A few months ago Robert Thrift, a descendant of Isham Thrift of North Carolina, submitted a Y-chromosome DNA test and got a result showing that this line has several distinguishing markers -no one else in the databases was very close. In particular, the Thrift families from northern Virginia and from southern Georgia who had already tested were shown to be unrelated to Isham Thrift. That finding was particularly interesting because several people had made the assumption that Isham Thrift was descended from Nathaniel Thrift of Old Rappohannock Co, VA. The DNA test proved this was untrue, but could not say who Isham WAS descended from.

[Note how important it is to be able to use DNA testing to prove two people are NOT related!]

Others had proposed that Isham Thrift was son of Drury / Drewry Thrift of Dinwiddie County, VA. In looking into this assertion it appears questionable to me, since I can find no clear evidence that Drury was much older than Isham. However I did find that part of Drury's estate was claimed by members of the Snipes family, suggesting some family relationship
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.snipes/316/mb.ashx
The Snipes family moved from the St George Co /Dinwiddie Co VA region to North Carolina, AND had close ties with Isham Thrift's family, so it makes sense that Drury might be related to Isham, perhaps a brother or cousin if not father.

I further found a reference from a period witness that Isham & Drury were brothers, although that statement might be questionable since other statements in the file (Rev War pension application of John Curtis, who claimed to be a cousin of Isham & Drury, and served as a substitute for Drury) were not completely accurate:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.thrift/231/mb.ashx

There is no evidence that Drury did have male children. (After Drury's death, and before his wife's death, his land was conveyed to Colson Tucker, husband of Jane Thrift born 1765?, so Jane could be a daughter.) So we apparently cannot test Drury's DNA.


I am excited to say that we have now found one very close match to Isham Thrift: John Thrift who descends from William Thrift of Dinwiddie Co, VA, born before 1761:
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=DESC&...
William, Isham and Drury have about the same upper limit for year of birth, so it is possible that they were all brothers or cousins. In fact several other Thrifts from the region, possible relatives, have similar age limits, see
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&d...
Now we need to find and test the male descendants of the remaining patriarchs in this list! In particular we would like to test descendants of
Abraham Thrift
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=DESC&...
and John Thrift
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=DESC&...
(The others listed do not have male descendants as far as I know, but I could be wrong. Miles and Solomon died in the Revolutionary War. We also need to test Friths from the region, and Thrifts and Friths from England, and from other colonies including Bermuda, Bahamas, Florida, Australia, etc.)

The testing company has only reported results for 25 markers of John's 67-marker test so far. There is only one mismatch out of these 25 markers, indicating a very close relationship. We may have more that can be said in the near future after all markers are reported. But the DNA results thus far clearly establish that the two Thrift lines are related, and each of the two DNA results (and their relation to the available genealogical data) are validated by the other.

The test results are presented here:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thriftzzfr... or
http://tinyurl.com/3vjhms/documents/fam_grouping.htm
(The chart includes brand new results for a Frith from Alabama, but that situation is more complex and I'm not ready to post about it quite yet.)

I look forward to discussion or questions.

Richard Thrift
rtx at cox dot net
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thriftzzfr...
or http://tinyurl.com/3vjhms

I forgot to mention, John found the Thrift DNA project through Bob Jensen's posted research on Dinwiddie Co Thrifts. So THANKS, Bob.

I should also warn users of Netscape & Opera browsers (and perhaps some others) that the chart at
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thriftzzfr...
may not display properly in their browser of choice. Firefox seems to work OK, but Internet Explorer works best on this, due to quirks in the Microsoft program used to make the chart. If the chart looks jumbled, switch browsers.

Richard

This is indeed exciting news, and I await the completed test results with great interest. It was a bit puzzling when my results came in and I didn't match anyone in the Thrift database. But now, perhaps the local milkman is no longer a "person of interest" in the case, as they like to say in the news.

My mother worked on the Thrift lineage for about 40 years -- without benefit of the Internet, which didn't exist -- but never succeeded in getting back beyond Isham Thrift. I took over her work sometime around 1980, and so we have combined about 70 years on the project. She said to me more than once that she believed that Isham's line came out of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, but could never prove it. I think her impression came mostly from elimination of other possibilities.

Apologies for my my lack of participation in the forum recently, I have been tied up with a number of projects over the summer, but when colder weather gets here I'll have a lot more time to spend on genealogy.

Regards,
Robert L. Thrift
Masonville, CO

37 markers now in for John; genetic distance is still only 2.

Looking good.....

Bob

Robert L. Thrift
Masonville, CO

57 Markers now in for John, genetic distance still only 2; 10 more to go.

I may become a believer in this DNA stuff, yet. :-)

Regards, Bob

Robert L. Thrift
Masonville, CO

John's 67 marker tests are now in.

Bottom line: genetic distance of 2 between William Thrift of Dinwiddie Co., VA and Isham Thrift of Orange Co., NC.

I reckon that's a match. Not much divergence over a distance of five generations.

Next question: what was the relationship between the two? My starting assumption is going to be that they are not far apart in age, so, either brothers or cousins.

I haven't done any work on William thus far, but I guess it's time to start.

Regards, Bob
Robert L. Thrift
Masonville, CO

Re : "Not much divergence over a distance of five generations."

Just a minor correction. It's now 6 generations between you and Isham's parents (who may be the most recent common ancestor, may have been William's parents), so as far as the DNA knows it is at least TWELVE (=6 times 2) generations separating the two testees. Each of the two branches descending from the common ancestor had chances to accumulate changes from the DNA of the common ancestor.

Richard