A: Your Clay Family Society (CFS) FamilyTreeDNA Clay Group Project (Clay GP) Administrators evaluate your Haplogroup and move it into a labeled and colored Subgroup.

Q: How are Subgroup labels and colors determined?

A: 1) Each brick-walled major Clay branch gets its own color where the darker shade is for Big-Y testers and the lighter shade is for lesser level tests.

     2) Labels identify the 

         a. Location where the brick-walled Clay lived

         b. The level of Y-DNA testing at the Subgroup

         c. The Haplogroup of testers in the Subgroup

         d. The probable Birth Year (BY) and range of possible BYs specified by the Haplogroup

         e. The actual Clay identified by the Haplogroup (if identified)

         f. The relationship between this Subgroup and other if any.

Q: What is a Haplogroup?

A: A Haplogroup is a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP), which is a genetic mutation that occurred in an ancestor and was inherited by many others before there was another SNP.

Q: What good is a Haplogroup?

A: A tree (Haplotree) can be created with Haplogroups. A Haplotree is similar to a genealogy tree. But unlike a genealogy tree, a Haplotree runs from the male tester's Haplogroup all the way back along their paternal line to Y-Adam who lived about 230,000 years ago. This Haplotree is sometimes called the tree-of-all-mankind and a similar tree can be built with mtDNA along the maternal line to Y-Eve. These Haplotrees are powerful tools to break through genealogy brick-walls.

Q: How do I compare my genealogy tree to my Haplotree?

A: Join the Clay Family Society at https://clayfamilysociety.net ($15/yr). On our website we have integrated genealogy and Y-DNA Haplotrees for each major Clay branch as well as an integration of all the Clay branches, which we call The Ancient Clays Haplotree. This Haplotree shows where and when the major Clay branches intersect!