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Welcome to the Athey Surname Project home page. This project was started in December, 2003.

Project Objectives

The Athey surname project has two main goals:

1. To obtain test results from American male Atheys who descend from each of the probable sons of the immigrant, Capt. George Athy, who came to America in about 1661. These results can show that such descendants are closely related, thereby confirming the family history research.

2. To test the hypothesis that everyone of the Athey/Athy/Atha/Athon/Athan surname, whether of the U.S. branch or the English branch, has a single common ancestor, probably the historical figure, Gerard de Athee, who was a protégé of King John of England.in the late 12^th and early 13^th Centuries. Gerard was apparently the first of the family to adopt the Athee surname, which he took from the village of his birth, Athee sur Cher on the Cher River in the Touraine region of France. It seems unlikely that anyone else in Britian or Ireland would have adopted the same surname, though this remains to be proven. Since we know that he had descendants who used the Athey name, if we find that we have a single common paternal-line ancestor, then it was probably Gerard. Of course, if not all Atheys derive from the same ancestor, then we won’t know which group is from Gerard without further historical research.

Why Y?

The Y-chromosome has two advantages for a surname project. (1) The Y-chromosome is only passed down from father to son, so it is inherited in the same way as surnames are normally inherited, and (2) there is no recombination to confuse things, at least on the part that is normally tested.

As one looks back on his pedigree chart, the number of ancestors doubles for each generation. If we go back about 600 years or 20 generations, there are a million ancestor positions on your chart. However, at each generation, only one ancestor, the purely patrilineal one, contributes your Y-chromosome. Therefore, at each generation of our pedigree chart, the Y-chromosome is passed down by the person in the top position in each generation of the pedigree chart. In each generation this is normally also the person with our surname.

The specific markers that are tested for the Y-chromosome project are markers that have no known function and no known selection advantages or disadvantages. Therefore, none of the medical issues associated with DNA testing apply here. These markers are useful only for genealogical or anthropological research. Even so, your results will not be associated with you by name if you join the project.

Test Results

To see the latest test results for the Athey Surname Project, click here.

Sign up to Participate

If you are a male and named Athey or related surname, and you wish to participate in the project, follow this link, scroll to the bottom of the page, and fill in the form:

Click Here to Join the Project

Your privacy will be respected. Your name or email address will not be released to anyone without your permission. Only you and your administrator will know who your results belong to.

Project Administrator

As project administrator, you may address any questions or comments to me at the following address: wathey (at) hprg.com. You should replace “ (at) ” with “@” when you send a message to me—it is written in the funny manner above to keep spammers from picking it up. My full name is Thomas Whitfield Athey, III, but most people I know call me “Whit.”