Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:31:40 -0400
From: [email protected] (John Chandler)
Subject: DNA discussion
The following is an open-ended discussion of the Blanchard Family DNA Study by those who have participated (and anyone else who has been following the project). Many of these messages can also be found in the archives of the Blanchard-L discussion group.
In order to preserve privacy for those who wish it, I will serve as relay for the discussions. When I receive a message, I will mask out whatever information the sender wants to keep private and forward the rest to the list. Also, with the sender's permission, I will add the message to the web log. Obviously, list subscribers can respond to such messages by replying to the list, but I would ask that any such reply include a notation indicating whether the reply is intended to go into the log or not. In the absence of such a notation, I will use my own judgment.
Note: any message posted to the list will appear in the list archives "forever", so the usual rules of netiquette apply here just as in ordinary mailing list discussions.
Here is a list of the items you need to consider when sending me a message for the DNA discussion:
I have been unable to document the father of my 3g.grandfather though
there is considerable circumstantial evidence that he descends from
Thomas B., the 1639 immigrant. My exact 12/12 match to the Thomas
haplotype strongly suggests that Thomas is my ancestor. Our DNA
web page shows clearly that the Thomas haplotype (Group 1) and the
John (son of Joseph) haplotype (Group 2) do not match, leading to
the conclusion that Thomas and Joseph/John did not share a recent
common ancestor. Knowing this, I would not search further among the
descendants of Joseph to confirm my 4g.grandfather.
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The results of our families DNA testing show our line goes back to Thomas, the 1639 immigrant. Which does help me to narrow down my search, but still leaves a several generation gap. I would appreciate anyone with Thomas as their ancestor to please look at your records to help me find the missing generations. Especially if you have lines going up to Maine.
I have taken the Blanchards back to Robert Blanchard of Unity, Waldo Co., Maine. The records state he was born in 1790 Gorham, Maine and married Hannah Stevens of Gorham, Maine married Hannah Stevens (b.Sept.18,1798 / d.Oct.11,1877). He died Mar.15,1875 Unity, Maine.
I have investigated records in Gorham and have found no trace of
him. The only Blanchards of that periond are John & Dorcas (Carsley)
Blanchard married June 4, 1792. The only children listed for them are
John (1795) and William (1793). They may or may not be tied in with my
line.
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I am stuck in Vermont with my G G Grandfather William Blancher. He is buried in Victory, at the East Concord Cemetery. His grave stone states that he died in 1853, was born about 1790, but no location is indicated. I want to connect with the BLANCHARD line if possible, to find his parents.
Replies: #4, #5
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Have you found William B. in the 1850 census - it should list his
birth state. That would verify Vermont or not, for you. Then check
for Blanchar(d) in the 1790 Census Index of that state for possible
names of the likely Blanchards. Good luck in your searching.
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Since I tested out to match on the DNA test with the Thomas Blanchard lines, according to John Chandler, I thought it would be a good idea that I resubmit to the list what my earliest "find" is in my search on my family tree. I have put down my GG grandfather's name and his children, in order that maybe one of us have the cross match on a tree. I have found the name spelling both ways on records of the same individuals.
1. William Blancher/ard born abt 1790 where ? Died 25 Mar 1853 at Victory, VT Married 28 Apr 1816 Mary "Polly" Adams b. 2 Jun 1797 at Watersford, VT, died 14 Sep 1882, Victory, VT
Children:
2. Joseph T. Blancher/ard b. 1816 Bradleysvale, VT, Married to Juliana Hall on 10 May 1840 Kirby, VT
2. William A Blancher/ard b. 3 Feb 1817, Bradleysvale, VT, married 24 Sep 1837 to Sarah Ann Jones b. 9 Oct 1816, Newport, VT, died 13 May 1861, North Concord, VT
2. John C. Blancher/ard b. 1818, VT married Susanna or Unius (unknown surname)
2. Mary R. Blancher/ard b. 1820, Victory, VT married 10 May 1840 at Kirby, VT to George W. Bennett
2. Corneliuis C. Blancher/ard b. 16 Feb 1825, Victory, VT, d. 16 Jan 1847 Bradleysvale, VT
2. Ira Blancher/ard 1829 VT
2. Ruth S. Blanche/ard b. 1831, Bradleysvale, VT, d. 19 Jan 1857, North Concord, VT married 28 Apr 1850, Kirby, VT to Eleazer "Belzar" May
2. George T. Blancher/ard 1833 b. Lyndon, VT, d. 1 Aug 1862 Petersburg, PA (Military Cem) married 1855 to Almira H. Adams b. 1834, d. 1855
2. Roderick B. "Roger" Blancher/ard b. 1835, Concord, VT married to
Mary Jane Hinman b. 1835
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I have just updated the Blanchard DNA page.
There is one new group added to the table, associated with a variant surname Blancett, and one possible new group that just turned up with three unexpected matches, who are even now poring over their research notes looking for possible connections. This is the sort of thing that is bound to happen sooner or later, but simply cannot be predicted.
