Skaggs Y-DNA Testing Update

Since it's a new year I thought I would give an update on where we stand with Skaggs Y-DNA testing. Based on our testing results to date it appears there are two distinct Skaggs families in America:

• Old Peter, the Longhunters, the Safeway Skaggs, James and Susanna, etc. whose descendants test with a Y-haplogroup of some flavor of R-M417.  These Skaggs match the Keig test-takers from the Isle of Man.
• Descendants of the Thomas Skaggs born 1728 in Maryland who migrated to the Greenbrier region of West Virginia.  These Skaggs test with some flavor of R-M269

We now believe the R-M417 Skaggs descend from Viking settlers of the Isle of Man. These Vikings likely came to the Isle of Man from Norway about 1000 years ago. You can see from this Big-Y test done by an American descendant of Old Peter Skaggs that we exactly match at least one other tester from the Isle of Man with a most recent common ancestor born about 500 years ago.  Remember, the Big-Y gives you a lot more detail about your Y-chromosome than typical DNA tests. His detailed Y-haplogroup is R-BY44771 shared by three test subjects. I believe if other American Skaggs do the Big-Y test that their results will also show up here as R-BY44771.


Chris Keig, the leader of this project at FTDNA, has done other testing on the Isle of Man that shows this R-BY44771 haplogroup is a subset of R-BY30722 that was formed about 550 years ago on the Isle of Man.  It looks like these DNA twigs all split from the same branch at that time.


As we move back in time we can see about 850 years ago all these twigs split from the DNA branch as R-BY30728, still on the Isle of Man.  This would have been close to the time that the last of the Viking kings ruled the Isle of Man.


If you look back about 1150 years ago the R-BY30725 haplogroup was formed.  Descendants are also found on the Isle of Man with a most recent common ancestor 1050 years ago. This must have been the time when the Vikings settled the northern part of the Isle of Man.  Remember, Skaggs are descended from these guys.  Six out of 30 Viking-descended families on the Isle of Man appear to descend from a single man who Chris Keig thinks was likely a Viking king.  American Skaggs of R-M417 also descend from this guy.  Chris is working to get Manx Heritage to allow DNA testing of the skeletons of the Viking kings interred in Castle Rushen on the Isle of Man to see if they match any of the descendants who have done Big-Y testing.