Join the Kent/Clifford Cousin DNA Project
The Kent-Clifford Cousin Project was created to learn about the genealogical background of the Kents, Cliffords, and their related families. Currently our lines are traced to Isaac Clifford born in New Jersey around 1776 and Evan Kent born in Virginia around 1784. The families settled in what is now West Virginia in the late 1700s.
Every two years the Kent and Clifford families join together in a large family reunion to catch up and meet new family members. In 2013, the Kent/Clifford Family Reunion executive board decided to extend our research into the family history by creating a cousin DNA project, which allows the participation of males and females. For more than 20 years the reunion committee has included a historian,who researches the family lines. Our family historian will greatly support this DNA project and will work with participants in finding their place in the family tree.
We welcome all Kent and Clifford descendants as well as any family that married into those lines over the years. Male participants have the choice of researching origins of their male line (father to father to father) through the Y-DNA test, finding cousin relationships through the Family Finder test, or taking both the Y-DNA and Family Finder tests. We recommend males submitting Y-DNA to purchase no less than 37 markers. Female participants are urged to participate by taking the Family Finder test. With your help we hope to gain knowledge on how our family lines were established and how other families are related.
If you are interested in taking the Family Finder test ($99), you can join the project at
http://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=KentCliffordCousin&code=Y43904
We are currently looking for Kent males of direct descent from Evan Kent (father's father's father's father...) to take an additional DNA test to get an idea of the geographic origin of the patriarch of the Kent family. If you are interested in participating, please email the
Kent/Clifford Reunion Historian.
This may be a bit difficult, we're also looking for Kent male or females that descended from Evan Kent that do not have Cliffords in their family line. If you fit these requirements, we would love for you to take the Family Finders test!
The Clifford Patriarch
Y-DNA is transferred from father to son with slight changes after a few to several generations. From this test we can find other males that descended from the same male hundreds of years ago.
There were three Clifford males on our known family tree that took the Y-DNA test. Clifford#1 was descended from John Clifford Cliffords #2 and #3 were descended from Isaac Clifford There were some differences in their genetic makeup at the 37 markers compared, but there are slight changes in Y-DNA over generations. It is interestiing to note that the only matches are the known cousins. No other men that have tested with Family Tree DNA match our cousins.
Y-DNA is assigned a haplogroup, which associates branches of the paternal tree of humankind with a geographic region. The Y-DNA tests taken by the three descendents of Isaac Clifford resulted in haplogroup E-M96, which originated in Northeast Africa. Further tests will be ordered to get a better idea of where in Africa we originated. Currently, it looks like we may have come from a Bantu speaking tribe. Africans speaking Bantu languages can be found in regions stretching east and southward from Central Africa across the African Great Lakes region down to Southern Africa.
This site will be updated as we learn more about our Clifford DNA patriarch.
The Kent Patriarch
We are in need of a male direct descendent of Evan Kent with no know Cliffford family relationship to take this test. It will be donated to you - no charge. We will update this page as we receive a tester and results.
The Kent/Clifford Cousins Project
The Cousin project is open to all males and females. We have had several known cousins take the Family Finder test to find unknown cousins with whom we share DNA. Surprisingly, we knew a few of these unknown cousins, and we're working on finding out where on our family tree we connect. There have also been several general Family Tree DNA testers that have chosen to join our family project for various reasons. No connections have been found yet in those particpants, but we'll continue to research. We currently have 31 people in the project, and 10 of those were known cousins.
We are trying to figure out the best way to share our results of the cousin test while considering privacy concerns. This site will be updated as we get approval from testers to share relationship information.