March 26 Since the lineage pages have been moved from view to the private google groups

November 13, 2009

We have a new biological Phelps line: Walter Phelps b.1680 Anne Arundel, MD (grandson of Walter Phelps probably b c.1600 Wells Diocese, Somersetshire, England) A key ydna test was supplied by a descendant whose genealogy was done by Robert Barnes, respected genealogist and publisher. Two other kits match him well although the three do not know how they are related.

FTDNA notified two of you who closely matched this new kit. Those two had previously only matched themselves. There was no good match to any other Phelps.

A new index entry has been entered at our Phelps YDNA web site.

If you wish to join the related google discussion group please contact me at dkphelps@suddenlink.net or access the google group at http://groups.google.com/group/descendants-of-walter-phelps-of-maryland-b1680 New YDNA and genealogy information will be posted there.

We now have 20 ydna-Phelps lines.

FYI: I made some minor changes to the disclaimer/waiver agreement at the JOIN link at our Phelps project.<br/><br/>Disclaimer: Family Tree DNA is not responsible for the safety and security of files downloaded from third-party sites. If at any time you want to stop receiving e-mails from your DNA Project Administrator, please go to the "Setup Preferences" section of your personal page and change the corresponding setting.

Oct 15, 2009 DNA at Ancestry.com

It may be worth your time to signup for the free DNA listing option at Ancestry.com. Some time ago I manually entered my ydna values there and found several matches, one of which resulted in a new member for our project. I am now working with two more new members there.. There is no charge for this. It is functionally the same as that provided by FTDNA with their Ysearch.org link where we members can automatically upload our ydna, and others enter manually. The difference is that Ancestry.com provides the database as part of their web site.

Another difference is that the two companies don't test all the samel markers which makes matching less accurate.

I have to admit I think their navigation is a bit difficult but with a little trial and error you may well find another related Phelps. If you do find a close match, we can try to post the matching information for your line on our web page (or google group) but it is awkward since I dont have a neat way to show ithe matches well. What may eventually happen is that the person you match at Ancestry.com would want to join FTDNA also (with a slight discount for Ancestry.com tested me).

Note to the Felps of Md, the Caswell NC and Albemarle CO, VA Phelps: TH and I have already registered so any matches with you would have already matched with us.

October 10, 2010 Caution on changing your User Options at your FTDNA login to not match at 12 or 25 markers.

Some of you have taken the advice of the comment at your "User Options" and have negated matches at 12 or 25 markers because you have so many matches that are not relevant. The wording at your FTDNA login is below. The concern with doing this is that those who match you will also NOT see any 12 or 25 marker matches with you. When another person has only those number of markers, he will not see any match with you, nor you him. Also I do not think any new tests at the lower numbers will cause FTDNA to inform either of you. Also, on your Matches report, if you do have higher marker matches, the lower matches will not be displayed for either of you. This can be very confusing for everyone. For thiese reasons I recommend that if you change those options (normally checked) you do so only for a brief test period, and change them back before leaving. Otherwise be aware of the limitations. If you have any doubt about your clicked option, login and check it out. (There was a report of a person upgrading to 67 markers and his options changed on him)

When displaying matches only show (you can check more than one box):

12-marker matches/close matches

Please note that depending on your 12-marker haplotype you may see a high number of irrelevant matches under this option. For relevant matches check only the 25, 37 and 67 marker boxes.

25-marker matches/close matches

37-marker matches/close matches

67-marker matches/close matches

July 7, 2009

As promised earlier, cryptic email addresses of matching members are now viewable on the lineage pages at the Phelps YDNA Project web site. They are on the Lineage page of your line - beside your kit number - IF you match other Phelps. An example of the format is "sailorman AT yahoo.com" It is not encrypted. Your name is NOT displayed.

If anyone wishes that to be removed please email me at dphelps61@alumni.wfu.edu THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR PRIVATE GOOGLE GROUPS OR ANY LISTS.

The web site is http://pages.suddenlink.net/phelpsdna/DNA_Project/index.htm

Currently email addresses for non-matching kits are not being displayed. If you do NOT match anyone but you DO want your email address listed with your lineage please email me.

June 25, 2009

How to add/change your oldest Phelps ancestor in your FTDNA record. If you submitted that name with your original test submission, FTDNA recorded it on your kit record. It shows up in reports and also automatically at their web page at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Phelps/default.aspx?section=yresults I also use it in the reports I generate for you all. The approach to add or change the name has changed. In some cases, I took the liberty of adding the name for you. You should verify that the name and identifying info is correct. Of several new FTDNA facilities, you can login to ftdna, then click "Plot Ancestral Locations" (under MyMaps). Then scroll down where you will see "Most Distant known Paternal Ancestor" You can edit it or enter it by following the directions there. (There is a size limit) ALSO, as a new option, you can name the geographical location (not coordinates) which will then be viewable on a map. You have the option to view a map to see those with whom you match - by clicking "Maps" under MyMaps.

This oldest paternal Phelps should logically be the name in what you uploaded to ftdna with your Gedcom file. (You have uploaded havent you? Grin)

A new list of lineage coordinators We are grateful to nine members who have agreed to be lineage coordinators. They will coordinate the genealogical research, are now the new "owners" of their private google groups, and will be responsible for continuing to post the complete and detailed lineage for their line to the new public Phelps lineage google group. The Phelps project web site will list only a brief paternal lineage. The new public google group with all the former lineage information is at http://groups.google.com/group/phelps-lineages-related-to-ydna-testing/files and is referenced on the project lineage page. To see your lineage coordinator, go to our Phelps project site, click "Lineage Index", scroll to find your line, and note the email address of the coordinator

Web site continues to evolve With the great technical assistance of Virginia, a project member, I hope to have addressed some web site issues that may have caused some viewing problems. I have also acquired the domain name phelpsdna.com for our future use and hope to move to a new web host later this year. I have no plans to go commercial, but the .com choice was concluded to be the best considering several issues.

June 15, 2009

To all ftdna members of the Phelps Project:

I apologize for once again filling your mailbox, but I feel it is important that you all be kept updated. I am struggling mightily to provide the best interaction between yourselves and potential members while providing a reasonable degree of privacy. While I feel the identity issues in our private google groups is adequate and addressed in our disclaimer, I want to be sure you are aware of the change underway to display FTDNA member email addresses on the project lineage pages. The revised disclaimer/release statement which applies to everyone now has a new sentence. The revisions are in purple italics.

“I understand that the administrators will make reasonable efforts to protect the identity of the participant on the web pages. Kit numbers will be displayed. ADDED: Unless requested not to do so, a somewhat cryptic email address associated with each kit number (where "@" is replaced by " AT "), will be placed on the project lineage pages. I understand that if I am a member in the provided private forums, my identity may become known there. I give the administrators the right to see, analyze and copy my results.”

For example my email address will be dphelps61 AT alumni.wfu.edu Your concern might be in personal indentification or in a concern for spamming by others. While I realize there is special code available which supposedly prevents robots from seeing a full email address, I have designed the web site using no imbedded html code. I personally do not think my coded email address has added to my spamming, although my ISP does offer considerable protection.

I hope this is a reasonable compromise to an alternative of identifying kits with names (which was found to be not acceptable in our recent survey).

June 12, 2009

Over the past months the Phelps YDNA Project web site has gone through several modifications in design and content. This spring I drastically reduced the detail in the lineages of tested members, but due to some thoughtful suggestions, I realized too much research work was being dropped out. Yet I found I could not continue to correctly maintain the ever increasing amount of detail that was being supplied in the lineages. .

As a compromise, I have redone once again the lineages on the web site to include all the male ancestors of the tested members. The previous and somewhat disruptive color codes are gone, replaced by a simple green color indicating where two or more tested lines triangulate to a common ancestor. All references to females, siblings, and other detail have been dropped (except in a few cases where no testing has been done). But the good news is that all the original information (except the color codes) has now been placed on a publicly viewable google group. http://groups.google.com/group/phelps-lineages-related-to-ydna-testing/files No membership is needed and it is not intended as a forum or a place to post comments.

Also each of the major lines now has a "line coordinator" whose responsibility will be to independently maintain those detailed lineages on the public google group. Our hope is that this approach will allow a full display of genealogy information - at the discretion of of the line coordinators. (Privacy of members should still be observed) Separate web sites by them is always a possibility. The revised Project web page provides links to the public google group and identification of the line coordinators

Other items:

Explore the revised web site. Notice the window showing previous announcements and the revised links on the left side.

