The ALLEN (I) DNA Patrilineage Project

The ALLEN (I) DNA Patrilineage

This project is dedicated to furthering the genealogical research of a particular set of ALLEN patrilineage cousins, in part by bringing to bear their specific yDNA test results, but mostly by attempting to mesh their genealogical research. This is called the ALLEN (I) project to differentiate it from the similar Allen (R) Patrilineage project that has been set up for an entirely unrelated set of Allen patrilineage cousins.

All of the DNA-tested members of this group appear to descend from an unknown common ancestor whose sons or grandsons emigrated from England to colonial Virginia in the 17th century.

A patrilineage in general comprises all the male line descendants of a particular man, and a genealogical patrilineage consists of all the male line descendants of one particular man who lived, perhaps, 650 years ago, and who adopted a particular surname and passed it on to his children. For most western European populations, membership in a patrilineage can be determined with a high degree of probability by a DNA test of the male yChromosome that is passed on from father to son virtually unchanged from generation to generation. Where a number of men who appear to belong to the same patrilineage from testing alone also bear the same surname, it is a virtual certainty that they descend from a common ancestor, though it is possible that the original surname may have changed in one or more lines since its first adoption, due to an NPE, so that a patrilineage may comprise more than one surname.

In this case, the predominant surname of the patrilineage is ALLEN—rendering the most prevalent modern spelling in all-caps as a way of representing all possible spellings of the surname. The surname is thought to derive from a Celtic personal name of great antiquity and obscure origin, and the roughly homophonic complex for the surname comprises the largely obsolete spellings, but phonically indicative forms: “Allain” and “Alleyn”. The modern spelling “Allan” is the preferred form in Scotland.

NPEs (Non-Paternity Events) and non-ALLEN Surnames

Of the current members of this project, several grew up with surnames other than ALLEN, indicating that an NPE has occurred somewhere in their ancestral lineage. This is typical of most patrilineages. There is a small chance every generation of an NPE occurring, and these chances accumulate from one generation to the next. The 3% estimate I use for NPEs/generation is typical, and going back to ALLEN ancestors born about 1650, predicts that 23% of the male descendants will bear surnames other than ALLEN, which is about the proportion in the present project.

Unfortunately, it can be challenging to trace an NPE line back to the ancestor who bore the original surname, because so many of these surname changes left no trace in the documentary records, whether by inadvertence or intention. And until the genealogical gap has been bridged between the new surname and the old, there must be some additional question about whether the NPE descendants of the patrilineage really belong. However, where the genetic distance (GD) relationship between a patrilineage NPE and a member bearing the predominant surname is reasonably close (GD 2 or less for the recommended FTDNA 37-marker test), there is little room for doubt.

The History of this ALLEN Patrilineage: Genetic & Genealogical

What strikes me most about this rather large patrilineage sample is how tightly knit it is, both genetically and genealogically. Indeed, all of the members most likely descend from a small set of closely related early Virginia (and perhaps Maryland) immigrants, whose descendants, following the usual tidewater settler pattern, spreading gradually out into the Virginia Piedmont, and the Carolinas, and from thence on into the middle and the deep South. Although the vast majority of those who have had their yDNA tested are Americans, so that there are few patrilineages fortunate enough to have tested counterparts who have never left the Old World, it is perhaps more usual to at least find a few outliers, whose immigrant ancestors came earlier or later than the rest, and from different places, where their DNA had had at least a couple of centuries to evolve separately. That’s clearly not the case here. There is only just as much genetic variation as one would expect over the 10-12 generations since these lines appear to coalesce genealogically in a common ancestor of all.

That’s both the bad news and the good news. The good news being that the DNA ratifies the genealogy in a general way: the bad news is that we don’t have quite as much variation as we might like to be quite sure about who is most closely related to whom within the patrilineage. Elsewhere on this page, I have constructed a mutation history tree, and on the ALLEN Descendancies page I have interpolated notes (in red) into the posted lineages about where the mutations in those lineages may have occurred, but because in most cases there has been no more than one mutation in the last 10 generations or so, most of the as yet unconnected members can easily be accomodated genetically into any of the earliest known ALLEN lines.

Upstream Genetic Markers

We appear to have one of these: the mutation DYS572- appears to mark the descendants of patriarch I’ve called “William of Albemarle”, noted immediately below (see also the mutation history tree).

