Castle surname yDNA project

A couple of years ago I dreamed up a project to prove or disprove the folklore that says that Jacob Castle (the long hunter) was a descendant of one of the sons of Yelles Cassell who left the Palatinate to move to Pennsylvania in the late 1600s.  These men first live in Germantown, Pennsylvania and some of them continued to live there for generations.  

So I bought a kit for a man whose paper trail connected him to Jacob Castle (the long hunter) who moved to southwest Virginia c. 1747.  This man is an autosomal match to me, so I am fairly certain that he does indeed represent the Castle family from which I descend.  Then I searched Ancestry public trees until I found a man who had a good paper trail to Yelles Castle and whose family continues to live in Germantown even to this day.  Much to my disappointment the participants for whom I bought yDNA kits did not match.  But I am not yet convinced that this means that Jacob did not descend from Yelles Cassell.   And here is what I am thinking at this point of my project.

Unfortunately the man who was the administrator for the Castle surname yDNA project had not done much to organize the participants who had joined the project.  I sent him several messages over a years time and he never responded.  So I asked FTDNA if they would add me to the project as an administrator which they did just before Christmas this past year.  Beginning the new year I began to organize the participants into family groups.  It is not a large project.  FG#1 contains Jon Castle who is my participant who has excellent paper trail to Yelles and whose family still lives close to where the early Cassell brothers lived when the first came to our shores.  Jon only has one match who carries the Castle/Cassell surname.  Even at 67 markers there are only 3 matches.....2 of the matches carry a different surname.  Does this indicate a birth incident for Jon's line or just the fact that not many men who have ancestors who fit the description of connecting to Yelles Cassell have tested at this time?

Family group #2 is a larger group.  It is probably the largest group in the project.  All of the men in Family Group #2 claim connection to Jacob the Longhunter except for one participant who does not have information about his paternal line.  I have asked among the participants to see if there is any chance that any of them do NOT connect to Jacob but instead connect to another son of Yelles and no one has come forth with a yes to that query.

So I am not farther along with my project.  However yesterday I noticed something of interest. I was chatting with the man who doesn't know his paternal line to see if I could send him anything helpful.  And As I looked at this man's matches, I noticed that the first 10 matches (except for one) claimed connection to Jacob the longhunter OR carried the Harmon surname OR claim connection to ancestor with Harmon/Harman surname.  Then many of the participants who are slightly less close matches have VERY Scotch/Irish surnames...NOT GERMAN.  Could Jacob Castle have had Scotch-Irish heritage instead of German?  Did he change his name?  Could his Castle surname have had connections to Great Britain instead of Germany?  Will we be able to solve this puzzle with dna?   My participant who descends from Jacob the long hunter has haplogroup R-M479.  This haplogroup could be British or German .....this does not raise red flags.

I wanted to add a map to this post to show that Jacob Castle and Jacob Harmon were relative neighbors in the mid 1700s....