Presley-Pressley Family DNA Project

Thanks to my great new job and some promotional rebates at Family Tree DNA I was able to order my DNA test kit and join the 36 other participants in the Presley-Pressley Surname Project. DNA testing is growing more and more popular in genealogy circles as people who are stuck in their research look for other ways to determine exactly where they come from and who they may be related to. From the results I've received so far, our Thomas Parker Presley (born 1841 in NC) is likely descended from the same line as the Jackson Pressley (born 1832 in NC).

Keeping in mind that currently these DNA services can only give you information on your direct paternal line (your father, his father, his father's father, etc)The first 12 DNA markers really only confirm or eliminate whether or not your male ancestor is from a particular part of the world from in the past few thousand years or so, so it's a good way to see if that line is Asian, Western European, African, Urasian, etc. The enxt 13 markers greatly increase the precision with which you can possibly match against someone else's results, to help determine how recent your common ancestor was. In our case, me and Kenneth Pressley are a perfect match for all 25 markers, making it a 99.6% probability that we share a common ancestor 24 generations back. The more recent you get, the lower the probability; 99.1% the common ancestor is 20 generations, 97.7% for 16 generations, 94.1% for 12 generations. By the time you get down to 8 generations, it's only 85.9% likely. 8 generations back from me would be the great grandfather of Thomas Presley.

Wow, I'm actually boring myself with all these numbers, so I'll cut this short. Results for the next 12 markers should be in about a week from now, so I'll post more when I get those. I hope more people participage in the project and that more of the existing participants fork over the $$ to upgrade their results. Could prove very interesting.