The Timen Stiddem Society

The Stidham* Family DNA Study

No doubt, some of you are growing weary of hearing me go on and on each issue about this Stidham* family DNA thing. Others are perhaps mildly interested seeing the report when finished, but not interested enough in taking part in the study themselves. Bear with me, a recap.

In the Spring 2000 issue, I proposed the idea of having a DNA study done on a group of interested Stidham* males to determine—with scientific certainty—who was a descendant of Dr. Stiddem and who was not. This after learning about a new service called MaleMatch [editor's note, it's now called Y-Line] which was promised to be made available later this year by the Oxford Ancestors Project of Oxford University in England.

The seed was sown.

On June 17th I mailed out a more detailed proposal to 80 qualifying male members who currently bear one of the Stidham* surnames. I followed that with e-mailings of the same proposal to other Stidham* males who had not received the first mailing for one reason or another.

In the Summer 2000 issue I noted the number of participants signed up to take part thus far. That number was six, including myself.

The seed didn’t seem to be germinating as well as I’d hoped!

By early October I was losing faith in the ability of the Oxford Ancestors to get their MaleMatch service off the ground any time soon, so I started searching the Internet for genealogy-related DNA labs who might also be offering this Y-chromosome matching service by now.

I came across a promising lead on the web site of another family association who was putting together a similar study for its members. The lab it had contracted with was called Family Tree DNA, located in Houston, Texas. I immediately contacted them and negotiated a fee agreeable to both parties for our study, with the stipulation that I get at least 10 men to go together in our group to receive this price.

I spent the weekend of October 7 and 8 on the phone contacting the five who had already expressed an interest in the study early on and got each of their approval of the negotiated fee per person. I then set about the task of trying to talk as many Stidhams* currently designated as “Associates” in our society, into joining our ground-breaking project. I thought this group would be especially eager to be involved in something like this because of the fact that we don’t know where they tie into the family tree--if at all. This would give them an answer one way or the other--yes, or no.

To my surprise, most of them were really not that interested in knowing for sure whether they were descended from Timen Stiddem or not. However, three were: Two Stidhams and one Steadham. In the end, eleven men in all agreed to take part in this study.

In addition to the three unplaced Stidhams* mentioned above: Five Stidhams and one Stidam--all from the Adam line--are participating; two Steadhams from the Benedictus line are involved (one being myself); and one Stidham from the Lucas line is representing that ancestor’s descendants. It would have been better to have at least one more participant in Lucas line involved, but I couldn’t find anyone else from that line to join in.

On October 16 I received a package with 11 test kits from Family Tree DNA. Two days later I sent out ten of these kits to each of the other participants, keeping one for myself. Each test kit consists of two cheek scrapers and two holding containers for shipping. The reason for two of each is to ensure a good collection of skin cells for analyzing from at least one of the collection samples. Their instructions insist we use them both.

As of this writing I’ve collected my own DNA samples and now await the return of those from the other ten study participants. When I have all 11 samples together, I’ll ship them in one package to Family Tree DNA for analysis. They promise to send me results from the test approximately five weeks from the date they receive them.

In Issue 12, Winter 2001, a full report on the findings.

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