Meanwhile, I note that the first flurry of traffic in the DNA discussion has dwindled away. If you take a look at the log and have anything to say in response -- or anything else -- about the DNA study, feel free to write either directly to BLANCHARD-L or to me (for relaying to the list).
John Chandler
Replies: #7
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Fascinating stuff, John!
It tends to light a fire under me to locate the descendants (if any) of my great-uncle George Blanchard--he's the most recent male Blanchard in my line who might have had male offspring. It will be tough sledding, though-- we lost track of him around 1900.
Dave Schuler
Chicago, Illinois
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Ludelle,
You wrote:
> I am sending info only as far back as Benjamin Blanchard, Sr. for > whom I have(what I believe to be) accurate documentation. This is > the beginning of my direct lineage and extends forward thru my > mother, Ruby Elizabeth Blanchard and to myself. [Migrating from > Charlestown, MA >Nansemond County, VA >Chowan County, NC >Columbia > County, GA >McDuffie County, GA]
You're in luck. Some very distant relations of yours have joined the Blanchard DNA project to help investigate the past. In all, now, there are three descendants of Benjamin Blanchard who have had their DNA tested. The results show that they are indeed all closely related to each other, but the results also show that they are NOT related to either of the identified Blanchard lines of Massachusetts.
Conclusion: Benjamin either was born in Virginia or came over from Europe (most likely England).
To see the details of how we came to the above conclusion, visit the web site.
Note: if you have male Blanchard cousins, they would also be
eligible to join the DNA study. Also note that Benjamin Sr had
other sons besides Benjamin Jr, but, so far, Benjamin Jr is the
only son represented in the DNA study. If you know of direct
male-line descendants of his other sons, please pass the word
about the DNA study.
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Incidentally, there is a piece of news for the participants in the
DNA project: there is a new publicly searchable database
of DNA results
which is hosted by the testing company FTDNA. They make it very easy
to upload your test results by simply clicking on a box while visiting
your personal web page at the FTDNA site. I recommend it.
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This is the fourteenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. Things have been quiet lately, partly because of a temporary slowdown at the processing lab, which is just now clearing a backlog that started to pile up in December. The latest news is one new result (for the newest ECP member, 19224). Interestingly enough, he is a 12/12 match with the earliest member, 3340 (earliest in terms of kit number, that is -- I haven't kept track of exactly when people joined the ECP). This match is particularly interesting because the two of them are also a 12/12 match with one (and only one) of the members of Group 1, and this selective matching suggests that both 3340 and 19224 are descendants of Thomas - Samuel - Samuel. This hint is written up in the Blanchard DNA web page.
Speaking of the backlog, I see that two 12-to-25 extensions are still pending and expected back this week. Real Soon Now...
Last time, I mentioned some more test subjects of French origin. Unfortunately, they still haven't sent their test kits in. I don't know what the problem is. Meanwhile, there is some progress to report for the subgroup of Group 99 that is looking for a connection to the Blanchards of Rhode Island: they have recruited a known descendant of that Blanchard line, and the test kit has been returned to the lab already. We should see the results in 4-6 weeks.
I also mentioned last time the new public DNA database maintained by FTDNA, known as www.ysearch.org. I see that 11 of our project have entered their results into the database. One, in particular, has "hit the jackpot" in terms of unexpected matches -- 3362 has 14 exact 12/12 matches, all with different surnames. This is not really a big surprise, though, since 3362 also has multiple hits in the European forensic DNA database. Because his haplotype is so common, these different-surname matches probably have to be viewed as coincidences. There is one other surprise match that may be a bit more meaningful -- the haplotype of Group 1 matches a Virginian named Brooks. This Brooks line has been traced back only to 1720, and so they could conceivably be descendants of Thomas Blanchard (probably not, but you never know).
John Chandler
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This is the fifteenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There has been another development on the 12/12 match of 3340 and 19224 with 3216 (a member of Group 1). 3340 has now extended his test to 25 markers and discovered that he has a second mutation (on the very last of the 25 markers). The chances are that this second mutation is more recent than the other one, but it would be a fantastic breakthrough if either of 3216 or 19224 should share this mutation as well. 19224 has already ordered an extension to 25 markers, and 3216 is considering it.
The latest news is really exciting. The persistence of the "orange" subgroup in Group 99 has now paid off with the creation of a new group, Group 7. The results have come back for the new participant who is a documented descendant of the Blanchards of Rhode Island, and he matches them 12/12. This match is enough to confirm the link that 6607 had recently found with that line, and so the new group starts off with two members: 6607 and 20319. Interestingly enough, the common ancestor of these two members (William) is the earliest known progenitor of the group, but at least one of the unconnected matches still waiting in Group 99 has been traced back to a forebear who cannot be a descendant of William. Therefore, we can expect to see some breakthroughs in the process of linking up the rest of the potential members of Group 7. (Note that we also have many potential members of Group 1 in Group 99, but they have not been traced back so far as to push the bounds of being descended from progenitor Thomas.)
