Clan Crawford AssociationCRAWFORD Y-DNA PROJECT
A full restructuring of the DNA pages is pending, but initial steps are underway. Apologies for any oversights.
WELCOME TO THE CRAWFORD Y-DNA PROJECT
The Clan Crawford Association has collaborated with Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) since about 2004 to produce the Crawford Surname Y-DNA Project. FTDNA has the largest Y-DNA database in the world and has the greatest ability to compare your DNA with others who have taken the test to determine relationships. We use the Short Tandem Repeats (STR) “Y-DNA37” test (at minimum, the Y-67 and Y-111 provide more power for matching and grouping members) from FTDNA. However, SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) testing is playing a growing role in dissecting project lineages. You may find some useful information on the Crawford Project’s “Links” page, here:
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/crawford/links
Meet DNA Coordinator Dave Nicholson
I am the newest of several family genealogists, including both parents and my maternal grandfather, Archie Stuart Crawford, and for the last decade I have been the primary genealogist for my extended family. My Crawford ancestors spent several generations (starting in 1855) working as Protestant missionaries and educators in the Damascus / Beirut areas of the Middle East. My grandfather, Archie, eschewed the missionary work, and spent his career working to strengthen what became the American University of Beirut, in addition to working for the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS) in Cairo during WWII. Prior to the 1850s, my Crawfords lived in Washington County, New York, having come there around the time of the Revolution from what was then called “Little Britain” (near New Windsor, NY), where they had first settled. In 2013, I began experimenting with genetic testing for genealogical purposes, and since then I have used tests from all the major vendors, with most focused on AncestryDNA and/or Family Tree DNA. My exploration of SNP testing (thanks mainly to the Big Y test) on my Crawford line made me a natural fit for a new phase of analysis in the Crawford project, starting when I joined the CCA in 2016, and I have been administrator of the Crawford Y-DNA Project since then (with Bruce Crawford until 2018, when he stepped back to make time for some other interests). My Crawford line is in lineage I1-02 in the Crawford Y-DNA Project.
The project is run by volunteer administrators, and our initial goal is to help group each member with any others who appear to be relatively closely related, and thereby allowing those groups to focus on pushing back their paternal genealogical line further, and hopefully identify common ancestors. We further hope to shed light onto the deeper connections between these groups and how they might connect through the historical Crawford lines (see the Genealogy and Prominent Clansmen tabs above).
MEMBERS-ONLY Y-DNA REPORTS:
In addition to the project’s public Y-DNA Results page at FTDNA (where there are additional pages only for members of that project), we also have a “Members-Only Y-DNA” page on the CCA site in the Y-DNA tab that will allow members of the Clan Crawford Association to view and download special reports concerning STR and SNP results related to specific lineages or haplogroups. The members-only page is here: https://clancrawfordassoc.org/members-only-y-dna/
These reports are not available to non-members in order to protect privacy. We also provide access to these reports for members of the Crawford Project at FTDNA even if they are not also members of the CCA. Nevertheless, note that participation in the Crawford Surname Y-DNA Project does not provide automatic membership in the CCA, nor the other way around. If you wish to join the CCA, click on the “Home” page and then “Join the Clan.” You will then be able to click on the “Members Only” tab to access the PDF files. If you wish to join the Crawford Y-DNA Project, see the DNA Testing Details page (you need to be DNA-tested at FamilyTreeDNA.com, as the project is hosted there).
The Crawford Y-DNA Project, Going Forward
The Crawford surname project has over 710 participants at this time, over 500 of them Y-tested, including over 415 who are Y-tested Crawfords (as of 1/2022). Many more are needed to obtain an adequate sample of Crawfords to draw major, firm conclusions, and this will take time. We are encouraging all Crawford men to have their Y-DNA tested in Family Tree DNA’s Y-DNA database & the Crawford surname project. We are especially interested in testing more Crawford males from Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland, and people with well-documented descent from any of the numerous established Crawford families from the 1600s and before. From such expanded testing, we hope to facilitate those without such “paper trails,” on all the continents, to obtain linkages to their ancestral home, bringing Crawfords together from around the world.
We have made significant progress in delineating and identifying specific ancient Crawford lineages using SNP information derived from the Big Y-700 test and other advanced SNP tests provided by Family Tree DNA and YSeq.net, and with the help of external results analysis at Ytree.net (“The Big Tree” is free but only supports one particular haplogroup, R1b-P312) & YFull.com (not free, but very sophisticated and useful analysis reveals SNPs that others can miss). We are seeing more and more lineages within their own defining Y branches and are also separating multiple sub-lineages within such groupings. As the SNP research fulfills its possibilities, we have been able to track DNA branching into modern times and we are starting to connect Y-DNA with our known paper trails. It is too early to be certain but what this could mean is that the Y-DNA participants, especially those who have taken advanced tests such as Big Y-700 will reconnect the lost paper trails and allow them and us to understand how we are related.
Within the Crawford Surname Project the haplogroups A, B, E, F, I, J, N and R are represented (N was only identified in 2022!). The project continues to expand in scope and in its power to detect recent common ancestors. The number of identified lineages has grown over the years and the complexity of the I1 and R1b haplogroups have been the principle cause of additional lineages. Periodically, as new analyses are completed, some individuals may find that they have been placed in a different lineage while others may find that they are no longer in a lineage but have been put back into an ‘Ungrouped’ category. This will hopefully be a short stay as more individuals join the Crawford surname Project and future analysis connects new relationships.
Below are some files that may be of use or interest. The Y-DNA FACT SHEET PDF will provide you with additional guidance and information in interpreting your results. The Y-DNA Administrators PDF will allow you to become better acquainted with the main volunteer administrators who update and manage the site. The Y-DNA Utility will explain the protocol and procedure for determining lineages and TMRCA using STRs. The Y-DNA STR Lineage Placement Protocol describes the decision making process for identifying and naming lineages.