Some may recall my post from November 13, 2015 entitled Solving the puzzle of the Babb Rosetta Stone, in which we were testing the theory that the Eastern Virginia Babb (4) family was related to the Babb Families of North Carolina (5). We finally had a candidate available from the Eastern Virginia lineage to test against. A couple of candidates from the North Carolina Babb families had tested many years ago, so we already had their tests on file.
These days we test at a minimum of 37 genetic markers, so when I pulled up the list at that level I didn’t see a match. I was so discouraged that I put it down and didn’t pick it up again for over a week. Enjoying a slow weekend, I started reviewing my results again today and suddenly recalled that back when we did the tests on the two North Carolina Babb family members, the tests were not nearly as evolved and were quite expensive. So, we had only done the minimum test of 12 genetic markers.
Here is what the report looks like once filtered down to the common markers for our 3 test candidates:
In the world of DNA, this is known as a “Perfect Match”. It confirms the theory that the candidates are indeed related and is exactly what we would hope to see of a family so closely related.
Given what we know of the lineages, the North Carolina Babbs descend from the Eastern Virginia Babbs. It had always been a mystery that the North Carolina Babbs seem to appear from nowhere. Now it is clear that they simply migrated across the border as the family grew.
It is important to note, what this result does NOT tell us. It does not give us the exact connection point from father to son. But today we have one less lineage of Babb’s to connect back to England. This means, I’ll have to go back and put out a second edition of my book The Puzzling History of the Babb Families of North Carolina & Eastern Virginia, but that will just be plain fun! First, I’ll have to go back and get the tests upgraded for the previous candidates, so we can make further comparisons. But the link is confirmed and further testing won’t change that.
For today I celebrate finally having success in proving a theory that simply couldn’t be solved with the paper trail.
Now, it’s time for a little champagne.
Cheers!
Dan
