Requirements to join: CATEGORY 1: Kits for a biological male with a Neely variant surname. - After clicking Join, please provide some information on your Neely line. Such as starting with your Neely grandfather or great grandfather, and however many generations back you know. Alternatively, provide a link to a tree. This can be your own tree at Ancestry.com, or MyHeritage; or a link to a spot on a community tree like FamilySearch.org or Wikitree. - You must have a Kit Number from FamilyTreeDNA to join any project. If you don't have one, the least expensive way is to transfer the DNA from one of the other supported test sites: (e.g., Ancestry.com) https://www.familytreedna.com/products/autosomal-dna-upload - But the "Free upload" does not provide a male y-DNA Haplogroup. So we will ask you to pay the nominal fee to "Unlock" the results. - The y-DNA Haplogroup for a DNA transfer, or from the FamilyFinder test, is very rough. It will be to an ancestor born typically over 4,000 years ago. It may be too rough to properly tell you if the kit belongs in one of the existing Neely groups. To get the full benefit of this group, the kit should have a Y-DNA specific test. We recommend the Y-111 test at a minimum, and consider the BigY-700 test to be the best value. CATEGORY 2: Kits that show Y-DNA matches to a man with the Neely variant surname. - After clicking Join, provide information like the Neely match you see, or that one of the Administrators requested you to join, or similar. Purpose of the Neely Project: It is set up to establish the various lines of Neelys that immigrated from N. Ireland to America beginning in the early 1700's as well as other parts of the world. Several early Neely immigrants have been identified through genealogy by Neely researchers and we hope to identify some of the family lines by YDNA testing known American descendants of these early immigrants as well as those still living in Ireland. A longer term objective is to determine where the Neelys originated. There are many spelling variations of the Neely surname with the most common being Neeley, Neelly and Nealy. Also names that sound similar, including variations seen in some Pre-American Revolution German immigrants to the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, including: Neligh, Nelich, Nelig, and Naley. (Some of these lines ended up anglicized to Neely.)