In 2012, the great-grandson of Albert Perry, a man born into slavery in South Carolina, tested his Y DNA and the result was the groundbreaking discovery of haplogroup A00, a very ancient branch of the Y tree found in Africa.
The results were announced at the Family Tree DNA Conference in 2012 and published the following year.
Early Y DNA tree dating was imprecise at best. As the tree expands and additional branches are added, our understanding of the Y tree structure, the movement of peoples, and the evolution of branches is enhanced.
In 2015, two Mbo people from Cameroon tested as described in the paper by Karmin et al.
Click to enlarge
Those men added branch A-YP2683 to the tree.
In 2018, a paper by D’Atanasio et al sequenced 104 living males including a man from Cameroon which added branch A-L1149.
In 2020, the paper by Lipson et all found an ancient branch of A00 subsequently named A-L1087 that was added above A00, dating from between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago and believed to have been found among the remains of Bantu-speakers. Of course, that doesn’t tell us when A-L1087 occurred, but it does tell us that it occurred sometime before they were born.
How do you like the little skull indicating ancient DNA, as compared to the flags indicating the location of the earliest known ancestor of present-day testers? I’m very pleased to see ancient DNA results being incorporated into the tree.
What About Albert Perry’s Great-Grandson’s Y DNA?
The Y DNA of Albert Perry’s great-grandson had never been NGS sequenced with either the Big Y-500 or the current Big Y-700. NGS technology for Y DNA wasn’t yet available at the time. Is there more information to be gleaned from his DNA?
Recently, Albert Perry’s great-grandson’s DNA was upgraded to the Big Y-700, and two other descendants of Albert Perry tested at the Big Y-700 level as well.
The original 2012 tester, Albert Perry’s great-grandson, added branch A-L1100, and Albert’s great-great and great-great-great-grandsons split his branch once again by adding branch A-FT272432.
The haplogroup A Y DNA tree shows the new tree structure.
Looking at the Block Tree at FamilyTreeDNA, Albert Perry’s descendants are shown, along with the ancient sample at the far right.
Click to enlarge
Because so few men have tested and fallen into this line, the dark blue equivalent SNPs reach far back in time. As more men test, these will eventually be broken into individual branches.
The men who carry these important SNPs and their branching information will either be men from Africa or the diaspora.
I would like to thank the Perry family for their continuing contributions to science.
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Roberta, Thanks for this article. I have several questions for you regarding Ancestry removing DNA cousins at 6 and 7cm. Has there been any shift in Ancestry’s decision to do this on August 1, 2020? Also, how can I at least save my Shared Ancestor cousins that fall into the 6 and 7cm range? Turns out that I have a lot of them. Thanks Bill
They have delayed until the beginning of September. I wrote an article about methods to preserve your matches. Go to the main blog page and search for the word preservation.
OK, thank god. Too much going on this week to get it done. Thanks so much, Bill
So glad to hear about the delay. Will the removal of the low cms affect the research/matches of the Perry family.
The removal is at Ancestry. Their Y DNA is at Family Tree DNA. So it won’t affect this.
Roberta,
On behalf of the family of Albert Perry, you are very welcome. Just a way to honor an ancestors we never had the opportunity to meet and know.
Special appreciation and thanks goes to my male cousins who tested for our Albert Perry family, John Clyde Perry (great-grandson), Clifford Anthony Norwood (great-great- grandson, NPE discovered through DNA), and Barton LaMont Perry (great-great-great-grandson).
Thank you, Jacqueline, and them. A wonderful way to honor your ancestors and family members.
This was an amazing story, and I helped Jacqueline try and identify the slaveholder when she lived in Houston. I felt strongly that their entire history and story should be told. Their contributions to the story of man kinds origins have added to the confirmed scientific fact that Africa and Africans are atop the human pyramid.
Thanks Roberta for this interesting blog. In Finland we have Y-DNA hg A1a (M31, V25). It’s an old branch that has existed in Finland for centuries – as we know family trees based on documents. They have aN Y-DNA ”brother group” in the UK. Perhaps trade & a ship have brought their first Y-DNA hg A ancestor to Finland.
Our genealigical registers etc are excellent, far-reaching in Finland, church registers year-by-year ftom the 1600’s.
Glad to hear Albert Perry’s family is still committed to this!
Hi! I just found out that I have this in my DNA …haplogroup i CT’s 6364
Ftdna
Hello,
It’s funny I did the genetic test recently and I’m part of haplogroup A1a, I’m from Mali.
Are you referring to a mitochondrial DNA haplogroup? A00 is Y-DNA.
My william Hall born 1823 Rockbridge Va is related to Albert. I’m still learning the dna stuff help Annette sight2c@hotmail.com
I’m A-PR2921, I’m glad they discovered this, people thought I was crazy a while back, I knew it was something to this ).