The Halsted Trust continues to analyse the DNA results of men bearing the Halsted name and its variations.
We now have two men born in England who match the Y-DNA of a large group of testers who were all born in the United States. These USA men appear to all descend from two cousins Jonas and Henry Halsted born in Yorkshire in the 1600s and who emigrated to the USA. We don’t yet know how the two new Englishmen are precisely related (to each other or to the USA men). Their earliest known ancestors are from Lancashire and born much later than the two cousins. ALL these men MUST have an earlier common ancestor but we are still trying to work this out.
As well as the above, we have two new groups each with two Halstead testers (ie. the two men in each group match each other on Y-DNA).
One pair both claim Yorkshire ancestors but the connection between them remains unknown for now.
The other pair allegedly has ancestors from different counties : one from Carlisle, Cumbria and the other from Burnley, Lancashire. Again the connection between them is not known.
We also already have one tester from Essex and two from Sussex – none of these three match each other.
To help solve all of this, we are looking for more men to take the Y-DNA test and are particularly interested in those with ancestors from the Burnley area in Lancashire, and from Cumbria, Essex and Sussex.
However no matter which area you believe you are from, please get in touch and we may consider you for a free Y-DNA test, and in some cases for an autosomal test on Ancestry.
Please note that the Y-DNA test can only be taken by men, and traces a small part of DNA passing only from father to son.
Any reservations or questions you have will be answered promptly. Please email me on dna@halsted.org.uk.
Hester has been a professional genealogist since 2014 and is a Member of the Association of Genealogists & Researchers in Archives (AGRA). She specialises in genetic genealogy, which usually means applying DNA analysis to a client’s brick wall in their family tree, most often to determine the identify of an unknown grandfather. DNA can also be used to solve problems of several generations ago.
