NEW Group Time Tree feature reveals branching pattern within Group 2 (the Farrell's of Annaly, Longford)

FTDNA recently introduced a new feature that Project Administrators have been asking for for quite some time. It is called the Group Time Tree and (like Alex Williamson's Big Tree), this one has surnames of all Big-Y-tested individuals, together with their MDKA (Most Distant Known Ancestor), and the specific downstream branch of the Tree of Mankind on which they sit. But in addition, it includes the most advanced TMRCA estimates (Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor) for each branch in the Tree. In other words, it has a user-friendly Timeline. And this is something that has been missing from other versions of the Tree of Mankind.

This new feature allows us to see how closely any two groups within the project are related to each other. And indeed it can show how all the groups in the project are related to each other - see the diagram here, which shows (not surprisingly) that everyone within the project shares a common ancestor who passed down the SNP marker M168 and lived about 63,000 years ago (around the time when the ancestors of present-day non-Africans first emerged from the African continent).

But it really begins to provide potentially-useful genealogical data when we start looking at the branching structure WITHIN a particular group, and seeing how individual group members are related to each other within the last 1000 years (i.e roughly since the advent of surnames).

Group 2 - the Farrell's of Annaly (Longford)

This is the largest group within the project, currently boasting 72 members. Of these, over 30 of them have done the Big Y test. Previous analyses (here and here) suggest that this group are the descendants of the Farrell clan of Annaly in Co. Longford. 

The overarching SNP marker for Group 2 appears to be BY28646 because all the men in Group 2 named Farrell fall under this branch. In addition, TMRCA estimates indicate that the common ancestor who passed on this SNP marker to all the people in Group 2 would have lived about 974 AD (95%CI 664-1219) - see here. This date of 974 AD is consistent with the approximate timescale for the emergence of surnames in Ireland (roughly 900-1250 AD).

Figure 1: Group 2 - the Farrell's of Longford ... see the full diagram here
(click to enlarge)

However, there is also a clear branching structure within the group, since 974 AD, and this may correlate with known genealogical information about the various branches of the Farrell Clan of Annaly.

Four major branches below BY28646 have been identified so far (see the diagram above) ... and more branches will likely emerge as more people do the Big Y test. The largest of these 4 branches is BY93145 and most of the Big-Y-tested members of Group 2 sit on this branch. The common ancestor of people on this branch lived about 1121 AD (95%CI 831-1349). This branch in turn has two major divisions:

• the BY126923 branch (common ancestor c.1424 AD)
• the BY176936 branch (common ancestor c.1227 AD)

By the 1400s, the O'Farrell clan had divided into two major sub-clans, the O'Farrell Bán (Bane) ruling North Annaly and the O'Farrell Buí (Boy) ruling South Annaly. There is a good account of the clan history on the Longford.ie website here.

The two downstream branches mentioned above could potentially represent the two major sub-clans - the question is: which is which? Big-Y testing of O'Farrell descendants with a family history of descent from one or other of the sub-clans could help answer this question.

Maurice Gleeson

Jan 2023