The ALLEN DNA Patrilineage 2 Project

The ALLEN DNA Patrilineage 2 Project

This ALLEN patrilineage project is dedicated to furthering the genealogical research of the members, each of whom has sponsored a Family Tree ySTR DNA test of 37 markers (or better) that matches to the haplotype pattern for this ALLEN patrilineage. Our goal is to promote both individual and collaborative genealogical research aimed at reconstructing the overall tree of descent from the patriarch common to all of the members, using their ySTR DNA test results to guide us in our research, and our conclusions.

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The Likely Origins of this Patrilineage in Somersetshire, England

The most fertile of the immigrant American patriarchs of this patrilineage, George1 ALLEN of Sandwich, Plymouth, emigrated in 1635 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although a few possibly matching records have been found for antecedent George ALLENs back in England, this is hardly surprising given the commonness of the surname, but where the wider context of these particular records has been explored, the circumstantial evidence does not support the identification. See MacDONALD, p.2, for more on some of these English ALLEN red herrings.

What we do know about George is that he and part of his family sailed for New England from Weymouth, Dorset, in March, 1635, on the ship Marygould bearing a company of followers of the Rev. Joseph Hull of Broadway, Somersetshire, who according to colonial governor Gov. John Winthrop brought 21 families with him. Annotations on the ship’s passenger list and other evidence places several of these families in Broadway, and others in Batcombe, Somerset. As can be seen by this map, Broadway is about 7 miles SE of Taunton, near Ilminster, while Batcombe is about 25 miles to the NE. One of the other known Broadway passengers, Thomas Holbrooke, is also known to have married and had his first two children in Glastonbury, Somerset, about 9 miles due west of Batcombe, while Joseph Hull is known to have been born in Crewkerne about 7 miles SE of Broadway.

This whole area had been a hotbed of radical Protestantism and consequent emigration for many years, starting in early 1630 with the passengers on the first ship of settlement to the Bay Colony, the Mary & John, who were largely followers of the Rev. John Warham who had preached in Crewkerne and other parishes of this area, and who led the Mary & John company to the New World. This first expedition, and many others that followed were also sponsored by the important minister, the Rev. John White, of the large town of Dorchester, Dorset, which can be seen near the bottom right of the map. The port of Weymouth is off map to the south of Dorchester in the same direction.

It is thus probable that George and the other patriarchs of ALLEN Patrilineage 2 came from this area of central Somerset, though no one so far one has found the smoking gun evidence. Unfortunately, for the obvious first place to look, Broadway, the extant parish begin only in 1678. Some further details on these likely English origins will be found on page 15 of my report “Two New England Patriarchs”.

Three American ALLEN Patriarchs

Newly brought forward genealogical information, and a reconsideration of the DNA evidence, make it clear now that there have been at least three American patriarchs of ALLEN Patrilineage 2, representing three immigrant lines—not just the one—George1 Allen of Sandwich, Plymouth Colony (say 1585 - 1648).

The second ALLEN Patrilineage 2 patriarch is George’s close relative, the immigrant Samuel1 Allen of Braintree, Massachusetts Bay Colony (say 1604 - 1669), and you will find much more on him below, and in the newly researched papers I’ve published: “Two New England Patriarchs...”, and the accompanying evidential timeline. I am indebted to genealogist Susie Hartman for supplying the key genealogical evidence that shows that Patrilineage 2 patriarch Samuel2 ALLEN of Bridgewater, Plymouth, was in fact the son of Samuel1 of Braintree, not of George1 of Sandwich, as other circumstantial evidence strongly suggested.

The third ALLEN Patrilineage 2 patriarch is Joseph1 Allen of Charles County, MD (say 1718 -), whose patrilineal descendants I’ve named “the Maryland cluster”. We now have four descendant haplotypes of this branch of the family, project member Kathy Phipps, and new members Marilyn Krell and Steve Jacobs, who is managing two different haplotypes of this line.

Although I’ve suffixed all three of these patriarchs with a “1” (the generational designation usually reserved for the first generation to immigrate), the origins of Joseph of CharlesCoMD remain obscure, and I suspect that he was not himself the first generation immigrant of his line, as there were several antecedent ALLENs in sparsely settled CharlesCo dating back to the late 1600s. More research needs to be done in this area.

The posted pedigrees for each member have been organized on the Descendancies page under these heads:

The GEORGE1 ALLEN of Sandwich, Massachusetts, Descendancy

The SAMUEL1 ALLEN of Braintree, Massachusetts, Descendancy

The Maryland ALLEN Descendancy

Unconnected NORTHERN ALLEN Pedigrees

Unconnected SOUTHERN ALLEN Pedigrees

George ALLEN of Sandwich, Massachusetts (say 1585—1648)

Two of the ySTR DNA tested members of this project can trace their lines all the way back to the immigrant, George1 Allen of Sandwich, Plymouth Colony, in Massachusetts. These are 02-John-02, who descends through George’s son Ralph2, and Bill-L-10, who descends from George2 (George2). Although the evidence supporting some links of the ancestral chains of these two is not as strong as it might be, and although a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, the fact that these lines follow a very different geographical course, and have been researched both ably and independently (and confirmed by DNA testing), gives us a very high confidence level that they are correct. This is particularly so in the case of 02-John’s ancestry back through Ralph2; there is a bit more chance that the line that runs back to George2, whose descendants remained for some time in New England amidst so many other ALLEN cousins, may have taken a slightly different path back to George1 than appears. In fact, now that we know that the haplotypes inherited by George1 and Samuel1 were identical, we cannot rule out the possibility that Bill-L’s line runs back to Samuel1, and not to George1—except, of course, on genealogical grounds, which are always problematic.

Still, on the genealogical side, we are fortunate that exhaustive research has been done on George himself, and on his conjugal family. The definitive reconstruction of George’s family is found in ANDERSON-GeorgeALLEN-Sketch, below, although a careful reading of the “George Allen” sketch in that book should make it clear that the considered judgement of the authors, the very best of New England genealogists, working with an exhaustive compilation of facts from the primary records, is still not necessarily the last word on this family. The authors themselves note that “At one time or another just about every young Allen male in southeastern New England has been placed as a son of George Allen.”

The best published treatment of the descendancy of George1 is a paper by Jack MacDonald. This paper, though sparsely sourced, is particularly strong in its tracing of the Quaker line of Ralph2. MacDonald has also paid some attention to the English origins, and has usefully undermined a few of the half-baked ideas advanced by others.

The most comprehensive and best evidenced treatment that I know of for the generation of George1 and Samuel1 are the two papers that I’ve just published (Apr2014): “Two NewEngland Patriarchs, Not One: Samuel Allen of Braintree ”, and the corresponding “Evidential Timeline for Patriarchs George1 & Samuel1 ALLEN”. These papers do not cover all the details of these men’s careers, but they do focus analytically on all the salient genealogical and contextual historical evidence concerning these men and their relationship, and they show, I believe, conclusively, the George and Samuel must have been the closest of relatives short of being father and son.

Samuel1 ALLEN of Braintree, Massachusetts (say 1604—1669)

This Samuel is not really a new discovery. In fact, most of the published secondary sources, including James Savage in his Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England... have made this Samuel the father of Samuel2 of Bridgewater, Plymouth Colony, to whom several of our Patrilineage 2 project members, trace their ancestries. But none of the sources I have seen provide any evidence for this attribution, and all the circumstantial evidence has seemed to favor George of Sandwich as the father of Samuel2 of Bridgewater.

In 1656 (within months of the founding of Bridgewater), Samuel2 of Boston, the son of George1 of Sandwich, joined with brother Henry in selling land in Sandwich that they had inherited from their father—and that is the last we hear of Samuel2 (George1). What could be more natural than that George’s son should have taken the proceeds of his inheritance and become a proprietor of the newly forming town of Bridgewater, in Plymouth Colony? Then, there is the claim, often advanced (but also unevidenced as far as I have seen) that Samuel of Bridgewater was aged 71 in 1703, thus born about 1632. This matches almost perfectly to the estimated birth date of George's son, say 1633, in ANDERSON-GeorgeALLEN-Sketch.

However, another descendant of Samuel of Bridgewater who has researched him extensively in the primary records, has provided me with evidence that seems incontrovertible that Samuel of Bridgewater was the son of Samuel1 of Braintree. The latter made a will in Braintree 2Aug1669 (proved 16Sep1669) leaving £20 to his son Samuel to be paid within four years of his death, and making wife Margaret and son Joseph executors. Then, on 16Sep1672 a deed to 12a of Braintree land was acknowledged by the grantors “Margaret ALLEN, the late wife of Sammuell ALLEN now deceased, and Joseph ALLEN my son, both of the town of Brantry of the government of Massachusets, in consideration of £20 given and appointed to be paid by the abovesaid Sammuell ALLEN, deceased, to his son, Sammuell ALLEN of Bridgewater in the government of New Plimouth”.

What was Samuel1 ALLEN of Braintree to George1 of Sandwich?

Samuel1 of Braintree can be ruled out as the son of George1 because the circumstantial context doesn’t fit. For one thing, George’s son Samuel is grouped with his brother Henry, and the other George’s “five least children” in the latter’s will. For another, unlike George’s older sons by his first wife (John, Ralph, and George) Samuel is not found in possession of any of this father’s lands in Weymouth, or is any way associated with Weymouth in the records, even though the circumstantial evidence for Samuel of Braintree shows that he was married say 1631, so would probably have been George’s oldest son.

On the other hand, given that the DNA of at least one descendant of Samuel and at least one descendant of George matches perfectly on the 67 marker Family Tree DNA test, the two must have been very closely related indeed. My guess is that Samuel was George’s nephew, but they may have been first, or possibly second, cousins. Until and unless their English origins can be found, it is doubtful that anything more can be said about their relationship.

Joseph ALLEN of Charles County, Maryland (say 1718 -)

I haven’t yet finalized or posted the descendancies/pedigrees for this branch of the ALLEN Patrilineage 2 family, but the research on these Maryland lines looks pretty solid, and I’ve added a bit to it myself, extending it at least a generation farther back. I expect to be able to post a single consolidated pedigree for the Maryland Cluster in the coming months.

In the meantime, however, I have posted their DNA (at least to the project haplotype chart—they’re grouped at the bottom) so that everyone can see how different and distinctive it is compared to that of the descendants of the two New England patriarchs. Since in addition, there are indications that this line runs back into at least the late 1600s in Maryland, it is almost certain that it stems from a third immigrant ancestor, not a descendant of either of the New England patriarchs, who came over to Maryland on his own hook and in his own time, and though he probably came from the same area as the New Englanders, he may have been only their distant cousin. If it seems anomalous that he would have migrated to Maryland rather than New England, I note that as David Hackett Fischer has pointed out in his classic, Albion’s Seed, the fountainhead for emigrants to the Chesapeake tidewater area (besides the port city of London) was the southwest of England.

Descendants of George1: Quaker ALLENs and the Southern Branch of the Family

One of the most interesting features of the descendancy of George ALLEN of Sandwich is the fact that he projected offshoots into the American South. In fact seven of the twenty-one project members claim such southern roots, presumably through the line of George1’s son Ralph2, though only one of these, 02-John-02, can at present trace his lineage back to George.

It would be an understatement to say that this New England—Southern connection was unusual. To find great-grandchildren of New England Puritans in the Anglican plantation society of Virginia would be distinctly anomalous. The anomaly is accounted for, though, when we learn that many of George’s children were caught up in the first wave of New England Quakerism, for the Quakers were persecuted and hounded in the Puritan settlements, and encouraged to flock to the frontier in search of peace. And the areas of Virginia, and also North Carolina, where these Quakers settled were indeed America’s western frontiers, where they joined such other unwanted peoples as the feisty Scotch-Irish, and the pietistic, hard-working Germans.

Certain Quaker enclaves did emerge in southeastern Massachusetts, and of course in Rhode Island, the first polity in the world in which religious toleration was written into the constitution, and it is in these New England enclaves that George's Quaker progeny first took refuge. The largest number settled in DartmouthMA on the southern coast next to Rhode Island, and their descendants continued to constitute one of the largest families in the town on into the 1800s. Others trickled into Rhode Island, and as orthodox Puritanism began to lose its grip, on to Connecticut, Vermont, and New York.

But meanwhile several families of George ALLEN descendants made the big leap to Monmouth County, New Jersey where a small Quaker settlement and monthly meeting sprang up in the township of Shrewsbury. From there, it was only natural that subsequent generations should continue the migration south toward the newly opening western frontier of Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Towards the end of the 18th century, the north central counties of North Carolina (Orange, Rowan, and the counties they gave birth to, Guilford and Rockingham) became a Quaker stronghold in their turn, but a generation before that, beginning in the 1730s, George ALLEN descendants were participating in the first settlements of the Valley of Virginia, in Augusta and Frederick Counties. The story of these first Quaker settlements beyond the Blue Ridge is told in WORRALL.

Of the four project members who can trace their lines back to George, two are descended from sons of George who went Quaker. Member Bill-L-10 descends from George’s Quaker son George, through progeny who settled first in Dartmouth, then migrated later to Rhode Island and New York. The line of the fourth member, 02-John-02 (representing testee David Allen) descends from George’s Quaker son Ralph, through his son Joseph, who ended up in MonmouthCoNJ. Two of Joseph’s sons, Benjamin and Reuben, migrated in turn first to CecilCoMD, and from there to AugustaCo in the upper Valley of Virginia, appearing there first in 1739. 02-John’s line runs through Reuben.

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Further Research Possibilities for the Southern Branch

One of the more salient problem regarding the patrilineage right now is how to connect the unconnected southerners to their DNA-indicated line of descent from George1 of Sandwich through the mostly Quaker lines of his son, Ralph2. The descendancy of project member 02-John-02 gets this line into the Valley of Virginia. What is left is to figure out how to bridge the one- to two-generation gap from the time the earliest known ancestors of project members begin to be identifiable as such in the records of FranklinCoVA and nearby areas in the late 1700s, back to the early-to-mid 1700s when Quakers first began to filter down deep into VA and NC.

The starting point would be to follow up on the brothers Benjamin and Reuben in Augusta, Frederick, and other related Valley of Virginia counties, and to look for the appearance of other ALLENs in that area who might be descendants of George of Sandwich’s Quaker sons. Targeted DNA testing might be in order to address this problem.

The descendancy of Reuben has been fairly thoroughly researched and accounted for, though some of his grandchildren may have migrated farther south. MacDONALD seems to have foreclosed on the possibility that Reuben’s brother, Benjamin, had children, but I am not so sure about that. He does note that further research needs to be done on the ALLENs of this area, but I imagine that the reason he himself didn’t pursue things further, is that there simply aren’t likely to be any, or many, records for this area which do not already appear in CHALKLEY—and I have made my own abstracts of all that do. There are also a few ALLEN records in the order book index for OrangeCo, Augusta’s parent, and there may well be deeds records there too.

Both Benjamin and Reuben took out early patents in the Valley, evidently intending to settle (MacDONALD notes these too, albeit with a couple of minor errors), but there may be others in SW Virginia by other related ALLENs. Wonderfully, the VA Patents have all been abstracted, indexed, and put online by the Library of Virginia, the search link for which is to be found here. By entering Reuben Allen and following the links you can access and download Reuben Allen’s patent.

