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End of 2022 - added a third administrator, Tyler Hillman, who brings years of experience in family history research.  A grandson of the late credentialled professional genealogist, Gordon Hillman.

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24 Oct 2022: In June 2022 FamilyTreeDNA introduced a new "Discover More" feature that is still in "beta" and can be accessed at https://discover.familytreedna.com/.  You just need a haplogroup.  (If two cousins have both tested at the Big Y-700 level then they will likely have a recent common haplogroup.)  There are tabs that allow you to review the "Haplogroup Story", "Country Frequency", "Notable Connections", a "Migration Map", "Ancient Connections", a "Time Tree", "Suggested Projects", and "Scientific Details".   You may want to look at each of them in turn but the most exciting is the "Scientific Details" where you see a curve where the "Mean" represents "Birth Year for Most Recent Common Ancestor".  

Several observers have reported that often this feature generates a "Mean" birth year that is very similar to the birth year found in primary sources such as christening records or gravestones.  That happened for the Hillmans of Sussex as well, where our James Illman, christened 1 April 1764, appears to be the man who has a mean birth year of 1760.  ... that it was within four years was quite eye opening in demonstrating the power of Y DNA.  

Could this birth year represent someone else?  Never say never, but recall that two test takers are descendants of James Illman, each through a different one of his sons.  It can't be anyone born AFTER James, because both test takers have the same SNP [mutation], not found in any other man, represented by the haplogroup I-FTC36257.  

Could it be William, James' father, or could it be some earlier generation?  This seems unlikely - William was born decades earlier - but not impossible.  

One way to explore this is to test more Hillmans!  James had brothers.  If we can locate a descendant of his brother and he is a reasonably close match but does NOT have the mutation represented by I-FTC36257, then we would know that this mutation started with James Illman (1764-1835).  James would then represent an "anchor SNP", and it would be possible to give a yes/no answer to whether someone is descended from him.  

If we can learn the haplogroups of more and more Hillmans then, through Big Y-700 DNA testing, we can sort Hillmans into their places in their family trees with a greater degree of certainty even when traditional paper records fail.

It's a bit like playing "battle ship" where each "shot" (or Big Y-700 DNA test) has the potential for defining more of the shape of the family tree.  And you never hit a mine sweeper.

Join us!  An exciting new era of Y DNA-based genealogy awaits!

Sincerely,


Mori Hillman
mori underscore hillman at hotmail dot com
24 Oct 2022