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From: "Ed and Mary Yonan" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Allison/Ellison Success Story
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 03:06:44 -0600
References: <004101c2dee7$f828cbb0$320aa8c0@William>


I'm happy to share our Allison/Ellison DNA Project success story with
all of you. However, it's not easily summarized in a few sentences.

Our Allison/Ellison DNA project is providing evidence of the genetic
connection between my G5 grand-father, Joseph Allison (origin unknown),
who was living on Long Island, NY by 1720 and moved to Orange Co., NY ca
1725 and Lawrence Ellison who migrated from northern England to New
England ca 1632 and then to Long Island in New York. Lawrence Ellison's
descendants moved to Orange Co., NY in the 1700s and were using the
Allison spelling by then. Several researchers of the Joseph Allison
and Lawrence Ellison/Allison lines have searched for documentation to
prove or disprove a connection between the two families, but traditional
genealogical research has failed to find a paper trail that proves that
they were related.

Our Allison/Ellison DNA project was "unofficially" begun in April 2001
by two Allison men
(# 4 & # 8 below) who wanted to answer the question about whether
there was a genetic connection between the Joseph Allison and Lawrence
Ellison/Allison lines. One man, who is my 4th cousin, (# 4) had
traced his ancestry back to Joseph and the other (# 8) had traced his
ancestry back to Lawrence. They each sent their DNA sample to FTDNA and
the test results showed them to have very different DNA scores.
Although disappointed by the DNA test results, we concluded that the two
Allison/Ellison lines had coincidentally lived on Long Island and in
Orange Co., NY at the same time in the 1700s and were not related.

Fortunately, other Allison and Ellison men became interested in DNA
testing as a result of our small beginning. In February 2002 the
Allison/Ellison Y-chromosome DNA Family Reconstruction Project was
officially organized as a surname DNA project at FTDNA and I have been
the group administrator since that time. We currently have DNA test
results back from the lab for twenty men with the Allison and Ellison
surnames.

Six of the men have good paper trails which trace their genealogies
back to Allisons/Ellisons in Orange Co., NY in the 1700s and all six
have matching DNA scores, which is good evidence that they all descend
from the same line of Allisons.

Two of those six men (# 1 & # 2) have very good genealogical paper
trails tracing their Allison/Ellison lines back to Lawrence Ellison.
# 1 is a descendant of George Suffern Allison of New York, who was a G3
grandson of Lawrence Ellison. # 2 lives in Canada. He is a
descendant of the Lawrence Ellison/Allison group from Orange Co., NY
who were Loyalists and went to Canada after the Rev. War.

Two other men {my brother and my 4th cousin} (# 3 & # 4) definitely
trace their ancestry back to Joseph Allison. They descend from two
different sons of Joseph.

The other two of the six men (# 5 & # 6) trace their Allison ancestry
back to Orange County, NY but their paper genealogy doesn't show for
sure if their earliest Allison ancestors belonged to the Lawrence or
Joseph lines. However their DNA scores are identical to the four men
above, so we feel confident that they all have a common Allison
ancestor.

# 5 knows that his first known ancestor, Nathaniel Ellison, was in
Orange Co., NY, in the 1700s and then moved to NJ. Later descendants of
Nathaniel Ellison lived in Coyner Springs in which is now in Botetourt
Co. VA.

# 6 (already mentioned by Bill Bailey in an earlier message), has a
paper trail back to Benjamin Allison who fought in the Revolutionary War
from Orange Co., NY and moved to Greenbrier Co., VA (now WV) by 1792.
The interesting thing about Greenbrier and Botetourt Counties in VA is
that they were originally all part of the same county in VA in the
1700s.

A seventh man (# 7) has a DNA score that matches the six men described
above. # 7 knows that his Ellison ancestor moved from Michigan to
Pennsylvania in the early 1800s, but he doesn't have any information
about his ancestor's parents. However we have evidence that Orange
County Allisons migrated to Michigan in the late 1700s so there is an
Orange County migratory geographical link for the most mysterious of
these Allison/Ellison ancestors. It's also possible that he could have
left his Loyalist Allison/Ellison relatives and migrated to MI from
Canada.

It seems likely that there were large families of Allisons that lived
close together in NY and NJ in the 1700s. We know that some migrated
to VA, some to MI, others to OH and the Loyalists moved to Canada. As
these families migrated westward they lost track of their relatives, but
DNA test results is helping us reconstruct our Orange County
Allison/Ellison family. The beauty of the DNA test results is
definitive proof that all seven men have very similar DNA test scores
and therefore all descend from a common Ellison/Allison ancestor. We
still need to do more research and find out whether my line's common
ancestor was Lawrence Ellison who migrated to New England ca 1632 or if
both Lawrence and Joseph descended from an earlier Allison who lived in
the British Isles prior to Lawrence's migration to America.

Our original test results led us to the false conclusion that the
Lawrence Ellison and Joseph Allison lines were unrelated. The Allison
male (# 8) who was one of the two original testees has done very
careful research and had traced his ancestry back to Lawrence. However,
his DNA score is very different from the other seven men who have
Orange County, NY Allison/Ellison roots. This seems to be a classic
case of a non-paternity event and he has no idea during which generation
it occurred.

There is another group of seven men who are participants in the
ongoing ALLISON/ELLISON DNA project whose DNA doesn't match the above
group's DNA scores. This group of seven men have very similar DNA test
scores and now know that they share a common Allison ancestry, although
they didn't know each other prior to becoming participants in the DNA
project. All of them trace their ancestry back to
Ellisons/Ellysons/Allisons in Lanarkshire, Scotland in the 1600s.

The seven New York Allison/Ellison descendants and the seven
Lanarkshire, Scotland Allison/Ellison/Ellyson descendants have very
different DNA test scores, which proves that they are not related. All
of the men have had the 25 marker DNA test.

In addition to # 8 above, there are five other men who are currently
ungrouped. Each of their 25 marker DNA scores are unique.

Mary Allison Yonan




----- Original Message -----
From: "Lowe DNA" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 11:12 PM
Subject: RE: [DNA] Success stories


> Dennis...
>
> My wife has an Allison aunt who has Alzheimer's and years
> ago she helped me get started in genealogy...so to help
> her pass the Allison lineage down to her grandchildren I
> traced her Allison family back to a Benjamin Allison
> in 1759 in Orange County, New York and then reached a "brick wall"
> as there were no paper records to search further..
>
> Then one of the Allison cousins joined Mary Yonan's great Allison
> NRY DNA project.... This cousin knew he was from our Benjamin
> Allison...and when his DNA results were compared they found
> an exact match with a Lawrence Ellison (b. 1500's) in Blackburn,
> Lancashire, England.
>
> So with DNA (an no official records) we jumped back in time from
> 1759 to about 1520....130 years or about 3.5 generations and found
> not only a SURNAME match but where they were from in England..
> Now I must find the non-existent 3 great grandfathers in between...
>
> So DNA testing is very powerful when coupled and correlated to
> genealogy research.. I am a believer !!
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> ==============================
> To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy
records, go to:
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237
>


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