In January 2007 a man named Whitfield showed up in the FTDNA database and he matched our Capt George Athey cluster. This Whitfield was supposed to be a descendant of a brother of the Rev George Whitfield (b 1724-the famous preacher important in early Methodist history). Another near match turned up in August in a man named Whitefield, which was actually the spelling used by Rev George. The only other haplotype in any of the public databases that is close to us is the one from the Prince participant that was found in the SMGF database. The Whitefield is from Lanarkshire and the Whitfield participant is from nearby Durham in northern England. The Prince participant was from England also, exact location unknown. We first thought that the similarity of the Whit(e)fields to the Atheys was due to a "non-paternal event" that occurred in Dublin around the year 1800 when a Whitfield married an Irish girl there and brought her home to England. To test this hypothesis, a documented descendant of a brother of the Rev George Whitfield was located and he agreed to be tested. If he did not match us, that would add credence to the non-paternal event theory, because he should represent the "true" Whitfield line going back to the 1600s. Very surprisingly, the new (third) Whitfield participant matches us also! That means that this Whitfield line must connect to our Athey line before the time of Capt George-probably a couple of centuries earlier since our Athys were established in Galway since about 1400. Either our Athey line came from England or the Whitfield line came from Ireland or both arrived independently in England and Ireland from somewhere else. That arrival would have to have been around 1200-1300, however, because of the close matches between the Atheys and Whitfields. This is an extremely interesting development.
Because of the similarity of the Whitfield/Whitefield participants to the Capt George cluster, they have been added to the project tables. There is no suggestion, however, that they are descended from Capt George. Since the Whitfield line goes back to the 1600s in England, the connection must be earlier than Capt George, who was born about 1642. The Whitfield data appears to show that the common ancestor of Capt George and the Whitfields must have had the same values on the first 37 markers as did Capt George. I have used the FTDNATiP calculator (to calculate generations to the most recent common ancestor) for the Whitfield participant who is the latest to be tested, which results in TMRCA (50% probability) for each of the 19 Atheys in the cluster who have data on 37 markers, and then averaged the results. I find that the common ancestor of this Whitfield and the Atheys must have lived about 9 to 10 generations back. When I subtract off the actual number of generations from each Athey back to Capt George, I find that the common ancestor lived between zero and one generation further back than Capt George. This is actually the 50% probability point. This just means that the common ancestor probably lived just a few generations before Capt George. Of course, this is the result for just one Whitfield-when we have more to compare, the result may be somewhat different. Applying the same approach to the results for the "Whitfield3" participant (see results table), who now has 37 markers reported, results in an even later MRCA-one that is only about 5.4 genrations back. However, it appears that the other Whitfield (Whitfield1, who is not yet formally in the project, so the TiP calculator can't be used) on whom we have 37 markers is slightly more divergent from the Atheys than those used in the calculations above. However, the reconstructed ancestral haplotypes for Capt George and the Whitfield ancestor are identical on 37 markers.
All of this presents a bit of a challenge for our history. The Whitfields seem to be well established in England throughout the 1500s, so it isn't clear how the Whitfields and Atheys could be related or where the common ancestor lived. The first G2 Whitfields, at least, don't seem to show enough difference from the Atheys for a pre-1500 common ancestor. However, as mentioned above, this could change with more Whitfields being tested.
One possible way around the difficulty is that the most recent common ancestor of the Whitfields and the most recent common ancestor of the Atheys (Capt George) had exactly the same marker values, even though their common ancestor may have lived around 1400 or earlier. Sometimes, the marker values may go for a few centuries without changes. For example, three out of the 20 participants in the Capt George cluster have exactly the same values on the first 37 markers as did Capt George.