Robinson Genealogy

from Stuart
Your Genetic Distance from descendants of the High Stewards of Scotland may help you to imagine what life was like for your patrilineal ancestors, e.g., that they lived in Brittany (Little Britain) until about a thousand years ago, and possibly in Britain (Great Britain) until the Anglo-Saxons dispossessed them about 1500 years ago.

Even if each chose a different surname, Walter, in a story below,  belongs to the same patrilineal family as all other descendants of his great-great-great-grandfather (gggGpa) Alan, Seneschal de Dol en Bretagne. No matter what your surname, anyone who tests positive for SNPs R-L21 L744, L745 or L746 does too. That some of your close Y-DNA37 and Y-DNA67 matches belong to this Stewart family indicates that you may test positive for one of these SNPs too. If you do, about two thousand years of probable family history cost you less than $30 through familytreedna.

The Scotsman 27 December 2011, by Alistair Moffat


"The story of one name in Scotland is very clear and very well documented – but DNA can take it much further. Walter fitzAlan came to Scotland around 1136. His ancestors hailed from Brittany and when William the Conqueror mustered his invading army in 1066, they joined it. Walter fitzAlan came north and his family became Stewards of Scotland in the 12th century. Their royal role eventually became their surname, and it in turn became royal. Around 16 per cent of all Scottish men with the surname Stewart carry S310, the same marker as direct and undoubted descendants of James V and James VI and I. It is a sub-type of the widespread Celtic marker labelled S145.

"Now comes a fascinating twist in a familiar story. In Brittany, the land of Walter the Steward’s ancestors, there exists a very high proportion of men with the S145 marker, as many as in south-west England, Celtic Cornwall and Devon and far more than in the rest of western Europe. There is a historical reason for this quirk. Brittany literally means Little Britain, a name acquired between 400AD and 600AD, the period when Saxons raiders became invaders and settlers. As the Roman Empire in Britain and Western Europe collapsed, they drove out large numbers of native British and they crossed the English Channel to escape and found communities in Brittany. Several place-names such as Bretteville recall the refugees. It may well be, on the evidence of DNA, that the Stewart dynasty of Scotland and of Great Britain and Ireland actually originated in the south or south-west of England and not on the western edges of Normandy..."