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Windsor

Surname Project
  • 73 members

About us


Not too long ago, family history research had to be conducted with nothing more than oral, written and printed records ... and all too often, those records were either wrong, damaged, incomplete or just plain nonexistent. Try tracing your family line back with a bit of information like "John Windsor, born about 1800 in Virginia," and you'll appreciate what I mean (and I feel even sorrier for the Smiths and Joneses).


Census records are often incomplete; sometimes the most interesting or pertinent information was not even collected. Names are often misspelled, and the census taker's handwriting is often illegible. Family Bibles get burned. Oral histories are often based on rumor or the guesses of another genealogical researcher. Family names change, often for the strangest of reasons. And the list of problems goes on.


With the advent of genetic genealogy (also known as "DNA ancestry testing"), it has now become possible for us to overcome some of these limitations through developing profiles of certain types of DNA.




Y Chromosome DNA

The Windsor Surname Project concerns itself primarily with Y Chromosome DNA, or "Y-DNA" for short. Y-DNA is passed directly from father to son, and is uninfluenced by any other DNA.


There are two types of Y-DNA. The first tests what are known as short tandem repeats, or STRs. The second tests single nucleotide polymorhpisms, or SNPs (pronounced "snips"). Both are important.




STRs


Since in most Western societies the family surname also passes directly from father to son, Y-DNA testing can be used to trace a man's surname, and hence his male ancestral line, both legally and biologically. The Windsor Surname Project uses Y-DNA STR testing to achieve this first research goal. Men who match exactly on STRs, or who are sufficiently close, are considered related and are usually placed within the same family line. Y-DNA STR testing needs to be done first.




SNPs


After a man has done at least some of this first type of testing, he can benefit from taking a Y-DNA SNP test. This second type of Y-DNA helps confirm that any initial matches he has are not false positive matches, which can arise in certain instances. A close match on a large number of markers, combined with a match on a low-level SNP marker, virtually guarantees that two men are indeed related.


SNPs also help determine a man's Y-DNA haplogroup, the larger genetic group to which he belongs. This can be of help in determining race and ethnicity, and is extremely valuable to historians and anthropologists in tracing people movements over time.















WANTED!




Males who bear the following surnames:


  • Windsor
  • Winsor
  • Winser
  • Winzar
  • Winzer

or similar variants


AND


Who are willing to have their Y-DNA tested with Family Tree DNA for inclusion in the Windsor Surname Project database.


PLEASE NOTE:


This is NOT a British Royal Family project page. The current British royal house is a German family, formerly known as the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. George V, the reigning king, changed the name of the royal house to Windsor in 1917 for purely political reasons.


The surname of Windsor in all its variant spellings is a British surname that goes back nearly a thousand years. An Anglo-Saxon writing dating from the year 1060 mentions Windelsora. The name itself is an Anglo-Saxon place name referring to a place along a river where a traveler could land his boat and take a drink of water from a nearby windlass. As such, it occurs throughout the British Isles.


There is no reason for anyone who bears the surname of Windsor to derive significance from being associated with the British Royal Family. Most of us were around long before the name became attached to the royal house. Each Windsor line has its unique history and accomplishments.


To learn more about our objectives, please click on the Goals tab!


Be thankful that you belong to the Windsor line that you do, and seek to learn all that you can about your own family's place in our history. Testing your Y-DNA with Family Tree (or having a transfer and conversion from another company) and joining the Windsor Surname Project contributes toward that in a HUGE way.




















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