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The 27th Golden Family Reunion is happening April 28-30, 2023 in Williamsburg, Kentucky.

In 2022 family traveled to Kentucky from Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Michigan and Ohio, plus areas in Kentucky to meet their cousins and visit the area of where the Stephen Golden Family line first settled in Knox County, Kentucky. Plus, with DNA testing, more cousins are being found who attend the annual gathering.

Surnames tracing back to the Golden family include Alford, Alsip, Ames, Baker, Bays, Bishop, Bray, Brewer, Brooks, Bruce, Campbell, Carroll, Carter, Crawford, Cummins, Evans, Fuson, Gibson, Goins, Gresham, Hamilton, Hart, Helms, Hembree, Hubbard, Ingram, Jackson, Lawson, Lee, Logan, Lowe, Mackey, Main, Matlock, Mays, McFarland, McKiddy, Messer, Miller, Mills, Montgomery, Parris, Partin, Patterson, Rickett, Syler, Teague, Thompson, Wilson and York.

Anyone with these surnames have a good chance to be related to this family that settled here in 1804.

The itinerary of events include gathering at the Wells Cemetery on Golden Creek in Williamsburg, Kentucky at 10 a.m., Friday, April 28 to set up the tent. Later, from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., a gathering will be held at the Williamsburg Tourism and Convention Center, located at 650 South 10th Street, across the street from the Cumberland Inn in Williamsburg.

Attendees should plan to arrive on schedule. Dinner can be brought into meeting rooms. Dessert will be provided. Beverage service will be set up including coffee, tea, water and soft drinks. A copy machine will be available to share copies of family history with others.

Beginning at 8:30 a.m., Saturday, April 29, family will gather at the Stephen Golden first settlement site and his resting place on Golden Creek. A group photograph opportunity will take place after 11 a.m. before lunch. The potluck lunch begins at noon. Visitors should bring their lawn chairs. Singing will take place after lunch. Donations are welcome with any money collected going towards the Friday event, cemetery upkeep and stamps for newsletter mailing.

The event ends Sunday, April 30 with a set-up of Joshua Golden’s grave marker at the Wells Cemetery before 1 p.m.

Due to recent advances in DNA sequencing technology have revolutionized genealogical research. Thanks to DNA testing, now can look back not just 6 or 7 generations back, but thousands of years back and find out what ancient culture during the Neolithic and the Bronze age our ancestors were a part of. It will be useful to know the basics of how Y DNA genealogy works. Males have a chromosome that is specific only to males – the Y chromosome, and it is crucial for genealogical research. The Y chromosome is passed down from father to son almost without changes. But at certain intervals a mutation appears in the Y chromosome and is inherited by all descendants of a man, together with all previous mutations. In Y DNA genealogy this mutation is Single Nucleotide Polymorphism. The sequence of these mutations can be used to trace back migrations that ancestors of a given male took in the past.

The Golden family Y DNA belongs to haplogroup G-L13. The man with this mutation, that was passed to all his descendants, including the Goldens, was born among the so-called Neolithic Farmers. In a nutshell, the Neolithic Farmers are the people who first adopted a settled lifestyle and instead of foraging for food, started making their own food. The Neolithic Farmers migrated from Anatolia to Europe and brought with them agriculture. There in Europe descendants of these Neolithic Farmers, already in the Bronze Age, created the Dolmen Megalithic culture. This culture spread all over Europe and Mediterranean region, to such places as North Africa and Israel, Western Caucasus. During the Bronze Age descendants of G-L13 man were among these people.

In the G-Z39053 cluster of G-L13 haplogroup, to which the Goldens also belong, there is one SNP in which the family still doesn’t have anyone, that is G-Y57335. It is unknown exactly where the Golden ancestors were during the Bronze Age. Either they were among the Dolmen builders in the Southeastern Balkans, or among the same culture in the Western Caucasus.

During the Iron Age, the Goldens were already among the Germanic tribes of Central Europe. In the G-Y54750 SNP there is a man from Germany, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which is in Northern Germany. His last name is Eichholz. And right downstream from this German guy we have a sample from Reading, a suburb of London, named Jonathon Martin. And all other downstream mutations are the Goldens.

A very high degree of probability that before moving to the United States the Goldens lived in England. Jonathon Martin’s time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) is 1,350 years before present day. This is the exact time when Germanic tribes invaded the British Isles. Since Martin came from Southern England, most likely his ancestor was among the Saxons. Already in the United States several more mutations appeared in this line. All of these mutations (SNPs) are within one extended Golden family. This data was shared by Anzor Kashezh, whom the Goldens share a grandfather ancestor from many years ago. He has helped the family to understand the results of 11 male Golden Y-DNA test takers with valuable data.

For more information contact Carol Golden, family historian, at 865-376-7141 or email goldencj@msn.com.