FTDNA continues to enhance the options available to members who logon. I encourage you to explore those also.

I should also mention that M David Phelps, who has been a fantastic coordinator of the New England lines and my consultant and advisor, continues to be largely unavailable. Not only have recent personal issues absorbed most of his time, his PC had a major failure. Tons of saved emails were lost. Hopefully he can get back with us sooner than later. Thankfully others are stepping forward. Please look through the"LIneage Index" page on our web site to see the names of the new lineage coordinators - with cryptic email addresses provided.

My next task is to place the tested member's cryptic email address beside the kit numbers so that anyone can easily contact the kit owner. If anyone has a problem with this let me know.

May 13, 2009 A request to members for opinion of a new way to display lineages with ydna analysis

May 7, 2009 Because FTDNA has been changing its member web pages, because we continually get new members, and because it is so easy for anyone to confuse what FTDNA provides and what our project provides, I have re-written the “Get Started” page of our project found at the Worldwide Phelps YDNA Project.

May 6, 2009 Announcement of the results of the second English Phelps test having no known ties to American Phelps. There was no match with any of our tested Phelps.

This second test is kit 148244 with 37 markers, Haplogroup R1b1b2. His lineage is below. He, like the first such English Phelps, matched none of our tested Phelps.

1. Edward Phelps – b. bef. 1757 England m. Sarah ______

2. Thomas Harper Phelps – b. 1789, Worcestershire, Eng., d. 1870, Gloucestershire, Eng.m. Keturah Johnson

3. James Phelps - b. c1824, Oxfordshire or Worcestershire, Eng., d. 1862, Whitewater, Walworth Co., WI

m. Hannah Loxley

4. James Harper Phelps – b. 1857, Whitewater, Walworth Co., WI, d. 1912 Rockford, ILL. m. Elizabeth Bird

5. James Henry Phelps – b. 1892, Sharon, Walworth Co., WI, d. 1984 Salt Lake City, UT

m. Jesse Jones

6. Father Phelps

7. Submitter Phelps

The first such test was kit 134006 (Australia back to England. Both these kits and their abbreviated ancestry are listed on the Lineage Index page of our Phelps Project web site.

If you would like to contact them, email me the request. It is becoming clearer that there were a number of biologically unrelated Phelps lines from England.

April 14, 2009 An opinion survey of our project's direction was announced to the FTDNA Phelps members for their participation. The link to it was made in a FTDNA bulk email. Members who missed the announcement should email the project administrator.

March 26 Since the lineage pages have been moved from view to the private google groups, it is vitally important that you do the following to enjoy the full benefits.

1. Upload a gedcom lineage file of the tested person to your FTDNA record. A Gedcom file is created by a genealogy program into which you have entered direct of the tested person Others who match you can then view this tree. Log in to FTDNA, click "Gedcom Family Tree" under Tools. Follow the instructions.

Please ask David or me if you have any problems with this. Only eight of you have uploaded.. If you are not able to create a gedcom file we may be able to do it for you.

2. Be certain your FTDNA record shows the correct name and identification for the oldest "Paternal Ancestor" of the tested person. This name with your kit number will appear in the “y-dna“results page” here To change or enter it,lLog in, click "User Preferences" and enter or change the paternal ancestor. (There is a size limit) For example enter something like "Hiram Phelps b. 1819 England, d. 1864 Australia"

Please ask any questions Doug Phelps, Project Admin,

March 26 The Phelps lineages/ancestries and any previous lineage ydna tables are now removed. The lineage/ancestry pages have been moved to the various Google discussion forums as a FILE named “Lineage.htm”. (Log on to Google, click FILE on the google group page you want).

The 12 remaining information pages have been updated with many errors corrected.

The web site format underwent major changes last month. If you have not viewed it recently, please visit again http://pages.suddenlink.net/phelpsdna/DNA_Project/index.htm

Lineage Coordinators are now in place for most lines and are now “owners” of the Google groups (rather than the Project Admin). Those contacts may be viewed by clicking “Lineage Indices” on our web page. The web site objectives have changed slightly, with an emphasis on YDNA and more individual involvement with FTDNA tools – and with an emphasis of Lineage Coordinators for genealogy issues

I hope the evolving nature of our project is acceptable to you. Perhaps in time this “reset” may help us all determine what is of most value to us.

