A Roper Y-Chromosome Testing Project

L. David Roper (roperld@vt.edu)
(www.roperld.com)

Contents:

• Testing for the male Roper line using Y chromosomes
  • Introduction
  • Chromosome
  • The Roper Male-Line Y-Chromosome Project
  • What Could be Achieved by the Project
  • Project Results
    • All of the Y markers
    • 12-Marker Results
      • Comparison of FTDNA and Oxford results
      • Defining 12-marker set for Southern & Northern USA Ropers
      • Discussion of the Results
    • 25-Marker Results
    • Defining 25-marker set for Southern & Northern USA Ropers
    • Y-Chromosome Haplogroup Tree
    • Markers for Other Roper Families
    • Relative Mutations for 25 Markers
    • Relative Mutations for 37 Markers
    • Time-Ordered Phylograms
    • Probability Considerations
    • Family Connections for Some of the Participants
    • Majority USA Roper Family Connections
      (A PDF file containing the known relationships among the MUR testees.)
    • Classifying Roper Families According to Y-Chromosome Marker Sets
    • Comparison of Markers within Roper Families
    • Location of Roper Y-chromosome testees
    • Roper families documents
    • Roper and Campbell Families Y-Chromosome Comparison
    • Comparison with Other Families
• Surname Breaks
• Testing for female Roper lines using mitochondria DNA
• Roper families documents
• Excellent web page about Y-chromosome testing
• An excellent web site about DNA: http://www.contexo.info/DNA_Basics/

I have initiated a project for testing the genetic connections of males with the surname Roper by analyzing the DNA in Y chromosomes. I would also like to test Roper female lines by analyzing mitochrondia DNA.

Testing for the Male Roper line using Y chromosomes

Introduction

Elementary genetics teaches that a human egg becomes a female embryo when a sperm gives it an X chromosome (mostly DNA) and a male embryo when the sperm gives it a Y chromosome (mostly DNA). Thus the Y chromosome is passed down generations only through the male line. You might want to read some articles about the Y chromosome. The only change from one generation to the next is by mutations, which are rare. So one can determine male paternal lineage by comparing the DNA coding of Y-chromosomes.

There are "junk" regions on the Y-chromosome that contain repeated base-pair sets (microsatellites or Short Tandem Repeats or STR). Over time the number of repeats changes due to mutations. The number of repeats at these locations, called “markers” can be used to distinguish different male-line families. Thus, the detailed structure in terms of base-pair coding is not required; only information about certain aspects of a small part of the Y-chromosome is needed. This does not identify the individual, but only the family to which the individual belongs; determining the 12 or 25 markers (see below) is much less information than that obtained by totally sequencing the Y-chromosome. There are several labs that do such work, at a cost of about $100 per person.

So one can determine male paternal lineage by comparing the DNA coding of Y chromosomes. This was recently done for descendants of a slave woman, Sally Hemings, of Thomas Jefferson, with the result that one of her sons had a Jefferson Y chromosome, either from Thomas or one of his near relatives.

See Alan Savin's short article Introduction to Genetic Genealogy. Mr. Savin has also written an excellent booklet entitled DNA For Family Historians. You can purchase it from him: USA: US $ 5.99 (plus US $1.00 for airmail posting), UK: £3.99 (includes 2nd class post). Other countries: e-mail (alan@savin.org) for the actual price, but it will be similar to the USA price in local currency. Personal cheques in any currency should be made payable to "Alan Savin" and sent to: Genetic Genealogy Guides, 9 Bannard Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, England SL6 4NG. Remember to enclose a note with your address.

A very complete web site on DNA & the Family Historian is available.

The Roper Male-Line Y-Chromosome Project

I have initiated a Y-chromosome DNA testing project for the male Roper line. Each male Roper participant commits himself to provide a mouth-swab sample to be analyzed by a competent DNA laboratory, with the understanding that it may be found that he is not actually in a male Roper line. (Several with the surname Roper come from a woman ancestor with surname Roper.) The participant must also provide me with his Roper family tree as far back into the past as possible.

