Re: James Alexander the weaver b. abt 1652

Dennis,

First of all, to answer your questions as best I can.

Joseph, James weaver and Samuel are the only testers we have so far.

I have been in touch with Bill Alexander as recently as yesterday evening.He has never tested but is in the process of doing so now.So we will have results on Andrew in 6 weeks or so.

We have not been able to find any male Alexander heirs of Francis, John nor William.Using Jack Wells' site as reference: William's most recent Alexander male listed is a gggrandson b. abt 1780; Francis shows a grandson b. 1720; John shows the most recent heirs but we have not been able to connect with any yet.

Regarding a cousinal relationship between James the weaver to Joseph and Samuel, our 5 James the weaver testers are roughly 12/37 markers with the 10 Samuel and Joseph testers. So if the weaver testers are really from James, then James is a very distant cousin, probably prior to 1400 or earlier.I must say that 2 of the 5 "weaver" testers only speculate they are from James.So we continue to look for testers to help indicate if we weaver testers are NOT from James, or James was not a brother of the other 6 brothers.

Also the James the weaver testers are noticeably closer in DNA to many other Alexanders in our group, therefore it is for sure we are more closely related to them than the Samuels and Josephs.

That answers your questions except the last about mixed up Jameses, for which I can only speculate that it started somewhere as wishful thinking and evolved to legend and then fact.Obviously, DNA testing enables us debunk these "facts", and will also show you where to focus your continued research.

Finally, just yesterday we got some very interesting news.The first 12 markers of a new tester were released.He is the first James the weaver tester who does NOT descend from James the weaver's son Moses.He descends from Moses' brother David. (I am assuming in this that the paper research is correct.)Well, this new tester is 12/12 with the Sam and Joe boys, but only 7/12 with the Jim boys.

So maybe Jim was really a brother of the other 2. If that is the case then we other Jim boys who don't match the Sam and Joe boys know at which generation(s) we may have a paper error.

If you want more detail just let me know.

Roger Alexander