Our Stoneman DNA project
The Stoneman DNA project at Family Tree DNA has the results from our testing.
DNA has been tested from both descendants of sons James Jr. and Quaker John and they perfectly match, so we feel we have identified James Sr's DNA signature.
A little explanation of DNA is due. For genealogy purposes the DNA that is tested belongs between every cell in our bodies and is not the DNA you see on CSI or any other crime detective show. The DNA tests are made at home with Q-tips by scraping the inside of the cheek. This junk DNA tells us if we are related or not and that is why we are excited about it's use.
Men and women inherit their DNA, known as junk DNA, from the parent of the SAME sex. This means women take after their Mom and boys take after their Dad. This is the biological DNA, and for boys that means you have the same junk DNA that your great grandfather had and his male ancestors before him. Same for the girls except you have the same Junk DNA of your mother's mother mothers and so on.
DNA is slow to change and changes a little teeny bit every 600 years so you can see how male Stonemans alive today have the same junk DNA that James Stoneman Sr. had.
We have tested a few men and just as tradition says the DNA is most common in the United Kingdom. We have results that show we Stonemans have DNA that was in England before the Vikings. We may have been Celtic or Pictish. Our bloodline is very, very old.
We have the results of a son of James Stoneman Jr. and he matches Quaker John's sons so, we are sure we have identified James Stoneman Sr's DNA. Now, any male who wants to test will have numbers to test against to see if he descended from James Stoneman Sr. and the Carroll County Stonemans.
To explore this in more depth, our earliest known ancestor, James Stoneman Sr., (who married Sarah Freeman) had 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls. We can ONLY test the 3 boys lines to obtain James Sr's DNA. So we test male descendants of Joshua, James Jr, and John. (Joshua's DNA apparently died out in 1979 as no known living males are alive.) Male DNA is called Y. Y is very simple to determine.
For Sarah Freeman Stoneman, her DNA can still be alive in straight direct line female descendants. We can only test the 3 daughters lines. We look for descendants of daughters, of daughters, of daughters, of daughters , of daughters, of Sarah. So we look for descendants of those 3 daughters, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Hannah. Female DNA is much more complicated and is called HTDNA. So far we have tested no females.
The straight line descendants are the only ones eligible to test for the Stoneman project.
Now, we hope to find Stoneman relatives in Europe! Remember I told you about the DNA only changing a little bit? Well, it changes so slowly in fact, it is almost the same as it was 11,000 years ago.
DNA is the tool to do that, but we need your help. Please donate to the project even if you are not a straight line descendant, so others who do qualify may test.
You may donate at the Stoneman Project website as there is a donation button, or you may send a check to me for forwarding to the project donations.
