Results 20080221
Thursday, February 21st, 2008Our latest Y DNA results are in, which you can see and compare with earlier results at
http://www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/ and click on Y Results.
Hoping to make interpretation easier for all who visit this page, I have started a system of ‘groups’ with obvious connections.
The results show, even at this early stage of the project, that line PL (earliest known ancestor in Lampeter Velfrey in late 18C) has developed quite separately from lines PM/S and PR (who are themselves quite closely related).
It’s a minor blow to the idea that all Pembrokeshire Cantons might be related but, looked at positively, gives an impetus to further testing in the hope of building up family groups - we should be on the lookout for other families related to either of these groups. We don’t, of course, know at present if most Pembrokeshire lines are comparable with PL or with PM/S and PR.
GENETIC DIFFERENCES
To quote Chris Pomery (DNA and Family History, 2004), ‘DNA results do not lie, and if the difference between two DNA signatures cannot be accounted for by mutational change then clearly something else has caused it’.
Reasons for Y-DNA change may be found in any of the following factors:
- An illegitimate male birth to a Canton female, with the child taking his mother’s name; this was more frequent than the case where the child’s father’s name was both known and taken by an illegitimate child (as in line PR). Often an unwed mother’s child would be brought up by, and known by, the grandparents’ name. As an extension of that, sometimes such a child was brought up as a late addition to the grandparents’ own children – if the family lives into the census era, it is possible to spot this sort of thing and seek documentary proof.
- A male birth within a Canton marriage where the child is fathered by another man than the husband – no documentation of such events is likely to exist except, at certain periods, in parochial records relating to bastardy.
- A woman marries a Canton male as her second husband and her male child from a previous marriage takes his stepfather’s surname.
- A surname change of a legitimate male child of a Canton daughter, taken for reasons of inheritance or to ensure the name survives. I know of no real Canton example of this in modern times.
- Canton in use as an alias, which becomes settled as surname in time – an example might be where a man took his employer’s last name at the end of his own patronymic name, to be distinguished from another man with the same personal name.
- The misspelling of a similar name so that it looks like or is mistaken for Canton. This is unlikely to apply to the Pembrokeshire families we are currently studying, but it is certainly known in some English families. For example, the Jewish surname usually spelled Cantor in Britain is often misread in indexes, etc, as Canton and one such family, at least, has taken Canton officially in this circumstance.
[Family preoccupations over the next few days means that the above may, when time permits, be edited and revised.]