In any case, I have just now updated the DNA web page, and you can see the new group there.
John Chandler
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The Blanchard DNA project has just uncovered an intercontinental match. The latest test results are an exact match for test subject 3197 (who is from North America). The new testee is from Australia. This is a real breakthrough.
There's just one problem. I don't know who the testee is. I found his results in the Sorenson worldwide genealogy database, and the identities are all confidential. What they do have, though, is four-generation pedigrees, and the names of people born before 1900 are shown. This person's line is as follows:
William Waddell /Blanchard/; b. 1863 in:Collingwood, Victoria, AUS
+ Rose Isabella /Westgarth/; b. 1861 in:Ballarat, Victoria, AUS
..... William Joseph /Blanchard/; b. 1897 in:Collingwood, Victoria, AUS
..... + Ethel May /Sawyer/; b. 1897 in:Donhead, Wilts, ENG
.......... ? /Blanchard/
.......... + /Sharman/
............... ? /Blanchard/
Does anybody recognize this lineage? I don't actually need to know who the testee is, but the ancestors are of the utmost importance.
John Chandler
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This is the sixteenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are four new members of the plan since the last notice. A new development for the project as a whole is the appointment of two co-administrators, Fletcher Blanchard and Allen Blancett, both of whom are members of the plan. I announced these appointments on BLANCHARD-L, and I hope you all saw the announcement there, but there's no harm in a little repetition. The co-administrators have two main jobs for now: to assure continuity of the project in case I get hit by a bus tomorrow and to help in recruiting participants for the project.
Group 6 has made some progress recently. Two new members have been added, and some potential members have signed up for testing. Interestingly, the lines are beginning to blur between this group and the rest of the project -- one Blanchard has been shown to belong to Group 6, while one Blan[s/c]et has been shown not to belong.
The latest news is the expansion of Group 2 to cover three continents. In July, I discovered a DNA match for Group 2 in the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation database. Amazingly, this match is an Australian whose ancestry has been traced to England in the 19th century. (Although the progenitor presumably came from England, we have never had any explicit evidence before.) Strictly speaking, the new match is not yet a member of Group 2 because his line has been traced back only to the early 1800s. Clearly, the task of following it back to the early 1600s will not be easy, but there is hope.
You, too, can search the SMGF database for matches. I have created an index all the haplotypes found in our project with direct links to the SMGF database, avoiding the need to translate and enter the haplotypes laboriously by hand. When you reach the SMGF search results, if any, you can then examine the pedigree of each participant who matches (or nearly matches) the kit you specified. Needless to say, if you find a match who appears to be related to you, please let me know.
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~blanch-l/smgfbl.html
John Chandler
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Dear list members,
About two and a half years ago a group of Blanchard surname researchers started a project by which they hoped to confirm or refute assumed relationships between certain early American Blanchards of English origin through the use of DNA testing of their descendants. The project has been very successful in achieving its original purpose and continues to provide some very interesting information about several separate Blanchard lines.
The original group has graciously opened the project to participation by any ma le Blanchard that wishes to do so. I am writing at this time to let Acadian Blanchard researchers know that the Blanchard DNA project now includes test results of one person whose lineage has been researched through conventional genealogical research methods back to Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert. It is also my hope to generate interest among other potential candidates to participate in the program and help build a DNA data base for the Acadian Blanchards that could be very helpful to all researchers and perhaps others who cannot establish their Blanchard heritage through conventional means.
The person whose DNA test results are currently included is one of my first cousins; the son of one of my mother's brothers. My line is as follows: 1- Jean and Radegonde Lambert; 2- Martin and Marguerite Guilbeau; 3-Martin and Isabelle Dupuis; 4-Jean and Catherine Forest; 5-Charles and Marie Alendre; 6-Pierre and Archange Cartier; 7-Joseph and Marie-Genevieve Brouillard; 8-Joseph and Victorine Brouillard; 9-Joseph and Edouardina Hebert; 10-Gertrude and Joseph Fontaine; 11-Myself. It would be very desirable to have the participation of someone whose male descendancy is traceable to Jean and Radegonde Lambert but whose direct lineage is as different from mine as possible, e. g. through Jean and Radegonde's son Guillaume. Of course, the more data and the more varied th e paths, the better.
Unfortunately, testing is not Free, but, the directors of the Blanchard DNA project have negotiated special rates with a testing lab. While they are now recommending a 25 marker test it is possible to do an initial screening with 12 markers and later expand that to 25 if it seems desirable. Current rates are: 12-marker = 99 + SH = $101; 12 + upgrade = 99 + 90 + SH = $191; 25-marker = 169 + SH = $171. Privacy may also be a concern to some and the project directors have worked out methods to preserve anonymity, for those who wish to do so, and also allow people to communicate with other testees if they wish to do so.
