Earlier, I posted about a Settleman gentleman who believed that he was related to my Suttlemans--and some of the
circumstantial evidence seemed to back that up. To try to get more evidence, Mr. Settleman took a DNA test. His initial FamilyFinder (autosomal) results
didn't look very promising for a connection, but his Y results weren't in yet. But now they are.
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| Mr. Settleman's Y-DNA Haplogroup |
Mr. Settleman's haplogroup is R-M269. If there were a common direct male ancestor to Mr. Settleman and my Suttleman/Zitelman relative who tested, the haplogroup would be identical.
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| Suttleman/Zitelman Y-DNA Haplogroup |
Not even close. So the Settlemans and Suttlemans/Zitelmans are not descended from the same direct male line. So what does this mean?
- There may have been the adoption of a mother's name by a child, so we are related but not through direct male lines.
- There may have been a "non-paternal event" (NPE) along the way in one of our families--someone's father wasn't really their biological father.
- We're really not related, any more than two typical random Ashkenazic Jews.
Any other potential options anyone can think of?
Note: I'm on Twitter.
Feel free to follow me (@larasgenealogy).
Another possibility is that one of the male children was given his mother's surname for some reason. For instance, they didn't have a civil marriage (depending on where they lived, I can't remember) or the mother was from a rabbinical family.
ReplyDeleteI'm dealing with a similar situation. Is there a second direct male line descendant you can test? That would help rule out the possibility of a NPE.
ReplyDeleteI know from autosomal DNA that there was no NPE on my side, at least back to my great-great grandfather Yechiel Suttleman. There are no other direct male descendants on his line that we know of.
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