Another Call for Skaggs Men for DNA Testing

We've made a lot of progress with our Skaggs DNA testing.  We've had a lot of descendants of Old Peter Skaggs and the Long Hunters do the Y-DNA testing and it's really paid off with the knowledge we've gained.  We can go back to the early 1700s pretty confidently for the Long Hunters and we still think Old Peter Skaggs' parents are likely John Skaggs and Ruth Elkins despite many opportunities to prove that theory wrong.  But now we're finding our relative lack of knowledge about the other Skaggs lines is hurting our research back to the year 1700 because it's too easy to confuse an ancestor of Zachariah or Aaron Skaggs with those of Old Peter.  We need more Y-DNA testers in certain Skaggs family lines to make a lot of our deed and court record searches support provable DNA relationships.

R-FT48276: Richard Skaggs, Lost Leader

Current Y-DNA testing points to Richard Skaggs who married Catherine Brockman as the first Skaggs ancestor in the R-FT48276 haplogroup.  Richard was the eldest son of Aaron Skaggs and Sarah Lyon and married Catherine "Caty" Brockman in Adair County, Kentucky on 17 September 1804.  According to Skaggs historians, Richard tried to lead a pioneer expedition to Texas in the 1830s but must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because he ended up in Illinois.

R-FT12801: Charles Scaggs of Sims Settlement

Intruder alert!  Intruder alert!  Our Y-DNA testing project has tested multiple descendants of Charles Scaggs, one of the intruders on Indian land in Mississippi Territory at Sims Settlement in the early 1800s. You can read the history of how the President ordered the Army to beat the stuffing out of these intruders to drive them off Indian land back to Tennessee where they belonged.

R-BY44771: The Grandfather of the Long Hunter Brothers?

The Skaggs Y-DNA project has tested multiple descendants of Old Peter Skaggs and the Long Hunters.  These testers all descend from a single common ancestor with the R-BY44771 haplogroup.  The genealogies of the test participants indicate that this common ancestor lived in the late 1600s to early 1700s.

R-BY114454: Descendants of William Brock Skaggs

I don't know much about William Brock Skaggs and that's unfortunate because he was the common ancestor for two testers in the Skaggs Y-DNA project.  He was a grandson of the Rev. James "Longman" Skaggs of the Long Hunter group of Skaggs, born about 1796.  He married Nancy Warren about 1815 and lived out his life in Green County, Kentucky dying sometime after the 1860 census.  William Brock Skaggs had the R-BY114454 haplogroup in the Skaggs genetic lineage, shown below:

An Update on Richard Scaggs of Prince George's County, Maryland

I've written several posts regarding Richard Scaggs of Prince George's County, Maryland. Each post about Richard is a little better than those that came before since we are learning a lot from the Skaggs Y-DNA project. 

• First, I showed Richard marrying Grace then a second wife Mary Brashear, however, we discovered through DNA testing that those were two different Richards.
• Next, I thought Richard who married Sarah Selby was the Richard born 1724 as youngest son of Richard and Grace Scaggs of Kent County, Maryland but DNA testing proved that wrong also
• Then I thought Richard who married Sarah Selby was son of the Richard who married Mary Brashear since they appear have the same R1b DNA haplogroup, however I'm ready to consider another possibility.

R-BY99605: The Father of Old Peter Skaggs?

The Skaggs Y-DNA project has tested multiple descendants of Old Peter Skaggs and his brother Solomon.  All these descendants had the same Y-DNA haplogroup, R-BY99605.  So it appears an ancestor of Old Peter and his brother Solomon had this R-BY99605 haplogroup.

More discussion about the genealogy of R-BY99605 is below the fold.

1909: How about a vacation at Skaggs Hot Springs?

The following is a 1909 travel brochure for vacationing at Skaggs Hot Springs in Sonoma County, California

only four hours’ ride from San Francisco by boat, train and automobile. The Sausalito Ferry is the traveler's starting point, and a half-hour ride on our incomparable bay brings you to the Marin shore, where two trains daily connect for Skaggs Hot Springs. As the train whirls through the far-famed Sonoma Valley with its luxuriant vineyards, olive groves and blossoming orchards, the traveler views a scene of natural grandeur unequaled on the Pacific Coast.

 Sorry, but it appears we're 115 years too late.

R-BY114642 Descendants of Peter Skaggs Jr.

The R1a Skaggs Family has a family group defined by Y-DNA testers who are living descendants of Peter Skaggs Jr., identified by the Y-haplogroup R-BY114642.

The genealogy for the Y-DNA test subjects in the R-BY114642 haplogroup is below the fold.

Updating the Skaggs Y-DNA Project in Family Tree DNA

I like to occasionally provide an update about the Skaggs Y-DNA project that is being managed on Family Tree DNA.  Usually I blend the DNA test results with the genealogy work that's been done to create several Skaggs family groups.  This time I will "follow the science" by using the Family Tree DNA haplogroup chart to create the Skaggs family groups and fill in each family group with the known genealogy of only the test participants involved.