Project News Letter #3
09 November 2004

Dear Cousins,

Just a quick update on the status of the Burgess Surname Project.  Family Tree DNA is running at least two weeks late on the current batch of tests; that delay may be extended even further as the holidays approach.  I received notice today that two of our 12-marker tests, including the one out of the Thomas Burgess line of Sandwick, Mass., the largest and earliest Burgess family in the Americas, were botched completely and will have to be rerun; this will extend their delivery time until, supposedly, the end of November (in reality, it'll probably be sometime in December).

I'm not happy about any of this, but there's absolutely nothing I can do to speed things along.  The last time I complained about something to FT DNA, several weeks ago, the representative who responded was unnecessarily rude and quite abrupt.  I think they're tired of hearing from me.

I won't update the website or post any further notices to the Burgess genealogy newsgroups until we actually get more results in hand.  I do appreciate the efforts of all of you who have contributed both time and knowledge and money to the project.  Thanks particularly to Dr. Scott Burgess and Mildred Guernsey, who donated $100 each to subsidize future testing.  FT DNA did match these gifts with a grant of $200, but we have to expend the matching funds before the end of the year.

I have a lead on another representative of the Col. William Burgess line, so I'm still hopeful that someone out of that very important family will step forward.  Given the antiquity of this line, one would think that locating male descendants would be quite easy, but just the opposite has been true.  One entire branch of this family, numbering in the many hundreds, has now shrunk in terms of male representation to just two brothers and their offspring.

But we have many important families with test results yet to appear.  Let's hope they all show up by Christmas, and that we see additional random matches between seemingly unrelated Burgess lines!

All best to everyone:

Prof. Michael Burgess