11/04/2019
Facebook keeps nagging me to post something, but I don't have any cool old pictures to share. So, I'll take a chance that you won't get TOO bored if I update you on the Y-DNA study I'm in at Family Tree DNA.
Please bear with me, though. I'm typing on a $29 phone because Linda and I are in Mexico and I didn't bring my computer.
The Cliff's Notes version is that the four other fellows in the study and I share a Most Recent Common Ancestor ("MRCA") who was born between 325 and 410 years before our average birth year of 1955. That means he was probably born between 1545 and 1630, though it might have been a few years on either side of that range.
Since no pair of the five of us has any further SNP variances in common, we probably descend through at least two of the MRCA's sons.
This description fits Nicholas Bullington who was born in 1587 in Kidderminster, Worcesterdhire, England and came to Jamestown before 1623 perfectly. Four men born between 1625 and 1640 with the surname "Bullington" are mentioned in one or another documents surviving from the period, and two of them left wills which name at least two sons.
So I believe that the broadly accepted theory that all of us genetically "Bullington" males (and you daughters, grand-daughters, and so on, plus men related through you) living in the US are his descendants. Because of "Non-Paternal Events", that group of Nicholas' descendants includes a number of "Bowling" and "Ball" descendants as well. And because of a documented name change, it includes a number of "Burlington" descendants as well.
However, the results have thrown some doubt on the likelihood that Robert Bullington who died in 1822 in Pittsylvania County was the father of John Bowling born in 1790 in Pittsylvania County. If Robert Bullington was John Bowling's father then the other Bullington-surnamed man in the study should have at least one additional variant in common with the Bowling member. Both men have four private variants, and Robert Pittsylvania is four generations and 160 years later than Nicholas. One of their four variants should have arisen in that time.
The odds say either the Bullington-surnamed man is not descended from Robert of Pittsylvania, or the Bowling man is not. The Bullington man is a GREAT researcher, but even he admits that the paper trail is not ironclad.
We have a Bullington-surnamed man who DOES have an iron-clad trail back to Robert of Pittsylvania who has agreed to join the group, and his test will be upgraded to Big Y 700. He should share at least one variant with one of the two of them.
I also thought we had figured out who the father of the Ball-surnamed man in the group was, but the lack of any shared variants with me has disproven my theory. I believed that his grandfather, John Ball, born in 1890 in Cocke County, Tennessee, was the son of one of the four sons of a James Bullington who moved to Cocke County after tge Civil War. James was born around1830 in Spartanburg, South Virginia to Caleb Bullington, my 2nd great grandfather's younger brother. So, the Ball-surnamed gentleman and I should be close enough cousins to show up as Autosomal matches. Alas, we do not share any additional variant, nor are we "cousins" on either Ancestry of FTDNA Family Finder.
So, this testing spree has probably verified the Nicholas-Is-Grandpa-To-Us-All theory, but blown to shreds two beautiful theories of later detailed descendancy.
I hope this isn't too boring.
By the way, I THINK that you can comment on what I write here. It is my intention that you are able to do so, and I would love hearing your reactions.