DNA match -- lines of Edmund Wyatt and Malachi Mann
My g-g-grandfather, Edmund Wyatt, was born in 1792 NC and died about 1870 in Russell County, Virginia.I do not know his parents' names.
I am in contact with a Mann who descends from Malachi Mann of North Carolina (1750- ?) who married Jennie Jane Underwood.
This Mann descendant has DNA which is a rare, 100% perfect match to my Wyatt's DNA on each of 46 markers tested.If any researcher of either name has any family history indicating a Wyatt/Mann boy may have been adopted by or assumed the name of a stepfather of the other name, we'd like to hear from you.
Here is one person's observation of possible explanations for this DNA mystery:
"That's an interesting puzzle! A first step might be to check if your family's Wyatt y-DNA is at all close to the y-DNA of other living Wyatt descendants. If it is, then your Edmund Wyatt was most likely fathered by a Wyatt. It would suggest also that somewhere along the line, a Wyatt son was raised as a Mann, accounting for the y-DNA of the individual who contacted you. A Wyatt son could be raised as a Mann through several mechanisms: for example, if the father of an infant Wyatt son died, and the mother remarried to a Mann, and raised her child as a Mann. Or if the parents of a Wyatt son both died, and the boy was raised by his father's sister married to a Mann. Or infidelity.
"If, on the other hand, your family's y-DNA is moderately close to any living Mann descendants, your Edmund (or a male ancestor of his) was likely fathered by a Mann, and raised as a Wyatt.
"If your family's y-DNA bears little resemblance to any known Mann or Wyatt male descendants, then y-DNA won't help sort out the puzzle. But the finding Manns and Wyatts living close to each other, around the same time the y-DNA must have crossed families (based on the exact match between your family's DNA and the Mann DNA), seems like a great clue that might help unravel the mystery."
If you have a family containing both Wyatts and Manns, we'd like to hear from you!