Leichnitz Surname Project

The standard genealogy Y-DNA test comes in the mail and you swab the inside of your mouth.  It is painless.  The result contains no personal information - it is a string of 37 numbers which you will share with those to whom you are related.  Only men can take the test, since only men have a Y chromosome.  The Y-chromosome is passed from father to son, typically unchanged.  Occasionally, a small change occurs,where a number goes up or down by one. For this reason, it is always best to test the most distant male, which is your father.

The test result would enable us to determine if you are descended from the earliest known Leichnitz, Christoff Leichnitz or if you are another previously unknown branch.  If your surname is Leichner or Likenes or some variation, the test would tell us if your surname originally was Leichnitz, or Leichnitz was originally your surname.  (Or maybe Leichnitz was originally Leichner, etc.)

In most surname projects, there is considerable uncertainty as to ancestral lines and the test can help identify all those different lines.  Leichnitz is such a rare surname that we expect that most people tested with that surname will be a match to the line started by Christoff Leichnitz.  But we don’t know where the surname came from or what it was before Christoff lived. We also don’t know if Leichner and Likeness are only new variations or if they are variations that have been used for hundreds of years.  And we don’t know if the many Likeness found in the Netherlands are related or not. So it would be quite exciting to the members of this family to find out more about the current and distant ancestry.

For more information on the Leichnitz Family Tree, click on the following link:

http://www.leichnitz.net/

I would like to invite you or preferably your father, if living, to test.  Below is a link to the Leichnitz surname project at Family Tree DNA and a link to the FTDNA website for DNA testing. 

Leichnitz - Activity Feed | Family Tree DNA

www.ftdna.com/groups/Leichnitz/ | www.ftdna.com

You will want to order the Y-DNA 37 marker test (currently priced at $99-129 USD).  This test will tell you about what is called your "direct male line", which is your father, his father, his father and back in time.  You would have inherited your Y-chromosome from your father.  The test result also tells the participant about their distant origins through a “haplogroup” which traces your early paternal migration over 100s of thousands of years.

Let’s take a moment and look at a surname distribution map of Leichnitz in Germany, which you can see at this link. (Type in Leichnitz, and click Suche)

http://www.verwandt.de/karten/

This map is not typical, because the distribution pattern of the surname is not clear.  It could be a single origin, with early migrations, or a multiple origin surname.  What this means, is that either all Leichnitz are related (single origin) where one man took on the surname centuries ago, or as a multiple origin, multiple men took on the surname in different locations - so we may or may not share an ancestor, depending on if we are from the same origin.  Usually these maps are clear as to which is the case.  For example, map Schumacher, and it is clearly a multiple origin surname. 

Information about the surname is another discovery we will make over time as you (or your father), and then additional Leichnitz men test.  These are discoveries that you can't make from the paper records alone.

I do hope you will talk to your father or uncles about participating, so we can take a journey of discovery together.  This is an opportunity for your father to make a contribution to the knowledge of the surname. You and anyone else he designates will continue to have access to the result, and be able to do match searches at any time, to see who he matches. There are NO subscription charges associated with the test kit.

I would be glad to answer any questions, or refer you to reading material/published articles.

Earl Schultz

earschz63@outlook.com

13 Mount Robson Close SE