There is a tantalizing reference in MacDONALD to an Augusta order book record dated 18Mar1746/7 which associates a Daniel Allen with the probate of Benjamin, and he notes at the same time that additional research is required on this Daniel, whom he thinks was probably married in CecilCoMD, as was (brother) Reuben. As usual, MacDONALD provides no citation for this record, but since the order books are chronological, I’ve scanned all the Chalkley abstracts for that court date (Chalkley 1:26) and there is no such record to be found—nor are there any corresponding Daniel Allen references in the indexes to any of the three Chalkley volumes. Is this one of the items which Chalkley missed, and did MacDONALD himself plow through every page of the early order books trolling for ALLENs, or perhaps it was the probate records which were meant, or maybe the date was wrong. Only the original books themselves are likely to yield up that secret, and for such a potentially important record, only the original document will do.

If Benjamin and Reuben’s brother, Daniel, did come out to the Valley, and especially if he was a Quaker, he may well have continued south in his search for vacant land in a less violent area than Augusta, which was populated largely by pugnacious Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and occasionally raided by Indians (one of my own Quaker ancestors did just that, leaving my Scotch-Irish ancestors to wrestle with the raw frontier). Daniel would only have had to journey another 80 miles due south down the Valley, crossing back over the Blue Ridge mountains to reach FranklinCoVA (perhaps passing over the old wagon road which passes within 100 yards yards of where I live), and it would have been only another 50 miles due south from there to present day RockinghamCoNC, where Bill-B’s Allen ancestors may have come from. Moreover, I have noted the presence of at least one Daniel Allen in RockinghamCoNC, though much later in the 18th century.

The goal here would be to try to match up the early Allen settlers of Augusta and Frederick Counties in the Valley, with the Allens who turn up early in FranklinCo (and its predecessors, Bedford and Lunenburg) just to the south, over the mountains—meanwhile taking care not to conflate the Allens of this patrilineage with the many unrelated Allens of Patrilineage (I) who were also pioneers in these Southside VA counties.

I would recommend, therefore, to any of this southern crew who are determined to try to solve these knotty genealogical problems, to begin to dig into the primary records of all these counties (Franklin, Bedford, Lunenburg) and compile everything found there on Allens. At the same, the data at the other end of the missing link (Augusta, Frederick, and Shenandoah Cos) needs to be systematically compiled to identify possible descendants of Benjamin, Reuben, and perhaps Daniel or others who went south instead of north as most of the Quaker Allens did.

Because the records are so scant in colonial Virginia (and North Carolina), and vital records are almost entirely lacking, there is a need to thoroughly mine all such records as exist for whatever they may yield, and to try to reconstruct, not just the focal Allen ancestral family, but all of the Allen families, in order to be able to assign all the little shards found in the record books (here a signature on a deed, there a record of jury service, or as a party to a lawsuit) to the proper identities. It is possible, by diligently pursuing this comprehensive method, to build a strong circumstantial case even where direct evidence is lacking.

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Deepening and Extending Your Genealogical Research

On the genealogical side, the descendancy of George of Sandwich and the other patriarchs of Patrilineage 2 is so extensive, particularly in New England, that we may hope to attract many other testees in time, and any one of these may match mutations with existing members, and/or be able to contribute some missing piece of the genealogical puzzle. Thus, even though some project member’s lines appear to be “brick-walled” at present, there is always hope. And having examined to some degree the evidence that the existing members have predicated their genealogies on, it seems to me that there is still plenty of room in most cases to dig deeper into the primary records of the places indicated by the work that has been done.

It’s all too easy with these New England and Quaker lines and their plenteous vital records to assume that since the published data that comes easily to hand appears to have been plausibly shuffled into coherent families, that all the necessary research has been done. However, I have found that by digging into the primary probate, land, tax, and miscellaneous court records of a place, one almost always finds additional bits of circumstantial evidence, and quite often something of genealogical significance will turn up. One is also likely to encounter anomalies—new potential pieces of the puzzle which cannot be accounted for by the prima facie theories with which most people are too easily satisfied, and while these complications and apparent contradictions may be initially frustrating, some of these anomalies may turn out to be leads opening up new avenues of research for apparently blocked lines.

It should be within the compass of any of you to access the original records without an undue amount of travel or expense. Pretty much all of the county courthouse records in the US have been filmed by the LDS (the Mormons), who are deep into digitizing these records and putting them online at FamilySearch (Browse) for free. And in the worst case, just about everyone can find one of the LDS Family History Centers within an hour’s driving distance (usually much closer), and can borrow therefrom the relevant films from the LDS archives in Salt Lake City for a small fee. Either way, the online FHL Catalog is the best guide to the extant records of most American jurisdictions, and it is the first place I turn to when I am familiarizing myself with the research possibilities of a new area. If a particular set of films has been digitized, there will be a notice to that effect in red on the same catalog page as the film numbers, and if not, one can set up an account and place an order for films to be sent to your local LDS branch through this portal.

It’s true that primary records research in the colonial and early American records can be quite challenging. These old manuscript records are typically hard to read, and their correct interpretation requires familiarity with the law and customs of the time. But as long as such records exist unexamined, no one can reasonably claim to be brick-walled. And even though no genealogical nuggets are lurking in these primary records, one nearly always acquires through their patient examination, a few clues to who these people were and what their lives were like. Family history leads on to local history, which in turn plugs into the broader historical contexts with which we may be more familiar, but which without the personal dimension that family history brings, lack a certain reality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLISHED SOURCES for ALLEN Patrilineage 2

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ANDERSON-GeorgeALLEN-Sketch
pp. 27-35 in
Robert Charles Anderson, George F. Sanborn Jr., Melinda Lutz Sanborn
The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volume I, A-B, (Boston: NEHGS, 1999)

This crucially important sketch can be accessed by subscription at NEHGS (American Ancestors) page, or at Ancestry.com.

Although the Sanborns were important collaborators for this volume, I’ve elected to style this source just ANDERSON-GeorgeALLEN-Sketch. Given the problematic nature of the reconstruction of the conjugal family of the immigrant, George of Sandwich, it’s likely that all three authorial heads were brought to bear.

The authors first note {p30} that “At one time or another just about every young Allen male in southeastern New England has been placed as a son of George Allen.” They then proceed to consider the strongest claimants, and end up with a list which is considerably different from that found in GARDNER, though with respect to inclusiveness it matches MacDONALD except for the latter’s inclusion of son Francis. However, because MacDONALD evidently failed to take into account the many pieces of circumstantial evidence available to the authors at the NEHGS library in Boston, his estimates of the birth dates of George’s children are significantly different from those in this sketch, leading to a considerably shuffled birth order.

At the end of the sketch, two secondary sources on this family are recommended. These are GARDNER and J.K.ALLEN, below. Evidence and argument supplemental to and corrective of this sketch on certain minor points is also cited by Anderson at GMN 10(Jul-Sep2001):23.

This Great Migration George Allen sketch must be considered the definitive source. Like all the other sketches in the GM series, it is not only based on every shred of primary records evidence which has come to light in 150 years of research on these early New Englanders, it also takes into account the best secondary sources. Furthermore, all three authors are F.A.S.G.s—members of the most elite society of American genealogists. limited to no more than 50 living members, all elected by their peers. Robert Charles Anderson himself is undoubtedly the greatest New England genealogist of our day, or probably of any day.

However, precisely because the authors of this work are so well regarded, I am quite sure that they would be the last to claim that what they have published is anything but the best current take on the accumulated evidence to date regarding this extensive and genealogically important family. Nothing is every proved in history, and all historical propositions remain open and subject to revision in the light of new evidence, or new ways of looking at the existing evidence.

Both BOWEN and ROBB-2Patriarchs have adduced new evidence and/or argument, and the latter also examplifies looking at old evidence in new ways, in this case through the lens of ySTR DNA testing.

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BANKS
Charles Edward Banksr
History of Martha’s Vineyard, 3 vols, 155(Apr2001):212-214

The first volume is a general history of Martha’s Vineyard that mentions James and later other prominent ALLENs at several points; Volume 2 covers the records of the town, wherein I find the claim that “James Allen [of Sandwich, and also later of Martha’s Vineyard] was the son of Samuel Allen of Braintree”, but no citable evidence or extended analysis to support this claim; Volume 3 (which I’m unable to access online), purports (according to a footnote to BOWEN) to include a genealogy of the family of James, at 3:3-7.

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BOWEN
Richard LeBaron Bowen Jr
“Notes on George Allen of Weymouth and Sandwich”, in NEHGR, 155(Apr2001):212-214

Bowen’s article, cited in Anderson’s GMN 10(Jul-Sep2001):23, supplements Anderson’s Great Migration:1634-1635 “George Allen” sketch with additional evidence and argument, and corrects certain details, with special focus on the two Ralph Allens of Sandwich. Bowen also points out that “the most recent serious treatment of George Allen and the two Ralph Allens” is to be found in Bertha Clark, “A Sandwich-Dartmouth-NorthKingston Allen Line”, a typescript at NEHGS (a source I haven’t examined). As Bowen also notes, Charles Edward Banks, History of Martha’s Vineyard, 3 vols (1925), 3:3-7, and 2:25-28, makes a strong case that James Allen of Sandwich who ended up on Martha’s Vineyard, was the son of Samuel1 of Braintree.

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GARDNER
Charles Carroll Gardner
“George Allen of Sandwich”, in A Genealogical Dictionary of New Jersey, 16:1-4, 49-52
(reprinted in Genealogies of New Jersey Families (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2005), 2:150-169)

Robert Charles Anderson calls this the best (previous) treatment in print. Although GARDNER cites some evidence not explicitly referenced in the Great Migration sketch regarding the immigrant George and his family, his reconstruction of George’s conjugal family must give way to the more comprehensive and astute analysis in the definitive ANDERSON-GeorgeALLEN-Sketch. What makes GARDNER indispensible nonetheless, is the work he has done on many of George’s descendants, all of which is backed by copious evidential extracts and full source citations.

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J.K.ALLEN
John Kermott Allen,
       “George Allen of Weymouth, Massachusetts...”
  &  “Ralph Allen of Sandwich, Massachusetts”

According to ANDERSON, These two typescript papers were published informally in 1924 by the author, and distributed to “major genealogical libraries”, including, no doubt, the NEHGS library in Boston. I have not been able to obtain copies of these papers myself.

