At FTDNA I've joined Hagan and yDNA Ireland myProjects. These are open to men who have had a STR test. My aim was to find the genetic distances (GD)and the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) between myself and the other Hagan's in the group of which there are about 100 members.

Update: August 2021Below I used MS Excel and MS Word but have now found it easier to use Notepad++ instead of S Word. In the Select Replace use \t for Tab.
FTDNA have updated the haplogroupings and I have joined Dal Cuinn Group who have added further sub-clades (to BY123238, F17047).

Method: (Windows)

Select and copy all of the data from the Hagan web page and paste it into an MS Excel page. Edit the data as necessary. Save as a text file then open in MS Word where all non numeric characters need to be replaced ready for the ulility.

Detail - MS Excel: Edit the sheet date by deleting the header and non STR data rows then delete the rows where there is insufficient data e.g. only 12 STRs. Next delete the excess columns, say after 37 or 67 STRs. Save as a text file, I find Unicode is best. If there is is a cell containing text within the data the program will not work. For example, 17/10/2020 needs replacing with 17 10. Copy or move the row of data that we want to compare - usually self - to row one.

Detail - MS Word: Open the text file, select Unicode as appropriate. Change the page orientation to landscape and maximise the margins so that more of the data can be seen during editing. The yUtility program that generates the GDs and TMRCAs only accepts spaces separating the data and the data should only contain numeric chacacters. The editing uses Word's find/replace ability (CTRL-F) and select Replace. If the data is separated by tabs use ^t in the Find box and a single Space for Replace. Use the same method to replace the months; Aug replace 08 (no spaces). Save the file.

Detail - yUtility: McGee. I have found this utility excellent to use - www.mymcgee.com/tools/yutility.com It is not currently an https site but that´s not a problem - the site is well worth a read too. open the utility in a browser and click on the buttons - suggest top 2 rows ignore, on the left panel remove ticks for SMGF, Ybase, Yhrd; change Mutation Rate to FTDNA and on the right panel remove all the ticks so that the comparison is with row one.

Detail - putting the text data into the yUtility is done by selecting all of the text in the Word document (CTRL-A keys) then copy (CTRL+C); go to the yUtility web page ang paste (CTRL-P) into the box under "Paste haploype rows here ....." and hit Execute.

Detail - Results display. Very often there is an error in the data and if so details are given. Unless the error is severe simply pressing OK delivers the results, but with errors. When there is a severe error in the text file it needs resolving in MS Word. Data should be deleted from the yUtility before adding new data.

If this Error pop up appears click OK. If it is a non fatal error results will be displayed. For a fatal error; it needs to be rectified.
The screenshot below shows part of the input including the STR labels, from the first - DYS393.

The section below shows part og the screen displaying the genetic distances from the data in the first row - Benjmin hagan. There is only one column of immediate interest; the first column beginning with 20. (Gap between the 9 and 10). This is obviously an error at a GD = 20. The next ones at 2, 1, 3, 3 and so on mean the that there have been insertions or deletions of the varioss STRs. These numbers can be translated into years when Benjamin and others in the table had a common ancestor. (TMRCA)

The number of years to the common ancestor for Benjamin ans Arthur R at 4020 years is obviously incorrec. Howevr the next one doen Hagan with given haplogroup M269 at 360 years (i.e. about 1650 AD or CE) shows that the given haplogroup is not likely to be his terminal one. It would be written R-M269+ The age of this haplogroup is thought to be between 5 and 10 thousand years old and arose in Anatolia (Turkey).

Results

There were 97 members of the Hagan myProjects and below are 53 of the most recent common relatives. There are a number of points of interest: many SNPs are R-M169, a mutation that occurred many thousands of years before R-M222. We can conclude from that these are not terminal SNPs as further testing would reveal. I have chosen a refernece date 1940, birth year of tested Benjamin descendant. There will be discrepancies, for example the 30 year inter-generational gap.

The remainder of the myProject Hagan group is displayed below aand notice how the years increase as the given haplogroup was formed longer ago.

More info. Go to Dal Cuinn Group page

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