I would encourage any Blanchard male descendant who has a well researched connection back to our pioneer Blanchard Acadian ancestors to participate. While I don't particularly want to put myself between suitable candidates and the Project Directors, If test cost becomes a prohibitive factor for an otherwise desirable candidate please contact me. I would be willing to provide some modest subsidy and would also be willing to act as a focal point for others who might be like minded in the interest of expanding this data base.
Phil Fontaine
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This is the seventeenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are two new members of the plan since the last notice. The latest news is the addition of a new member to Group 2, establishing (at last) the full 25-marker ancestral haplotype. Group 6 has also expanded lately by extending the existing members to 25 markers (all but one are now at 25).
Another new development is the establishment of a subsidy fund at FTDNA to help pay for DNA testing in our project. This fund was started in October and has grown by the generous contributions of project participants and friends. The first $200 of those contributions were matched by a gift from FTDNA as well, but there's a catch -- we can only use $25 of the matching gift on any one test, and anything we don't use of that $200 before December 31 will evaporate. So far, we have used only $50 and have plans/hopes for using $75 more in the next week or so, but that leaves $75 "up for grabs". If you know any likely candidates for testing, please urge them to come forward and take advantage of this temporary windfall.
In case you want to make a contribution to the fund, you can do so on line:
http://www.familytreedna.com/contribution.html
You can dedicate the contribution as a memorial and/or place a restriction on how the contribution is to be used by entering the name and/or restriction in a box marked "in memory of".
John Chandler
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This is the eighteenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are several new members of the plan since the last notice. We had a flurry of recruitment in December, driven in part by the need to use up the FTDNA matching gift in our DNA fund. Two of the recent test results were for Blanchards from the north of England. We had hoped that they would match each other and also Group 2 (which has now been tentatively assigned to the north of England because of the match with "sm01"). It seems, however, that life is more interesting than we expected, and the two samples are both unique. The diversity of test results is evidently as high in England as in the US. We had also hoped that the UK-based DNA study announced by the BFHS would have some results by now to compare against ours, but, so far, nothing has been released. We are still hoping to find and recruit more test subjects either in Europe or with solid genealogical links to specific places there.
In the meantime, American diversity has been confirmed by the addition of a new Group 8 to our web site. This is a second group with the -et ending. Group 6 (the other group that is mainly -et[t]) has been growing, and now boasts a majority extended to 37 markers, as well as two different mutations identified in the first 12 markers. Note that mutations are, or at least can be, especially valuable in showing who is most closely related to whom in a group whose relationships are not entirely clear.
The table of results has been modified slightly. There is now a little arrow at the right end of any row of Table 1a when that row is continued in Table 1b.
Today, the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation announced a new edition of the SMGF web site with thousands more DNA samples and an improved interface. As you may recall, we have a page of links enabling anyone to look up a test result from our project in the SMGF database:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~blanch-l/smgfbl.html
I have determined -- mirabile dictu! -- that the new SMGF site still supports this sort of one-click lookup, with only some slight modifications, and the newly updated index of links is now online as well. I confirmed that "sm01" is still findable at SMGF via the new interface. By all means, visit the new site and see if you have a match with a surname that looks interesting. The list of surnames still has only one Blanchard (that would be sm01), but there are also Blanch, Blanco, Blanke, Blankenbaker, and Blankenship. (In case you want to see what the old site had, it's still available for the time being from our old index page, which you can reach from our new one.)
John Chandler
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This is the nineteenth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are several new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results. Group 6 is rapidly closing in on 100% extension to 37 markers, and Group 2 now has one member extended to 37. Seven of the twelve additional markers are also part of the test panel of the SMGF DNA project, and we can now confirm that those seven are an exact match between sm01 and the extended member of Group 2. Note: I have written in the past on how it is now relatively easy to look for matches in the SMGF database using the lookup links for our test results. The main motivation is to find additional indirect participants like sm01, but there is another aspect. If the direct participants contribute their DNA to the SMGF project, we can find *their* results in the database in the same way (presumably as exact matches) and extend the results to markers that FTDNA does not test (and at no cost). Of course, patience is required, since the lead time between submitting DNA and appearing in the database can be a year, but genealogy is certainly a pursuit that has always demanded patience. You can learn how to donate by visiting the SMGF web site
Another bit of news: the markers that are handled by FTDNA but not by SMGF are now offered by a new testing lab in Germany, named Biotix. A member of Group 3 has used this lab to fill in three such markers. Also, a member of Group 6 has used Biotix to fill in two markers offered by SMGF and not by FTDNA. One interesting, but still tentative, result from Biotix concerns the DYS464 signature of Group 3: although both FTDNA and DNAH reported this as 15/15/16/16, Biotix says 15/16/-/-. The test is slightly different, but it seems likely that the new result is applicable.