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MacDONALD
Jack MacDonald,
“The Allen Family: Descendants of George Allen of England, and Sandwich, Massachusetts, 2019”

MacDonald is a professional genealogist who has researched the descendancy of his ancestor, the immigrant George1 Allen of SandwichMA for many years, working with some primary sources as well as high quality published secondary sources. The link is to his latest published version of this report, which aims, essentially, to do for the George1, immigrant to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, what the Mayflower Society “silver series” of books do for certain of the 1620 passengers on the Mayflower: provide a comprehensive catalog, in loose Register generational format, of all the descendants of George for the first five generations. This is supplemented with a continuation of the author’s own line down to the present.

MacDonald provides prefatory material defining his abstracting conventions, and numbered superscripted citations throughout the body of his work to 944 endnote references in the third of the three PDFs that comprise this publication; however, many of these references are generic, and don’t cite to specific page#s, persons, or other identifiers essential for finding the particular record, and only a few of these references include hyperlinks. There is also, either in the body or the endnotes, precious little in the way of analysis or argument. Like the “Silver Books” (which MacDonald cites as such at one point), this is merely a presumably well-researched catalog of descendant family groups, linked by Register style numbering; it does, however, have an invaluable every name index at the end of the third PDF.

Although the author cites to a few Register articles, and a few surname genealogies, he unaccountably misses the most comprehensive, well reasoned,, and indeed definitive, account of the immigrant George1 ALLEN and his highly problematic conjugal family at The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, 27-35, not to mention Robert Charles Anderson’s Focus on Weymouth {GMN 5(Oct-Dec1994)}— four concentrated pages of evidence-based analysis of the history and records of the first Massachusetts town where George and certain of his grown sons settled, along with most of the other passengers on the unnamed ship from Weymouth, Dorsetshire that brought George and family to the New World in May of 1635.

Despite his not citing either of these definitive secondary sources, Mr. MacDonald deserves credit, first, for coming up with a version of George1’s conjugal family that closely matches ANDERSON’s, and second, for considering, but like Anderson, dismissing, several of the most popular theories regarding George’s English origins—in fact, this latter discussion is a useful supplement to Anderson’s sketch.

In my opinion, the greatest deficiency of MacDonald’s work, besides it’s being largely devoid of analysis and argument, is his failure to adopt the modern style of family reconstruction advocated by Anderson in the prefatory material of every one of his Great Migration volumes, starting with the first, published 1995: to reconstruct conjugal families as fully and accurately as possible, in birth order, and with guessimated “say” dates for the birth of each child, and for the date of the parents’ marriage—even where specific evidence is lacking. The rationale for doing this is the same that requires scientists to construct specific hypotheses, which are then subject to tests that attempt to falsify them. The construction of hypotheses, the bolder the better, forces the scientist, or the researcher, to account for and try to integrate all the little shards of evidence in a way that avoid contradiction, and the very act of attempting this inevitably yields inferences and insights that would otherwise be left fallow.

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ROBB-2Patriarchs-2Patriarchs
John Barrett Robb
“ Two New England Patriarchs of ALLEN Patrilineage 2:Samuel1 of Braintree, and George1 of Sandwich”

The goals of this paper are

(1) to validate the descent of ALLEN Patrilineage 2 project members Melava-07, Nancy+B-13, Marlon-22, et al. from the immigrant patriarch Samuel1 ALLEN of BraintreeMA, by marshalling and summarizing the relevant genealogical evidence;

(2) to thereby show that, since
    (a) certain other project members, such as 02-John-02 and Bill-L-10, have equally solid descents from the immigrant patriarch George1 ALLEN of Sandwich,

  & (b) that given the near identity of the 111-marker ySTR haplotypes of certain descendants of both Samuel1 and George1,

the two patriarchs must have been closely related genealogically;

and

(3) to present genealogical evidence of association between these two patriarchs.

Although the evidence offered for (3) is in itself capable of other interpretations, the case made for (1) and (2) on the one hand, and for (3) on the other, are mutually reinforcing and taken all together essentially conclusive on all points.

Abstracts of the evidence and detailed citations for this paper have been offloaded into an associated evidential timeline.

OTHER, GENERAL, SOURCES of relevance

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BERRY
Ellen Thomas Berry & David Allen Berry
Our Quaker Ancestors: Finding them in Quaker Records
(Genealogical Publishing Co, 1987)

This little book is a must-own guide to locating and understanding the Quaker records.

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CHALKLEY
Lyman Chalkley
Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in VA, Extracted from the Original Court Records of AugustaCo, 1754-1800, 3 vols.
(1912; rpt. BaltimoreMD: GPC, 1999). Chalkley is now in the public domain and may be accessed here.

