December 2022.  Update.  The project has grown to 44 members.

September 2021.  Update.  The project has now grown to 42 members.  Advanced y-chrome tests taken by several members suggests a link to Seaton/Seton lines in Scotland. 

May 2018 - update.  The project has now grown to 38 members, with members from each of the three male descendants of Joseph, John, and Phillip as well as Hannah Sitton.

March, 2016

The project has now grown to 25 members, with five Sitton y-chromosome matches between direct male descendants of Joseph Sitton (1745), John Sitton (1763) and Phillip Sitton (1770).

 In addition, descendants of Hannah Sitton, born about 1767, married to William Dickson, have also joined the project and have autosomal dna matches to descendants of John Sitton (1763) and Phillip Sitton (1770), thus supporting traditional genealogical research that suggests that Hannah is a sister of John and Phillip. 


October 15, 2015 - update

Y-Chrome test results have just come back for a new member of the project who is a direct male descendant of John Sitton, 1763. His kit matches those of descendants of Joseph Sitton (1745) and Phillip Sitton (1770), providing further support for the relationship between these three men and their families.

October, 2015

Two members of the Sitton Families of North Carolina, 1700s project have recently been confirmed through snp testing as belonging to the Rox2Y-chromosome subclade, an R1b deep subclade, downstream from P312, DF27, ZZ12 etc. The“founder” of the Rox2 subclade is a male who probably lived at the end of the Early Middle Ages, roughly 1250-1300 years ago.  Increasingly, these“deep ancestry” snp test results are being used to help guide genealogical research. Given the narrow and limited population that is being studied in the Sitton Families of North Carolina, 1700s project, it seems likely that all of these Sittons and their descendants belong to the Rox2 subclade. This seems to offer additional information for helping confirm the origins of these Sitton families and determining whether they are, in fact, related to the John Sutton, 1590, line from New England.

Membership in the Rox2 subclade can be confirmed from a pattern in Y-STR values; reliable confirmation requires 111 marker STR testing.   If STR results with fewer markers tested suggest Rox2 membership, this can be confirmed more inexpensively by testing a single definitive SNP -FGC11397; a negative FGC11397 snp test result could help rule out a potential match to our Sitton Families of North Carolina, 1700s cluster. 

For information on the STR pattern that suggests Rox2 subclade as well as additional background on Rox2 subclade, see https://sites.google.com/site/rox2cluster/home.

September, 2015
Preliminary Analysis  
Preliminary analysis is based on a small number of samples, but is already yielding promising results.

Y-chromosome
Three direct male Sitton descendants have joined the project:  two reported descendants of Phillip Sitton (1770) and one reported descendant of Joseph Sitton (1745).  FTDNA reports all three as matching each other at 37 level test, with genetic distances ranging from 1 to 4.  North Carolina land documents show that a Joseph Sitton was the guardian of the orphans of a Phillip Sitton, who is presumed to have died around 1778,  i.e. Chatham County, North Carolina Deed Book B, p. 234, executed in 1779 by Joseph Sitton on behalf of the orphans of Phillip Sitton, recorded February 9, 1780.  (Note:  Phillip’s year of death is sometimes cited as 1788, an apparent transcription error.) These Y-chromosome test results tend to support traditional genealogy research suggesting that this Joseph Sitton (1745) was the Joseph Sitton identified in those land documents and is the uncle and guardian of Phillip Sitton (1770), who is believed to be one of the orphans. 

Autosomal DNA (family finder)  
Autosomal DNA (atdna) results are much more difficult to determine, as multiple ancestral lines must be identified and assessed before any conclusions can be reached.  Additionally, atdna becomes much less reliable as the number of ancestral generations increase.  With those important caveats in mind, the following observations can be made at this point:

*Four project participants with atdna results are reported descendants of Phillip Sitton (1770);
*Two project participants with atdna results are reported descendants of Joseph Sitton (1745);
*One project participant with atdna results is a reported descendant of John Sitton (1763);
*One project participant with atdna results is a reported descendant of Benjamin Sitton (1674) from  daughter Grace (New England-only line); and
*One project participant with atdna results is a reported descendant of John Sutton (1593) from daughter Mary (New England-only line).

Within the project, FTDNA reports atdna matches between one John Sitton (1763) kit and one Phillip Sitton (1770) kit; between one Phillip Sitton (1770) kit and one Joseph Sitton (1745) kit;  and between two  Phillip Sitton (1770) kits and kits of  Benjamin Sitton (1674)(daughter Grace) and John Sutton (1593)(daughter Mary).  Additionally, two Phillip Sitton (1770) kits from different lines are reported as atdna matches by FTDNA.

As more Sitton descendants join the project, we hope to have more detailed analysis of atdna results.  At this point, the atdna results tend to support the connections between John Sutton (1763), Phillip Sitton (1770) and Joseph Sitton (1745), but additional atdna results are needed to support any possible connections to the New England Sitton/Suttons.

We encourage anyone who may be related to any of these families to join the project to help further refine and investigate what connections DNA may help identify.  Please note that only project members can see all of the Y-chromosome project results, view the project activity feed, or use advanced search tools to identify other project members with family finder matching results.

August, 2015
Sitton Families of North Carolina 1700s FTDNA project is launched with ten initial members.