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Sorry, Jack, no cigar. Your Grandpa's Indians are not what you think. And it is not true "most free African American families that originated in colonial Virginia and Maryland descended from white servant women who had children by slaves or free Africans" (source). Negro males did not go around selectively "fathering" little man-children on "white servant women" in early America.

It is ironic that these fantasies should even emerge in the recently publicized report, "Melungeon DNA Study Reveals Ancestry, Upsets a 'Whole Lot of People.'" The authors of the report, Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson and Janet Lewis Crain, have spent the better part of ten years trying to prove they and others with Melungeon ancestry are just plain folks, that is, white folks.

Maybe they are just that, though. Among the conclusions of the report are that Melungeons aren't Portuguese, aren't Native American, aren't Jewish, aren't Romani/Gypsy, aren't . . . . On and on. They just have a teeny-tiny bit of Sub-Saharan African in some lines. Not to worry, though, it is just a little soupçon of non-white. And it goes back to a few heroic "negroes" (the report's language) who left a trace their Sub-Saharan African Y chromosomes in the fathers and sons and grandpas of three Melungeon families.

From an article published, lo! way back in 2002 in the Appalachian Quarterly, now sadly defunct,

Shalom and Hey, Y'all (243 KB)

comes the true story of these "negroes" (the report's language) fathering "multiethnic" babies on innocent white indentured servant women.

In discussing the will of Indian trader James Adair, the author of the study remarks on the fact that Adair did not apparently approve of his daughter Agnes marrying John Gibson (from the selfsame Melungeon Gibson family that is creating all the brouhaha today). (Agnes, by the way, was not an indentured servant; her father had a considerable fortune.)

           "Notice the harsh treatment Adair accords his daughter Agnes, leaving her and her husband John Gibson the nominal sum of only one shilling (if he had left her nothing, she could have protested to the probate court that he simply forgot her). John was one of the “mulatto” Gibsons of the Great Pee Dee river valley region. Gideon Gibson stands large on the pages of history for his role in the so-called Regulators Revolt. The Gideon Glass Antiques Store today pays testimony to the “richest man in South Carolina” of his time. When members of the Gibson family first moved to the state in 1731, representatives in the House of Assembly complained “several free colored men with their white wives had immigrated from Virginia.” Governor Robert Johnson summoned Gibson and his family and reported:

            I have had them before me in Council and upon Examination find that they are not Negroes nor Slaves but Free people, That the Father of them here is named Gideon Gibson and his Father was also free, I have been informed by a person who has lived in Virginia that this Gibson has lived there Several Years in good Repute and by his papers that he has produced before me that his transactions there have been very regular. That he has for several years paid Taxes for two tracts of Land and had several Negroes of his own, That he is a Carpenter by Trade and is come hither for the support of his Family [Box 2, bundle:  S.C. Minutes of House of Burgesses (1730-35), 9, Parish Transcripts, N.Y. Hist. Soc. By Jordan, White over Black, 172.]

 

"The Gibsons are discussed as Melungeons in Brent Kennedy and as true-to-form Sephardic Jews in Hirschman. Melungeon Gibsons derive their origins from the Chavis family, one of the oldest Portuguese-Jewish names in America. If they are Jewish, it is ironic—and probably funnier than any Fanny Brice skit—that historians trot them forth as shining examples of non-slave African American colonials owning land and marrying white women."

The moral of the story? Melungeons have often been hauled into court to prove they are not black. Now they are being dragged through the court of Internet opinion. The outcome is doubtful.

Now about those Indians . . . That will have to wait until another blog post.

Photo: Black Revolutionary soldier. Blackpast.org.

Article cited:  Donald N. Panther-Yates, “Shalom and Hey, Y’all:  Jewish-American Indian Chiefs in the Old South,” Appalachian Quarterly 7/2 (June 2002) 80-89.

More information about Melungeons
Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern Appalachia
Melungeon Studies
Melungeon Match
Melungeon DNA Fingerprint Plus
The War on Melungeons
Melungeons.com

Shalom and Hey, Y'all (243 KB)

Brent Kennedy's book on Melungeons
Elizabeth Hirschman's book on Melungeons
Lisa Alther's new novel on Melungeons

Mountains will be in labor, and an absurd mouse will be born, meaning all that work and nothing to show for it.

In a previous post we drew attention to an online article "Melungeons, A multiethnic Population,"published by the International Society for Genetic Genealogy in Journal of Genetic Genetic Genealogy, its authors Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson and Janet Lewis Crain.

The article is a bit forbidding at some 100 pages and it fairly bristles with self-importance and DNA, so we will attempt to summarize it.

Here are some highlights from the summary in the article itself, with our comments in italics:

Summary

Many sources exist where the Melungeons identify themselves variously as Indians and Portuguese.  Only one family, the Goins, are identified orally as having negro heritage.  Given the physically dark appearance of the Melungeons, they have unquestionable heritage other than European.

This seems to be an unsurprising conclusion, until you realize that after limiting their sights to Melungeons who called themselves Portuguese, preferably only those in the 37869 zip code, and Goins who already identified themselves as having Sub-Saharan African (please, not the n-word in 2012, or at least capitalize it), the authors are going to draw a further veil on proceedings and deepen the mystery. Read on.

Every Melungeon core family is indentified in multiple records as being "of color".


We won't comment on the equivocation going on here. Please read on.

DNA evidence identifies several lines conclusively as having African roots, specifically, Bunch, Collins, Goins (3 separate lines), Minor and possibly Nichols.  Gibson has one line who has tested and shows haplogroup E1b1a, but they also match another Louisa County affiliated family, Donathan.

 

Of these families, the Collins family has four different haplogroups within the same family group, a situation not unexpected based on the commentary by Will Allen Dromgoole wherein she states that of the Collins that while "they all were not blood descendants of Old Vardy they had all fallen under his banner and appropriated his name."

The Collins and Gibson founding lines, meaning Vardy Collins and Shephard "Buck" Gibson were said to be Cherokee and stole the names of white men in Virginia.  Their DNA indicates that if they were Native, it was not via their paternal line. 

Comma splice. Hate to be petty. How do you steal a white man's name? I certainly hope no Melungeons are going to steal mine. This is one of the funniest conclusions I have read so far. But do continue, Gentle Reader.

Dromgoole reportedly stayed with Calloway Collins who stated that his grand-father was a Cherokee Chief.  His Collins grandfather was Benjamin Collins who lived on Newman's Ridge and did not remove in 1835.  There are no known Cherokee who lived on Newman's Ridge.  The Cherokee Nation was significantly further south prior to removal in 1835, as shown in Figure 12.

After making fun of other people who claim Cherokee chiefs and princesses in their family tree, the authors seem willing to entertain an exception with their own relatives, or friends. We will not quibble with their Cherokee history but would have said "farther" rather than "further." Maybe that is a regionalism, however. Don't give up yet.

The Mullins line was reputed to be Irish and is confirmed genetically to be European.  However, "Irish Jim", the progenitor is listed as a "free person of color", a very unusual classification for an immigrant from the British Isles.  Droomgoole states that the Mullins will "fight for their Indian blood."  No Indian heritage is evident in historical records or DNA.

We would like to remark that Irish, like other undesirables in early America, were often considered non-white and persons of color. Please purchase the book by Nell Irvin Painter for your local library, The History of White People. 

The Denham line was said to be Portuguese and oral history indicates that the line originated "further south" or possibly from a shipwreck, yet the Revolutionary War pension application of David Denham says he was born in Louisa County, Virginia.  The Denham line may connect with the Gibsons as early as 1627 in Charles City County.  The Denham DNA is European and the Denham descendant who DNA tested has no Spanish or Portuguese matches.  Denham is not Portuguese on the paternal Y-line.

Watch that distinction between "further" and "farther." The latter is to be used of distance; the former of degree or depth. I was born pretty far south but not fur.