The Earliest Known Allen Patriarchs

First, there appears to have been a line of three successive Williams, the first of whom, William1, was probably an immigrant from Britain, and born no later than 1650. Solid evidence links William1 to his son William2, who is also known to have had a son William3, but the identification of the latter with

William (say 1691 - 1752) of NewKent, Goochland, & Albemarle Cos VA)

whom I have christened “William of Albemarle”, rests primarily on none too strong circumstantial evidence. At any rate, this latter William is known to have married twice, and to have had sons Samuel, William Hunt, John, Valentine, George Hunt, and Phillip, and whose first generation descendants, who are well accounted for, remained in the area where their patriarch ended up, which became Buckingham and Amherst counties by 1762—all except Valentine, who removed to Rockingham County, North Carolina. Many of William of Albemarle’s third and fourth generation descendants are found next in Tennessee—in the counties of Williamson, Marshall, or Fayette.

All the other known Allen patriarchs of this patrilineage appear to be either brothers, or close cousins. These others, of the generation born between 1700-1730, were:

Robert (say 1709 - abt 1783) of NewKent & Lunenburg Cos VA, and CaswellCoNC
WilliamWilliam (say 1725 - 1789) of Lunenburg & Mecklenburg Cos VA)
David (say 1728 - abt 1805) of BrunswickCoVA, JohnstonCoNC, & SpartanburgCoSC
Reynold (say 1730 - abt 1808) of Granville, Johnston, Wake, and Iredell Cos NC

That William and David were brothers is shown by the fact that Francis Wray of LunenburgCoVA made deeds of gift to each of them, calling them sons-in-law. Meanwhile Robert also appears as a resident of LunenburgCo (hived off from BrunswickCo), while Reynold's nearby BrunswickCo land apparently fell into GranvilleCoNC when the state line between VA and NC was resurveyed. There are other associations and transactions amongst these four and Francis Wray. For example, both Wray and Reynold Allen removed to JohnstonCoNC, and there is a deed from one to the other there. Most telling of all: all four of these men named sons Young Allen, and the other given names of their sons, including “Drury”, overlap extensively.

MILLER has made Robert (say 1709 - abt 1853) a son of

Robert Sr (say 1680 - abt 1756) of NewKent & Henrico Cos VA

an hypothesis I have adopted for reasons too complicated to go into here. Although one might suppose Robert Jr to be a brother of William, David, and Reynold, there is no evidence that Robert Sr had sons named David or Reynold, and his son William, can be tracked from HanoverCoVA (where both his father Robert, and his brother Robert owned land) to GranvilleCoNC. Thus, patriarch William Allen of Lunenburg and Mecklenburg Cos, who was a brother of David and named sons Young and Drury, cannot readily be made a son of Robert Sr.

Several other Allens of Robert Sr's generation have been suggested as fathers of William, David, and Reynold, including another Robert Allen of Maryland who is known to have had a son named Reynold(s); I will consider this theory in more detail in the next section. Unfortunately for this theory, there are records for NewKentCo, where Robert Sr and his young family lived, for both a Reynold and a David Allen who were contemporaries of Robert Sr, and either of these, who were likely brothers, may have been the father of William, David, and Reynold; or there may have been another Allen brother or close relation in NewKentCo whose name has been lost.

Be that as it may, it appears that Robert Jr, son of Robert Sr, was not a brother of William, David, and Reynold, but given the fact that he too named a son Young, it is likely that he was a first cousin and shared a maternal grandmother of that name with the other three.

Three of these four patriarchal Allens migrated south to the Carolinas, and even to Georgia, and many lines moved on from there across the deep south all the way to Texas. Only a minority of these Allens either remained in Virginia, or migrated to Tennessee.

The Putative Maryland Connection: Two Roberts and two Reynolds ALLENs

The principal published source for this ALLEN Patrilineage is MILLER, but at least two researchers, Sara Carpenter Allen, who died in 2003, and Melba Allen of Mississippi, who is still with us, have uncovered Allens in Maryland who were likely members of this patrilineage. Unfortunately, although some of the relevant evidence has been brought forward and circulated in an informal manner, no comprehensive published case that I am aware of has been made for the connection between these Maryland ALLENs and the ones found in Virginia records. Indeed, the connection seems to rest largely on the coincidence of the names Robert and Reynold(s) Allen in both Calvert Co MD, and later in Brunswick Co VA, where the name Robert appears in 1742, and Reynold in 1745—this, according to Melba Allen who has researched both sets of records.

