In the summer of 2001 Dan Craycraft introduced the Craycraft/Craycroft research group to the concept of DNA testing for genealogical purposes. We discussed the idea for a couple months and then Dan got 6 or 7 men to volunteer to submit DNA samples to Family Tree DNA for testing. He had 1 man from England, Peter Cracroft, and a few from the U.S. We expected that Peter's DNA would become the baseline against which all the other samples would be compared to see if the American brances of the family, Craycroft and Craycraft, were indeed related to the original English line.
All but 2 of the samples came back with results which indicated that the American branches of the family were indeed related to the English line. We had been able to document a direct descent from Ragemar down to Peter Cracroft so when the other samples showed either an exact match or statistically close match to Peter we assumed that all was as we had hoped.
But early in 2008 Justin Cracroft of Salt Lake City submitted a sample and his results came back with a surprise. Peter's haplotype (very broadly speaking this identifies a general regional grouping) was English as we mistakenly expected since Cracroft has always been an English family. But Justin's haplotype was Northern European/Danish and his test results indicted absolutely no chance for a match to Peter's DNA. At first there was some confusion and we thought that Justin was the result of a break in the family line. Then after a couple months went by Patrick Cracroft-Brennan of England and a long-time family researcher and professional genealogist reminded us all that Ragemar was actually of Danish origin. Perhaps instead, Justin's DNA is a direct straight-line descent from Ragemar and Peter is the result of a genetic break in the line.
We, Dan, Patrick and I, are trying to locate other volunteers in Salt Lake City and England to submit samples to prove or disprove this new situation. In the meantime I have posted the current DNA results report in the Histories section here.