12th: An interesting day

Life is still interfering far too much and stopping me from indulging in my genealogy obsession, but today I couldn't resist any longer.
A full set of new RUNCIMAN DNA results were available, with a 12/12 match to the next set due - which was fully expected, given the paper trails, but always a relief to have confirmed, with no blips down the generations.
However, the real excitement of this was that this family line has vindicated the effort I put into helping a group of researchers from the line of William of Crail, even though I didn't really think there was any connection to my lot (the weavers of Earlston, and farmers of Wanton Walls).
They have turned out to be an excellent match - so farmers and fisher folk DO sometimes mix and match after all, despite my quite long held theory over several family lines and many generations.
The icing on this particular cake will be to finally find a willing representative amongst the descendants of Thomas and Alison(GRIEVE) RUNCIMAN to (dis)prove my current theory that William of Crail is Thomas' brother. Any takers? There must be some out there somewhere willing to help.
And then to cap all of that, I also noticed that partial results were in for the confirmed representative for the line of Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN, and again, thankfully, it looks like there have been no blips down the generations AND they are showing a good match so far as expected, to Lineage 1 "clump 1".

Jan 28, 2008: DNA success story

The RUINCIMAN Surname DNA project now shows that the respective descendants of the Michigan and Wanton Walls RUNCIMAN families are a very good match, at 37 out of 37 markers. Now I'm trying to work out whether or not it is worth upgrading the tests to get a better idea of how closely related, or just to fit William in where he probably belongs anyway. I reckon his grandfather is probably a son of John and Betsy(FAMILTON) RUNCIMAN, so along with this assumption, and that the Michigan James and William are cousins, not brothers, that's where I've placed them in the RUNCIMAN family tree. If anyone has a convincing argument of where better to place them, speak up.

Still looking for a willing descendant of James & Isabella (CARTER) RUNCIMAN to join the project - which is growing. There's been some interest from a descendant of William of Crail whose descendants seemed determined to set foot in a fair few countries and Counties: Fife, Dunbar, Ireland, Canada, NZ, Australia... and hopefully Don will eventually get some evidence of a connection between his James and Janet (HOG) RUNCIMAN of Selkirk then Canada, and the James & Agnes (HERIOT) RUNCIMAN of Ayton/Dunbar whose descendants went to Selkirk, Ohio, and NZ.

Matching Michigan and Borders RUNCIMEN?

Next lornahen webpage update will include a link to the geograph picture of Wanton Walls on the place pages. Which activity was prompted by an early morning phone call from George RUNCIMAN ex of Wanton Walls in response to a letter I'd written him. (It was a welcome call, but it was 5:30am, I hope I sounded coherent). I was trying to find out if there was any further information to be had about the Michigan link and the current whereabouts, if any, of the letters between the Michigan and the Wanton Walls RUNCIMEN back in the 1850s-1870s(?). George was convinced that they were related, and added a snippet, to be verified somehow, that the original Michigan lot had been transported following deer poaching in the Edgarhope forest (appears on maps as Edgarhope Wood, just north of Lauder).

Given my current interest in DNA testing and genealogy, wonder if any of the US lot and the Scottish lot would be interesting in comparing dna to "prove" this? A 37 marker test comparing 2 male line surname descendants showing identical or close dna matches apparently have a 50% chance of sharing common male ancestors within 2 generations, and 95% chance within 7 generations, this latter would cover current day family back to known ancestors on the Scottish side, and likely ancestors on the American side. I can spot several Scottish candidates, but Michigan line descendants look a bit thin on the ground unless I do some more research. The last known male descendant of William (still a RUNCIMAN) that I have records of died in 1981, and the last I have down from James isn't at the address I had for him any more.