The surname Bingham is in my ancestry through Permelia Bingham. It traces back to the immigrant Thomas Bingham (β 1642-06-05 – 1730-01-16), who married Mary, daughter of Jonathan Rudd. Thomas was from Sheffield, England, the son of Thomas Bingham and Anne Fenton, and eventually settled in Windham, Connecticut. His son Samuel (1686-03-28 – 1760-05-01) was the grandfather of Reuben Bingham.

Thomas’s mother’s maiden name Fenton is often mistranscribed as Stenton, caused by the older practice of writing a double f for a capital F.

DNA

There is a Bingham DNA Project^ref with a section for “Thomas Bingham of Connecticut”, which does seem to be my immigrant ancestor, with four visible testees, albeit with no information about descent, and only at most 37 markers tested. They are fairly good matches for each other, so likely form a clade. One testee did SNP tests and was identified as R1b-Z346, which is fairly specific marker, with a most recent ancestor estimated at 750 BC.^ref There were likely had deeper tests done that excluded subclades, but the project does not expose this information.

There is also a Bingham testee who posted his Y haplogroup to WikiTree.^ref He provides no information about the testing service or a kit number, nor apparently is he a member of any project. He descends from the immigrant Thomas’s son Thomas and says he is in haplogroup R1b-Z8.^ref

R1b-Z346 is a subgroup of R1b-Z8, so these results are consistent and confirmatory. I conclude that Thomas Bingham was very likely of haplogroup R1b-Z346.

… and me

I have not found DNA corroboration for my descent from any Bingham beyond Permelia, or for that matter any of her ancestors on either side. This is an annoying gap.

What is needed for confirmation of the generations from her back is other close relatives who do have DNA connections to these ancestors. Males with the surname of Bingham who take Y tests could be particularly helpful.

Ancestry of Thomas the immigrant

His ancestry is not known beyond the great-grandparents. The earliest record is the marriage of Robert Fenton and Elizabeth Bray in Sheffield on 1576-07-30.

See

• The Bingham Family in the United States by Donna Bingham Munger.