Goal: Determine if there is any relationship between Jan Pieterszen Van Husum (a.k.a. Jan Pieterszen Van Huysen) of Husum, Denmark (now Germany) and Abraham Staats (a.k.a. Abram Staes) of Amsterdam, Holland.

Hypothesis: There is no direct-paternal relationship between Jan Pieterszen Van Husum and Abraham Staats. Background: Both of these men are the immigrant-ancestor progenitors of 2 lineages of Staats families in the United States. Jan Pieterszen Van Husum immigrated to New Amsterdam circa 1638 and removed to Gowanus(Brooklyn) by 1642. Abraham Staats immigrated to the Albany, NY area circa 1642.

Jan never used the name Staats and it wasnt until 1687 when his two sons, Pieter and Jan, adopted the Staats name by the time they took the Kings County New York Oath of Allegiance in 1687. That, coupled with the fact that Jan Pieterszen Van Husum was an illiterate farmer and Abraham Staats was a well educated surgeon and that they never witnessed the baptisms of each others children indicate a very low possibility of a relationship.

How: Test the Y chromosome of currently-living men who are known to be descended from Jan Pieterszen Van Husum and Abraham Staats. If the haplogroups of the tested descendants are the same, then we know there is a possibility they are related and further analysis of the allele counts of the genetic markers will then indicate just how closely these men were related.

Results:

Conclusion: Abraham Staats and Jan Pieterszen Van Husum were not related. The haplogroup of Abrahams descendant is R1b1b2 and the haplogroup of Jan Pieterszens descendants is I1. A haplogroup gives insight into deep ancestral origins on the order of thousands of years. Due to the fact that Jan Pieterszen was a member of haplogroup I1 and Abraham Staats was a member of haplogroup R1b1b2, these men dont share a common male ancestor for at least 20,000 years and thus are not even remotely related. According to the familytreedna.com genetic distance calculator, the probability of these men being related within the last 24 generations is 0.02% - that is 1/50th of a 1% chance of them being related within the last 800 years. In other words, these men were not related. However, because only 1 descendant of Abraham Staats of Albany has been tested, there is the possibility of there being a non-paternal event somewhere between Abrahams grandsons and the member who was tested. A non-paternal event just means that one of the wives in the direct, paternal line gave birth to a son fathered by a man not descended from Abraham - in other words, an extra-marital affair. I am not saying that this happened, but until more members of the Abraham Staats line get tested, we have to take this small possibility into account.