Before reading this, please read the post titled Why Y-DNA? if you are not already familiar with Y-DNA testing for genealogy. It will explain how Y-DNA can be used for genealogical research.
Kendall testing
My husband took a Big-Y 700 DNA test in February 2023. His test matched that of another man with the surname Mills in the same haplogroup on all but 13 out of 700 markers. Genetically speaking, that is a paternal line relationship. However, Y-DNA changes very little and very slowly, so even close Y-DNA cousins may have a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) born before church or vital records were commonly kept. FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA), a well-known testing company for Y-DNA, hosts the Kendall Y-DNA project and many others. FTDNA has estimated the common ancestor for my husband and the other tester was living between 1450 and 1800, with the greatest likelihood around 1600 to 1650.[1] With a connection that early, finding an MRCA might not be possible, but there were other clues we could use.
Colonial America Kendalls
Many Kendall family histories, including a number of those for the Francis Kendall family, state he and his brother, Thomas, came from either Cambridgeshire or Norfolk in England. None provided original documentation for those statements. Generations of Francis and Thomas Kendall descendants have combed Cambridgeshire and Norfolk without success for a family of Kendalls with sons named Thomas and Francis (born about 1616 and 1620).
Failure to find Francis and Thomas in either Cambridgeshire or Norfolk told us one of two things. Either they were from one of those counties but lived in a parish without records in the early 1600s, or researchers were looking in the wrong places. Without an additional clue, a different location for their origin would have been hard to determine.
The clue that sent research in the right direction was the Y-DNA testing. It also proved Kendall Y-DNA testers are in many different haplogroups (about 20 so far). Therefore, Kendalls are not all closely related and did not all come from the same place. This is a shout-out to Scott Kendall for all the work he has done on the Kendall DNA project and to all those who have joined the project. Without his project and chart, it would be difficult to make Y-DNA comparisons.
A new direction: James Mills
My husband’s Y-DNA match to a tester surnamed Mills took our research in a new direction. It was time to take a closer look at the Mills tester’s ancestry and at work done by my research partner (Celia Renshaw) on a family which used the Kendall alias Mills surname in Sherington and Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.
The Mills tester listed his most distant paternal ancestor as James Mills (1752-1825) of Middlesex in England.[2] Rather than simply discounting this as an NPE, James Mills was of interest to us because Francis Kendall used the surname Kendall alias Miles, (a variation on Mills) when he married Mary Tidd in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1644.[3] For Francis to use the alias surname four years after his immigration, he must have still felt a personal connection to the unique name. It was unlikely to be relevant to his life in Woburn, and even less so as time went on, but he was clearly attached to it to use the name on an official occasion.
My attempt at tracing the ancestry of James Mills uncovered his parents’ generation. They were John and Ann (Dancer) Mills of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, who married in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire on 27 Jan 1746/7.[4] Even though the research did not get back to the 1600s, it identified a valuable clue, which was: the Kendall als. Mills family may have come from Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, or somewhere nearby. We began the hunt in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire for Francis’ roots and we found them.
Evidence found earlier
A few years ago, a Kendall als Mills/Mylles/Miles family was found in Sherington, north Buckinghamshire, by Celia Renshaw, my research partner. Because that location did not match the family origin listed in Kendall histories (which I thought at that point were correct) and because there was a burial for a Francis Kendall in 1666 in the Sherington area (Newport Pagnell specifically), I did not follow up on that family. Later, I discovered the family histories had no proof for the origin of my husband’s Kendall line and that there were other Kendall and Mills families in the Newport Pagnell area to whom the Francis buried there in 1666 could have belonged.
Once the assumptions which had held research back were cleared out, it did not take long to find sufficient paper trail evidence to connect the Buckinghamshire Kendall alias Mills family with Francis Kendall of Woburn and to push the family back another generation, to his father and siblings in England as well as brother Thomas who went with him to New England. This research is detailed in the many posts on this website.
Kendall or Mills?
Alias surnames used in past centuries bear similarities to today’s hyphenated surnames. The use of an alias was rarely an attempt to hide or evade anything, as some family histories have stated, but rather an attempt to connect two surnames, both of high value, to their bearers. Of course, anything that can be connected can also be disconnected and over time those who were using alias surnames tended to choose one surname over the other. While Franics and Thomas in NE chose the Kendall part of their surname (despite being Mills by Y-DNA), the documented members of their family who remained in England (the other descendants of their father Rafe/Ralph) all chose Mills. This is the most likely explanation why two close Y-DNA cousins, my husband and the Mills tester, have two different surnames.
Future DNA research
The one thing that could still help with Y-DNA research is to have new Mills or Kendall DNA testers, ideally doing the Big Y-DNA 700 test, who descend from the brothers or cousins of Francis and Thomas Kendall. This might also help us focus on a common ancestor for Francis Kendall and the Mills tester whose match directed us toward Buckinghamshire. Right now, the genetic family tree looks like the chart below with the farthest back ancestors identified for each tester.[5] The top branch is a descendant of James Mills and all others are descendants of Ralph and Francis Kendall. If more testers could be added, the Kendall/Mills connections would become better defined.
How to join the Kendall Y-DNA project
Joining the DNA project is easy. As stated on the instructions for the Kendall DNA Project hosted by FamilyTree DNA you must:
1. Be genetically male
2. Bear the Kendall surname or a variation on it (Kendal, Kendale, Kendel, Kendell, Kendle, Kindall, Kindel, Kindell, Kindle)
3. Take a minimum Y-DNA 37 test (the Big Y is strongly recommended)
4. Upload a well-researched family tree to your FTDNA account (we can help if necessary)
5. Set group permissions to ‘advanced’.
Once you are in the group you will be able to see how closely related you are to other Kendalls (or Mills) and can be placed in the proper group. The project also has various tools and charts to help us understand how we all connect.
[1] This is according to the information listed for the testers by the FamilyTree DNA company in an MRCA Time Predictor report based on Y-STR Genetic Distance.
[2] According to Ancestry’s “Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-2003” database with images, James Mills was buried 18 Aug 1825 in St. James Westminster in Middlesex at age 67, which places his birth about 1758.
[3] “Massachusetts Vital Records, 1620-1850,” database with images, American Ancestors NEHGR (www.americanancestors.org : accessed 9 May 2023), Francis Kendall & Mary Tidd.
[4] England, Buckinghamshire, Aston Clinton, Parish Register for Aston Clinton, 1560-1906, marriage of John Mills & Ann Dancer, 1746, FHL microfilm 196,7035, digitized images, Family Search (www.familysearch.org : accessed 27 March 2023).
[5] Thank you to Kent Babcock for identifying the ancestry on this chart.
Great article. Thanks for the shout out!