We will need to have a sizeable group from several currently unconnected Roper lines to make this project feasible. If you are a male with surname Roper and wish to participate in this project, send me e-mail: roperld@vt.edu. I will need as complete a set of family data as possible, to correlate the test results with genealogical data.

I have arranged for a company http://www.familytreedna.com/ to do the Y-chromosomes tests for the Roper family. If you wish to participate in the Roper genetics project, send me e-mail: roperld@vt.edu or go to http://www.familytreedna.com/surname_det.asp?count=35&group=Roper, and you will be sent the details to be followed and one of the test kits. The 12-marker test costs $99, the 25-marker test costs $169 and the 37-marker test cost $229. (There is a shipping fee of $2 for the USA and $4 outside the USA.) Usually the 12-marker test will indicate in which major family a Roper male resides. (I know of a Buchanan and a Roper with 12 marker matches, but the pair has 7 relative mutations for the last 13 markers.) 12 markers work well when starting testing males of a given surname; but 25 markers are needed after a surname project is well underway to determine the branches of the family by one or two relative mutations. For a study about the efficacy of only doing 12 marker tests, see http://newsarch.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2002-08/1030558442.

The result of a test will be twelve or twenty-five numbers ("markers") that give the number of repeat units for twelve different parts of the Y-chromosome. All Roper male lines from a common ancestor will have almost the same result from the test back several hundred years, with the possibility of a random mutation or two. Differences in the test results will indicate how far back the common ancestor is beyond several hundred years. See: http://www.familytreedna.com/techfaq.html

What Can be Achieved by the Project

There are many Roper male lines in the United States and England that cannot be connected by data from documents. The twice burning of the court house records in New Kent County, Virginia destroyed all of the Roper records up to 1864, so many Southern Roper lines that emanated from that county cannot be connected. We probably will never know exactly how the early Ropers in Virginia fit together, because the St. Peter's parish records and other meager data are not sufficient. Probably the best we can do is find out which families from there are related by Y-chromosome testing of at least one male-line Roper in each family that connects back to early Virginia.

This project should allow some judgments to be made about how closely related these several Roper male lines are.

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Many of the testees are in the R1b1 haplogroup, the largest European haplogroup.

Project Results

One should be cautious about putting individuals with only 12 markers measured in a family; it is possible that more markers could be greatly different.

Here are the probability curves for 12, 25 and 37 markers:

Another view of the Roper markers.

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Classifying Roper Families According to Y-Chromosome Marker Sets

Michael John Roper (rstelmar1996@aol.com), father of DTCR, has suggested that we adopt a classification scheme for the different Roper families as determined by the Y-chromosome tests. In order of time at which the Y markers were determined, the classification is:

Only families with 25 or more markers are classified.

Comparison with Oxford Ancestor and National Geographic Genographic Project Results

As a check, I had my Y-chromosome analyzed by a different laboratory (http://www.oxfordancestors.com) that uses a slightly different set of 10 markers. For the 9 markers that overlap between the two tests there is total agreement between the two laboratories.

This immediately shows that 7 of the markers are identical. The following relationship holds: (389i)=(389-1)-3; (389ii-i)=(389-2)-(389-1):
then numerically 10=13-3; 17=30-13. So the two independent 389 locations agree in value. Thus 9 markers are in agreement. (DYS425 is not measured by Family Tree DNA.)

I joined the National Geographic Society Genographic Project. The 12 markers determined by that project agree with those determined by Family Tree DNA.

Defining 12-marker Set for the Majority USA Roper Family

Note that several of the participants have identical markers and several differ by one digit in one marker (red) from the identical ones. The fact that the single-mutation cases usually have a single mutation in different Y-chromosome locations illustrates the random nature of mutations and the veracity of evolution by mutations. One of the identical sets of markers is from the northern-USA Roper family and one of the single-mutation sets of markers is from the northern-USA Roper family. (One of the identical sets of markers is from Nova Scotia, with known origin in Virginia USA; so I call this a USA family.) This indicates that there is a high probability that the 12 markers of the identical sets is the defining marker array for the common ancestor in England of both the southern-USA and northern-USA Ropers. That defining marker array for what I call the "Majority USA Roper Family" (MUR) and its common ancestor in England is:

We do not know the name or location of this English Roper ancestor, but he was probably in Norfolk, Suffolk or Kent County. As of 20 April 2005 two English Roper (PJR & AGGR), with Suffolk County, England Roper ancestry, matches these 12 markers; so we should probably call this family the Suffolk/Norfolk,England-USA-Roper (EMUR) family.