BrunswickCo, from the time it was created (on paper) in 1720, until 1746, when LunenburgCo was hived off of it, constituted the cismontane SW frontier of Virginia, stretching hundreds of miles—the “old Southside”. Then, between 1746 and 1752, when Bedford and Halifax Cos were created from Lunenburg, the latter county bore this mantle.

This county genealogy is important, because we have rare surviving tax lists (most colonial VA tax lists are lost) for Lunenburg covering the period 1748-1752 and beyond, and many ALLENs appear on these Lunenburg lists, some of them claimed by researchers Melba and Sara Allen to be brothers of Reynold Allen of BrunswickCo, who with his father Robert were said to have been relegated to North Carolina in the 1745/6 border adjustment, and the others to have fallen into Lunenburg from Brunswick.

But based on the evidence in MILLER, many if not most of these ALLENs can be associated instead with Robert Allen of NewKent and Henrico Cos. And most telling of all, a Reynold Allen is found in NewKentCo from 1689-1710, evidently an older contemporary (and perhaps a brother or uncle) of Robert Allen of that place.

Although MILLER has abstracted the Lunenburg records, and attempted to show associations between certain of these ALLENs (indicated by indentation and by noting the name of the tax commissioner) the grounds for these associations are far from clear, and the context of the records is lacking: we would like to know, for example, which years were missing, whether there are tax records for any of the daughter counties of Lunenburg for the period, and what relation the county sublists, grouped by geography, bore to the landholdings of the individual families involved. It is on the interpretation of these various records that much of the case for the structure of these ALLEN families is bound to rest. As it is, the case remains up in the air.

Possible ALLEN Roots in the Old World

Stepping backward from the American colonial evidence, there are also two theories of ALLEN origin in the Old World. According to Melba Allen, there is evidence that both Thomas Allen (father of the Maryland Robert) and Edward Reynolds (Robert’s father-in-law) came from Gravesend, in the far northwest corner of Kent, in England.

Meanwhile in MILLER, a family of ALLENs, children of one Richard Allen, rector of St Mildred's Canterbury, deep in the heart of Kent, is found to include sons, Reynold (born about 1609), Richard, and Thomas, with evidence that Reynold ended up in Barbados, which was a feeder to much Virginia immigration. Thus, it is quite likely that the Reynold Allen who appears early in NewKentCo was a grandson of Reynold of Barbados, especially since a third early Allen of NewKentCo, a contemporary of both Reynold and Robert, was named Richard. Evidently, the association of the names REYNOLD(S) and ALLEN (both of them ultra-common names) is less than unique, unless some evidence can be developed on the other side of the pond showing that the Allens of Gravesend, which lies on the Thames, far from Canterbury, and is essentially a satellite port of London, were in some way related to the churchly Allen family.

And speaking of London, one of the early ALLEN immigrants to Virginia was William Allen, merchant of London. This William in 1640 patented 600a in CharlesRiverCo, later YorkCo, which was the progenitor of NewkentCo. Was this early William the same William Allen who died in YorkCo by 1677, and who is quite likely the grandfather of William Allen of NewKent and Albemarle Cos—the patriarch of several project members? It is perhaps worth noting here H.T.ALLEN’s suggestion that these Virginia ALLENs came from a family in Thaxsted, Essex (just 10 miles from central London), in which the given names Richard, Chrisopher, and Reinold run.

Where things stand now

Although, as I’ve noted, a great deal of research has already been done on the early Virginia ALLENs, including research in the primary records, what I have not been able to determine is just how comprehensive and exhaustive this research has been. Although incomplete research might on its face be a negative, it also offers hope that there is more significant evidence to be found that will benefit all the project members, since both the DNA and the genealogical evidence we have strongly suggest that all descend from one or another of these early Chesapeake tidewater ALLENs.

As for the many unconnected project members, including those with non-ALLEN surnames, I have made a comprehensive review of the published evidence in the sources available to me, and have posted all the male line ALLEN descendancies through, at least, the early 1800s. Where these have been carried down further, principally in MILLER, I have actively looked for possible connections, but, alas, without finding any. However, my review of these materials, and the additional postings I have made from them, do in a couple of cases suggest possibly fruitful lines of investigation.

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PRINCIPAL ALLEN SOURCES

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Bill_A_ALLEN
William Alfred Allen, History of George Hunt and Mary Ogilvie Allen and their Descendants and Related Families, Ogilivie, Ewing, and Fonville (published by author, 2005)

Project member Bill_A-03’s book follows the line of Valentine Allen of RockinghamCoNC (1730-1797), son of William of AlbemarleCo, to his descendants in TN and beyond. Although formal citations are omitted in the interests of readability, this book is very well researched and the material presented is developed directly from the evidence that underlies it. Consequently, although written with the novice in mind, it is persuasive even to readers who are accomplished genealogists.

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Donald_ALLEN
Donald Lee Allen, History of the Allen Family of England, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and California, 1600-2000: Descendants of William Allen and Mary Hunt Minge (BaltimoreMD: Gateway Press Inc, 2000)

Project member Donald-05’s book follows the line of John Allen of AlbemarleCoVA (1726-1754), son of William of AlbemarleCo, to his descendants in TN and beyond. This book is full of enlightening background material on the historical settings for the early generation. A special strength of this book that will be of interest to Allen researchers is that it includes extensive transcriptions of primary source material for the VA Allens of this line, at least some of which is taken from WICKER. The work also includes a comprehensive name index.

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H.T.ALLEN
Henry T. Allen, "Allen", in Genealogy of Kentucky Families, From the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, A-M (GPC 1981), 1-18

Although the genealogical argumentation here is often unpersuasive, General Allen presents a good deal of valuable early evidence in abstract form.

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CARPENTER/McKEE
Reva Nance Carpenter and Virginia Nance McKee, The Allens of Cribbs Creek in Burnsville Township, Anson County, North Carolina, and Related Families (CharlotteNC, the author, 1979)

This book focuses on William Allen of MecklenburgCoVA, and his children, especially those who migrated to AnsonCoNC. It follows the line of project member Lynda-09 down to the 20th century.

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MILLER
Norma Carter Miller and George Lane Miller, Allens of the Southern States (BellevueWA: Gateway Press, 1989)

This is by far the most comprehensive published source on the Allens of this patrilineage, and while it is not the last word in research, the depth of research that underlies it renders it indispensible for any comprehensive view of the early Allens. And it carries scores of Allen lines down to the present. The Millers’ book is also to a fair extent a composite work, as it draws on the work of others. But the value of their work has been enhanced by the Miller’s skilled interpretation of the evidence. All that said, there is much more work to be done on these lines, and plenty of room for revisions. The conclusions in this book need to be weighed in the light of the more recent unpublished research of several researchers, especially Sarah Carter Allen (who was a major contributor to the book), and of Melba Allen of Mississippi, and perhaps others.

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MOORE
Elizabeth Allen Moore and Mary Elizabeth Allen, The Allens of Fayette County, Tennessee, and related families (WhitneyTX: published by the authors, 1980)

The focus here is on descendants of William of Mecklenburg’s line in FayetteCoTN. I have not had an opportunity to examine this work.

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WICKER
Richard Fenton Wicker, Jr., The Allen family of England, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, and Illinois, 1600-1995 : the descendants of Captain William Allen and his wives, Hannah Watson and Mary Hunt Minge (VirginiaBeach: the author, 1995)

This is a comprehensive evidence-based old-fashioned genealogy covering the family and descendancy of William Allen of Albemarle. It follows General H.T. Allen in identifying William as the son and grandson of the two Williams of YorkCoVA, and posits, without any real foundation, a great-grandfather John. Wicker’s sources are mostly published abstracts, but he has most usefully provided transcriptions of many of the key original wills and certain other documents. He adduces much evidence in his family sketches, but he quite often fails to put his finger on what is crucial in his argumentation, and his method of source citation is inadequate—consisting as it does of simply listing a host of sources, casually identified, at the end of each family sketch. His coverage of the first few generations, though is thorough and generally adequate (except for the citations), and his conclusions are based on a good understanding of his sources and are generally sound.

