Doherty Surname Group

You're right, of course. My bad.

FTDNA has recently pushed back delivery of my Big Y-700 results until sometime between May 27 and June 10. They must be doing a land sale business on this offering. The fairly steep discount they were able to provide when I ordered must have been very attractive to a lot of FTDNA members. Hopefully, plenty of Doughertys opted to take up their offer.

It would be welcomed, if they would finish a from-scratch Y-700 batched on 31 DECEMBER 2019.

What I'm really afraid of is that my terminal SNP will be determined to be an isolate somewhere downwind genetically from the Clann Chief line but not connected to any other participant - thereby dashing any hopes to provide me with an opportunity to identify with a particular townland, a place with its own special magic which I could visit. There's a 3rd to 5th cousin on Family Finder whose Dougherty antecedent is from Tawny, Kilcar, Donegal. The SNP is slightly downwind from the Clann Chief line. That would be nice to establish. Sorting through the last "Dougherty" group names used in the Donegal records of the period is difficult, however. Making it more difficult is that my emigrant was variously recorded as "Docherty, Dockerty, and Docerty" between 1855-1865 by Anglo-American census takers dealing with someone who, though listed as literate, probably spoke with an accent unintelligible to Anglo-Americans. It was not until 1875 that his widow (John was murdered by a rival tavern owner in Stated Island in 1870 after surviving 3 years a a sergeant in the Union Army) enforced "Dougherty" as the correct surname spelling to be used by U.S. governmental authorities. John's naturalization immediately before enlisting also used "Dougherty" - so it was something they agreed upon. But how to conciliate these surname spellings with the local Kildare Donegal spellings which included Doherty, Dogherty and Dougherty? Clearly, discovery of state of the art terminal SNPS on such a massive scale is going to generate a lot of work by many of us. I'm looking forward to it.

Dennis, I think everyone who elected to do the Y700 upgrade is having kits mailed to them. I received an email yesterday that wasn't too clear with regards to my Y700 upgrade. My sample was only about 2 years old and only had a couple tests performed on the sample. There is still the backup in storage but since they have the first sample open they have elected to renew pretty much all samples. This is somewhat important though because it adds significant delays if the samples they do have on hand fail QC then waiting to mail off for a new sample ends up extending the process in some cases to 8 months or more. Here was the first email: Dear Kit Manager, We are contacting you regarding your recent order of the Big Y on B121647. The Big Y is an extensive test that requires a large amount of sample to process in our laboratory. For any customer that does not have an additional backup sample available in storage, we are mailing out a new collection kit to the address on file, in case the sample we have available is not enough to produce results. Please return this new collection kit as soon as possible. If the original tester is not available to submit another sample, please reply directly to this email and we will inform the lab that no additional sample will be available, and we will work with you on alternative options in the event that there was not enough sample to process. Please be advised that while at the time this email was sent the new sample collection was only just in case a backup was needed, the sample processing in the lab can fail quality control at any stage of processing and at that point this new sample collection would be required in order to produce results. While failures are rare and we hope they do not occur, it is best to send this new collection kit back as soon as possible to prevent any potential delays in receiving your results. If you have any questions, or need to make any changes to your address, please reply directly to this email. Here was the follow-up to my question if they are waiting on the new sample to arrive or not before starting the process: I'm sorry Katy's message was not entirely clear. We are sending you a test kit for kit number B121647 to collect a backup sample for your Big Y upgrade. Right now we are running your test with your previous sample and we have no indication of a problem with that sample, but we wanted to pro-actively get a new sample from you just in case.

Zack. My DNA kit went back to 2004 when all this DNA was in its infancy. Used it for at least 6 different tests. They suggested the kit was probably degraded to a point where the results could prove unreliable. Sent new kit back so will now wait and see if anything new shows after they complete testing.

