“Genealogy is a constant reminder that human beings have not changed.”

-Reclaiming Kin, Who’s Your Daddy?

To determine how or if the various Hamby/Hanby families are related, Grant Hamby created the Hamby/Hanby DNA Project. So far the results show five distinct lineages or haplogroups. The Hamby family of Buncombe and Yancey Counties are in a sixth group.

I haven’t found a source that indicates William Hamby’s mother, Elizabeth, confessed who the father was, so the best hope for finding the father’s surname is through Y-DNA testing. Testing the Y chromosome investigates the male paternal family line and can help identify surname lines and living relatives whose Y chromosome is similar. Special sections on the Y chromosome determine a male’s Y haplogroup, revealing the origins of his ancestors as evidenced by common DNA markers.

My cousin, Chuck, has taken the Y-DNA37, Y-DNA111, E-V13 SNP Pack, Big Y-500 and Big Y-700 tests through FamilyTreeDNA. The Big Y test results are on the Y-DNA Data Warehouse. His results are also on YFull.com.

Haplogroup
Chuck’s confirmed Y haplogroup is E-BY132264 on FamilyTreeDNA and E-S9725 on YFull.com. The results are consistent with two other results, one from an unknown descendant of William Hamby and a second known descendant, a son of Charlie Hamby, who was tested through the now defunct Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF).

Chuck’s ethnic makeup on Family Tree DNA is
84% England, Scotland and Wales
8% Scandinavia
6% Ireland

Thirty five men have taken one of the five Y-DNA marker tests on FamilyTreeDNA and are matches with Chuck. Out of those 35 matches, 19 have 0 genetic distance. Out of those 19, seven have the last name Davis.

One Davis, who took the Y-DNA 67 test, is an exact match with a nearly 100% probability that we share a common ancestor in the last 8 generations. William Hamby is 6 generations from Chuck.

The book St. George’s Parish Registers [Harford County, Maryland] 1689-1793 by Bill and Martha Reamy, lists births, deaths and marriage events in the Parish. Several Davis families are shown living there at the same time as Elizabeth Hamby and her family.

Big Y
The Big Y test scans the entire Y chromosome for mutations, known as SNPs, which find mutations on the Y chromosome that define branches of the paternal line of humanity. It’s the most information I can get from Chuck’s Y DNA. One person from Germany has taken the Big Y test and is a close match.

YFull
Chuck’s i.d. on YFull is YF114742. The smaller subclade is E-S9725 which is the same as the Big Y results above. Our branch has split several times.We currently share our twig with an ancestor from Germany.