Most MILAMs in America are descendants of John Milam Sr (ca 1718 - 1789) and Thomas Milam (ca 1716-1775) who lived in the Piedmont region of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in the mid 1700s. By 2021 fifteen Americans from our Surname Project have taken the FTDNA BIG Y DNA sequencing analysis. This analysis looks at more than ten million nucleotide base pairs on the Y-chromosome for SNPs or variants. 

All descendants of Thomas Milam are positive for these major SNPs:  

R>R1b>M269>U152>L2>Z367>L20>CTS9733> S10068>BY33970

Somewhere along his line, John Milam Sr. acquired two additional SNPs which Thomas and his descendants do not have: BY67643 and BY184340. All of John's descendants therefore carry these major SNPs:

R>R1b>M269>U152>L2>Z367>L20>CTS9733> S10068>BY33970>BY67643 and BY184340

These results prove that John Sr and Thomas Milam were NOT brothers.

The details and full discussion are here: http://www.milaminvirginia.com/genetics.html#big_y

MILAM FAMILY Y-DNA SUBGROUPS 

Project administrators have divided Milams in America into four subgroups. Milam in America-1 are descendants of the Colonial John Milam Sr.  Milam in America-2 are descendants of the Colonial Thomas Milam. 

There are of course MILAMs who are not descendants of these two brothers as shown on the Milam Surname Project DNA page here:

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Milam/default.aspx?section=ycolorized  

These men make up our Milam in America-3 and Milam in America-4 subgroups. 

Members of the Milam in America-3 subgroup are predicted Haplotype I-M253 like 60% of British men that we have tested so far. On testing with the I-M253 SNP Pack, our one American member was also Haplotype I1>M253>Z58>Z140>F2642 like those British men. 

Members of the Milam in America-4 subgroup are represented thus far by one member from a third Haplotype: E-CTS12048. 

In 2017 we we able to recruit an additional 17 British men to join our project for a total of 26. Their results are complete and we now know that there are at least six genetically distinct “MILAM” families in Great Britain. Unfortunately none of them match the descendants of the Colonial Virginia MILAMs. A summary and discussion of those results is found here:

https://www.milaminvirginia.com/genetics.html#britgen  

You may contact a project Administrator with any questions: zack.milamsurname@gmail.com or milamsurname@gmail.com .