A Belgian man had tested 37 STRs at FTDNA several years ago.

Back in 2019 I notified him that he was likely most closely related to men of the Williams and Burgess clans based on those STRs. Now after Big Y and WGS testing, we know that the Burgess and Williams clans’ Most Recent Common Ancestor lived about 2000 years ago.

I need to reconnect with researchers from these Burgess and Williams clans to see if they have made progress with their paper trail origins. On the YFull tree I only see that one descendant of Williams traces to Kentucky and that another one traces back to Pembrokeshire at the southwesternmost tip of Wales. If you are a J2b-L283 Williams or Burgess please feel free to comment on this post.

In 2024 he upgraded to Big Y and while we don’t have the result yet, we have his 111 STRs. His 111 STRs are consistent with my initial prediction based on 37 STRs because he shares four rare STR alleles with Burgess and Williams haplogroup J2b-Y189978 as indicated in the Haplotype Match output from STR Match Finder.

Clicking the option “Haplotype View for Matches” changes the original rarity-based color coding of alleles in the matches table to a black and white scheme where a colored outline is used to indicate ancestral (blue), derived (green) or other (red) alleles. All green boxes in a match indicates that he completely matches the queried STRs’ predicted haplotype.

If he is confirmed by SNPs to be a third, equally distantly related branch below J2b-Y189978, then I will update the haplotype to be DYS714 = 26 -> 27 given that only the Williams line deviates from this, perhaps having collapsed in a single mutation from DYS714 = 27 down to 25. According to my recent recalculation of STR-allele mutation rates from publicly available data from the YFull YTree, both DYS714 alleles of 26 and 27 mutate about once every 4400 years.

Where did the J2b-Y189978 MRCA likely live 2000 years ago?

My own male line distribution and age mirrors that of J2b-L283>..>Y189978. I’m J2b-L283>..>FGC58561 and we all descend from a MRCA who was born 1700 years ago and are now found in Belgium and the British Isles.

I think the simplest explanation for our NW European subclades of J2b-L283, who descend from a MRCA who lived during the time of the Roman occupation of England and are now living on both sides of the English Channel, is that our ancestors first migrated to continental NW Europe with the Romans (from a proximal homeland around the Adriatic, the South Central Balkans or Italy) and that in each case, later migrated to England where they sired additional surviving lines.

The most closely related ancient sample to J2b-Y189978 is Segesta 5 from Trapani, Italy dated to 775-970 CE. The next closest relatives date to the Bronze Age and are from Croatia, associated with the Cetina culture.

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/J-Z40052/tree

Be found by your male line relatives via STR Match Finder’s new Haplotype Matching feature!

Anyone can commission me to add their haplotype to STR Match Finder for $17. This is something you can actively do in order to make it more likely for your male line relatives to find you because anyone who matches your haplotype will see your contact email. You can email me at hunter provyn at gmail dot com.

If your haplogroup is not on the YFull tree it will take me additional work to compute/estimate your haplogroup’s haplotype (and it may not be possible without access to the samples’ STRs).

Please note that this feature is still in development and there are a few tweaks still needed for it to work completely as I have envisaged.

These posts are the opinion of Hunter Provyn, a haplogroup researcher in J-M241 and J-M102.