Our original research plan was to confirm the accuracy of the reconstructions of the nine family lines we had identified through traditional genealogical research, by ideally identifying a minimum of two male Adamthwaite individuals who would be willing to be tested from different branches of each line we have identified – although some of the larger lines have multiple branches, so we knew we may need to test more than two males to be certain of their accuracy.  This was particularly important as all of our lines originated well before the start of general registration and the 1841 census, which meant there was a greater likelihood of fundamental errors in our reconstruction.  For this reason it seemed likely that we would need to undertake more than the recommended two tests, at least in the larger lines such as VIOLET, YELLOW, OLIVE and GREY lines.

One potential problem was that we had a number of documented illegitimate births back there in Ravenstonedale and Sedbergh, where we knew with certainty that a line descended from a female Adamthwaite. (And of course, there could have been other cases where the father was not actually an Adamthwaite - or as they are more tactfully termed 'non-paternal events').  Each of these breaks in the male line would result in a negative match; so we needed to select our testers with this in mind.  

We were also fairly certain that at least two of our identified lines no longer had any living male Adamthwaite descendants.  On the following page you can read a summary of the situation for each of our identified lines, together with descendancy charts showing where we believe any existing male Adamthwaites fit into the different coloured lines, and find out how you can help in our research project.

Five years into our DNA research, we have now established a tenth Adamthwaite line - directly as a result of our yDNA program!  We discovered that we had wrongly married off Thomas, one of the sons of the founding couple of the OLIVE line.  We have now created a TEAL line which  includes all the descendants of Thomas and his correct wife - Mary Pearson.

We have also discovered that there is not one single progenitor for all the Adamthwaite lines by any means - we know that the YELLOW line, the BLUE line and the new TEAL line do all descend from a single common ancestor, but there are at least three more 'founding fathers' heading up the OLIVE, VIOLET and GREY lines (see the chart on the DNA Results page for further details). However, we do believe that ALL the Adamthwaite lines took their surname from Adamthwaite Farm in the parish of Ravenstonedale.