Berners / Barnes

Hi Bill. I received an update to your project in my email today. I've also done a lot of research into this line. I probably wouldn't have thought to do too much but my projected y dna (R1a) and its rarity in England combined with the decent chance I'm descended from one of the Barnes' from East Hampton keeps me intrigued. I've also done a lot of research into the Barnes' from East Hampton. Ill be getting tested next year, probably through ftdna and yseq. I'm relatively convinced that Charles, Joshua and William are related. There was a Richard and another William there as well and while they may have been related to the others they did not stay. They were primarily living in Massachusetts. Charles has a definite connection to Norfolk and Cambridgeshire and has a definitive lineage along with a coat of arms. You've probably seen it. Sable with three roundels and two bars counter engrailed in Or. The first coat of arms was Sable and Argent instead of Sable and Or. Anyway, my frustration really lies in the fact that I'm R1a and I can't figure out how it got to England. There is a chance that my line is Dutch (I'm in group 5 in the Barnes dna project, John, 1735-1804) but I believe it's less likely (R1a in the Netherlands is also a very small percentage). I did get tested for the Z284 subclade and it came back negative. I believe I'm R1a L1029 but I'll know for sure next year. If so, this puts most of that subclade into East Germany and Southern Sweden and parts of Denmark. Some say Northern Poland but Maciamo (a published genetic researcher) seems to feel differently (see Maciamo L1029 map). The mutation for the subclade did possibly occur around the border of Northern Poland and Germany, which is real close to Denmark and Sweden, none the less. This would put that line in an area that could have been part of the viking raids on France and in the Norman invasion. There is also a chance that my line could be Anglo Saxon but when I combine the surname with the DNA and the fact that this line had a coat of arms and married into the Drury line it seems to paint a picture albeit not a very clear one. I do have a somewhat close match to a subject in a study on R1a and he's in Devonshire. There is another Berners who could have possibly been related to Hugo that came over from Normandy. His name is Tetbald Fitzberners. He had lands in Devonshire. Some seem to think he was Hugo's son but I think he may have been a relative, but not a son. Anyway, just thought I would try to give you some of the information that I have. I'm hoping I can figure this out. I'm in my forties and I'd like to know before it's too late if you know what I mean :) My main focus is just trying to figure out where my first ancestor to the States came from. It would be nice if it's the Berners because I'll have a documented history and somewhat of an idea of where they came from but if not just finding out where they came from would be great. This is just a snippet of the info that I have. If I can be of any help let me know. I'll share my results of my tests with you when I get them back. Thanks for starting this project. Let's hope we get some good results.

Yes the Berners family is intriguing. There are a couple of Barnes branches that claim descent from them, but I suspect there are others out there with no obvious links and we'll only find them now through the DNA.

The coat of arms issue is interesting - I haven't yet transferred all of my notes over to the Berners project, but there are four Barnes coats of arms based on the Berners main one (or and very quarterly - or cheese and onion flavour i my neck of the woods). So I'd be very interested to see what the DNA of the Barneses of Wigton is - the direct male line from those granted the arms has died out but it looks like all Wigton Barnses look to be related and there appear to be quite a few still knocking about the town and, presumably, others who have migrated overseas.

I assume the one you are talking about is a variation on #2 here:

https://coadb.com/surnames/barnes-arms.html

Coincidentally, a cousin on the Barnes side bought my a coaster with the smooth bar variant of that one. I doubt any of my Barnes ancestors merited a coat of arms (I do have Anglo-Norman ancestry from a couple of lines on my mother's side, so I'm not feeling left out).

I haven't done much digging into the Barnes coats of arms but it is certainly possible that some of the similar ones indicate a deeper connection between branches. Or it could be people trying to "claim" an ancient noble line to boost their standing, although I imagine when they are assigned they do watch out for such things.

I ran you numbers through Nevgen and got a 94% chance you are:

R1a Z282 > M458 > L1029 > YP417

Most of the rest of the 6% is taken up with L1029, so you do look to be likely to fall in there, as you suspect.

It is very rare in western Europe, being proto-Slavic, and I see some of the thinking is that some may have migrated west and ended up with Anglo-Saxons.

It'll be interesting to see what your matches are and the date YFull gives you.

I'll be flagging up the FTDNA end of year sale in various projects here and the Barnes project on FTDNA - that is the best time to go for the Big Y.

