DNA Testing Results
DNA Studies:
Brooks Families of New England
On the Genealogies page of this site lives a Founders table, consisting of emigrants from old England who are known to have founded a Brooks line in New England by 1700. In order to learn more about these men and how they might be interrelated, and thus to learn more about how their descendants are related, a privately organized yDNA testing project commenced in 2006 using the Family Tree DNA lab. This project tests the comparative makeup of the y-chromosome which is present in all males.
Participants to date have been Brooks males who, on the basis of traditional ("paper") research, descend from one of three particular founders. This page summarizes our experience: 11 laymen with no genetic literacy struggle to absorb the barest basics of the science, but for their pains are rewarded with results beyond expectations. A rough chronology is provided, and a few benchmarks and observations made along the way. Some advanced testing will be needed to move forward with Group One. At the same time, we'll initiate Phase Two with testing of descendants in two Connecticut lines. All findings will be added here as they become available.
Click here to view our test results in PDF format, with color-coding which correlates with the accompanying analysis. (When the spreadsheet opens, you can zoom the view in Adobe Reader's percentage box to fit your monitor and viewing comfort.) Note that this chart may include as-yet-unproven descendants who are not included in the more restrictive charts accessed via the yDNA Testing link on the Genealogies pages.
Click here for a short list of recommended y-DNA resources: off-site tutorials I've found useful and non-intimidating. I particularly recommend National Geographic's "Genographic Project" as a painless, interactive introduction to DNA.
Each link above will open in a new page in your browser, so you can tab back and forth between two or more pages.
- Thomas & Henry Brooks: DNA Intersects Traditional Scholarship || 6 Nov 2006
This topic and its immediate predecessor present a pair of important developments which took place this year. First, the results of our previously reported DNA testing confirmed beyond a doubt that Henry and Capt. Thomas Brooks of Massachusetts shared a recent common male ancestor. (See the next topic down this page for details.) Secondly, John Brooks Threlfall has generously shared his privately published research into the origins of these two men in England. The serendipitous result is that Mr. Threlfall's research and our DNA test results converge on one man, Richard Brooke of Manchester, county Lancaster, England, as the common ancestor - a grandfather to each of our emigrants, making them first cousins.
John Brooks Threlfall needs no introduction. Author of 50 Great Migration Colonists and many other works, both publicly and privately published, Mr. Threlfall wrote the seminal article "Thomas Brooks of Watertown and Concord" which first appeared in TAG (The American Genealogist) in 1977, and was subsequently reprinted in the now-defunct Brooks Family Query Exchange in 1980. When Mr. Threlfall could not conveniently access the 1790 census for New Hampshire to trace his ancestors, he paid to have the original enumerations printed and the books distributed to New Hampshire libraries at his own expense. His personal life's work, a study of his own ancestry prepared for his children, takes the great majority of his lines back to England. Indeed, to my knowledge no one living has conducted more research into the English ancestry of early New England settlers than John Brooks Threlfall. Visit Alstead, New Hampshire, or one of the other New England towns in which Mr. Threlfall had a Revolutionary War ancestor, and you'll find a life-sized statue of a minuteman in the town center, courtesy of Mr. Threlfall.
I knew that John Brooks Threlfall and I share a descent from Capt. Thomas Brooks. Earlier this spring, as I was mailing out documentation of my own Brooks ancestry to cousins, on impulse I mailed an additional copy to Mr. Threlfall at the Madison, Wisconsin address where he was living when he published his TAG article in 1977. Just as the first DNA lab results were coming back, the phone rang and it was Mr. Threlfall, still at the same address, now in his late 80s and still eager to swap family history. He asked if I'd found the English origins of Thomas and Henry Brooks, I replied, sadly, no, and he offered to send me the information. He has subsequently shared with me all the relevant chapters of his privately published family history, as well as photocopies of such essential documentation as the wills of Richard/b Brooke and Thomas/a Brooke of England, and Henry/1 Brooks of Woburn, Massachusetts. I will add scans of these and many other documents to the relevant person pages on this site as time permits.To recapitulate Mr. Threlfall's research odyssey, he searched the IGI listings of parish register marriages in England for a Thomas Brooks with wife Grace. Only one was found with acceptable dating, the marriage of Thomas Brooks and Grace Cunliffe in Manchester Cathedral on 2 Feb 1617/18. (Researcher Debbye Lansing subsequently confirmed this marriage record independently through email contact with Christopher Hunwick, the Cathedral's archivist.) Since the record states that bride and groom were "both of this parish," Mr. Threlfall then focused on baptismal records and wills of Brooke families within the parish, and in the process identified a four-generation chain: widowed mother Elizabeth, mentioned in the will of her son Richard/b Brooke, whose sons Thomas/a and John/a [baptismal records, Richard's will] had, among other children, sons Thomas (Jr.) and Henry (of John).
These findings initially perplexed me. Since Shattuck wrote his History of Concord, Massachusetts in 1835, various authorities had speculated that Thomas Brooks came from County Suffolk, from the region of East Anglia in general (the hotbed of Puritanism), or from London. We also knew that Thomas was literate, and able to bring with him from England enough initial capital to eventually become one of Concord's largest landholders. These speculations and facts suggested that he "ought" to be the son of someone less humble than a shoemaker from Manchester, in the English midlands. Given the gaps in 16th-century English records, I asked myself, "Could there be some other Thomas Brooks who married a wife Grace?" It took the completed DNA results - my own were the last to arrive - to answer my questions about surety.
Basically, the DNA results tell us that Thomas and Henry of Massachusetts were closely related, sharing a common male ancestor in their recent past. John Threlfall's research tells us that a Henry and Thomas Brooks who were, as proved by will, first cousins, lived in or about Manchester, England at precisely the right time in history. Thomas Brooke of Manchester married a wife Grace, and the bridal couple subsequently disappeared from Manchester records (having emigrated to New England). If we lack absolute certainty in an imperfect research world, I believe we can say with near certainty that Thomas and Grace of Massachusetts were the Thomas and Grace of Manchester.
- DNA Results || 6 Nov 2006
During the late winter and spring of 2006, four Brooks males submitted DNA samples (cheek swabs) to FamilyTreeDNA, the leading genealogical testing lab in the country. All four males had meticulously researched genealogical pedigrees - two were direct male descendants of Henry Brooks, and two were direct male descendants of Capt. Thomas Brooks, both of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. We purchased the most sophisticated y-chromosome test then available, which analyzed 37 markers (in layman's language, locations) within the male Y chromosome to produce a string of numbers which remain nearly constant in the DNA of a given male line of descent through the generations. The preceding qualifier nearly is important, as exact matches are rare - mutation, the random change of one or more of these sampled markers, is estimated to occur as often as every six to eight generations.
The series of numbers which the tests produced were entered into a spreadsheet and color-coded for comparison. For the two descendants of Thomas Brooks, myself and Clarence (Buzz) Brooks, allele values differed by one step in 4 of the 37 locations measured, with the other 33 results being identical. This served as a test control to confirm that our paper research was correct, and that both of us were direct descendants of Thomas.Click here to open a copy of the spreadsheet in PDF (Adobe Reader) format. To save the spreadsheet to your own computer, click the floppy disk icon on the Reader toolbar (NOT the browser toolbar).
Two descendants of Henry Brooks were also tested, and we found an initial problem - their results were quite dissimilar. Any difference of more than one step in a comparison of a specific marker represents a red flag, and the two men who tested as descendants of Henry had five two-point discrepancies in their numbers when compared side by side. As it turned out, one of these two subjects had a previously unknown break in his paternal ancestry a few generations back - what genetic genealogists call an NPE (non-paternal event). Despite well-circulated warnings to be prepared for such surprises when testing DNA, I think it's fair to say we were all taken aback by this occurrence.
The remaining participant representing Henry Brooks, Morris (Mo) Brooks, had test results which closely matched those of Buzz and myself. As Mo showed less divergence from Buzz than Buzz from Chris, we were somewhat perplexed. DNA results do not provide names, dates, or relationships - but only numbers which can be compared to probability tables to estimate how recently the test subjects shared a common male ancestor. First, consider what the company's website has to say about a 37-marker comparison with a mismatch of 4, representing the comparison of Chris and Buzz.
33/37 You share the same surname (or a variant) with another male and you mismatch by four 'points' - a 33/37 match. Because of the volatility within some of the markers this is about the same as being 11/12 and it's most likely that you matched 23/25 or 24/25 on previous Y-DNA tests. If you matched exactly on previous tests you probably have a mismatch at DYS 576, 570, CDYa or CDYb in our newest panel of markers. If several or many generations have passed it is likely that these two lines are related through other family members. That would require that each line had passed a mutation and one person would have experienced at least 2 mutations. The only way to confirm is to test additional family lines and find where the mutations took place. Only by testing additional family members can you find the person in between each of you... this 'in betweener' becomes essential for you to find, and without him the possibility of a match exists, but further evidence must be pursued. If you test additional individuals you will most likely find that their DNA falls in-between the persons who are 4 apart demonstrating relatedness within this family cluster or haplotype.
This left us all confused. Buzz then followed up with the lab, and passed along the following response from lab associate Sierra Netz.
