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My great grandfather Selley was a Devonian bastard

Posted by Richard Selley on 22/8/2016, 15:03:54

My great grandfather Henry Selley, born in Ide/Alphington according to 1861 & 1871 census records, died Topsham 1979, was a bastard - so I am not really a Selley at all. Unable to trace his parents. According to testing by britainsdna.com my Y-DNA holds the R1b-S356 subtype & R1b-S116-Beaker Folk Haplogroup. Apparently common in the West Country & Spain, especially the Basque country. Any comments for this newcomer to DNA from any DNAGurus????

Re: My great grandfather Selley was a Devonian bastard

Posted by Debbie Kennett on 22/8/2016, 16:12:27, in reply to "My great grandfather Selley was a Devonian bastard"

Richard

With DNA testing you could potentially get clues to the biological surname of your great-grandfather but to do this you need to test with Family Tree DNA who are the only company who have a Y-DNA matching database. If you are lucky you might match with someone who has the surname of your ancestor.

S116 is an alternative and less common name for P312 which is the most common branch of R1b in Britain. We can't say it's associated with the Beaker People because we are mainly testing the DNA of living people and you need ancient DNA to determine the past distributions. They might be very different from what we find today. There is a large P312 and subclades project at FTDNA:

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/r-p312/about/background

There's also a link at the bottom of that page to a P312 mailing list.

There is some information in the DNA section of the DFHS website about the different tests and how they work:

http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/devon-dna.htm

Do have a look at the Devon DNA Project website:

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/devon/about/background

FTDNA have a sale on at the moment so it would be a good time to get tested. You might also like to consider the Family Finder test which gives you matches with genetic cousins on all your family lines and could potentially help to solve the mystery in the long term.

Re: My great grandfather Selley was a Devonian bastard

Posted by Richard Selley on 22/8/2016, 15:06:20, in reply to "My great grandfather Selley was a Devonian bastard"

Sorry all - did you spot the deliberate mistake? Henry the bastard died in 1879, not 1979.

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