If we add the extra marker (DYS425) of mine from the Oxford Ancestors test and assume it had no mutations since the common English ancestor in England, the defining 13-marker array could be:

Discussion of the Results

One that is very different than the others (WSR) is known from documents to descend from a female Roper (Isolda Roper and Richard Fourneaux). Another (DTCR) is a central English family. A third is from an eastern English family.

There is one, CMR, that differs considerably from the identical ones, but differs by only two markers from LWR. It appears that CMR is from a Western England family (see below).

HSR and AWR define a completely different Virginia/West Virginia Roper family than most Ropers who originate in the USA from Virginia. ITR in England is also a member of that family.

The ones that differ so much from the Majority USA Roper family, excluding WSR, possibly define different Roper families other than the Majority USA Roper family.

Random mutations (probability of about 0.2% per generation for each Y-chromosome location) caused the differences. This indicates that many participants have a reasonably recent common ancestor according to the probability graph and table given below (taken from http://www.familytreedna.com/techfaq.html). The chart shows that the most probable number of generations for a common ancestor is about 15 for those that differ by one digit in one marker, but could be much lower or higher.

I have a case in my mother's Franklin family where two males that are known to be related through four generations differ by one digit in one marker. This illustrates that such a single mutation can occur within a small number of generations.

It is interesting that the northern Ropers (CFER & NJR), whose ancestors are known to come from County Norfolk in eastern England, and the southern Ropers are related. It appears that there are different Roper families in the east (Norfolk/Kent) and west (Dorset) and central (Stafford, Worcester, Warwick) parts of England that are not closely related, and that the Eastern one is most closely related to the southern USA Ropers, which agrees with much documentary evidence. However, HSR descends from Nicholas Roper, whose gravestone indicates that he came from County Suffolk, England, which is in eastern England, and his 12 markers are very different from the Majority USA Roper family's 12 markers.

Defining 37-marker Set for the Majority USA Roper Family

Note that CFER, NJR & DR are northern-USA Ropers and they have the same set of additional 13 markers as the two southern-USA Ropers LDR and RSR. Thus we can conclude that the additional 13 markers for these four participants define, with high probability, the additional 13-marker set for the common ancestor in England of both the southern-USA and northern-USA Ropers. Taking the defining original 12-marker set from above or what I call the "Majority USA Roper Family", we get the 37-marker defining set for the "Majority USA Roper Family" and its common ancestor in England to be:

We do not know the name or location of this English Roper ancestor, but he was probably in Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk or Kent County England.

There are no surnames which have 1 or 2 relative mutations for 25 markers with this Roper family, so I conclude that this occurence of the Roper surname is relatively old.

Y-Chromosome Haplogroup Tree

This family is in the http://www.isogg.org/tree/ M94->M168->F(M89)->K(M9)->P(M45)->R(M207)->1(M173)->b(M343)->1(P25)->c(M269)->3(M126) or R1b1c3 for short. As defined in The Journey of Man, A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells, p. 182:

The Genographic Project of National Geographic gives the R1b migration route as:

So the MUR family took the long scenic ancient paleolithic route from Africa to Europe, rather than than the short more recent neolithic route.

From Family Tree DNA: Haplogroup R1b is the most common haplogroup in European populations. It is believed to have expanded throughout Europe as humans re-colonized after the last glacial maximum 10-12 thousand years ago. This lineage is also the haplogroup containing the Atlantic modal haplotype.

Relative Mutations for 25 Markers

A way to compare each participant with all other participants is to record the number of mutations by which they differ for 25 markers (relative mutations or genetic distanc e). The following are the relative mutations for family RY1: