DNA Evidence of Earlier Ancestry

DNA Evidence of Earlier Ancestor

The documentary record for our Winters ancestors goes no further back than 1785. However, DNA testing has the potential for revealing earlier origins. Y-DNA in particular is crucial for tracing Winters ancestry, as it exclusively focuses on the Y chromosome, passed virtually unchanged from father to son through the paternal line that maintained the same or variant surname.

FamilyTreeDNA’s Big Y-700 service compares a tester’s results with others to find potential matches. A match indicates a shared paternal ancestor. The closer the match, the more recent the ancestor.

This capability allows us to explore a possible common ancestry with other Winter(s) families in early records for Co. Limerick and Co. Cork, especially near the border. Winters(s) of Co. Cork are more numerous than the Castle-Oliver line and have bee documented in an excellent Winters Family Tree on Ancestry.

Four Winters(s) descendants tested with Big Y-700: two from the Castle-Oliver Winters family line and two from Co. Cork Winter(s) families. Their results showed a close match between the two lines, identifying a common ancestor with haplogroup R-BY113346.¹ The genetic time tree below shows that the two Co. Cork Winter(s) testers also shared a more recent common ancestor with haplogroup R-Y372082.

Genetic family tree with Haplogroup branches (click on top right icon to enlarge)

One of the Co. Cork Winters(s) testers traced his lineage through successive generations, all living in Co. Cork, to his earliest ancestor Thomas Winter, buried at Killabraher Cemetery, Co. Cork in 1792, aged 54. Killabraher cemetery is near Newtownshandrum, which is only 16 miles from Castle Oliver. Thomas Winter belonged to the same generation as the progenitor John Winter of the Castle Oliver line, so the common ancestor would have lived before then. The Big Y-700 test provides a range of years during which that common ancestor might have lived, with varying levels of likelihood. The results are shown in the graph below. Significantly, the mean value for the date is 1731, suggesting that the common Cork-Limerick ancestor lived only one or two generations before the earliest known ancestors Thomas and John Winter of the two lines.

Most recent common ancestor of Castle-Oliver and Co. Cork Winters(s) (click on top right icon to enlarge)

A possible candidate for the most recent common ancestor is Thomas Winters of Churchtown, Co. Cork, who was buried in Shandrum Cemetery in 1760 aged 52. His lifespan of 1708-1762 places him in the generation before the earliest known ancestors of the two lines. The inscription on his gravestone reads:

THOMAS WINTERS DIED NOVEMBER THE 7th 1760 AGED 52 YEARS MAY REST IN PEACE AMEN THIS STONE WAS REGISTERd BY WILLIAM WINTER CHURCHTOWN BEING HIS FAMILY BURIAL Gd

While documentary evidence places the origins of the Castle Oliver line in Co. Limerick, the Y-DNA results indicate an earlier common origin in the North of Co. Cork, close to the Co. Limerick border. This suggests John Winter may have moved from Co. Cork to take up his tenancy on the Castle Oliver estate. Alternatively, the earlier origins may have been in Co. Limerick and the line now the Co. Cork line resulted from their movement across the county border.