at http://www.smgf.org/. Information on this has now been provided by Penny Cecil Bloodhart who identified one of the Sorenson participants as her cousin and provided family tree information to show that he was a descendent of the William Sessell (Cecil) who was in Prince George’s County, Maryland prior to 1697 and who died in Frederick County, Maryland in 1749.

We compared the Sorenson test results for the descendent of William Cecil with those from one of the John Cecil descendents (31919) that had also been tested by the Sorenson group. There was an exact match between these individuals in at least 28 of the markers. There was one mismatch on marker DYS-439 (The William Cecil descendant had a value of 12 while the descendant of John Cecil had a value of 13.) and on marker YGATAH4 (The William Cecil descendant had a value of 11 while the descendant of John Cecil had a value of 10.) This close match shows that both families are very closely related and do share a common male ancestor.

Sorenson provides a most likely estimate of TMRCA for the two individuals as 16 generations. The William Cecil descendent is a 13th generation descendant from him and the other individual is a 10th generation descendant from John Cecil. If the Sorenson estimate were correct, then, the MRCA would have been just prior to both family branches coming to this country.