El Jefe is an amateur historian and geneologist in the "spare" time vouchchafed to him by Giga-Law Firm. Last week his cousin sent him this link to a story about getting your DNA tested for geneological purposes. Cousin had just ordered a mail-order test from a small company that specializes in analyzing DNA for geneological purposes and urged him to do it as well. Both of them have been gathering a lot of information about their shared family tree in the past few months.
When El Jefe read the article he was startled to see the name of Skip Gates. He knew Skip when they were both at Yale. Skip is now professor of African-American studies at Harvard. It seems that he had his DNA analyzed and found that his family story that one of his ancestors was a 19th century planter was wrong. In fact, one of his Anglo ancestors was a 17th century Irish indentured female servant and there was no slaveholder in his family tree. Apparently there was significantly more miscegenation in the 17th than the 19th century in America. Skip found that he was actually more European than African. Another man in the story who had always considered himself African-American found that he had no African ancestors at all--he was from mixed European, East Asian and American Indian descent. Talk about an identity crisis!
El Jefe is sending off his sample today. We don't expect anything as dramatic as the two results above, though both El Jefe and Cousin think they are Irish although their shared surname is TOTALLY English. Last fall we found out my maternal grandmother's family were Swiss Mennonites, when the family had always assumed they were Dutch. It goes to show that family stories can be really wrong.
Cousin and El Jefe are hoping the results will show they are related to some ancient Irish warlord: Neal of the 9 Hostages. Wager, anyone?
When El Jefe read the article he was startled to see the name of Skip Gates. He knew Skip when they were both at Yale. Skip is now professor of African-American studies at Harvard. It seems that he had his DNA analyzed and found that his family story that one of his ancestors was a 19th century planter was wrong. In fact, one of his Anglo ancestors was a 17th century Irish indentured female servant and there was no slaveholder in his family tree. Apparently there was significantly more miscegenation in the 17th than the 19th century in America. Skip found that he was actually more European than African. Another man in the story who had always considered himself African-American found that he had no African ancestors at all--he was from mixed European, East Asian and American Indian descent. Talk about an identity crisis!
El Jefe is sending off his sample today. We don't expect anything as dramatic as the two results above, though both El Jefe and Cousin think they are Irish although their shared surname is TOTALLY English. Last fall we found out my maternal grandmother's family were Swiss Mennonites, when the family had always assumed they were Dutch. It goes to show that family stories can be really wrong.
Cousin and El Jefe are hoping the results will show they are related to some ancient Irish warlord: Neal of the 9 Hostages. Wager, anyone?
9 comments:
Grace, that is fascinating. I look forward to hearing El Jefe's results.
This interests me a great deal, as an adopted person with no knowledge of my ancestry.
I might have to try this.
El Jefe's mother was adopted and we have almost no information about her family other than her mother's name. This is part of the reason he is interested in this as well.
I am a closet family history fanatic. I have considered doing this test but just haven't gotten to it. Which testing service did you use?
That's really amazing! Can't wait to hear more about what you find out.
We used Family Tree DNA. The url for their website is:
http://www.familytreedna.com/
for those of you who are interested.
I'll post our results when we get them.
The National Geographic is doing a study which sounds similar but less specific. I'm rather fascinated by all this.
I saw the recent PBS series on African-Americans who've gone through this process, and it was fascinating. I'd really like to have my DNA tested, because my people come from places in northern and central Europe where there was a lot of political and social flux over the centuries...it would be very interesting indeed to follow that DNA trail as far as science could take me.
Thanks for the link!
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