The primary goal of the project is to help members find out where their patriline Collins great*-grandfather was from and investigate paternal line origins, most of which are assumed to have originated in the British Isles. Our means to achieve that is by collecting and analyzing Y DNA and finding matches and clustering results accordingly. We look first at Y STR data, then incorporate Y SNP data for further guidance.

The project carves out PEDIGREES (multiple testers who show the same documented paternal line ancestor) and LINEAGES (multiple testers clearly related but haven't established a documented common ancestor) as well as UNMATCHED and INSUFFICIENT DATA clusters.

Our secondary goal is to use historical texts and records to identify the geographic regions in which these surnames are most densely represented.

To achieve our goals, we have several smaller ones:

• Assist members with family history / genealogy records and research, when possible, thereby helping them to identify their ancestry and fill in their family trees. Ongoing content development of our Collins project website is for this purpose.


• Identify and carve out relatively recent genealogical lineages and pedigrees, assigning a terminal haplogroup/SNP label to each.


• Contribute to deep SNP research, and thereby the evolution of haplogroup research, by encouraging SNP testing, once members have done sufficient STR marker testing.


• Review literature on the origins of the surname, along with state of the art haplogroup discoveries, to determine whether correlations can be made between any origin hypotheses and haplogroups.
  
  Identify the ancestral genetic signatures of the major Collins lines in Ireland.
  Identify the ancestral genetic signatures of the major Collins lines in England and the UK, possibly linking them to entries in the Domesday book.