10 DEC 2005: The Y-DNA of William's alleged son, Hamilton Bess (1803-circa 1888) has been uploaded! All that is required is the Y-DNA of William H. Bess in which to comapare results...

16 DEC 2005: The Y-DNA of William Bess (1776-circa 1865) has been acquired and uploaded! SUCCESS...the Y-DNA of William Bess matches that of Hamilton Bess 11 for 12!!! An upgrade from 12 to 37 markers is planned in the very near future.

01 MAR 2006: Happy belated New Year to all project members and a huge WELCOME to the descendant of Everett Bass of Sampson County, NC! So far, it does not appear that this member is paternally related to the other members within any meaningful genealogical timeframe as not even the haplogroups match, however these results provide a future motive for others whose Y-DNA match this participant. Also, it has been noticed that yhe Y-DNA of Everett Bass on a 12-marker value appears to match or closely match the results of several participants of the "Orr" surname.

15 MAY 2006: WELCOME to yet ANOTHER participant who descends from Nash Leslie Bess and whose Y-DNA is a direct 12-marker match to Hamilton Bess! A further upgrade to 37-marker results is scheduled for the future as funding is the only hold-up, but this upgrade is bound to prove that Hamilton Bess was the older brother of Nash Leslie Bess. Also it is to be noted that our descendant of William Bess who is the alleged father of Hamilton and Nash Leslie Bess shares a one-step genetic mutation on the DYS439 marker. Again, an upgrade to 37-marker results is planned for the future. Since the descendants of Hamilton Bess and Nash Lelie Bess are a direct 12-marker match, this probably means that the mutation occured in either William Bess, Jr. (brother of Hamilton and Nash Leslie Bess) or of a more recent paternal descendant of William Bess, Jr. Only additional results of Y-DNA testing though other paternal descendants of William Bess, Jr. could hone in on exactly which generation mutated. 18 MAY 2006: What a busy month this has turned out to be! Welcome to our newest participant (Kit #57895) who also descends from Nash Leslie Bess (b. 1819). He is an exact 12-marker match to the other descendant of Nash Leslie Bess (Kit #N27793) as well as the descendant of Hamilton Bess (Kit #N10310)! This strengthens the mutation theory that it was the William Bess, Jr. (b. 1814) line that mutated on the on the DYS439 marker. William Bess (b. 1776) most probably shared the same DYS439-13 marker that his sons Nash and Hamilton shared.

30 MAY 2006: A giant WELCOME goes out to our newest participant, Kit #N18471 who is actually of the R1b Haplogroup just like the descendants of William Bess and who also bears the BEST surname! We are honored with his presence! This is a major breakthrough in proving that not all Best surname bearers are of Haplogroup I! The 12-marker comparison results looked promising at first, but the 37-marker results make it nearly impossible that Kit #N18471 is recently related. We need more R1b participants who bear the BEST surname to bridge this gap.

26 JUN 2006: 37-marker results have just arrived for Kit #57895 who descends from Nash Leslie Bess (b. 1819). This participant shares a very odd genetic distance of two alleles with Kit #N10310 who descends from Hamilton Bess (b. 1803 and brother of Nash Leslie Bess). By using the term "odd", this is in reference to the unusual DYS447 mutation. Notice on that this particular allele is blue script instead of red and then refer to the following quotation taken from the FTDNA Y-DNA Tutorial page located at this http://www.ftdna.com/tutorial_A.html#67markers web address: "The markers in red have been observed to have a faster-than-average mutation rate, and therefore these markers are very helpful at splitting lineages into subsets or branches within your family tree." Either one of Kit #57895's paternal ancestors mutated or on of Kit #10310's paternal ancestors mutated on an allele that is less common to change! It is imperative that a 37-marker upgrade occurs for Kit #N27793 who also descends from Nash Leslie Bess so that this DYS447 mutation can be identified with its participant branch.

23 JAN 2007: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! The 25-marker upgrade for Kit #57895 has just arrived and although he descends from Nash Leslie Bess as does Kit #N27793, his Y-DNA appears to have mutated away on the DYS447 allele as Hamilton Bess' descendant, Kit #10310 matches Kt #N27793! Also, it appears that Kit #10310 has mutated away at the DYS458 allele!