The ALLEN Haplogroup, I-M26+ (I2a1):
the Deep Ancestral History of the ALLEN Patrilineage

While the focus in this project is on descendants of a particular man who first adopted the surname ALLEN (the founder of the ALLEN genealogical patrilineage), this ALLEN patriarch himself was but a single member of the broader patrilineage descended from an original yAdam (who strode the earth anywhere from 50-100,000 years ago), which comprises all males alive today. And just we test ySTR mutations to sort males into particular genealogical patrilineages, so a different kind of mutation—ySNP mutations—are being tested to map the whole history of humanity as it emerged from Africa and spread out across the continents.

ySNPs mutate so rarely that they are useless 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 has been passed down from the original yAdam it has picked up characteristic sets of ySNPs that differentiate branches, and sub-branches, of the male tree of descent; in fact each ySNP mutation constitutes a potential branch point—if we can find the ySNP and figure out where it fits into the branching tree. To put this another way, each branching of the male tree of descent defines a new haplogroup, or subclade, and it has become possible in most cases to identify by SNP testing the deep ancestry of each patrilineage.

Although to my knowledge, none of the members of this project have been deep clade tested, it can be inferred from the ALLEN haplotype that it belongs to the broad haplogroup I family, and more specifically, to the subclade I2a1, or in the most recent nomenclature (which seems to change every couple of years): I-M26+, where “M26” is the most recent SNP mutation known to charterize this line, and the “+” means that there are other more recent mutations that may apply too, but which haven’t been tested, and can’t be inferred. The ISOGG I-Haplogroup tree, which is updated frequently, is the best place to keep track of the most recently accepted SNPs, and this shows that I-M26 has been further differentiated by the SNPs M161 and L160. Additional SNPs L158 and L159 are currently being evaluated as possible additional differentiators.

Several members of the ALLEN Patrilineage Project also belong to the FTDNA I2a Project, in which I-Haplogroup expert Ken Nordtvedt has taken an interest. He has developed a method of inferring haplogroup subclades, and their known SNP definers, from haplotypes. Although his method has yet to be adopted by anyone else, and is certainly open to theoretical challenge, it does have the merit, if sound, of providing finer gradations of differentiation, preliminary to the identification of additional SNPs: thus applying his criteria, the ALLEN subclade has been further differentiated as I-M26-C.

All this deep only ancestry begins to be interesting to the extent that one is able to map the distribution of a particular subclade within the general history of the migrations and diffusion of the human population across the continents. From the analysis of the geographic dispersion of modern tested descendants, and to a lesser extent from testing archaeological exhumations, we do have some rough ideas of the way that most of major subclades have diffused from their origins. For example, here is a map of the I2 subclade, which shows, by inference, that it probably originated in the Balkans, perhaps 20,000 years ago. Meanwhile, the dating of the M26 mutation defining the I2a1 subclade is estimated to have occurred anywhere from 4-12,000 years ago.

As for its distribution, the only place in the world where M26 is found in significant concentrations (40% in fact) is the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, but this is probably an artifact of that place’s isolation and inbreeding, and not necessarily an indicator that the first man to experience the M26 mutation was an islander. Otherwise, I-M26 appears to be distributed much like the predominant British haplogroup subclades of R1b, which account for anywhere from 60-80% of the British population: namely, it is found spread northwards from the Basque region of Spain, up the western European coast to Britain, and beyond, probably at least to the Jutland Peninsula (Denmark), but no further in the direction of Scandanavia. It is theorized that the early settlers of Britain (though they may not have been the first) wintered through the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) of 15-20,000 years ago in Iberia, then gradually followed the retreating glaciers north, along the coast. This map, showing the post-LGM distribution of the most important I-Haplogroup mutations, gives some idea of the distribution of I-M26 and its lack of prevalence compared to other I2 haplotype subclades.

In Britain itself, the presumed area of origin for the ALLEN I-M26 patrilineage, M26 is very uncommon. In fact a study (Capelli, 2003, Current Biology 13:980-981—note: the old name for I-M26, before I2a1, was I1b2) has been made of the distribution of haplotypes across the British Isles, and M26 was found only in a few regions of SW England, Wales, and the eastern Irish coast, and then only at concentrations of 2-3%. As it happens, the SW of England was the major source area for migration to Virginia, besides London and a few other large cities where indentured, and often convicted, transportees tended to originate.

This field of DNA-based human population studies is exploding, with new advances being made every year. In fact, as the current rate of progress continues to accelerate, I expect that before too many more years have passed, some of these subclades will be brought down into genealogical time, and may even become a shortcut means of identifying patrilineages. In the meantime, you can read more about haplogroups and their distribution across the continents at this site.