Purpose
The purpose of this project is to explore how genetics can help elucidate the genealogy of the Ewing families of Scotland, Ulster, America and the world. Most of our participants so far are American, but we welcome the participation of Ewings everywhere. We are especially interested to have the participation of Ewings from Ireland and Scotland who know their genealogies back to 1700 or before, because we think this can help us trace the deep origins of many Ewing families. Already we have participants from Canada, Scotland, England and New Zealand--where are you Ireland and Australia? We also hope to understand better what the relationship may be between Ewing, Ewen and McEwan in any of their variant spellings. Analysis of Y-DNA samples from men who have well-documented conventional genealogies will allow us to solve some thorny old genealogical puzzles about the relationships among many different Ewing lines. Genetic genealogy will never replace conventional genealogy, but it is a useful tool for determining what line to focus on for conventional research, and it will sometimes help a genealogist break through a maddeningly tenacious genealogical brick wall.
Group Administrator
The project's group administrator is David Neal Ewing, who is primarily responsible for the content of this web site. Neither Dr. Ewing nor the Ewing Family Association benefit financially in any way from the DNA project and all the work you see here was done by volunteers. DNA testing costs money, but project participants purchase this testing directly from testing laboratories, mainly from Family Tree DNA, the vendor that hosts our project. Neither Dr. Ewing nor the Ewing Family Association have any financial interest in Family Tree DNA. We welcome feedback and suggestions, and we would really welcome volunteers who would like to help with the project and web site. Email him at
Results
The project now has over two hundred participants. We have concluded based on the results of DNA testing that about two thirds of these men are probably related to one another within a genealogical time frame. In addition to the large cluster, there are some smaller clusters of related men. For the sake of discussion, we have divided the participants into Groups, which are comprised as explained in Results Introduction. Group Relationship Diagrams have been prepared to show conventional genealogical relationships between those participants we know to be related on conventional grounds. Finally, Lineage Charts have been supplied by most project participants and are posted on the web site. We urge first time users of the web site to have a look at the Y-DNA Project Help page to understand how the results pages are organized. Experienced researchers who are interested in our Raw Data can download an Excel file of the results. Check the menu in the left column of the Y-DNA pages for further options.
Resources
For those interested in learning more about DNA testing for genealogical purposes in general or about the rationale and implications of the Ewing Project in particular, a number of resources are available. Project coordinator David Neal Ewing has written a series of Y-DNA Project Articles, which were published in the Journal of Clan Ewing and its successor, the Journal of the Ewing Family Association, and are posted on this web site. A number of related articles have been commissioned by the project and are also posted on the Y-DNA Project Articles page. Links to pertinent articles in the scientific literature are also offered, as are links to a number of other web sites and on-line resources about genetic genealogy and anthropological genetics. Finally, a number of Tools useful for working with genetic data are discussed and links for finding them are offered in the About Resources page.
Should I join?
Please see the page Join the Project? for more details on who should consider joining the Y-DNA project and how to proceed.