Hello Hackett Project Members,

You may know that Terry Barton is retiring Worldfamilies.net. Although my connection to Hackett is very remote, I've decided to assume the administration of this project. I admin (or co-admin) nine others, including Cooley, Fisk, and Akins.

My interest in Hackett comes through an ancient DNA link to John Hackett (1746-1808) of Derbyshire, England. The Hackett tester and my Cooleys (Group CF01 in the Cooley DNA Project) belong to haplogroup R1a-YP4253, which is probably 800-900 years old. The markers tell us that we (Hackett, Cooley, and others) are connected to the ancient Cochrane clan of Scotland. This is an R1a haplogroup and likely had Norman and/or Norse ancestry. (It's certainly not of old Briton orgins.) It's only because of this association that I've made this Hackett tester (who presently has no Hackett matches) the first listed group on the new project page at https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Hackett/default.aspx?section=yresults . It's a simple case of nepotism. :) Otherwise, it's policy in the projects I admin not to create groups with a single person. (I just want to keep my eye on this guy.)

Because I'm red-green colorblind, the multi-colored, confetti-like headers used by many admins to distinguish between groups comes across as mere noise to me. Instead, I use a strict color scheme: orange at the top for matching members, yellow for non-matching members of the same haplogroup, and gray for members of a different surname who appear to have no genetic tie to the surname.

I first tested in 2006 and officially became a co-admin of the Cooley project in 2012. I've since studied and reported on about twenty Big Y tests. I don't know that I can be considered an expert, but I've become pretty well versed in advanced SNP testing. I'll be happy to answer any questions about it. But I'm not a Hackett genealogist. I'll need to rely on members to guide me in some of the placement decisions.

Genealogy has been in my blood for more than forty years. I published the National Queries Forum (NQF) for nearly five years in the early '90s. In 1994, I put one of the first non-.edu genealogy websites online. Needless to say, Rootsweb was far more successful and I sold genealogy.org to them in 2000. It's now owned (and ignored) by Ancestry.com. In addition to the DNA projects and teaching genealogy and genetic genealogy through OLLI, I maintain a genetic genealogy blog at blog.ancestraldata.com.

So, here I am. If you want to know more about me, I have a more complete bio at newsummer.com. But because my connection to Hackett is remote, I'll probably drift in and out. I'll keep the results page maintained and will answer all questions to the best of my ability. I'll be particularly happy to discuss genetic genealogy and help you decide what tests to take next.

Best Regards, 

Michael Cooley 

michael.cooley@humboldt.edu