Recruitment Update 2021

The O'Malley DNA Project has been running since 2005 and recruitment has been steady over that time. There was a noticeable increase in the rate of recruitment following the Clan Rally in May 2017 and the annual number of recruits jumped from 18 in the previous year to 48. Annual recruitment these past 4 years has averaged at about 40 new recruits per year. In fact, project membership has doubled since the project update that I gave at the 2019 Clan Rally.

Recruitment since inception of the O'Malley DNA Project
(click to enlarge)

Everyone is welcome to join the DNA Project, irrespective of gender or the DNA test the person has taken. Currently there are 209 members in the project and of these: 

• 103 have done a Y-DNA test - this tests the father father father line
• 41 have done a mtDNA test (mitochondrial DNA) - this tests the mother mother mother line
• 78 have done a Family Finder test (autosomal DNA) - this tests ALL ancestral lines

Further information on the breakdown of the various tests undertaken by project members is available on our Project Statistics page on the website. 

Of particular note, only 115 of the 209 project members  (55%) have filled in their Paternal Ancestor Information. This is essential information for analysing the results and is easily added by hovering over your name (top right), click on Account Settings > Genealogy > Earliest Known Ancestors and fill in the information in the first field (Name and Birth/Death Date) using the following format:

Michael O'Malley b c1820 Newport, Mayo (birth location is essential for ongoing analysis)

Of the men who have done the Y-DNA test, over 50% (53/103) have tested to the 111 STR marker level and 42 have done the Big Y test. Of these, 32 have been allocated to a specific O'Malley group and 10 belong to the Other Surname group. If we exclude the Other Surname group, this means 32 out of 79 Y-DNA tested O'Malley's (or their close Y-DNA matches) have done the Big Y test, and this works out as 40.5%, which is quite an impressive figure.

As mentioned on many occasions previously, Big Y testing is essential for those in the Group 3 subgroups (M222+) because of the presence of significant Convergence which has resulted in chance matches and a high risk of incorrect grouping.

Big Y testing among O'Malley men
(click to enlarge)

So the project is going from strength to strength and with the recent launch of the Extensive Lineage Project, it is hoped that targeted Big Y testing of specific individuals will help project members connect to ancestral lines that go back into the 1600s and earlier.

If you wish to contribute to this project, you can do so by making a donation (of any amount you wish) to the General Fund here. This fund will be used to sponsor Y-DNA tests for O'Malley men with extensive lineages. Several such people have been identified and targeted testing of some of them is already underway. The results of this testing will be posted in future articles on this blog and also in the Facebook group.

Maurice Gleeson

June 2021