R1b-L21 Descendant Tree borrowed from the ‘R L21, Z290 and Subclades FamilyTreeDNA Project’
(click to enlarge)
For a number of years I’ve believed my patrilineal line (my Hibbitt ancestors) dated back to the early 18th century, being located in the village of Exton in the county of Rutland. However, recent DNA discoveries have thrown this into question.
The records I’ve looked at to date show no sign of a problem but it’s looking likely that my family has a NPE (non-paternal event) or misattributed parentage. How do I know this?
I recently started a Facebook Group called Hibbitt/Hibbett (plus other variants) Family History Research Group. There are a number of people in this group who descend from a John HIBBIT & Mary Toft who married in St Pancras, London, in 1770. One member, who is a direct male line descendant of this couple, ran his father’s AncestryDNA test through the Morley Y-SNP Subclade Predictor Tool and received a basic haplogroup of R1b-Z2534.
My dad knows his current haplogroup (R1b-Z36747), having taken a number of Y-DNA tests. It can be written as a series of subclades moving forward in time as various mutations arise:
R1b-M343 > P297 > M269 > L23 > L51 > P312 > Z290/S461 > L21 > DF13 > DF21 > S3058 > S424 > S426 > CTS2187/S190 > Z36747
Unfortunately, the Z2534 haplogroup split away from my dad’s haplogroup at DF13, a haplogroup which was formed in approximately 2600 BC. The path is:
R1b-M343 > P297 > M269 > L23 > L51 > P312 > Z290/S461 > L21 > DF13 > Z253 > Z2534
Therefore my dad and the descendant of John HIBBIT (m. 1770) cannot share a recent patrilineal ancestor.
At this point I wasn’t too concerned as paper records haven’t connected the London HIBBIT family to the Rutland HIBBITT/HIBBETT family. I was therefore keen to hear from descendants of my most distant known ancestor (MDKA), John Hybit, who married three times in Exton between 1712 and 1732.
I believed I was descended through John HYBIT’s son, William, and so I was pleased to discover that a descendant of John’s son, Matthew, had received his AncestryDNA results. He too was a direct male line descendant and very kindly ran his DNA through the Morley Tool. It turns out that he too, received a result of R1b-Z2534.
The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the London HIBBIT group and the Rutland HIBBITT/HIBBETT group share a distant ancestor dating back to about 4600 years ago, give or take a few centuries either way. The likelihood is that if they were to undertake dedicated Y-DNA testing, they would probably find that their common ancestor is much more recent than this and they would also be eligible to join the R-Z253 Project at FamilyTreeDNA.
Unfortunately for me and my close family, it is looking very likely that we are the odd-ones-out. However, I would still be glad if additional, suitable candidates would ascertain their haplogroup so we can be more certain of the facts and to perhaps narrow down precisely in which generation the NPE occurred.
[UPDATE: since I first posted, a few more men with similar surnames to ours have ascertained their haplogroup which confirmed a recent connection between themselves, leaving us very much out on our own – see more about this here. Dad’s haplogroup has been further refined and is now R-Y85420. We still await closer DNA matches to help us solve the mystery of what our surname might be.]
