My Ryder family is documented back to the immigrant Samuel Rider⟮1⟯The spellings Rider and Ryder were often used interchangeably, so they will be treated as equivalent. (β 1601-06-19 – 1679-12-02) and his father John Ryder of Newport Pagnell, England, but DNA evidence, namely the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son, has disproven this descent to me. Instead, the evidence shows that my male line goes back to Nicholas Rich, born about 1660, who is first recorded in Salem, Massachusetts.
This is often called a non-paternity event or NPE, a standard term (though often criticized) for a documented father not being the biological father. The source of this discrepancy remains unclear, but I’ve made several plausible deductions. My current conclusion is that William Ryder’s paternal grandfather is not a Ryder, narrowing the anomaly down to one of two generations.
I had my first Y chromosome test in 2009, and my closest matches had the surname Rich, and no close matches were named Ryder. At the time, only guesses were possible as to why; maybe the Rich and Ryder families were closely related, and no Ryders of my grouping had yet had tests. However, more evidence appeared over the years, and now the picture is fairly clear.
Several male-line Ryder descendants of Samuel Rider have now tested, and they belong to Y haplogroup R1b-BY20420.⟮2⟯One Ryder testee of unclear ancestry tested as the more specific R1b-FTB10997, which may however date to modern times. I belong to haplogroup R1b-FT85080. These are quite divergent, the former part of the U106 branch, mine part of the P312 one, where these split from each other about 4800 years ago, well outside of genealogical or surname time frames. The Ryder testees are diverse enough at this point to leave little doubt that the former was also Samuel Rider’s haplogroup. I am thus not a male-line descendant of this Ryder family.
My close match to the Rich testees is strong evidence of at least some connection. But of especial interest is one marker, DYS393. In our subgrouping, this marker almost always has the value 13. However, among a cluster of closely related Riches, some have the value 12, and these form a grouping, presumably all descendants of an original Rich who has the mutation. I also have a value of 12. While it is possible I also independently had this same rare mutation, it is far more likely that I am also a descendant of this Rich.
In 2025, my FT85080 SNP was discovered to have arisen within the Rich family, thus confirming the STR inference.
The Rich Family Association has documented numerous Rich families in North America, and many members have taken DNA tests. Those who are closest to me fall into a handful of documented groupings, and those who have a 12 for DYS393 and who can be traced back all descend from Nicholas Rich. While it is possible there is another Rich family not descended from Nicholas but closely related, and missed by the Association, it is unlikely.
Nicholas not only has numerous descendants, but many of them migrated to the same area of Vermont where my Ryder ancestors lived, in many cases nearly next door. Contact between the families was found at just the expected time.
I have an autosomal match to a family which corroborates my descent from William Ryder. We have a shared segment and descent from Henry Vadakin. Although this is only a single family match so far, and autosomal evidence always has uncertainty, so this is not entirely dispositive, the totality of evidence for this link is convincing, since for example Henry did not have many descendants, making it an unlikely red herring. Thus, my descent is probably good as far as William, although I am still seeking further matches. (To be sure, I have a few other matches, but they’re much less certain.)
William’s supposed paternal grandfather Nathan Rider Sr. (a deacon) was born in Southeast, NY, far away from Vermont, and not anywhere near where any of the Rich families settled, which suggests he is not my ancestor. Y-DNA evidence only gets me an exclusion two generations before him; one Ryder testee who doesn’t match me is a descendant of Nathan’s uncle John Ryder (1746–1779).
Similarly, Nicholas Rich’s descendants who lived nearby were largely through his grandson Elisha Rich. Elisha’s son Caleb Rich, a Unitarian preacher, lived particularly close, as did his sons. However, there were scattered other descendants of Nicholas not far away, so there is less certainty here.
Future work basically covers three fronts:
There may be more documentary evidence that I haven’t seen which would help with the above, but I am primarily expecting further DNA testing to be necessary. This is what is needed for each of the above, respectively:
This chart represents possible ancestors of mine, at an undetermined number of generations back from me along a male line. It is tiered from the highly speculative to the nearly certain.