Greetings Gant/Gantt/Gaunt/Gauntt/Gent/Jent researchers, and all other variants!

 

I just wanted to email to let everyone know I’ve recently adopted the Gant-Gaunt DNA Project at Family Tree DNA.   I still have a little work to do, but have familiarized myself enough with the lines to have a general feel for things.   

 

To tell you a little about myself, I administer five other projects at Family Tree DNA, and happen to descend from both Peter Gaunt of Sandwich, MA and John Gant/Gent of Isle of Wight, VA.  When I saw that the project had no family administrator, I had to step in.   Now for project information.

 

Right now, there are three distinct lines identified by Y-DNA marker values.  They are:

 

-  The Peter Gaunt of Sandwich, MA line

 

-  The John Gant/Gent of Isle of Wight, Virginia line

 

-  A Culpeper Co., VA Gant/Gaunt line that matches a gentleman with roots in Cheshire, England

 

You can see these lines in the Y-DNA Results table in the project:

 

 

For some particulars on the lines...

 

The Culpeper Co., VA line has five members to date.   Four have roots in Virginia with Culpeper Co. believed to be the epicenter by at least once researcher.  The man with roots in England descends from an adopted father.  He hired a researcher in England to help learn his adoptive roots back to a certain point, and then I took the research back a little further to the early 1800s in Cheshire.    Note that this man has only tested to 12 markers which is generally not enough to draw conclusions on, but given the uniqueness of those markers and the common surname, there’s little doubt in my mind they’re connected.   Additional testing could be done to make things conclusive, but that costs more money of course.

 

The Peter Gaunt line is currently represented by six men all with ties to New Jersey.   Some of these men don’t have conclusive paper trails to Peter Gaunt, but it is widely believed they do indeed descend from him.  Y-DNA at least confirms they have a common paternal ancestor with the men who do have a paper trail to Peter, so it’s a logical conclusion that they do also.

The John Gant/Gent line of Isle of Wight, VA is not well-represented despite its age and reach.   Cliff Gant, long-time researcher and author of two books on this line, has tested and is the sole documented descendant of the line.    He does, however, have a match in the database with a Vincent Gantt whose sponsor, Jenifer Cassady, I’ve not been able to reach yet.   Vincent is not in the Gant-Gaunt project at Family Tree DNA, so his results do not appear in the table, but Cliff definitely matches him.   I will keep trying to reach Jenifer, but if anyone should happen to know either of them, I’d appreciate being put in touch with them. 

I’d love to see more men from all lines Y-DNA tested and help us prove more connections.  If anyone has had a Y-DNA test done with Ancestry which now no longer supports them, they can be transferred to Family Tree DNA.  Contact me for help.

And all descendants of any lines who have autosomal results from Family Tree DNA’s Family Finder test are also welcome to join the project, although tools for working with autosomal results at a project level are limited.   I have, however, happily discovered both Gant and Gaunt matches in my DNA. 

Please email with any questions.

Cheers!

Jane Gilbert Gant-Gaunt (and variants) Project Admin