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Might you share a Powys Y-DNA?

11th Nov 2022

Two Powys descendants of a man who was born in 1649 have been found to have identical Y-DNA. Y-DNA is a sex chromosome and is only carried by males. Y-DNA does not combine with any other DNA and is the male sex chromosome. The female sex chromosome is X and behaves slightly differently. Anyhow this feature of a Y chromosome enables us to say that the Y gene will not be changed from father to son.

But us humans are a bit contrary. We, a few of us, engage in NPE, (non-paternal-events), where the mother consorts with someone who is not her apparent partner. Yes, any male child inherits his father's Y-DNA, but it may not be the father that he may have been brought up to believe to be such.

I have seen it written that 10% of male births are from NPEs. If true, then a mere 90% of sons at each generation will inherit their apparent father's Y-DNA. After two generations this is 81%, and so on.

The above two Powyses have the same Y-DNA. So none of the mothers in the seventeen generations that separate them engaged in any NPE. Remarkably, they 100% have the same Y-DNA and we can therefore say that this must have been the Y-DNA that the ancestor born in 1649 carried and acquired at his conception around 1648. See the accompanying tree.

If you think there is a chance you carry this Y-DNA, then a test will decide it absolutely regardless of the apparent or lack of any documentation. If you have this DNA then you share ancestors with Sir Thomas Powys, full stop, incontrovertibly, God's own truth.

The Y-DNA concerned has the name of R-FT287223. The only firm offering Y-DNA tests that I know of is FamilyTreeDNA.com

You can contact me at [email protected]

For the rest of the journey so far see here and here

About the Powis One-Name Study

What is a one-name Study?
I feel the need to explain this as I get many emails from people asking for details of their personal ancestry.

A one-name study aims to document all instances of a particular surname around the world.

I chose the surname Powis/Powys as I was having trouble locating my 3rd great grandfather Joseph Powis, born in Gloucestershire somewhere between 1811 & 1815. I started collecting everything I could find on the surname Powis & variants, hoping to eliminate every other Joseph, leaving me with one...mine.

This website is a result of many years of research, simply documenting all the Powis/Powys names I could find in the BMDs and various UK Censuses. Trying to make sense of all the information I found, I decided to include a search function for others to try and find clues as to where their relatives may be hiding.

I have not done, nor do I have any intention of doing any specific research on any other tree than my own. I've had a lot of help along the way with fellow researchers sending me work that they have done and giving permission to include on the site, for which I am very grateful, this site wouldn't be what it is today without their input.

Origin of the surname

We do not know exactly when our family took the surname Powis but we can make an educated guess. We know that people called Powis appear in parish records in the late 15th century, in the north of Shropshire. It seems very likely that the surname was first used when our ancestors moved to England from Wales. Surnames had been used in England from the 13th century; they were not used in Wales until the 17th. A family moving to England would need a surname, and could well have used the area they moved from as such.

It is important to realise that Powis is not a typical Welsh surname. In fact it was almost certainly first used when our ancestors moved from near Meifod in present day Powys to North Shropshire. Most Welsh surnames only date from the 17th century and are almost always patronyms. John ap Richard or Ellen ferch Richard, son and daughter of Richard could take the surname Richards or Pritchard (ap Richard). ?Powis? probably dates from the 15th Century and was first used after the family settled in Shropshire.
[written by Mick Powis. To read the rest click here.]

Names included [when found] are:

Powis, Powiss, Powys, Powyss, Powes, Powess, Powice, Powies.
Plus an assortment of hyphenated Powis & Powys such as Powys-Lybbe,
Powys-Keck & others.

 

[email protected]

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