Don's DNA Report
The point of me telling you all of this about MY Peacock and Tucker matches is about fellow researchers helping each other trying t get the best and most correct information, and becoming friends at the same time. Patti has even spent a few hours helping search the internet for information they may help to find my Arnold’s family.
In another “mix-up” in our DNA, from the Cullen and Bryant Peacock tie to the Rogers line, has also stirred the interest of Carolyn Hall, who is searching and finding clues where they may be connected. If a tester by one name doesn’t match others in his surname group, but possibly matches another surname group, the other testers and researchers seem to always be willing to help solve the mystery. Family helping family. This same kind of family helping families can also help our known kin solve various mysteries within the family. Where the DNA markers have a mutation that delineates THAT family that can be followed on down the family line.
To try and explain the differences in our DNA and help some of you understand some possibilities of how it happens, I’ll state it this way: It would be easy if we all had an identical haplotype (markers), however, that is not the case. As we gather more participants – and the probability of more or varied haplotypes in our Peacock Group, we will seek assistance from a variety of knowledgeable amateur and professional researchers and scientists for possible interpretations of the results.
FTDNA has grown exceptionally fast and have added many trained specialists in the DNA field, but we always look for and appreciate other members and researchers help in tying the scientific findings to the paper research trails. As in most research projects we will generate more interesting questions. There is always the possibility that an individual participant could get test results different than expected. Samples (haplotypes) that vary by three or more markers from the main group may do so for a number of reasons. One possibility is that they represent distinct lines either older or younger than the currently observed most frequent line (commoners). Another is that there has been a non-paternal event at an unknown past time. There are several types of non-paternal events in addition to a pregnancy gained outside of a marriage.
For example, a child may be adopted and given the Peacock name; a man may take the Peacock name when he marries a Peacock daughter; a Peacock man may marry a pregnant woman whose husband has died; a couple where the wife is the Peacock may choose to give their children the Peacock name for various reasons; clerical error in recording administrative data may assign a Peacock name to the wrong person, and so on. It should be remembered that adoptions (formal or informal) were quite common in every age (i.e. parents died by disease or war and a relative took in the children and raised them as their own) Some may not want to see a result indicating a non-paternal event, but we are all legal Peacocks and a small testing sample could be misleading. One may get a DNA sequence that suggests a non- paternal event, but they could be of the original blood Peacock line.
For example: Twenty people are tested and 19 are very similar but the last is clearly different. It could turn out that the 19 descend from the same person 300 years ago and this person was an adopted Peacock, while the other is of the original blood line going back 800 years. Now that may be a stretch, but I am saying to all of you that I am a Peacock and I am very proud of my Tucker and related connections.
Neither of us know at this point in time what our ORIGINAL surname was, but we are having fun being in the hunt! Expect to have a lot of fun in your hunt for your ancestors and you can start by taking a DNA test. NONE OF US will lose our “cousinship” due to having a different haplotype. It will just deepen the mystery. I would like to encourage all of you MALE or FEMALE PEACOCKS to consider doing a DNA test so your DNA can be preserved and to help us find more matches amongst our members.