Harvest of the Helix : Our Tidwell Y-DNA

The Tidwell's receive my highest amount of autosomal cousin matches. So this year I asked Uncle Oliver to test, and more than one-third of my dad's autosomal matches also match him. One of my first DNA success stories with a confirmed paper trail back to my great great grandfather Andrew Tidwell born 1844, was discovered prior to Uncle Oliver testing has since been confirmed to also match him and higher than the way he matches either my dad or myself. Oliver is my dad's mothers brother my paternal (maternal side) grand Uncle. I also learned that my Uncle is a haplogroup E1b1a8a1* which means his ancient paternal families, father's father's father direct male line can trace back to a single mutation of a male born 20,000 years ago in Sub Saharan Africa. I checked the Tidwell surname project on Family Tree DNA to see if any Tidwell male lineages on there were haplogroup E* and this is what I found:

Family Tree DNA Tidwell surname project

Most of the Tidwell men who tested, tested to haplogroup I* which means my great great grandfather Andrew J Tidwell was probably not a direct descendant of a Tidwell male. This doesn't mean however that we are not autosomally related to the Tidwell's who are haplogroup I*.

So far Uncle Oliver has the most Sub-Saharan African matches on Countries of Ancestry on 23 and me having all four grandparents from the Continent. This includes two matches with all four grandparents from Edo Nigeria, four grandparents from Mauritius, four grandparents South Africa, four grandparents Kenya, four grandparents Uganda, and four grandparents Niger. Also, our cousin from Ecuador triangulates with my grand Uncle Oliver.

Recently, my dad received another high match on AncestryDNA to a Tidwell cousin with Tidwell relatives from Texas. Her Tidwell family traces to Thomas Tidwell born 1835 and ours to Andrew Tidwell 1844. I asked her to upload to gedmatch which she did and learned that she also matches Uncle Oliver we have yet to determine who our most recent common ancestor is. This is how she matches Uncle Oliver: