We are off to a great start at sorting our Cullen ancestors based on their ancestral location in Ireland and England. See highlighted text below for more on the Cullens of Wicklow DNA discoveries.

Here are 3 possible goals for DNA testing and genetic genealogy:

(1)  Check genetics against a "paper trail" of birth, death, civil, church records etc. and confirm/refute a family tree going back to the 1600s or 1700s, and place new people into these established family lines.

(2)  Determine the genetic pattern for different lineages (families) of Cullens in Ireland and beyond, and figure out which lineages are related to each other, on a time scale of hundreds of years.

(3)  Trace the history and migration of your male line ancestors for hundreds or even thousands of years: when did your male ancestor likely come to Ireland (for example)? Was it with the Celts or earlier (before 100 AD), or later with the Vikings? Are you descended from a ruling/dominant/prolific family, or is your male line restricted to a small area?

Because most of us come from ordinary Irish people, and records in Ireland are scarce before 1864, we don't have a paper trail or established family tree to fit people into. So goal (1) is not realistic for most of us. This may change--for example, if a new member matches member C-9, he will know he comes from an English family, with records for this Cullen family going back into the 1500s. We also hope to get DNA samples from landowning Irish Cullen families and early Cullen immigrants to the US, both which will have more extensive paper trails.

Goal (2) is really the major goal of this Cullen Family DNA Project.  As expected, many independent Cullen lineages are showing up, which agrees with what we know about multiple Irish Gaelic surnames being anglicized to Cullen, and other origins in England, Scotland and Europe.

Member C-21 with known roots in Bray, Wicklow, Ireland, matches member C-4. These two men share an uncommon DNA pattern with other men from southeastern Ireland. This pattern is called the "Leinster Modal" and its distinctive marker values are underlined in C-4 and C-21's listings in our results grid. The Leinster Modal is found mainly in men from families that were once rulers of the area, like Byrne, Kavanagh and Cullen (and also in some families in Scotland). You can compare the Cullen results to these other families, click here (The link will take you to the DYS464x project, which is using advanced testing to show that these families are related).

Notice that C-4 and C-21 share the very rare value of 18,23 for YCA IIa,b. They have more distinctive values also not found in other Leinster Modal families (all these are in bold in our results grid). Still the two Cullens differ from each other at several markers, which indicates that their common ancestor lived a long time ago.

Now we can say that we have identified the main lineage of O'Cullen of Wicklow. Most Cullens from other parts of Ireland are _not_ related to this family. More Cullens from Leinster and other parts of Ireland are urged to take a test so we can learn more about the spread of this important family.

Here's more on some of other matches:

Member C-18 who was born and raised in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, matches member C-5, an Irish-American from Chicago, USA. They match exactly on all 25 markers that both have tested. This match was by no means guaranteed: although the two suspected their families were connected, they have each traced their ancestry back to the 1820s and found they descend from two different Cullen men living in the same parish. So the connection between C-5 and C-18 is probably more than 200 years ago.member C-4

The other good news is that the most of the remaining 16 lineages identified so far are very distinct from each other, and most are very distinctive when compared to Irish, English and Europeans in general. All this means that when new people join the Cullen project, and we get more matches between our members, we will have an easier time determining which of the matches reflect a shared Cullen ancestry, and are not merely chance matches based on very common marker values.

Goal (3): Some details about what we've learned about our history:

Like 80% of Irish men, six of our members are members of DNA haplogroup R1b. But several of our members show interesting/uncommon patterns within this large group:

• Member C-7 matches the "Niall of the Nine Hostages" signature, which is found in up to 21% of men in northwest Ireland. He is descended from a line of Irish kings, or at least one of the most dominant and prolific families in Ireland. Obviously this is a common pattern, with over 350 matches in the FamilyTreeDNA database, but so far C-7 is the only Cullen.
• Member C-2 has fewer matches, but is very close to the genetic signature of the "Colla Uais", the founding rulers of the old Ulster Irish - Scot kingdom of Dalriada, which evolved into the Scottish royal house. Member C-2 comes from Co. Cavan in Ulster, Ireland, and is trying to determine if his Cullen ancestors came from Scotland to Ireland in the last few hundred years, or if they had been in Ireland for a long, long time.
• Members C-1 and C-8, although probably not related in the last 2000 years, show some very distinctive marker values, which place them in a well-defined "Southern Irish/Continental" group. For a more detailed explanation, and an analysis of results for our other R1b members, click here to visit the DNA page of our member JT Cullen.

The other three members of the project are in Haplogroup I, which only about 10% of Irish and Scottish men belong to (the percentage is about 18% in England and around 40% in Scandinavia and northern Germany).

• Member C-5 and C-18 have no other exact matches in the FT-DNA database, and belong to the unusual I1b2 haplogroup (I'm using the traditional names for the haplogroups), which occurs in 40% of men in Sardinia (an Italian island), and at low levels throughout western Europe. Despite this, their closest matches are from Ireland, so their ancestors probably have been in Ireland for thousands of years, like most of the R1b Cullens
• Member C-3 has an even more unusual haplotype, with no matches or close matches--it looks like he belongs to Haplogroup I1c.  Testing of more markers could reveal a possible Scottish or Germanic origin for this Irish Cullen family
• Member C-9 also has a very rare pattern, with no close matches. He belongs to Haplogroup I1b2*, formerly called I1(x). This groups is thinly and widely distributed across continental Europe, and given this Cullen family's Nottinghamshire, England origins, points to an Anglo-Saxon, Danish or Viking origin for the family (instead coming from British/Celtic people who were already on the island of Great Britain).

For more information on how to translate all the numbers on our results page to Haplogroups, click here to visit the DNA page of our member JT Cullen. Or if you want to join our project, or have questions about these results, please email me---Bernie (member C-5)    

• Feel free to discuss this project on the Cullen Family Forum

•   Click here to place an order for a DNA test at Family Tree DNA