A New Genetic Family is Born - Lineage VIII (North Tipperary)

Back in April this year, some new Y-DNA-37 results recently came back from the lab and I've been meaning to blog about them since then! The results were reviewed by me and our new Co-Administrator Lisa Little, and here is a brief summary of what they tell us.

The new member (MG-9273) had 11 matches (comparing his 37 marker results to everyone else in the database) and one of them was an ungrouped Gleeson who was already in our project (PG-7861). The Genetic Distance (GD) between them was 3/37 indicating 3 steps away from an exact match. And this would predict that they share a common ancestor some time within the last 14 generations (i.e. after 1530) and probably closer to 6 generations ago (about 1770). And as a result of this match, we were able to identify a new genetic family, which we have called Lineage VIII.

Judging by the other people these two project members match, this group appears to have come from North Tipperary. The names Meara, O’Mara, Leahy, and Carrell appear among their matches and all have strong North Tipperary connections. You can see where they sit in relation to each other on the “Tree of Mankind” here and in the diagram below.

The new genetic family (Lineage VIII) sits somewhere in this region of the Tree of Mankind
(from https://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=54)

The names Kennedy & Carrell / Carroll (in the diagram above) are also strong North Tipperary names.

A SNP Progression is the series of SNPs that characterise each branching point in the Tree of Mankind from a relatively upstream ancient SNP marker down to where you sit on the Tree of Mankind. And the SNP Progressions associated with the O’Meara & Leahy branches are:

• R-P312/S116 > Z290 > L21/S145 > DF13 > DF21/S192 > FGC3213 > Z16532 > Z16526 > Z16524 > Z16534 > Z16533 > Z16538 >Z16525 > Z16523 … 
• then > BY61171 > Y142760 (Meara) … 
• or > FGC14748 (Leahy)

Many of these SNP markers can be seen in the diagram above and also among the Y-DNA matches of the two members of the new Lineage. This all suggests that this particular Gleeson branch sits somewhere in the same area of the Tree of Mankind as the O’Meara’s and Leahy's.

The new group (Lineage VIII) is one of several North Tipperary groups of Gleeson’s (the others being the large Lineage II and the smaller Lineage VII). It could be that if we went back far enough along the father’s father’s father’s line of these two men that eventually we would see the name change to O’Meara or Leahy, but that could have been 400 years ago or more. The only way to be sure would be to do the Big-Y-700 test which would give very fine-scale detail about the position of this new Lineage on the Tree of Mankind.

But before that there are several things that can be done that would provide us with some useful additional information:

1. Both project members could update the information on their MDKA (Most Distant Known Ancestor) - this will optimise the chances of making connections with other genetic cousins. See here for instructions ... http://gleesondna.blogspot.com/p/getting-most.html
2. Joining the relevant Geographic & Haplogroup DNA Projects could provide some additional interpretation from the Project Administrators, and its all free. To do so, simply click on JOIN in the photo on the following webpages:
1. Ireland yDNA
2. Munster Irish
3. R1b & subclades
4. R-L21
5. R-DF21
6. R-Z16526
3. The members of the new group could contact each other and share information about their family trees. If they are lucky, they might even be able to identify where they connect.

Maurice Gleeson

April 2019