Hi Dennis and Zack, I ordered my upgrade to Big Y-700 on the 25/03/2019 and was notified that I would need to send a fresh sample to ensure that it would pass all tests in the lab and would probably therefor take less time than trying to use my original sample. I spoke to someone at FTDNA help desk and they told me that all upgraders are being asked to provide a new sample. I think the only time they will try to go forward with an old sample for upgrade is if the original tester is unable to provide a sample. Otherwise they won't test with an old sample. You have to ask for it particularly and they don't recommend it. I was worried that my testing would be delayed with postage to and from the United Kingdom and I might be dropped in the queue. My kit arrived on 11/04/19 and I used the kit and sent the samples back the same day by tracked and signed for post which is the best I could send. It needs to be sent as a package rather than an envelope. I have tracked the package which is currently in the United States and hopefully will soon be recieved at FTDNA. During my conversation with the person at the FTDNA helpdesk I asked if it was better to provide a cheek swab or if spit would be better...my thinking being, that maybe a larger sample would be better and maybe last longer. She told me that at FTDNA they use cheek swab and don't require spit, although other DNA testing groups do use spit. The dna kit is delivered well packed and padded and consists of instructions with two snappable testing sticks. The dark line on the swab is the end that snaps off at the end of the small containers with small tops, of which there are two, that seem to contain some liquid. Only one end of the swab is to go into the container and that is the only usable end. Snapping the stick is a bit fiddly as it does give some resistance and the vial is small...so keep a firm grip of everything as you don't want to drop or contaminate your sample. An important thing contained in the kit is a release form for the dna to be used, which must be sent back with the samples. The other thing in the kit is a self addressed envelope to return your kit sample which needs paid postage from the United Kingdom (I'm not sure about US postage). Now comes the long wait. I hope that this is helpful in some way. Like you Dennis, I first had my dna tested in 2004 (43 marker) by an English company called DNA Heritage. FTDNA later bought them out and currently hold my old dna results there.

I didn't know this. I think a lot of heavy lifting can hopefully be done with autosomal testing. If your father is up for it for sure test him at Ancestry at the minimum and transfer the RAW data for free to FTDNA, GEDmatch and MyHeritage. I imagine if you have done any autosomal testing on yourself that you already generate matches up through your father's paternal/maternal lines. The key will be trying to make sense of which matches are which. So you haven't been able to do any genealogy up above your father at all? Your paternal grandfather/grandmother are currently mysteries?

HI Zack, I do know the names of my grandparents, gg, ggg, etc but it stops around 1765 and the 1765 is not confirmed... It's only subjective genealogy that I have done online. None are alive and I never met any of them. The information I have stops with my father as he is the eldest patrilineal connection I have alive. However, the information my father was told as to where we came from was/is 100% false. He had no idea we were Irish/proto-Celt. He said that there were "only a couple children in each past generation" He also has no information other than what I have been able to discover on my journey. I will ask him to take the Ancestry autosomal YDNA and transfer to FTDNA.

I ran the BY 198 test via YSEQ and here are the results. Could someone interpret this for me please? Thank you BY198 ChrY 15191400 15191400 C-

It simply means that the mutation or SNP BY198 is a 'T' at position 15191400, and you are negative for it. So you do not have or are not positive for this SNP (which means you have the reference base nucleotide at this position, or do not have a mutation at this position; so you have 'C' at this position).

I don’t have any direct access myself. I have used groups@ftdna.com to address issues with administrating projects but that is the only working email I know.

I've been in contact with FTDNA (concerning BigY website failure and people using older systems and browsers, script failures (gateway blocking), advert servers holding up or stopping connection and other website and communication problems) on their webchat and the person that I spoke to said that the FTDNA employee that deals with the aspects that I mentioned was away from work for a few days but that they would contact me by email early this week. I complained about ftdna not having a formal usable email address as opposed to the web form that they use now. I also tried to talk about issues of privacy and security in terms of the danger of external accessibility of third parties to our data and web profiling and advert tailoring associated with our web usage and presence within the context of our usage of FTDNA on the website and wider web.

FTDNA still haven't contacted me as promised.

Paul, at the their conference this last weekend FTDNA stated that they are unable to fix the 5 SNP Step view for Big Y matches. However, they did switch it to where it simply will show a person all their Big Y matches that are at or under 30 non-matching variants. But this isn't super useful because some of one's "matches" showing here can be somewhat distant such as 2000 years back to a common ancestor in some cases.