Judge Chalkley indexed virtually all of the records found at the AugustaCoVA courthouse as of the late 19th century, though he deliberately omitted records which concerned only people of obvious German surnames. There are also some gaps in his abstracts, and inevitably, some mistakes. The abstracts themselves, though intelligent, and focused on genealogically relevant information, are often quite inadequate as representations of the records themselves, and they can even be misleading for those not well versed in both the colonial common law and institutions, and in the local geography. Nonetheless, since AugustaCo was the western Virginia frontier from the 1730s until the Revolutionary War, during which period the initial trickle of Scotch-Irish into this wilderness swelled to a flood, CHALKLEY is an indispensible resource for anyone researching 18th century Virgina beyond the mountains. It is important to understand, though, that CHALKLEY should be treated as an imperfect index to the actual primary records, and not as a source in itself.

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FISCHER
David Hackett Fischer
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
(Oxford University Press, 1989)

Although there is nothing about ALLENs here, this is perhaps the single most important work in print on the four most important subcultures of early America: the New England Puritans; the settlers of the Virginia and Chesapeake tidewater region; the Quakers; and the Scotch-Irish settlers of the western frontiers. Since ALLENs of this patrilineage mingled with all four of these cultures, this book provides some context for their varying family histories and some perspective on their evident adaptability

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QUAKER_ENC
William Wade Hinshaw
Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy. Vol. I - VI
(1936-1950; published on CD by GPC, 2003)

Transcriptions of the vast majority of extant Quaker Monthly Meeting records. An indispensable source for Quaker genealogy. It includes the records for the important Virginia monthly meetings, but not those for Shrewsbury MM in New Jersey.

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QUAKER_SHREWSBURY
Shrewsbury Monthly Meeting Records
on microfilm at Swarthmore College Library, and available through the LDS.

Transcriptions of the Shrewsbury MM, in Shrewsbury Township, MonmouthCoMJ—an important location for early ALLENs of this patrilineage.

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WORRALL
Jay Worrall, Jr
The Friendly Virginians: America’s First Quakers
(AthensGA: Iberian Publishing Co, 1994)

This is an anecdotal and narrative-style history of the American Quakers, with a useful chapter on the history of the first Quaker settlements west of the Blue Ridge, in the Valley of Virginia. This raw western frontier was first settled in the 1730s by the Quakers, by various German Mennonite groups, and by the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish, all seeking religious, cultural, and economic freedom. WORRALL tells the story of the organization of the first Quaker Monthly Meetings in the (now) counties of Frederick, Shenandoah, and Rockingham. ALLENs of this patrilineage first appeared in the RockinghamCo area in 1739, the southernmost of these counties, when it was still part of AugustaCo, but they are later found north of there in ShenandoahCo, and they belonged, variously, to the Crooked Run Monthly Meeting, north of Front Royal, and the Hopewell MM north of Winchester. Their land probably lay in the main part of the Valley and it would have been a long haul to either Monthly Meeting.

The ALLEN Patrilineage 2 Haplogroup, R-L21->DF13->ZZ10->BY12512
and the deep ancestral history of the patrilineage

The most precise, articulated, designator of the haplogroup for ALLEN Patrilineage 2 is now R-ZZ10/BY12512, based on the Big Y test results of project member Dick-01 and others. However, since little is known about this most recent subdivision of the haplogroup tree, the following much broader and generic explication of where the patrilineage fits into human population history will have to suffice.

This Allen (R-L21*) Patrilineage (to use its full name) is of quintessential British stock.

There is evidence that humans and protohumans had lived in Britain as long as 700,000 years ago, but all were driven out by the glaciers which overran Europe during the last Ice Age (20,000-8000 BC). As the glaciers melted, the human population, which had been pushed back to refugia in the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of the Mediterranean, followed them north and eventually regained access to Britain, which was at the time a peninsula of Europe, linked to it by a land bridge called Doggerland. As the ocean waters continued to rise, first Ireland (about 7500 BC), then England (about 6500 BC), were cut off from their adjoining land masses.

The R1b haplogroup, of which R-L21+ is an offshoot, goes back about 22,000 years to the Middle East, and as it happens, it became the prevalent haplogroup of the repopulated Europe. However, the mutation which marks the L21 branch occurred about 3000 years ago, long after Britain had become separated from the Continent. Consequently, although the type is also found in northern France and Germany, most R-L21+ males today are of British descent.

The Celtic culture and language was brought to Britain between 1200-800 BC, and by the time Julius Caesar led the Roman armies to Britain (about the time of Christ), Britain was Celtic. Ireland, of course, had long been separated by water from Great Britain, and Scotland by its remote geography, so it shouldn't be surprising that in time the basic Celtic culture trifurcated into three subcultures: Brythonic (covering the area of modern England, except for Wales and Cornwall), Gaelic (Ireland, the SW of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall), and Pictic (the remainder of Scotland). By about the 10th Century AD, the Gaelic subculture had largely prevailed over the Pictish subculture of Scotland, except for the lower border areas which were influenced by the Brythonic.

Since all of these cultural developments took place long after the L21 mutation had arisen in Britain, the type is to be found in all these subcultural areas. However, later offshoot branches of L21, marked by the characteristic M222 mutation, have been identified specifically with the major burgeoning of the Irish population associated with the semi-mythical tribal chief Ui Néill, about 500 AD, and descendants of these lines also made an impact on the population of the SW parts of Scotland which have always had two-way intercourse with Ireland.

The Allen Patrilineage is negative for this M222 mutation, as well as for all other mutations subsequent to L21, so it most likely descends from the English (Brythonic) strain of Celts.

