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The Farr DNA Project Project Coordinator Tim Farr

A Little Background On DNA DeoxyriboNucleic Acid Double stranded molecule that encodes genetic information If you uncoiled DNA from one of your cells it would be 6 feet long All the DNA in your body weighs 7.5 grams and is worth about 9 Million dollars Made of cheap ingredients: atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus

More Background The way those cheap ingredients are assembled gives DNA its special status Those 6 foot long molecules are called bases and they are made of different combinations of the proteins: adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine or A, G, T and C for short Just as a Morse code dot and dash can spell every word ever written- A, G, T and C can define every human being who ever lived

Y-DNA Y-DNA is genetic material found in the Y chromosome; passed from father to son essentially unaltered down through the generations except for occasional mutations in the STRs or Short Tandem Repeats of the proteins A, G, C and T Y-DNA does not meander and it follows a straight path through the male line This is convenient to track well established surnames in many cultures Because of its straight path nature there is no need to dig up dead bodies If you are a male, you carry an exact copy of your direct line male ancestor’s Y-DNA with you, or almost exact….

What This Means This means that we can now break the unbreakable rule of Genealogical research-- “Thou Shalt Not Skip Generations and Leap Back a Few Because It Soundeth Fun” Now it is possible and necessary to skip back generations using genetealogy or DNA

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Example: Since the time Winslow Farr Sr and his family joined the church in 1832, the Farr family has been trying to extend our line beyond Thomas Farr born abt 1688 of Concord, MA. Countless hours have been spent by family members and professional researchers for the last 174 years with no results The Farr family, including Winslow Farr, believed that Stephen Farr was the father of Thomas but had no concrete evidence. Without this evidence it was useless to even try and figure out where Stephen Farr came from.

Why A DNA Project? #1  There is no proof that Thomas Farr b. abt 1688 was a son of Stephen Farr #2  There is little hope of proof because of a document discovered by Melinde Lutz Sanborn co-author of The Great Migration Project. However, the document does show that Stephen Farr had unrecorded children

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Next Step Identify all proven (documented) and all unproven children of Stephen Farr Ebenezer, Stephen Jr. and Mary are proven (documented) children Thomas, Samuel, John, Jonathan and Joseph are unproven children Identify direct male downlines to the present from these male children and recruit Participants in the DNA project If a participant from a proven (documented) son of Stephen matches us – then we match Stephen Farr’s DNA Stephen would be our MRCA (most recent common ancestor)

Lines To Test

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DNA Certificate

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An Unexpected Event! Someone contacted me one week after posting the project on the internet He said that my ancestor’s names looked similar to his and was wondering why I asked him to do the DNA test He agreed We ordered the test He matched!!!

Who Is He? Steven Timothy Farr of Sint Niklaas, Belgium Born and raised in Bedford, Bedfordshire, England All his ancestors are proven and documented back to the 1500s in Bedfordshire

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What Next? Verify Steven of Belgium’s line back to before the time of our Stephen in Concord; then work downward to find our possible connection The Hunter “Farrs In England” CD was essential to accomplishing this I added all of the Farrs in the parish records of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland to the CD from the 1500s to about 1900 Births, deaths, marriages, wills, manorial records and others were put on the CD Over 25,000 Farr records in Great Britain are on the CD

Study the CD All Stephen Farrs were examined throughout Great Britain and we were able to eliminate all but one Stephen Farr b 29 Dec 1640 in Lidlington, Bedfordshire, England Robert Charles Anderson, the leading authority on New England migration, had proposed this Stephen as the most likely candidate for our ancestor Dean Hunter had also focused on this Stephen when he put the CD together but needed more data input on the CD I did the extra extracting of data and updated the CD

What We Found Our Stephen Farr’s DNA (of Concord) matches Thomas Farr’s DNA (of Lidlington), who is Steven Farr’s ancestor (of Belgium) Stephen and Thomas are brothers Our MRCA is their father William Farr b. 3 Oct 1613 in Kempston and m. 24 Nov 1630 in Lidlington, Faith Taylor

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How Many More Generations Did We Find? MRCA William Farr bur. 10 Jan 1683/4 Haynes is mentioned in his father Steven’s will Steven Farre bur. 13 Jan 1648 Aspley Guise is mentioned in his father William’s will William Farre bur. 5 Apr 1617 Aspley Guise is mentioned in his father John’s will John Fayre bur. Aug 1551 Aspley Guise

John Fayre

SUMMARY What we have now is double proof First we have documentation Second we have DNA evidence to back the documentation The documentation without the DNA is no good and the DNA without the documentation is no good either. In the given scenarios of this presentation you have to have both This evidence would be accepted in a court of law!

Other Discoveries From The Farr DNA Project

Choosing A DNA Testing Service Look for the company who offers the most products Look for one that can keep your DNA sample on file for future testing without having to re-sample Look for a company that has the most exposure on a world wide basis Look for a company that has the largest database of users already Ask if they offer discounts for a group project and ask if they would allow you to be the project coordinator. Choose a company that will help you contact other participants that you match!

Project Coordinators Have access to all the test results in their surname project Responsible to put those results in a confidential way on the internet Help participants contact others who match them Promote the project

The Test Kit Two Cheek scrapers Two collection tubes No needles! No blood!

THE END But Not Really!