The narrowly focused Maynard YDNA R-A902/R-A911 Project studies the Maynard lines (Soundex M560 and M563) from the YDNA R-A911 haplogroup and its subclades in North Carolina during the colonial time period. Our project's R-A911 Maynard ancestors were concentrated in central and northwestern North Carolina, mainly in Wake County and Wilkes County before 1800. There is compelling evidence that the R-A911 ancestors did not come straight from England but lived in the mid-1700s in Granville and Johnston Counties, predominantly near Moccasin Creek. Our primary goals are to find the relationships among these R-A911 Maynard lines, how R-A911 connects to R-A902, and how both connect back to England.

Over 60 Maynard men have tested at FTDNA with Big-Y700 tests and now meet our strictest group criteria.  Many descendants left North Carolina and initially populated states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Virginia (later West Virginia). Thus, this surname-geographic project will include that expanded geography as well. It is not only the YDNA results and surname that link these people, roughly as 6th and 7th cousins; it is also, to a lesser extent geography.

A major short-term project task is to find the MRCA for specific early Maynards in NC.  These are the five "fountainhead" men that have been identified:

                   

Our core group of project participants match at the level of 111-marker short tandem repeats (patterns known as STRs). Recently, the goal has been to expand Big-Y700 testing to more than 60 Big-Y700 cousins by the end of 2022 in hopes of finding genetic markers (SNPs) or patterns (STRs) that differentiate each of the five “fountainhead” groups.

As of late 2023, the project's Big-Y700 tests have identified 18 SNPs that uniquely identify the “SNP progenitor” as well as the most likely fountainhead of specific men within R-A911: