Who did Johann Cherpantier descend from? We will keep looking for historical records, but even if we find some, at some point we will run out of written records and get into a time in our past when surnames were not used. We will still be asking ourselves who did this ancestor descend from?

         There is one good method for probing this deep ancestry: genetic genealogy. It is based on a record that we carry in our bodies. There are two genetic routes that we can use: one is to trace our mitochondrial DNA that we inherit only from our mothers and the other is our Y-DNA that our fathers have and pass on to their sons. Only men have the Y chromosome. Sons inherit their Y chromosome from their genetic fathers. It is usually an exact copy; but sometimes, thousands of years later, one son’s Y chromosome makes a mistake and passes this mistake on to his sons. These mistakes allow us to trace the branches of the male human family tree.

         Combined with archaeological information on where this mistake occurred and proliferated, we can trace the general outlines of the migrations of these male branches all over the world. Y-DNA research, then, is the strategy we can use to discover Johann Cherpantier’s deep ancestry!

         So far only two Sherbondy men have had their Y-DNA tested, Jeff Sherbondy and my brother Don Sherbondy. They match. Don has only had his first 12 markers tested, but Jeff has had 37 tested. Since Jeff and Don are both descendants of Johann Georg Sherbondy that is not surprising. What we need is at least one test from some man who is a Sherbondy but more distantly related, someone descended from Melcher, Phillip or John. We would appreciate it very much if someone would do that! Family Tree DNA <familytreedna.com> is a good place to have it done. I have a Sherbondy surname group project there so that we can easily compare the results from Sherbondy men.

         What have we learned so far about Sherbondy deep ancestry? Jeff and Don are part of a larger group of men with similar Y-DNA, called a haplogroup. Theirs is haplogroup I1a. With this information we can find the Sherbondys on a world map of humanity! This map is a graph of the branching tree of our male ancestors that can be traced back to one particular Y-DNA code. This code tells us first of us that all living humans are close relatives and that our "Adam" evolved in eastern Africa, maybe as early as 79,000 years ago. You can access a copy of this map, the "2005 Y-Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree" at Family Tree DNA.

         The branches on this tree are made when a man has a son whose Y-DNA did not copy exactly, but made a change. The sons that kept the exact same code continued to have sons as well as the son with the mutant code, thus making two branches or two haplogroups. The A clan or haplogroup (Hg) then branched into A and B at some point in Ethiopia or the Sudan. From then on there were two clans, A and B. So far all these modern human men stayed in Africa.

         How do we know? This can be estimated from archaeological as well as genetic data. As an anthropologist, I have always found this research extremely interesting, but even more so now that we can link each one of us up to the overall family tree. There are some very good books to read about these recent discoveries by anthropological geneticists that I will recommend at the end.

         The next clan was formed by a B father who had son with the marker called M168. This formed Haplogroup C (HgC) or Clan C. Then one of this man’s sons (or maybe several brothers with the same Y-DNA) moved from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula where we find that one of his male descendants had a mutation (M89) forming Hg F (Clan F). This occurred about 45,000 years ago. We Sherbondys are part of the I haplogroup, that was formed by a mutation from HpF. But, before that happened, there was another man of HgC who had the M168 marker who also crossed into Asia, maybe even earlier than his cousin who went to the Arabian peninsula.

         About 50,000 years ago this man crossed at the lower end of the Arabian Peninsula, His descendants gradually made their way along the coasts of western Asia into eastern Asia down into the Malay Peninsula over to Borneo and then his descendants split. One group went north up through eastern Asia and crossed over to North America. The other group went to Australia. Recent research indicates that these groups were fully acquainted with boats.

         The studies of the I Clan have been able to refine subgroups. At the present there are four main subgroups: I*, I1, I2, and I3. I* is the original I that continues. I1 is the Sherbondy subgroup and it in turn has been subdivided into many groups. I1a (ours) diverged from HgI1 about 15,900 years ago plus or minus 5,200 years. The marker for I1a is M253. The area of this divergence has been pinpointed to the area known as lower Normandy in what is today France. That is precisely the area that we think Johan Cherpantier came from!

         This discussion is published in the same article by Rootsi et al (2004). Several researchers are working on the sub subgroups, such as geneticist Ken Nordtvedt. Someday soon, we’ll know more about the subsequent branching of I1a so that we will be able to fill in several thousand more years of pre-history for the Sherbondy family. However, for now, we can trace Johann Cherpantier’s ancestors to Normandy (France) and then back to a place in the Balkans probably, and then back to the Arabian Peninsula, and from there, back to eastern Africa.

         I invite you to join my Sherbondy surname group at Family Tree DNA. For now it is very limited (just Jeff and Don) but the Carpenter surname group ("Carpenter Cousins") is looking at a number of different groups that can be lumped together under the Carpenter name and its many variants. There are some matches with Don’s 12 markers in that group. It will be interesting to see if this group makes some new discoveries about our Sherbondy line.

Recommendations for More Reading

         Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project: The Landmark DNA Quest to Decipher Our Distant Past is a good history of the recent effort to test everyone in the world in order to understand ourselves as one human family. It is written by geneticist Spencer Wells.

         For a very readable summary of the genetic history of men and their migrations that can be identified with the Y-DNA haplogroups, read Spencer Well’s book The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, published in 2002 by Random House. It is easily found in paperback.

         Another book that deals with the same topic but approaches it by examining different assumptions about ethnic groups is Steve Olson’s Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through our Genes (2002 Boston: Houghton Mifflin).

         A fascinating story with many interesting anecdotes is Bryan Sykes’s Adam’s Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny (2004 New York: W.W. Norton & Company). (The curse he refers to is the idea that the Y chromosome may be disappearing, an event that no longer seems imminent.) He tells interesting stories of researching his own surname and the MacDonald clan. He does not give much background in genetics.

         For a good, understandable introduction to genetics, I highly recommend DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser (2005, Fountain Valley, CA; Rice Book Press).

         The best history of human population in Europe focusing on the British Isles is a tome by geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer: The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story; The Surprising Roots of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh (2006 New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. It is a landmark publication that critically sorts out all the significant archaeological, genetic, historical, and linguistic research on the people who populated the British Isles. The HgI1a plays a major role, though he doesn’t identify it as such, which is a bit frustrating. He uses his own nomenclature. However, for me it is one of the most exciting and significant books that I have read.

FamilytreeDNA.com

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

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