When I was discussing the three balls in the air that I was waiting for, I talked about a cold contacted Elmore test. One of my Elmer related friends was active in the surname group and convinced one of the people with documentation back to Edward Elmer from Hartford to Y test at FTDNA.
The results are in and, with some interesting mutations away from the modal for the cumberland cluster, they are definitely a match. Our group in cumberland (under R-Z18 -> Z14 ->DF95) has some modal STRs. We show a 25 at DYS390, 11 at DYS385b and 22 at YCAIIb. Our subgroup of Cumberland also shows a micro-allele on DYS458..in my case 16.2.
What is interesting about our new Edward Elmer descendant tester is that they show the R-Z18 modal of 24 at DYS390 and 23 at YCAIIb. They do however have the 16.2 microallele and the 11 at DYS385b. They are also one of only 4 matches for me at 37 (3 Elmer/Elmores in that list now). So I’m certain they are a good match and are definitely on for the Elmer line. They just appear to have some back mutations away from the general “cumberland” pattern.
Stack this result up with the two other results that document back to Edward Elmer, and the two Elmer families from New York that follow this same pattern and I think we have a pretty compelling case. This is exactly how Y DNA testing is supposed to work.
Ironically, the New York Elmers are so close the modal for the Cumberland cluster that I could not find a novel STR value that wasn’t shared by another close-ish group..the Knowltons. The Knowltons have some interesting differences with the Cumberland cluster modal at 37 and they also for the most part share the values that make the Elmers stick out from the modal..they just go a couple of steps further. So there are some signature values at STRs that make Knowltons stand out from Elmers.
In other words: Looking at the Elmer/Elmore group I could see what would make them “not Knowltons” but it was the fact that their values were overall more vanilla “Cumberland” than the Knowltons and any variation from the norm that I found was also shared by the Knowltons.
To me, that means we have not defined an STR that just screams Elmer. There may not be one, but further 67 and 111 testing might turn something up. Of course the trick would be to get the Elmers, myself and at least a few similar DF95 candidate Knowltons up to that level to see what patterns there were.
This post calls for some illustration.
First up. These are the Elmers/Elmore results with mine listed at the bottom as Levi Thompson. You can see the Elmers have some variation from each other right in the first 12 STRs of the Y test. So too, do the Knowltons. The green bar is the modal for Cumberlands. The dark blue vertical bar is a variation all the knowltons seem to share away from the Cumberland modal. Where we usually have two 11s for DYS385 the Knowltons seem to have an 11-12.
Next:
https://wanderingtrees.com/2014/07/elmer-and-elmore-recruiting-for-y-dna-tests
Previously:
https://wanderingtrees.com/2014/05/three-balls-in-the-air