21 FEB 2007: WELCOME to the family of Kit #81932 who descend from Issie John Bess of South Carolina. It does not appear that this "Bess" line is recesntly paternally related to the Bess Family of Virginia, but it is probable that this line descends from Bostian Bess (born Bostain Bosch) who was born in Germany, immigrated to North Carolina before the Revolutionary War and fathered over a dozen children...many which were males. Anyway, WELCOME to the Project and we will try to get you in touch with your paternal pod! 24 FEB 2007: The 37-marker results of for Kit #N27793 have just arrived and we have now collected enough Y-DNA samples from the descendants of three sons of William Bess (b. 1776) to in fact REVEAL his ORIGINAL 67-marker allele pattern that he bore!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby announce the original markers of William Bess (b. 1776):

DYS393 = 13
DYS390 = 23
DYS19 = 14
DYS391 = 10
DYS385a = 11
DYS385b = 14
DYS426 = 12
DYS388 = 12
DYS439 = 13 (William Bess, Jr.'s [b. 1814] branch mutated to 14)
DYS389-1 = 13
DYS392 = 13
DYS389-2 = 29
DYS458 = 17 Hamilton Bess' [b. 1803] branch mutated to 18)
DYS459a = 9
DYS459b = 10
DYS455 = 11
DYS454 = 11
DYS447 = 25 (Nash Leslie Bess [b. 1819] was also DYS447 = 25, but one of his paternal descendants mutated to 26)
DYS437 = 15
DYS448 = 19
DYS449 = 28
DYS464a = 15
DYS464b = 15
DYS464c = 16
DYS464d = 17
DYS460 = 11
GATA-H4 = 11
YCA II-a = 19
YCA II-b = 23
DYS456 = 16
DYS607 = 14
DYS576 = 17
DYS570 = 18
CDY-a = 38
CDY-b = 38
DYS442 = 11
DYS438 = 12
DYS531 = 11
DYS578 = 9
DYS395-S1a = 16
DYS395-S1b = 16
DYS590 = 8
DYS537 = 10
DYS641 = 10
DYS472 = 8
DYS406S1 = 10
DYS511 = 12
DYS425 = 12
DYS413-a = 23
DYS413-b = 23
DYS557 = 15
DYS594 = 10
DYS436 = 12
DYS490 = 12
DYS534 = 15
DYS450 = 8
DYS444 = 12
DYS481 = 22
DYS520 = 20
DYS446 = 13
DYS617 = 12
DYS568 = 11
DYS487 = 13
DYS572 = 11
DYS640 = 11
DYS492 = 13
DYS565 = 12

The mutation pattern of the descendants of Hamilton Bess (b. 1803), William Bess (b. 1814) and Nash Leslie Bess (b. 1819) confirm that they were brothers and that their father donned the aforementioned Y-DNA allele patten. Knowing that William Bess (b. 1776) fathered many sons and that he was the ONLY "Bess" surname bearer of adult age residing in the Commonwealth of Virginia that fathered children, we now know for FACT, that three of the statistical male children identified under the household of William Bess (b. 1776) in both the 1810 and 1820 Federal Census Reports were indeed Hamilton Bess (b. 1803), William Bess (b. 1814) and Nash Leslie Bess (b. 1819).

23 MAY 2007: R1b1c deep-clade results have finally been received from Ethnoancestry's laboratory in the UK for Kit #N10310 and it reveals that William Bess (1776-186?) and all of his paternal Bess surname-bearing descendants share the R1b1c9* Haplogroup subclade! Y-DNA Guru Dr. John McEwan, Chemist has made a highly probable analysis that this Bess Y-DNA that from Kit #N10310 had a paternal ancestry that was part of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the British Isles. They came from Europe north of the Rhine during the Dark Ages, sacked the Romans, kicked them out of the British Isles, conquered what was left of the native Britons (Picts, Druids, etc.) and engulfed the populous of the island. This correlates with the theory that the paternal line of this Bess clan immigrated to the American Colonies from England.

29 DEC 2011: Kit #N10310 (descendant of Hamilton Bess b 1803) tested Z156+ (positive).  According to the research on this deep clade marker of Dr. Iain McDonald, here what we do know about the origin of the paternal ancestry of William Bess (1776-186?):

- Z156 (hence our ancestors) originated in the same general area (north of the Alps, probably Germany) around 0 - 1000 BC.
- Z156 is generally confined to northern continental Europe and the British Isles.
- The most likely time for Z156 to be introduced to Britain is during the Anglo-Saxon invasions.
- Clustering within Z156 seems quite high, meaning only a few families survived the early centuries.
- Our cluster, we already know, has a common ancestor born around 1200 - 1500 AD, somewhere in Great Britain.
- Our closest cluster is of German names, who have a common ancestor born around 1000 - 1600 AD, somewhere in Germany.
- They are probably related to us sometime between 600 - 1400 AD, when we likely had a common ancestors somewhere in Germany.
- This timespan allows our common ancestor to have arrived in Britain either during the Anglo-Saxon invasions, or later, during the Norman invasion.

02 FEB 2012: Happy New Year!  Well...it FINALLY happened!  Today, our FIRST descendant of Henry Bess (b 1805) joined our humble Bess DNA Project!  Welcome aboard, Kit #229483!  We now have Y-DNA participation from paternal descendants of for sons of William Bess (1776-186?), Hamilton, Henry, William, Jr and Nash Leslie Bess!