As I mentioned back in my first post about our ancient ancestors from Europe, in 2009 I had a Y-Chromosome DNA test done to determine my genetic profile. The main purpose for this test was to solve a seemingly insurmountable problem about our Ayers lineage in North America. This mystery had become a brick wall in genealogy terms.

Our ancestors in New England and New Jersey whom I have already discussed, I call “The Northern Ayers Line”. The ancestors that I will be discussing in future posts are who I call “The Southern Ayers Line”.  The Migration Map below clearly shows the geographic separation of the two lines.  Although I, and other researchers as I later found out, strongly believed that the two lines were related due to circumstantial evidence, no official connection could be made due to the lack of actual records.

Getting serious about solving the mystery, in the Fall of 2009, I joined a group of other Ayers folks around the country who also had DNA test results to compare.  As it turns out, most of the others had results that showed they belonged to haplogroups other than R1b.  This means those “Ayers” came from entirely different bloodlines, perhaps originating in Scotland, Germany or elsewhere.  However, there were a few other R1b’s like myself, and as time went on still more testers joined the group raising hope of a successful outcome.

Recall that Y-Chromosome genetic markers are passed from father to son down the line.  Without getting into the boring details, the basic approach is to compare Y-Chromosome markers with someone else to see how many matches you have. This allows you then to determine about how many generations back you had what’s called a Most Recent Common Ancestor or MRCA.  Then by comparing lineage charts you can typically pinpoint and name the MRCA.

After about a year, enough other R1b folks had joined our group so that we could definitively trace many relationships.  Finally by the Fall of 2010, several other testers and I were actually able to trace our MRCA all the way back to John AYRE, who came over from England.  This means that paper trail or not, my bloodline and thus our Southern Ayers line does in fact flow from the Northern Ayers line. By using DNA to solve the mystery, I had jumped over my brick wall!  See the now complete Migration Map below.

Note that the early migrations had to have been by ship since before about 1725, there were essentially no overland trails to be safely followed.