We have had no new results from Europe since last time, but there are hints that the UK-based DNA study announced by the BFHS may be about to start in earnest. Another hint of things to come: a participant named Blacketer has just joined, hoping to match some group within our project.
One other possible source of recruitment: the Genographic Project of the National Geographic. Reportedly, tens of thousands have ordered test kits from that project. When the results are returned, the participants are given the option of transferring into the FTDNA customer database. If someone whose surname is on our list of variants transfers, he is added to our project. So far, no one has joined by this route, but I expect it is only a matter of time.
John Chandler
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This is the twentienth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are several new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results, including three new surnames: Black, Blacketer, and Blance. This Black was the first person to join our study from the Genographic Project (which I mentioned in the last bulletin). He joined mostly because he had a perfect 12/12 match with Group 6 from his initial test results. Subsequent extenstion has shown that he is not closely related to Group 6 after all, but the 12-marker match coupled with the coincidental similarity of surname was intriguing. The Blacketer and Blance both joined because of the surname similarity. Interestingly, they match each other about as well as the match anyone else in the project (that is, not very closely). Each one is a distinct line.
In the last bulletin, I mentioned the SMGF database and our direct lookup links to it for the members of our project. In the meantime, their web site has been upgraded with new data and a long-awaited new feature -- it is now possible to look up results at SMGF by surname. In this new release, I found two members of our project who had submitted samples to SMGF the previous year, and one of them would not have been found without the surname lookup feature, since his DNA results were only partly finished. You can see these new results in Table 1b on our web page. Again, I urge all members of our project who haven't already submitted a sample to SMGF to consider doing so now. You can find out how to do it at
The latest news: three members of Group 99 who appear to be related to Group 1 now have results that extend into Table 1b, and so we are in the process of extending a member of Group 1 to see whether they match out to 37 markers, using the Blanchard DNA fund (composed of donations from friends of the project).
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-first notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are two new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results, including one especially interesting development: the first results from the long-anticipated DNA project of the (largely UK-based) BFHS. These new results were obtained at DNA Heritage (a UK-based firm) and covered 43 markers, including all 25 of the markers in the FTDNA 25-marker test. These results are a 12/12 match with the consensus of Group 7 (the Rhode Island Blanchards) and a 25/25 match with the only member of Group 7 who had extended beyond 12 markers. Interestingly enough, that same member had long ago ordered an upgrade to 37, and these additional results came within two days of the BFHS participant's. Of the 12 markers covered by this upgrade, 7 are included in the 43-marker report, and 5 of the 7 match. Since the new member's ancestry has been traced to mid-18th-century Northumberland, we now have a clue to the possible origins of the Rhode Island Blanchards. We can now look forward to more participants in the UK, as the excitement generated by this match may persuade more BFHS members to join.
Another recent addition was the extension of a member of Group 1 to 37 markers. (I reported last time that this extension was pending.) This extension confirmed that the green-color-coded members of Group 99 do indeed match Group 1 out to 37 markers. Thanks go to the contributors to the Blanchard DNA fund, which paid for this test.
John Chandler
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Not being in the Blanchard male line means that I cannot participate. But I have two female cousins currently living in Minnesota who are 5th and 6th generations from our female Blanchard ancestor (Orpha Blanchard, b. 1845 in Clinton Co., NY, to David Blanchard and Lorain Perry). If my cousins' mtDNA was tested would there be anything gained from it for our Blanchard research? I do realize that this mtDNA line would go back to the Perry ancestor and not David Blanchard's mother's line.
Tom Wilde
Chesapeake, Virginia
Replies: #21
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That's the key point. The testing could help your Blanchard research if, for example, it allowed you to identify which of two Lorain Perrys was the wife of David Blanchard. If you already know her parentage, or if you have no idea, then there's not much to be gained in testing these cousins.
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-second notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are four new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results, including three new reports from the DNA project of the (largely UK-based) BFHS. As I mentioned last time, the first report from the BFHS project was a match for our Group 7. Now, it turns out that a total of three of the four BFHS reports are in this category, and the fourth matches someone else who was already in our project. Thus, 100% of the new BFHS participants have found proof of connections that could only be surmised before (and I believe some of them were indeed surmised, though not fully expected). One might argue that the limited number of BFHS participants cannot be taken as a "trend" and also that these first few participants would be the BFHS members with the highest chances of making such connections. However, I still think it is significant that no new haplotypes were discovered in this initial effort. It would have been easy to suppose that the pool of UK Blanchards was only partly represented by the largely American set of project participants before this. In other words, even if the new BFHS participants turned out to match each other (as three of them do), there was no reason to expect them all to match anyone already in the project -- but they do. I think this may be a sign that future UK participants stand a very good chance of finding matches promptly.
It is an open question as to how many different French Blanchard lines there may be.
