Wanted!

Family Tree DNA have announced a short (ends midnight Sunday 15h July, Houston time) summer sale.
A good time to be in for those lines as not yet represented in the FAIRBAIRN Surname DNA project.

How about a descendant of Thomas & Elspeth/Eppie (WOOD) FAIRBAIRN, or George and Margaret (LOUGH) FAIRBAIRN?
What about the Northumberland family of Robert & Mary (ATKINSON) FAIRBAIRN of Stamfordham ?
Or any of those shown, or indexed, on the Wanted! pages?

As you can see from our growing number of results to date (over 50 kits now), a large number of the Scottish Borders families are indeed related, with enough results now to show which families are more closely related to whom.
So where does YOUR line "fit"? Are the English ones related? (Yes for at least some lines, as the Clapham gardeners proved to be so.)

For this project, you need to be a direct male line FAIRBAIRN, and although Y-DNA67 is the preferred test, a Y-DNA37 will give some indication of your "place" in the jigsaw. Upgrades are always possible at a later date.

Click here to select your test and join the project, or use the contact details at the bottom of most of the pages linked above for further information, including whether or not a subsidy may be available for a particularly Wanted! family. 

Anonymity can be assured if necessary. All those named in the project have agreed to be so shown.

Redressing the balance

As the Notables index has been resolutely male, often long dead, until now, a more recent female of the species has been added.
Read about Eileen FAIRBAIRN of Christchurch, New Zealand.
The descendant chart for her family, that of Thomas and Jean (LAWSON/LOWSON) FAIRBAIRN of Fife, (lineage 2a in the FAIRBAIRN DNA project), has had a number of additions to it, primarily those descendants in New Zealand.

Phylogram for Lineage 1

With the growing number of matches within the haplogroup I1 (Lineage 1) it is definitely time a pretty summary chart was created.

The version attached to the Lineage 1 forebear has an image map, so have an explore by clicking on the line labels.
The DNA analysis page has had a bit of a review/update.
It now also includes the radial tree version, below, of the above phylogram, and also a Genetic Distances table.

It was an interesting exercise examining the generated results and comparing them to those presented in the existing DNA Signature charts.
The latter are generated manually via visual analysis of the result tables, genetic differences provided by Family Tree DNA, and from known/suspected paper trails.
A couple of the generated results in the phylogram were a surprise, but mostly the two methods seem to have agreed.
One thing it did show is that the ELLIOTTs branched from the FAIRBAIRNs, not the other way around.
All of the above applies only to Lineage 1 (Haplogroup I1) as the other groups do not, as yet, have enough participants to provide many matches.

Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA)

The FAIRBAIRN DNA pages have been updated to include more data on the more recent participants, primarily to include missing links to their family trees, and Genetic Distance to their matches, along with a revamp to a few of the dna signature charts.
This latter are where we attempt to combine paper trails and dna information to surmise where/how connected families MAY actually link up. Completely subjective!

The most overdue update (Lineage 1, haplogroup I1 only) however was to include new Genetic Distance and TMRCA tables according to complete theory, compared to the above, "by eye" and judgement.
The program used for those is that found from the ISOGG  pages - Dean McGEE's Y-DNA Comparison Utility  updated for 111 marker comparisons.
These can be found on the Summary Discussion pages.
The preliminary Jul 2009 tables have been left there to show us how far we've come - we even now feature in the list of those with 50 or more participants on the World Families Network pages (where the summary dna pages are hosted).

Several more broken links have been attended to over assorted connected pages (Summary pedigrees aka Patriarchs page, summary results, supplementary dna information, this blog). Would be good to think that the background rationalisation that has been going on for some months now is near completion, but somehow there's always "just one more thing" to attend to.

DNA Update

The Supplementary DNA pages have been updated to include the newly received, complete t Y-DNA67, results from F-49, who is showing a good match to the Earlston/Mellerstain FAIRBAIRNs.
Several broken links on the analysis and signature chart pages have been corrected, and an additional signature chart, theoretical, included to show how some of our exact matches may connect.

We seem to also have found another ELLIOTT match, or rather one has found the FAIRBAIRNs, but at only 12 markers tested, it is too early to say how close the match is. Known info indicates an Irish ELLIOTT lineage.

Hidden updates

Updates to existing descendent charts wont necessarily show up in the recent change index.

Recent changes there:
- the inclusion of another New Zealand branch for the family of Thomas and Elizabeth (SIMPSON) FAIRBAIRN
- a few more Australian twigs on the John & Elizabeth (YULE) FAIRBAIRN

The Fife lineage of Thomas and Ann (SMITH) FAIRBAIRN has been included with grandson John's page explaining why it looks like his death cert is inaccurate. Anyone know of any connection to Thomas and Elizabeth (SIMPSON) FAIRBAIRN above? Both are from Fife.

Another Lineage 1b

Preliminary results have arrived for our latest DNA candidate, and at 12 markers, we have a 12/12 match to Lineage 1b, where he was hoped/expected to "fit".