Cryan Family History

The Haplotree, or Tree of Mankind now consists over 65,000 branches, thanks in large part to commercial Y-DNA testing. The Tree has exploded with growth in just the last five years. This has given the average genetic genealogist like myself  the opportunity to develop surname projects using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). When new SNPS are discovered along the Y chromosome they are placed on the Haplotree, allowing us to see when exactly each man branches off from one another. The male only Y-DNA test looks at the Y chromosome which passes from  father to son relatively unchanged. There are only occasional mutations that occur, resulting in the formation of haplogroups. A haplogroup is a genetic population of people who descend from the same man.  The first Cryan BigY700 tester tested positive for SNP R-A6925. This man was born around 750CE, somewhere in the west of Ireland. My second Cryan tester was sure to add new SNPs, FTDNA requires at least two testers to co...

    YDNA Testing     Y-DNA passes from father to son relatively unchanged, with only small, intermittent mutations over the centuries. Because Y-DNA is so stable, it can provide solid, genealogically relevant information about a person’s paternal line. For Y-DNA testing, there must be an unbroken father-to-son line to the ancestor about whom one wants information. Since women do not have a Y chromosome and receive no Y-DNA to pass on, a Y-DNA line can “daughter out” when a father only has daughters, or may disappear entirely when an only son dies without children. YDNA testing, as seen in the image, only reads the male line going back thousands of years. Unlike the autosomal DNA tests provided by commercial DNA companies like Ancestry or My Heritage that read each family branch, the DNA often times only being good for a few hundred years.  We are trying to learn more about the early history of the Cryan/Crehan/Crean surnames. The best way to do this is thro...