Another new development since the last bulletin is the availability of results from the 67-marker test at FTDNA. I have created a Table 1c to hold the results for markers 38-67. Once again, Group 6 has pioneered the upgrade, and we now have three results for Group 6 with the full set of 67 markers. These results have confirmed once again that Group 6 is closely related, even though the common ancestor has still not been identified. One of the possible benefits of upgrading is the discovery of mutations that may aid in identifying the relationships among the group members, and, indeed, two additional mutations have been found among the new markers. It remains to be seen whether these mutations will identify branches.
Another recent revision is the "new look" of the DNA data in Table 1a. I have taken the color-coded members of Group 99 who match existing groups and moved them into special subgroups of their own, adjacent to (but separated from) the groups that they match. This is in accord with the treatment in Table 1b, where the data were already grouped according to the color codes.
Yet another development: SMGF announced a new release of their on-line database. No new test subjects were added with surnames relevant to our project, but we obtained a few new results for people already in the project. Some of these new results were repetitions of results we already had from other sources, and I am happy to say that the redundant results all matched what we had before. (This is not a foregone conclusion -- see the project web page for a discussion of discrepancies previously discovered in Group 6). The SMGF search index has been updated to include everyone in the project as of July 30.
John Chandler
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My DNA test tells me my Blanchards are Thomas and probably Samuel. Unfortunately I have not been able to connect the line from my end to Thomas and Samuel.
I have traced my line back to a Martin Blanchard that was born about 1787 in New Jersey. Certain articles have said his father was named Aaron but there is no actual proof of that. The articles claim Aaron was born around 1767 and was the son of one of three Blanchard brothers who fought in the Revolutionary War battle of Springfield, NJ. There is no proof of that either.
Martin claimed that his father was born in "Philadelphy." There is a small community named Philadelphia in upstate New York. Is it possible it is near where your relatives lived in VT? Since I am not sure of Martin's father's actual name do you know of any in your line that had a son named Martin in the late 1700s?
Harry R. Blanchard Jr
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This is the twenty-third notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are two new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results, though three sets of results are unfinished (for 67-marker upgrades). The biggest news is the creation of a new Group 9 for a Blanchard family from the Wiltshire/Dorset border area. Coincidentally, this group includes one member who had already been hooked up tentatively to a "surprise" match from the same area who joined our project earlier this year and seemed likely to be able to find a genealogical link in due course. That link has not yet been found, but an "expected" match has now come through and confirmed the existence of the group. This group provides an interesting lesson in the perils of conducting a DNA project at more than one lab -- one of the members of this group had long ago tested 25 markers at FTDNA, but the two others tested 43 markers at DNA Heritage. The latter two match each other exactly on the 25 markers tested for all, but differ on three markers tested only for the two. Two of those discrepant markers are included in the 37-marker panel available from FTDNA, but the third is not. This member has therefore elected to get a 23-marker test from DNA Heritage (the minimum order allowed) to add all 18 markers he did not already have. In contrast, one FTDNA member of Group 7 who was faced with a similar desire to compare against DNAH members already had the 37-marker test at FTDNA and needed only 11 additional markers to fill out his haplotype -- he has chosen to order 9 of the 11 from the brand-new subsidiary lab set up by FTDNA after buying out another DNA testing firm, DNA Fingerprint. It remains to be seen whether the new lab is going to meet the schedule of promised results.
There is another possible new group in the offing. A "surprise match" at 25 markers has turned up for a previously unmatched member, and the two are now exploring for a genealogical link while waiting for an upgrade to 37 (which will very likely reconfirm the match). This match looks promising enough that I have set aside a new color code for these two in anticipation of the creation of a group. Stay tuned for developments. Indeed, there is yet another possible group that turned up in much the same way, except that the match is only 11/12, and no upgrade has yet been ordered.
We now have three members who each have two (but only two) of the three pieces that constitute the 37-to-67 upgrade. Because of software changes at FTDNA, we are now able to see these results, even though the upgrade package is not fully complete. Thus, these three are now shown in Table 1c on the web site and can compare results against our other members with 67-marker results. These three are 12733, 18091, and 41108. Take note because you won't receive a "results ready" message from FTDNA until all three pieces are done!
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-fourth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are two new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results and a likely new kinship group.
The first news item is the recent expansion of the SMGF online database. I found a new surname represented in their list of surnames: BLANCHER, and I discovered that the test subject with that name was a member of our project (by extracting the DNA haplotype and inspecting the pedigree). I have therefore added the new information to his entry in the project data as an extension of the existing FTDNA test results. The 28 markers that had already been tested agree exactly with the SMGF results. I have also updated the SMGF lookup page to reflect everything that has come along since last spring.
The second news item is bigger. We now have a group of six participants within Group 99 who are a close match and almost surely will come up with a conventional genealogy link and thus become a new group of their own. They have a mix of surnames (Blanchard, Blanchette, Blanchet), but they all have French Canadian ties, and most of them say that the surname used to be Blanchet. This is all very new, and so I have just set these six apart by giving them a separate color code within Group 99, but I expect to have a full-fledged group in the near future.
There is a follow-up on Group 9, which was announced in the last bulletin. One member, who had originally been tested by FTDNA on 25 markers, wished to be able to compare against the results of the other member and the associate member (who had tested with DNA Heritage). As I mentioned last time, he elected to upgrade by ordering a 23-marker test (the minimum order) from DNAH. Since then, the results have come back. The five overlap markers all agreed between the two labs (always good to hear!), and the other 18 gave him an entry in Table 1b. The new results helped to solidify Group 9 by agreeing 17/18 with the other full member. I also mentioned last time that another member had chosen a different route of upgrading, by using the using special-order testing now offered by FTDNA. Unfortunately, this new option is still in its shake-down stage, and the results have not yet come back.
On a more positive note, I can report that all of the overdue 67-marker upgrades have now come back. As preliminary, anecdotal evidence hinted, the 30 new markers have a fairly low average mutation rate. Among seven members of Group 6 who ordered the upgrade, only three mutations were discovered (out of a possible 210), compared with the nine mutations found (out of a possible 180) in the 25-to-37 upgrade.
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-fifth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. There are four new members of the plan since the last notice. Also, several new results and a newly created Group 10. In fact, we have just passed the milestone of 100 members with results obtained and posted on the web page.
As I mentioned last time, a group of six closely matching participants suddenly materialized this year. Now, three of the members have found that their lineages connect at a French emigrant to Canada, named Blanchet or Blanquet, and so we have a confirmed new group. The other three all have Canadian ties and probably are descendants of the same emigrant, but their lineages do not go back far enough yet to prove it.
There is yet another possible group-to-be that started out as a 12/12 match last fall. Both testees have since been extended to 67, and the comparison now stands at 65/67, which is close enough to show that the link between them is almost surely within the past five centuries and perhaps much more recent. You can see the pair with a separate color code in Group 99 in the tables. The two have not yet found any link, but I am hoping for a breakthrough some day soon.
The logjam of FTDNA "advanced orders" finally broke in early March. One of our members, 6607, has now received the test results for the 11 markers in the Sorenson 43-marker panel that are not included in the FTDNA 37-marker panel, and so he can now compare with the three members of his afiliate group who tested at DNA Heritage (and thus got the 43-marker test). The comparison shows near-perfect agreement on the 11 markers.
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-sixth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. I have been slow to send out this notice, mostly because activity in the project has been slow, but there are now five new members of the plan, and I think it's time to send a bulletin. We have several new results and a newly adapted SMGF links page (more on that in a moment).
One of the new results is from a member of the BFHS who has been tested and found to be a match with Group 1, thus making another intercontinental genetic link. Unfortunately, we don't yet have a paper connection, but the knowledge of the genetic link may help in tracing the ancestry.
Another result was an additional member of Group 7, confirmed by a genealogical link. Yet another was a result that remains in Group 99, but has a tantalizing near-match with two others in that category (see 87457). All three of the near-matches have tentative links to France. One of them is 14459, whose email address has apparently changed, and so I have not learned the details of his ancestry.
Another addition was more in the nature of an upgrade -- we continue to get results from the SMGF database for members of our project who have submitted samples to the SMGF. We now have eight members with results in that database, including two that I added "on spec" because their names are Blanche and Blanke, respectively. They haven't matched any other members yet, but I'm still watching. The latest release of the SMGF database revealed a change in the posted results for one member for DYS464. Originally, he had 15-15-17-17, the most common values for that marker, but he is now shown as 15-15-15-17.
The latest release at SMGF also "broke" the lookup index in our web site, because they changed the numering conventions, but I have now revised the links so that they work again.
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-seventh notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. In the nine months since the last bulletin, we have obtained DNA results for 15 participants, including both newcomers and long- standing members of the project. There are also 8 new members of this list. Most of the new results are for people who either belong to or match known groups (1, 3, 6, 7, 10).
It is now possible to see the latest results in the project as soon as they are available -- except for the results that have been obtained from labs other than FTDNA. The URL for the new, automatic web page is http://www.ftdna.com/public/blanchard. Note: the color scheme is as close as possible to the scheme we have on the main web page, but there are some differences because of the restricted palette offered by FTDNA. A reminder: the main web page is (still) at http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~blanch-l/bldna.html.
Incidentally, we "lost" one member of the project. His name is Blacketer, and he joined a few years ago in hopes that he might turn out to match Blanchards, basically because there is no DNA project for the Blacketer surname. He evidently gave up those hopes and quit. However, his results are still posted in Group 99 on the project web page, just in case (though not on the FTDNA-maintained page). One thing genealogists always need is patience.
I announced last time that an English match had been found for Group 1. We now have two others. Two of the three are tentatively traced to a common ancestor born c1770, possibly in Kent, and the third is traced to a different ancestor born about the same time, but in Hampshire.
The new member of Group 3 has pushed back the group's common ancestor to a man whose name is not known -- the previous members were all descendants of one of a set of three brothers whose parentage has not been established, and the new member appears to descend from a different brother.