It used to be thought that in the centuries 300-400 AD, when the Anglo-Saxons “invaded” England, filling the vacuum left by the Romans, that they displaced much of the native British population, or at least the population of procreating males, but recent DNA research has given this the lie. It turns out that there is very little genetic difference between the population of southern England, where the Anglo-Saxons eventually set up the Kingdom of Wessex, and the other areas of Britain. Britain is now, as it has been for many thousands of years, predominantly R1b, and especially R-L21. Based on recent DNA studies, about 65% of male Britons are of the broad European haplogroup R1b, and fully 25-50% of the current male British population is R-L21. The so-called Norman invasion, while it wreaked profound changes to the language and cultural forms of England, had even less genetic impact—on the order of 1-2%.

For those interested in reading more into these subjects, I recommend this Wiki article on Prehistoric Britain, and this Eupedia page illustrating and summarizing the diffusion of human haplotypes.

The Technical Stuff about ySNPs & Deep Ancestry

Although a male's deep ancestry can be predicted to some degree from the test he takes to determine his surname patrilineage, it requires additional kinds of yChromosome testing called deep clade testing or Family Tree DNA’s Big Y test to determine the most recent haplogroup into which his yChromosome falls. We are indebted to project members Dick Allen and JohnW for undertaking this additional Big Y testing. Since this has been done, there is little value in other project members ordering these types of tests, as all share in the same yDNA with just minor, inconsequential variations.

While the focus in this project is on the genealogy of the descendants of the particular male ancestor who first adopted the surname ALLEN say 600-800 years ago, and thus became the founder of this ALLEN genealogical patrilineage, the founder himself, as well as all males alive today, are descendants of a much broader patrilineage which comprises all the descendants of an original yAdam who lived (it is estimated) between 50-100,000 years ago. And just we test ySTR mutations to sort living male descendants into particular genealogical patrilineages, so we may test ySNP mutations to map the whole history of the human patrilineage, and indeed all of humanity as it emerged from Africa and spread out across the continents.

ySNPs mutate so rarely that so far they have proved to beof little or no value for differentiating male lineages over the genealogical time frame of a few hundreds of years, but they work very well in sorting out patrilineages over many thousands of years. As the yChromosome of the original yAdam has been passed down the exfoliating tree of his male descendants, a few of these rare ySNP mutations have occurred, each constituting a branching of the human tree. And where the bearers of these mutations can be tracked by archaeology, and their remains successfully DNA tested, it becomes possible to correlate accumulated patterns of ySNP mutations with particular populations and their migrations over time.

Technically, each new ySNP mutation creates a new human population branching, which may be referred to, more or less interchangeably as a “subclade”, or just as a new “haplogroup”. What is important is not the terminology, but the conception of a single patrilineal tree (call it a “ySNP haplotree”) which has been divided, and subdivided, and subdivided again by successive mutations to the original yAdam’s yChromosome, each mutation marking a new branch. Already, there are many hundreds of these known ySNPs, and many new ones are being discovered every year.

The highest level (earliest) branches of the human haplotree are identified by the capitalized letters of the alphabet (A, B, C, etc.), each representing a single early mutation of the original out-of-Africa yChromosome; then, as subsequent mutations have occurred wuthin each of these major haplogroups, corresponding small letters and numbers have been appended to the initial letter—analogous to the Henry System of genealogical numbering. Like the Henry System, unfortunately, as the qualifying ySNP mutation designators have accumulated, the identifying labels have become increasingly long and cumbersome, so that an entirely new nomenclature was introduced a few years ago, which is still only slowly catching on. In fact the field of ySNP testing has been burgeoning so rapidly that the nomenclature system itself has already changed several times, most recently just a couple of months ago, rendering all earlier publications obsolete in their terminology. Thankfully, the new system should render such wholesale systemic revisions unnecessary.

The old (Henry System style) designator for Allen Patrilineage 2 down to the R-ZZ10 level is “R1b1a1a2a1a2c1d”, but that nomenclature has become so unwieldy that it is now generally deprecated in favor of abbreviations of the form R-ZZ10 or even R-BY12512. Unfortunately, the downside of these abbreviations is that they leave out the long ancestral hierarchy of these most recent ySNP mutations to this patrilineage. However, one can find the full hierarchy either by finding the FTDNA Haplotree in your personal FTDNA pages, or at the public ISOGG Haplotree for the R Haplogroup (when you click this link, do a CTL-F search for ZZ10 to find the furthest articulation of the ALLEN Patrilineage Haplogroup—the BY12512 mutation is so new that it apparently hasn’t yet been recognized by ISOGG.

Over the next several years, I expect that enough downstream ySNPs will be discovered that the history of this Allen patrilineage will be brought down to within 1000-1500 years of the present, and perhaps even to a particular geographical area, and that not many years after that it will become possible to identify men surnamed Allen as members of this patrilineage just by ySNP testing. Even then, though, we will want to continue to test ySTR markers, because they mutate so much more rapidly than ySNPs, that they will still be the best means of sorting members of the patrilineage into sub-branches. In fact by that time, I expect that ySTR testing will also have improved its discriminatory capabilities, so that it will much more useful for genealogical purposes.