Smith DNA Project Community Forums

As it turns out, both Alexander Smith and the Flatts that are connected to him are mine, both from the Smith YDNA perspective and also from knowing the Flatt DNA Surname project on FTDNA. Not your Flatt, explaining why.

1. Alexander Smith was born in SC, went to Morgan Co AL and intermarried with Flatts who were of Scottish origin. By dint of having a lot of Flatt male YDNA testers, we know that the ones that were in NJ, PA, TN, KY, IL, TX, etc all match on YDNA. (See the Flatt YDNA REport - R-M512 section).  The group that Alexander Smith falls into is GRP-R-M269-77; your group is GRP-I-M223-6 (Nehemiah Smith) This Smith and that Nehemiah are not matches, one main reason due to having completely different haplogroups.

2. When the new group of Flatts that were PA > IL that tested YDNA's results came back, to my surprise they matched your group, where, with a very strong # of people who had matched for the other Flatts, including one whose ancestry was in PA, did not. Theoretically, because of the conflation of lines involving Flatt that were in PA, they should have matched, but they did not. This second group matched the Nehemiah Smith group.

3. One of the members in your group does have a David Smith who is a descendant of Nehemiah and had gone from New London, CT to Luzerne PA, which is the same location as the Andrew Flatt in your group. This is part of David's line, from father John.

3. Here is where this is written up in the forum. You can partly see that there is a book written about the Flatts but a large part of it iw not correct. For example, one reason I started the Flatt project some years back was to confirm or not whether the surname Van Der Vliet was corrupted to Flatt. No. They are distinct surnames and even have different haplogroups (Look on the Flatt chart reference above and you will see the Vliets, including one descedant ascribed to the same Vliet ancestor is E35 haplogroup.) . There is one member who had gone to PA and appears to be a direct descendant of the Andrew Flatt who was in New Jersey. (On the Flatt report he is kit 49877) . He does not match the Andrew Flatt who marches Smith but matches a raft of people, including one with the surname Flett that came from the Orkney Islands, Scotland. So, there is no evidence, first that Vliet/Van Vliet was the origin of the name, and no evidence, including YDNA matches that Andrew Flatt that matches Smith is the same line as the other Flatts. Problem is it is unknown why he matches the group with Nehemiah Smith but there are at least two different Smiths from CT who went to PA during that time frame to the same area, including around the Susquehanna.

Anyone reading that would like to solve this mystery is invited to join the Smith DNA Project.