Fish Family Men for Y DNA Test

[jrfish]

I am researching my ancestor Stephen Fish, who first appeared in Salem, Massachusetts in 1680. There are no records of his origin in England. Surname maps show highest incidence of the Fish surname in 1881 being in northern England, including parts of Lancashire. The only means of identifying the true Fish family of origin for Stephen Fish (there are several separate unrelated Fish families in the US) is by Y DNA. Family Tree DNA have a Fish Family Project. Many US men named Fish have submitted their Y DNA tests to the project, showing several distinct Fish families. Three men descended from Stephen Fish have matching YDNA, over 300 years later. Men from Stephen Fish's family of origin in England will have matching Y DNA. I would like to identify men from various Fish families in northern England who have done DNA tests or would be willing to do so. Any family with history of a scion named Stephen who left for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s would be an unexpected bonus.

If you are a Fish family male who has done DNA testing or would be willing to do so, please contact me at jrfish73 [at] outlook.com and we can coordinate getting your YDNA signature posted to the Family Tree DNA Fish family project page. And maybe I'll find the cousins of Stephen Fish.

Thank you.

Jerry Fish
Portland, OR

email address amended to prevent spamming, change the [at] to @ to use. MA

[MaryA]

Hi and welcome to the forum. As we are a family history society we are more concerned with tracing backwards rather than coming forward, however, we have put together a few suggestions for tracing living people here https://www.liverpool-genealogy.org.uk/ ... =14&t=8154

As there are a lot more records available online nowadays than there used to be it could be a good idea for you to actually research some of those you have found on the 1881 census (mentioned in a pm to me) and trace the families forward, by means of censuses, baptisms and marriages and subsequently perhaps the 1939 Register (available on Findmypast) and even more recent UK Electoral Registers 2002-2014, also on Findmypast. This last resource will give some addresses that might be worth writing to.

[JohnnyO]

You could upload you FTDNA results to gedmatch.com if you have not already done so, but they do not test y-DNA. You still might get some matches.

[jrfish]

Thank you very much for your responses.

The surname maps referred to do not list the names of any individuals. They are just "heat" maps showing the areas of England or Scotland with the highest concentration of families with a given surname. For the surname Fish in England, Lancashire and Yorkshire are the hot spots, with Norfolk slightly less so. I have been looking at an 1881 surname map and have not seen an earlier one. In Scotland, the "hot" areas in 1840 (the earliest I've seen) were Sterlingshire and Berwickshire. I will be contacting family history sites in each of these areas if I can.

I will look into gedmatch - don't think I've looked on that before.

[MaryA]

Don't forget you can access the 1881 census for free on most subscription sites, eg Ancestry and also on https://familysearch.org/

[Blue70]

In Britain I think most people will remember Michael Fish a BBC TV weatherman who told a woman caller who warned him that a hurricane was on the way, "don't worry, there isn't". The Great Storm of 1987 was the worst in South East England for three centuries, caused record damage and killed 19 people. The term "Michael Fish moment" is applied to public forecasts, on any topic, which turn out to be embarrassingly wrong. Some information about Michael Fish:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fish


Blue

[MaryA]

We will always remember that, goes down in broadcasting history