Two new members have been found to match Group 10, but one of these tested at GeneBase, instead of FTDNA, and has no results for about half of the FTDNA 37-marker panel. This match, therefore, must be regarded as tentative.
A word about future prospects: the BFHS has launched a program to encourage (financially) its members to try DNA testing. It seems to be working. In the past month, I have signed up eight new participants from the BFHS. One of the eight has already joined this list, even before getting results, and also one of the test kits has already been received back at the lab. The forthcoming results are sure to shed new light on the genealogy of Blanchards and Blanchets.
John Chandler
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This is the twenty-eighth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. I apologize for the long interval (over a year) since the last bulletin. In the meantime, we have obtained DNA results for 18 participants, including 12 newcomers and 6 with upgrades. There are also 6 new members of this list. The new results are for people in groups 1, 3, 10, 11, and 99. Of course, 99 is not a kinship group, but rather the collection of everyone who doesn't yet have an established group, but many of the new results belong to clusters that are currently classed with Group 99 only because there is not yet a conventional link between/among the members.
Group 11 is new since the last bulletin. It reflects a waiting period of more than two years, during which the first member of Group 11 was without a match in the project. Then, suddenly, a matching result came in, and due investigation of the records revealed a common ancestor born about three centuries ago in French Canada.
A report about the BFHS testing program: ten new members have come through the BFHS, all of them with ancestry pinned down to specific locations in England. Seven of the ten have found matches, either among each other or among those already in our project. One has been found to match Group 2, thus making that group now truly span three continents with living test subjects. Also, three new clusters have been identified with potential for forming new groups as soon as there is a confirmed, documented link between members. Geographically, the clustering of Blanchards in England seems to be concentrated along the northern and southern tiers, with participants traced to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Durham (all in the north), and to London, Kent, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset (in the south). In each area there are multiple distinct DNA patterns, but none of these groups has been traced back much before 1600, and so it remains possible that much of the genetic diversity has been added to the Blanchards by adoptions, name changes, and other means. By the same token, it is impossible to deduce how old the genetic clusters may be, because there is simply too small a sample available at present. It is to be hoped that the BFHS will continue to encourage members to test their DNA or that of their nearest male Blanchard cousins.
This year, a little bit of order has been introduced in the interlab comparison of DNA results. Two markers which have not been offered as standard tests by FTDNA, but which were tested by several of our project participants through the Sorenson lab (DYS452 and DYS463), have now been assigned a consistent nomenclature by all testing labs and, more importantly, by the Ysearch database. In the spirit of cooperation, our project has adopted the new standard as well. Sad to say, there are still markers with disparate reporting standards.
On a personal note: I recently attended my 40th high school reunion, and I saw there a Blanchard who used to live two doors away from me in those long-ago days before I became actively involved in genealogy. I had known even then that I had a Blanchard connection, but I had no idea that it might connect me to those neighbors of mine. (For context, I note that I was born and raised in Delaware, but my parents had both come from elsewhere, and so I had no relatives in the near vicinity at all, as far as I knew.) In any case, we got to talking about genealogy and DNA, and we exchanged email addresses to follow up later. I was then amazed to find out not only that we were related after all, but also that his father was already a member of the Blanchard DNA project without my realizing he was a former neighbor! Indeed, his DNA results support the connection (via Group 1). Small world.
John Chandler
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Happy New Year to all!
This is the twenty-ninth notice under the "enhanced communication" plan. Since the last notice, we have obtained DNA results for 4 participants, including 3 newcomers. There are also 2 new members of this list. The new results are for people in (or affiliated with) groups 3, 7, and 99. Interestingly enough, half of the new results are for testees with surnames other than Blanchard, due to name changes, and the results do match other project members.
One of the new sets of results is an upgrade from DNA Heritage. They now offer a 15-marker add-on package that includes the five markers they didn't previously cover in FTDNA's 37-marker test. Anyone with this upgrade will now completely fill the columns in Tables 1a and 1b. In this case, n8cp9 is an affiliate of Group 7, and the test shows that three of the five newly-filled-in markers match the consensus for the Group, while two are different by one step each. Since these five are all rather volatile markers, the discrepancies are not very surprising, and they may, in fact, be useful in determining how far back lived the common ancestor of the group and its affiliates.
I have recently gone through the whole project web page and updated a number of things that had become dated or obsolete. One thing that is still unresolved is the URL of the site for making donations to the project General Fund. As you may have discovered, FTDNA recently replaced much of the user interface, including the "public" web sites that hold the up-to-the-minute test results of project members who have tested at FTDNA (its URL is http://www.ftdna.com/public/blanchard). In doing so, they seem to have disconnected the General Fund access. I am pursuing this matter with FTDNA.
[FLASH! The new General Fund pointer is http://www.ftdna.com/group-general-fund-contribution.aspx]
John Chandler
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