Regards, Doug Phelps, Project Admin

March 20 2009 For some of you there is potentially misleading information when you log on to FTDNA and click “Haplotree” Your haplogroup graphic information is presented to you and is a significant visual improvement over previous versions. But some members, especially E1a haplogroups may be mislead.

To review the new presentation: When you click “haplotree” you are shown a chart with the word “Your Match” which can be clicked resulting in an exploded chart of information. Your personal haplogroup is listed at the top of the window. To the right is a tab “Frequency Map” that when clicked shows a world map with small pies in various locations. An arrow points to applicable regions of your haplogroup.

At this point is the misleading information – as agreed to by FTDNA. If you click any arrowed pie it will expand to show the breakout of each MAJOR haplogroup. Unfortunately this breakout of the MAJOR haplogroup – in some cases - does not conform to the wording just below the map (Scroll down). For example the wording for the breakout E1a of the major haplogroup E is correct. However if you simply view the pies you get the impression that E1a applies also to the arrowed pies. In the case of the E1a breakout (and perhaps others) the pie is completely misleading as compared to the wording. Haplogroup E – as a general haplogroup is correctly shown in the pies, but not the breakout E1a. Bottom line: the wording is accurate and the pies don’t properly apply.

FTDNA plans to address this inconsistency.

March 2009 Most of you are missing out on a great tool provided by FTDNA at your FTDNA logon record. That tool is the ability to upload to FTDNA the ancestry to of the tested person so that all who match the ydna of that person can easily view the ancestry and make contact. >It is so easy to upload the ancestry to FTDNA. Simply log on and click “GEDCOM-Family Tree” under Tools. Step by step instructions are then provided. If you can create a GEDCOM file in your PC you can easily choose it to upload. Before uploading, FTDNA asks you which person is the one tested. You select him and choose the degree of privacy you desire in the upload. Presto, it is there. The view provides mouse-over detail of birth and death information taken from your gedcom file.

Once uploaded, any others who match you closely will be able to view that data as indicated by a red and black “FT” to the right of the match. And of course a one-way email to that person is provided. (Kit numbers are not displayed.) Only 8 of our 70 members have uploaded. So don’t delay! If you have questions please ask me.

Feb 2, 2009

To allow the Phelps project to continue its growth as a volunteer effort, we are in process of integrating the following statements to the web page which will apply to everyone. Nothing has actually changed, but we felt it important to prevent any misunderstandings of the policies of our project. The statement may evolve over time. Beginning Friday for a week, Doug will be checking email only once in a while.

DISCLAIMER, CONDITIONS AND AGREEMENT January 30, 2009 RELEASE OF LIABILITY / LIABILITY WAIVER January 30, 2009

Doug Phelps, Project Admin David Phelps, Alternate Project Admin

Jan1,24,2009 Ongoing development of our project

All members need to log on to ftdna and click the User Preferences option. Then scroll down and view the contents of “Paternal side” under the heading “Most distant known ancestor” It is important that you verify and change that as necessary. The contents are what you told FTDNA on your initial test order. In some cases where you did not supply it, I took the liberty of adding it later, based on your lineage. If you change it supply some basic identification. There is a limit of the number of letters, so you may need to abbreviate. Be sure to click “ UPDATE” after the change; otherwise the change is not made.

Some of you might now want to show an older or perhaps even an earlier ancestor name. This name appears automatically on some FTDNA displayed information and on a few tables as information provided to me by FTDNA. It isone way of grouping you lineage with others.

Moreover, David and I are discussing a number of possible widely differing changes to our project. What you enter as the earliest known ancestor could become more important in the future. As we continue to grow it seems our attempts to provide for so many needs may not be reasonable considering the time and potential liability of a volunteer effort. One compromisel alternative would be to convert to our web pages to what is provided at http://www.worldfamilies.net/ Our project started there about 3 years ago, and their offerings have greatly improved.

Thanks for your participation

Doug Phelps , Phelps YDNA Project Admin