(R1b-FT43162)
Michael Cooley
To date, there are two Cooley families being tracked in this group. The first to come to my attention was William Cooley (1753-1817) of Ireland, Maryland, and Fayette County, Pennsylvania was. He is of special interest because his wife, Elizabeth Firmin, had been erroneously "married off" in the 1930s by Lura Coolley Hamil to a John Cooley/Johannes Cool. Dale Walker (1946-1993) later mistakenly identified this man as John Cooley (c1738-1811) of Stokes County, North Carolina and readily accepted Elizabeth as John's wife. All these assertions are untrue, however. Not only is there an old article that Hamil undoubtedly knew about but chose to ignore, multiple Y-DNA tests from descendants of both William and John have firmly delivered these families from pure mythology. The men were not even remotely related. Thanks to the Y chromosome and a fresh look at the records, much has been learned about these very distinct families over the last fifteen years.
The second family is that of John Cooley (1749-1813) and his wife Abigail Lippincott, for whom I've collected little data. However, of course, Hamil claimed John as a son of the fictitious John Cooley/Johannes Cool and his rather "indiscreet" wife, Elizabeth Firmin. Mortimer Cooley writes more realistically about John's family beginning on page 910 of The Cooley Genealogy (1940).
Although William's and John's descendants are a close Y-STR match to one another, none of John's descendants have undergone advanced Y-DNA testing. Such results will provide an idea about the degree of relationship between the two men. I've added addtional, more distantly-related testers to provide context. There is no doubt that these Cooleys were of Irish stock.
The following table is simply a bare summary of the results and can be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet. This is helpful for keeping track of larger projects. With the exception of those indicated by an asterisk, the novel SNPs (novel variants) can be tested at YSEQ.net for $18 each and a one-time kit fee of $6 for the first order.
| KIT | TREE | MRCA | TEST | NOVEL VARIANTS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| #IN103886 | | FTB19636 FTB19482 FTB19322 FTB19250 FTB19153 FTB22277 FTB22185
| #848923 | FT69347 FT69240 FT69233 FT68454 FT68418 FT67919
| #956858 | --
| #B65681 | FT43285 A24205 FT40043*
| #310238 | --
| #863354 | --
| |
* SNP cannot undergo Sanger testing
A SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) occurs when there's a genetic change at a single position, for example an A mutated to a C. Each marker listed in the tree below is a SNP, and each one was manifested at the birth of a single man. This doesn't happen every generation but, if we had enough data, they'd all line up one after the other in a timeline. In other words, each of these markers is a direct representative of a specific man born at a specific time and place. For that reason, I like to say that "SNPs are people too." It's not literally true, of course, but conjures an image that is reasonably apropos.
Every marker above is a direct genetic representation of the first man born with that marker. However, each marker could represent three or four more men not born with a new, unique marker.
Count the number of markers upstream of any one kit. Then multiply that by four generations. I'll leave it to you detemine how many years makes a generation. This can be done for all kits descended from any one haplogroup. Average the grand total to get an average timeline for the haplogroup. The word "average" is, however, the key. The more participants, the more that number will change.
STRs (Short Tandem Repeats) are the markers found on the results page of every FTDNA project. They're completely different from SNPs. For example, the number in the first column for the following markers, labeled DYS393, is merely the count of the number of times the sequence AGAT is repeated in the tester's cells. More about the markers can be found on the Wikipedia page for List of Y-STR markers.
The top line in this graphic, in gray, is the modal value. It represents the most common value found among each tester. The total number of mismatches any one tester has to the modal is noted in blue parenthesis next to the tester's kit number. This number is referred to as the genetic distance or GD. For example, a tester might be a GD of 1 from the modal's CDYb marker but with a total GD of 5 from the modal as a whole.
Here we compare the genetic distance between each tester rather than to the modal. This gives us a better idea as to how closely the testers are related to one another as opposed each to the modal, or mutual ancestor. The results tend to clump together by haplogroup. However, due to the volatile nature of STRs, the clumping is often inconsistent, as shown by the same graphics in the somewhat larger YP4248 Subclade Project. For this reason, STRs are unreliable for phylogeny. Nevertheless, the study can help direct us toward those kits that could provide the greatest impact on the project for Big Y upgrades.
The color version results from replacing the numeric values with color values. This doesn't tell us much for small groups but can be informative for groups of ten and more.