Awesome. Thanks Bill. I've used Morley's calculator and a few others but I guess I must of missed Nevgen or did it and forgot. I have a different father than the four siblings that I grew up with and we've been working on both sides of the family plus my mothers family has a lot of history so there's a lot of info bouncing around in my head sometimes. I actually just helped figure out a family mystery about my step-fathers family that discovered that their German last name, which is part of my last name, didn't represent their biological identity. There actually very Irish. My step-father's gggrandfather was adopted by the Strayer's and we figured it out by using my brother's dna and a paper trail. I figured out the paper trail first and the name I determined was their biological came up as many matches for my brother after. It was pretty exciting. As you know that's the power of dna testing these days. I'm trying to write everything down now. Mostly, lately, I've been trying to figure out the origins of L1029. I signed up to Eupedia and Anthrogenica and visit other sites like eurogenes blog and Indo-european.eu. I try to keep an eye on individual bias' in some of these groups. I try to stay with more published folks. No one seems to really know the origins of L1029 yet but the map from Maciamo seems to be the most thorough and up-to-date info and map I can find. I don't have any real slavic dna on gedmatch or any of the other sites I've downloaded my raw dna to. I have looked at other dna projects like Sweden's, Poland's, and others and John's/my markers do tend to match best with Johnson and some Swedish and some Polish and actually some German. I've done a lot of research on the Berner's coat of arms and the family and different variations of the coat and have determined why there are different versions (second son, etc.) and on the East Hampton (Charles') coat and determined why they have theirs (owned land, was steward of a castle in Soham). Some people claim that they come from the Lancashire Barnes' and some from York but I've researched those and there is nothing definitive. It starts at Edward Barnes and Margaret Bestney. I'll keep plugging away and keep you updated. Thanks again.

Great stuff, it sounds like you are doing all the right things - I was going to throw in an Anthrogenica link, as they seem to have the most balanced discussions, but their servers are done at the moment. Very frustrating.

And you are right about the wider family of Berners/Barnes - there often seem to be rather large jumps in trees, making me suspect there are actually quite a few gaps that are being papered over. Not helped by a very limited pool of first names, so you are often unsure who is being referred to. I suspect quite a few answers are in the wills. I've added the easy to find sources online.

Oh and Theobald FitzBerner - most information suggests he is Hugh de Berners son, which makes sense as he is son of Berner and Berners didn't really exist until the family got to England. I doubt we'll ever really know as he seems to only have had a daughter.

As one of the Berners' strongholds is Essex I'm intrigued by some of the Essex Barneses.

For example:

Thomas Barnes, Sr. who appears to have been haplogroup I, which would be consistent with Norman ancestry.

Also there are Barneses who seem to come from nowhere but are already prestigious, which makes me wonder if they might be a branch of the Berners family, see for example:

Sir John Bowrey Barnes whose descendants became mayors of London.

Stephen Barnes (our newest member) also has a added a Sir John Bowrey Barnes whose descendants became mayors of London (I assume the two lines can be merged but I can't quite make the dates/wives match) and he is born in Writtle, Essex.

This Thomas Barnes is down as a son of Sir John Berners (although I think he should be the Thomas who is son of Sir James Berners) was born in Writtle, Essex. So I suspect those two lines connect somewhere.

This would also suggest that Stephen is a Berners descendant.

There is quite a bit of clean-up required in the different Berners line and this might carry down into some of the Barnes lines too, but when resolved it could clarify things:

https://www.geni.com/discussions/188042

I am new to genealogy so my apologies if this is a dumb request. My tree shows a Margaret Emma Barnes, born in Ontario around 1846, with parents from Ireland, who moved to PEI at some point and married my gg father James MacLeod on Mar 30 1869. I've done searches on Ancestry.com without obvious new information. Does anyone know more about this Margaret Emma Barnes?

One more small piece of info - Margaret Barnes' death certificate says her father's name is 'John Barns' (w/o 'e') from Ireland. No info on her mother.

And she died in Mattapan, Suffolk, Boston, Jan 23, 1936. Immigrated to US around 1894. I'm looking for information on her parents, where she lived in Ontario, why she moved to PEI, etc. I have lots of details on her life after marriage in 1869.

Mark, it might be worth starting a new thread on this in the project, unless you know she is a Berners / Barnes as it might help other people discover this information if they were looking for it.

Also it'd help if you added your tree in here on Geni, I've had good luck with trees on here getting well-ranked in Google searches, again if anyone was looking for the relevant information.

I found some ohio/ Illinois Barnes in family. Also found book with them in hope it helps put these Barnes in world tree.

William Seaton Barnes

https://books.google.com/books?id=HM9MAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA677&lpg...

Billie