DOR-Terrill YDNA Genealogy

by Conrad W. Terrill ( cwterrill@comcast.net ), 24 Feb 2021

Data Privacy: In compliance with the European Union data privacy laws in effect as of 25 May 2018, DOR-Terrill is no longer making public anyone's actual yDNA test results. What we are making public instead are the differences between those test results and a reference set—one which will remain private to those persons who have contributed their test results to this project. We call this reference set "Modal Roger1." It is an average, of a sort, of all the actual test results, as explained in the Modal Roger1 article below. We believe that they are the test results Roger1 would receive were he alive today to be tested.

DOR's YDNA Roger section was first introduced in June of 2009. By April of 2010 we already had yDNA test result contributions from paternal line descendants of all five of Roger1's sons who had children (Joseph2 never married). Those test results alone gave us all the information necessary to determine Roger1's yDNA to 67 markers, with a very high level of confidence. You can read all about this, and a lot more, in our Modal Roger1 article. No known descendant so far has deviated from Modal Roger1 by more than four mutations, over approximately ten generations since Roger1.

YDNA results by themselves do not allow us to determine much—it's in combination with good traditional genealogical research that they show their value. A number of members of our Modal Roger1 group have confirmed their well-traced paternal lines back to Roger1, for themselves and for those closely related to them. Some members of our group were discovered as very close yDNA matches to the rest of us via ySearch (now defunct) and the FTDNA Terrell Surname Project. We have been able to help a few of them determine how they are descended from Roger1, and we're working with others, some of whom previously thought they were most likely descended from Terrell immigrants to Virginia Colony. Some members of our group are definitely not descended from Roger1, but rather from his ancestors, somehow. We have been able in some cases to help them trace their paternal lines further back, while ocasionally providing us valuable clues pertaining to Roger1's origins. YDNA genetic genealogy gives us, collectively, the leverage to learn a lot more from what we already know.

We encourage all male paternal-line descendants of Roger1 Terrill (or those who think they could be) who would like to join our group to get yDNA-tested through FTDNA, which is the testing company the rest of us have used. This allows us to compare your results to ours directly, without dubious conversion. Note that you must be male to get tested, since females do not have yDNA. Females can participate by finding a closely related male "Terrill" willing to be tested. You can find out more in the "How to get tested" article below.

Project YDNA Roger is on the move—Join us!