From this chart I would say that it's clear that you all share a common ancestor and it's very reasonable to assume that the ancestor is Thomas Brooks from 12-14 generations back. Each of you have 3-4 mutations between you but they are all only off by one step (for instance a 14 for one person and a 13 or 15 for the other). On the 37 marker test, being off by 3-4 still means you are most likely related. Two of the mutational differences take place on fast moving markers. CDY a and b are some of the fastest mutating markers and so is 464a, b, c, d, etc. So these are very likely to mutate within 10 or 12 generations.
It is also possible that you and Christopher share a common ancestor more recently than Thomas, but each line may have developed two mutations since then. Since you believe this connection to be a generation or two before Thomas, who Mo connects to, this is a reasonable assumption. Mo's line may just mutate slower or just didn't develop as many mutations down the line as yours and Christopher's.
Anyway, based on the information available, I say it is highly likely that these three men shared a common ancestor within 14 or less generations.
Clear as mud, eh? :-) The company's probability tables tell us that at the 37-marker level of testing, an exact match of numbers would represent a 50% certainty of a common ancestor within two generations (i.e., brothers), and a 95% certainty of a common ancestor within three generations (i.e., first cousins). When you begin to try to calculate falloff from this perfect norm of a 100% results match, the lab's answer seems to be, "More testing." FTDNA has recently developed a 67-marker test which can be applied to a previously submitted sample. I expect I will purchase this testing upgrade in hopes that with more alleles measured, and eventually more subjects tested, we can more closely pin down the generation in which the shared common male ancestor lived.
To expand our knowledge base, we need additional volunteers for all the pre-1700 lines identified on the Genealogies page of this site. While we haven't been able to identify qualified descendants in a number of lines, one line in which we do have multiple qualified descendants is that of William/1 Brooks of Springfield. We also ought to have a second descendant of Henry of Woburn tested to amplify his line's tiny sample size. To qualify, subjects must be male, with the surname Brooks, and with proven direct descent from a founder. That is, you must be a son of, son of, son of, all the way back through Brooks males to the emigrant. The cost of the 67-marker test, when ordered through the Brooks Surname Project at FamilyTreeDNA, is $269 + $2 s/h.) More information is available at the FamilyTreeDNA website here. If you click on the home page's Surname Projects link, and then navigate to the Brooks project, Y-DNA Tests link, our results are coded DDQC9 (Mo), DN5BN (Buzz), and A9663 (Chris).- DNA Testing Begins || 21 Apr
2006
Antiquarians and genealogists have speculated since the time of Lemuel Shattuck, who published his history of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1835, that Henry Brooks of Woburn and Capt. Thomas Brooks of Concord, each the emigrant founder of a prolific Massachusetts-based line of descendants, were brothers. Surviving evidence in contemporary records is sparse - a mention in the will of Henry's son-in-law of his "uncle Thomas Brooks," and a 1666 Concord tax list in which Thomas's son Joshua is living on property of Henry's son Isaac. Given the looseness with which terms such as "uncle" and "cousin" were used in 17th-century Massachusetts, these two facts alone fall short of definitive proof.
At the same time, it is unusual that two sibling lines of colonial Englishmen, living in close proximity, could somehow remain completely isolated from each other for a century. Historian David Hackett Fischer has aptly described Massachusetts by the mid-18th century as "a vast cousinage." Yet I find not a single intermarriage between these Woburn and Concord lines prior to 1755. And since allied families often migrated in groups, or settled near each other, we may also ask why the Woburn and Concord lines diverge sharply in their early geographical dispersion. Henry had numerous descendants in early Connecticut and West Jersey, yet Thomas none. In town after town in Massachusetts and even Connecticut, the early Brooks population is either exclusively Concord line or Woburn line. They seem somehow to be oil and water.
Were human factors such as family estrangement or religious differences at work, or was this differentiation merely a statistical anomaly? Somehow, none of this speculation brings us any closer to an answer to a question which has resisted solution for nearly 175 years.
Bring on DNA testing! The evolution of reasonably priced and widely available DNA testing offers us an exceptional opportunity to shed new light on this question, and on the larger question of origins - Were the founders of 17th-century Brooks families in New England related to each other, and, if so, how so?
The key to genetic knowledge lies in building a knowledge base, and we begin with the development of genetic fingerprints for Henry and Thomas Brooks. By spring we will have 37-marker test results for two direct male descendants of Henry and two direct male descendants of Thomas Brooks. We will then be able to compare Henry's baseline against Thomas's.
To expand our knowledge base, volunteers are needed for the other pre-1700 lines identified in the Founders table on the Genealogy page.(To qualify, subjects must be male, with the surname Brooks, with proven direct and unbroken descent from a founder.
