Ewing Family
Association

Audaciter!

The Y-DNA Project of the Ewing Family Association welcomes your questions and comments: dna@ewingfamilyassociation.org.

Results in the Ewing Surname Y-DNA Project have been sorted into five groups, each of which has its own Results Table and Results Discussion.

Results Tables have been prepared using Microsoft Excel but are generally distributed and posted as PDF files because of program compatibility issues. If you should want a copy of any of the source files used to prepare our results reports, please contact David Ewing at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. An Excel file of our Raw Data is available for researchers to download for manipulation and analysis, but trying to learn about our results by just looking at this file will make you go bug-eyed.

 If you are not familiar with how the groups are organized, please have a look at Results Introduction. The Results Tables are meant to be viewed in conjunction with Results Discussions, which contain more information about the conventional genealogy of subgroups and issues that are raised by the results. The Results Discussion corresponding to each Results Table can be reached by clicking on the appropriate link in the Results Directory.

Reading Results Tables

In the results tables, Sub-group designations are in the leftmost column, and participant IDs are in the next column. Clicking on the appropriate sub-group designation in the Relationship Diagram part of the Results Directory will take you to this sub-group's Diagram. Clicking on the appropriate ID in the Lineage part of the Results Directory will take you to the Lineage for that participant. The first row of each Results Table shows marker names in FTDNA order.

Marker values are reported using FTDNA conventions. If you are comparing results from companies other than FTDNA, please be aware that for some markers, the “same” results will be reported differently. The five marker names that appear in red are the five markers that distinguish the Ewing modal from the M222+ modal. Five marker names have been printed in red—these are the markers that together define the distinctive “Ewing” cluster within M222+, and are therefore the most important markers for establishing membership in the Ewing cluster.

The row of marker values to the right of each participant ID is that participant’s individual haplotype. Participant Lineages and Relationship Diagrams for sub-groups showing known conventional genealogical relationships among the participants can be reached from the links on the Results Directory.

Researchers and others are welcome to use and discuss the data from this web site, but it is copyrighted and must not be published or posted elsewhere without explicit, written permission from the group administrator. Any one who wishes to contact a project participant to discuss his Lineage or otherwise should email the group administrator at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Modal Haplotypes and Highlighting of Differences

In each of the tables, participant haplotypes are compared to a reference modal haplotype in the second row of the table (below the row with marker names). The concept of modal haplotype is very important to thinking about the results; if you are not familiar with this, please have a look at Modal Haplotypes and Y-DNA Article 3. Groups 1 and 2 have been compared with the Ewing modal haplotype.

The Ewing modal haplotype is a good approximation of the haplotype of the common ancestor of the men in Groups 1 and 2. We do not know where or exactly when the common ancestor of this group lived, but it was probably SW Scotland or Ulster, in or after the 16th century. The fact that we have used the shorthand label “Ewing” in the tables to identify the Ewing modal haplotype is in no way intended to imply that Ewing men who do not match it closely are somehow not genuine Ewings.

Differences have been highlighted such that a difference of one from a modal number of repeats is shaded light green, a difference of two is shaded light yellow and differences of three or more are shaded light red.

Although we did not use Dean McGee’s Y-DNA Utility to prepare these tables, we have followed his shading conventions and have used the utility a lot in doing the analysis. Dean has made this utility available for free use and it is a boon to genetic genealogy researchers everywhere. It has facilitated analysis and exposition of our results significantly, and we much appreciate it.

Group 3 is compared with the M222+ modal haplotype, Group 4 is compared with the Atlantic Modal Haplotype (AMH) and Group 5 is compared with the Group 5a modal haplotype. Any data cell without shading matches exactly the value in the reference modal for that marker.

Additional Markers

Because of space constraints, the Results Tables show only 37-marker haplotypes, but many project participants have had additional markers tested. The rightmost three columns in the Results Tables show which participants have upgraded to 67-marker haplotypes, had DYF399X testing or had SNP testing, respectively. The red upward-pointing arrow signifies that you can find additional results using the links in the Results Directory for the cited article.

All results are also shown in the Raw Data, but that has no narrative explanation or highlighting, and is most useful for downloading to Excel for further processing and analysis for researchers equipped to do this.

Mistakes and Corrections

Mistakes are inevitable. We strive for accuracy, but invariably fall short. If you spot inaccuracies or inconsistencies (or any plain old stupid mistakes), please contact David Ewing at DavidEwing93 at gmail dot com. Corrections are always welcomed.