Can someone help me confirm back to Nicholas Massey, Isle of Ely, England?

Question

Massey-1776 here!
We have a group of cousin's in the Massey DNA Project, group #12. More than 5 of us have taken YDNA and or auDNA. The match was proven with my kit B2044 at FTDNA & that of Robert Lee Massey.
Others who have tested and MRCA is our Jacob "Jacob" Massey / Massy.
George Dennis Massey kit#63096
*John David Massey kit# B2044 (A762312 auDNA at gedmatch)
*Robert Lee Massey FTDNA #
Caleb Michael Massey (ancestry auDNA) My son!
Albert Michael Massey N113969 (Geno 2.0)
Charles Litton Massey FTDNA#
Lee Roy Massey FTDNA# 2306645
*Prove back to Nicholas Massey Sr. Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.

Comments

Can you clarify what you mean? The Nicholas Massey linked is from Cheshire, as seem to be his descendants for centuries. That's on the opposite side of the country to the Isle of Ely. There's no connection.

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I think the Nicholas he is focused on might be https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Massey-1436

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This is the story

http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/mace/1194/

so as usual there seems to be no actual evidence of where the immigrant came from.

 

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I like the way it equates the Isle of Ely and the Isle of Man as essentially the same thing ... no big deal.

It's well known that many early immigrants came from East Anglia so the Isle of Ely origin might be correct. Grafting on a completely different Massey family from Cheshire, and claiming all Masseys are descended from a companion of William the Conqueror is not correct.

The only way to do genealogy is one link at a time, not working towards some preconceived imaginary goal.

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Yep. Massey-1436 certainly seems to be the correct one. And--at least on WikiTree--200 years of descendants in that line have unsourced profiles. While there is nothing stating so on WikiTree's "confirmed with DNA" help pages, the process really has to start with the traditional paper trail. Without a well-researched paper trail, there's no way to tell when sets of yDNA results actually converge to a common ancestor: it could be three generations ago or 30. And in this case, with an MRCA born this long ago (1629), the DNA evidence has to hinge on yDNA only; autosomal DNA is not a factor that many generations back.

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The Cambridgeshire Visitation  1575 (expanded 1619) links a Massey family in Ely with some from Coddrington   but the earlier generations look to  be shrouded in mystery. https://archive.org/stream/visitationcambr00britgoog#page/n42/mode/2up/search/Massey

questions/problems  (which is probably the original question)
1)evidence that those in America were related to this family

2) evidence to support the pedigree other than the visitation especially for the earlier generations (the further away from the time of the visitation, the more likely it is to be incorrect.

The only answer is to find supporting evidence from primary sources at each step, going backwards from those you have evidence for.

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Certainly doesn't have much resemblance to these

https://archive.org/stream/visitationofches00glov#page/170/

https://archive.org/stream/visitationofches00glov#page/174/

 

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But more similar to this

https://archive.org/stream/recordsociety58recouoft#page/172/

though no sign of the juicy Bold marriage.

 

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Mathew,

This mistake between the Isle of Ely and the Isle of Man was printed in Judge Frank A. Massey's books My Massey Family in England. This is where the misunderstanding came from. It appears to have been Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire.