I'm happy to welcome Rachel to the list. She administers the C.
Pillsbury Big-Y test that is a new close match to us. She shares a
relative with Fran Pillsbury dating to 1605. They both fall onto the
BY13850 haplogroup of our tree. This is below the Z16854 block on the
tree that represents their common Hays/Pillsbury ancestry (see
http://dna.smithplanet.com/snp).

The two Pillsbury men share the following "good" variants:
18770840-C-T (BY13850)
9496274-C-A (BY13851)
14811392-G-T

These are solid SNPs that indicate their shared Pillsbury ancestry
AFTER the Hays/Pillsbury ancestor, but before their Pillsbury lines
split in the 1600s. This does not change my SNP chart at all -
http://dna.smithplanet.com/snp (with the exception of adding the 3rd
SNP above to the Pillsbury block).

I've only been able to identify one good novel variant for the C.
Pillsbury line:
18839503-C-A

A novel variant is a mutation not shared with anyone else that has tested.

This also leaves Fran's Pillsbury line with only 1 good novel variant
(and I'm being a bit liberal with that one because it's a bit
questionable). This is a bit peculiar, because the 12 of us under
Z16357 average around 75 years per variant - and the Pillsburys have
only one identified in almost 400 years. This highlights the
difficulty with few testers in each haplogroup/block. Michael, Alex,
and YFull have better mechanisms for identifying "good" novel
variants, so they might find some I'm missing.

One problem with so few novel variants is that it makes it more
difficult to generate a basic Y-DNA test for people to determine which
side of the Pillsbury line they fall on.

Another is that it throws a bit of a wrench into my age estimations.
With only 1 novel variant each, this would suggest that the most
recent shared ancestor for the Pillsbury's was born 2-3 generations
ago - but we know he was instead born over 400 years ago. This likely
sways my age estimates to be more recent that is reality for that part
of the tree. My math puts the common Hays/Pillsbury ancestor being
born 626-734 years ago. Overall, this impacts my aging estimates for
the entire tree very negligibly - only .5 years more per variant. The
more testers we get, the more accurate this value becomes.

We'll have some other big news for our part of the tree soon!

Jared