A significant amount of oral history regarding Portuguese heritage exists, but no historical, genealogical or genetic evidence has been discovered to corroborate the oral history.  Some historical information refutes the oral history. 

Really? Who have you been talking to?

Claims of Portuguese ancestry are a pattern that stretches beyond the Melungeon families and is found explaining a "dark countenance" across the eastern half of the US, providing a European answer to the question of why. 

Oh, no. Now we have "dark countenances." Please buy that book I mentioned.

One possible source of the pervasive Portuguese oral history is that the Portuguese were heavily involved prior to 1642 in the early importation of African indentured servants, some of whom would eventually become free and some of whom would become slaves.

So that's it!

On the 1880 census, several Melungeon families claimed Portuguese as their race.  An analysis of the families so claiming reveals that none of them were descended from the Denham line.  Some, but not all were descended from the Sizemore and Riddle Native families.  Of the 22 adults listed initially as Portuguese, more than half, 12 are descended from either the Goins or Minor families with African haplogroups, 11 are descended from the Sizemore family, 4 from the Riddle family, 4 are not descended from any of the above and 3 are unknown. 

Tsk, tsk. The word "none" requires a singular verb. You should write, "None of them is..." I am not even going to attempt to straighten out your punctuation or sentence predication. Gentle reader, please persist. The best is yet to come.

Ironically, the Sizemore family is not identified as Melungeon in Hancock/Hawkins Counties, but is ancestral to many Melungeon families and settled there are well.  The Sizemore family is proven genetically to be Native, haplogroup Q1a3a.  Furthermore, there are two Native Sizemore lines, although only one is known to be ancestral to the Melungeon families.  A European Sizemore line also exists, and the Bolins match the European Sizemore lines, suggesting that these families may have had a common genesis or that these Sizemores may in fact be Bolins.  Both families are found in early Virginia along the North Carolina border.

I always wondered about that. Now I know less than I thought I did before.

A link has been found through the Goins family to the Lumbee.  The "Smiling" Goins family was not thought to be an original Lumbee family, but subsequent research has shown that even though the group in 1915 was thought to be an "outside" group, the ancestors of this group were found in 1770 with other founding Lumbee families.  The Moore and Cumberland County Pocket Creek Goins groups have always claimed kinship with the Lumbee.  Other links to the Lumbee have not yet been found.  The Lumbee Tribe has been reticent to support DNA testing and common surnames between the Lumbee and the Melungeon Core group have not all been tested.

I don't blame the Lumbee tribe for being reticent to support DNA testing. Most folks I know are pretty reticent about DNA. A better word would have been "reluctant."

The Riddle family who is also ancestral to the Melungeon families is genetically European, haplogroup R1b1b2, but is documented historically to be Indian from a 1767 tax list where they are noted as such.  Furthermore, they are found in other "Indian Communities" such as Pocket Creek in Moore County, NC, tied to the Goins family.  In 1820 several Riddle families are found beside a Goins family whose first name is illegible.  In 1830 in Moore County, William Riddle is found beside both Levy and Edward Goins, believed to be the Goins family of the Lumbee. 

That Riddle family! And now we find out they are living next to "Smiling" Goins.

Edward Goins is later found in Sumter County, SC, a progenitor of one the Smiling Indian families in Sumter County, SC, also known as Red Bones.  This Goins family moved from Sumter County and settled in Robeson County, NC in 1907.  The progenitor of this line, Frederick Goen, is found with the Lumbee much earlier, on the 1770 Bladen County tax list. Testimony regarding this family in 1915 states that the father's line is Melungeon.

Are you sure this is the summary?!

The Goins family is found in multiple locations in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, several of which are involved with legal proceedings relative to their race.  There are three genetic Melungeon Goins family lines, two E1b1a and one haplogroup A, all three being of sub-Saharan African origin. 

Wait a minute. Aren't we just talking about male lines, and only one family at that, and only three cases at that. That doesn't seem like a fair summary.

In Hawkins/Hancock County, Tennessee, Sumter County, SC, and Spartanburg District (Georgetown County), SC these Goins families are referred to as Melungeon.  Genetically, they share a common ancestor, probably John Goins found in Hanover County in 1735.

Indeed! So to carry this to its logical conclusion, Jack Goins is descended from John Goins. John Goins was a white man. So is Jack Goins. Did I miss anything?

The Sumter County, SC Goins family is found in Bladen in 1770 . . . where Louisa County families later settled. [several paragraphs omitted for brevity's sake]

Turning to autosomal genetic testing, no Native heritage was found using marker D9S919, although this finding does not disprove Native heritage.

Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. That's what my father always told me.

It is possible in some cases that haplogroup E1b1ba could be found in rare instances in Europe through historical invasions such as the Roman Legions. However, given the Louisa County cluster, it's unlikely that a large cluster of haplogroup E1b1a of European origin would be coincidentally found together in the colonies.  It's much more likely that this cluster is a result of people with a common bond living in close proximity and intermarrying.  Furthermore, if haplogroup E were to be found in Europe, it's much more likely to be E1b1b, the Berber haplogroup, not E1b1a.  No Melungeon families are found with haplogroup E1b1b or subclades.

Thank goodness those Roman legions didn't make it to Tennessee. But it seems like no North Africans did either, which is strange. See our post Right Church, Wrong Pew.

Marriage partners in colonial Virginia were legally restricted beginning in 1691 with the passage of a law that forbid the English intermarriage with Indians, mulattoes and negroes.  Prior to that, interracial marriages and encounters outside of marriage occurred regularly.  This restriction, along with increasingly severe penalties in the event that the intermarriage did occur was repeated in various laws in 1705, 1753 and 1792 in Virginia and in 1715 and 1741 in North Carolina, in essence requiring anyone who was other than white to intermarry within their own group or groups of racially similar individuals, meaning others "of color."  Legal marriages between whites and other races would have had to predate 1691, although illegitimacy certainly knew no boundaries.  In marriages occurring after 1691 in Virginia, in couples where one individual was "other than white," both partners could be presumed to have at least some recognizable non-European heritage.

This is one of the most hilarious and bigoted parts of this article, so be sure you read it several times to absorb it in all its unintended humor.

Given the proven Native ancestral families to the Melungeons combined with cultural styles that are perhaps suggestive of a maternal culture, Native or African, via illegitimacy, one would expect to find Native or African mitochondrial DNA.  However, all mitochondrial DNA to date has been European.  This was not expected given the very high levels of consanguity and intermarriage within this group from at least the mid 1700s through the mid-1900s.  However, Heinegg's analysis of mixed race families in early Virginia and his discovery that the predominant pattern of African or mixed men fathering children with white indentured female partners may explain these findings.

Typo:  consanguinity. And sorry, but we don't buy your and Heinegg's theory about African men "fathering children with white indentured female partners." Those weren't African men, for one thing. But that is a whole other story, and it happened in Spain, and besides the wench is dead.

No evidence, historical, oral, genealogical or genetic has been found to support a Turkish, Middle Eastern, Jewish or Gypsy heritage.

Paydirt! The end! So what are they? You're not going to cop out and tell me they are just plain old folks. Or are you? Shucks, I guess that would make sense, though. Start out with a bunch of plain old folks, test them, and you can prove they are plain old folks. Your conclusions come from your premises. And your premises come from your conclusions.

I am normally all in favor of any DNA test or genealogy subscription or genealogical resource that can help the family researcher discover their ancestors. But "Melungeons, A multiethnic Population,"published by the International Society for Genetic Genealogy in Journal of Genetic Genetic Genealogy, by Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson and Janet Lewis Crain is without doubt one of the most pretentious, portentous and poorly conceived articles I have ever read in just about any field, and I will read almost anything. If you want a bitter laugh, though, check it out. You may find out why "Smilin' Goins" is smiling.

More information about Melungeons
Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern Appalachia
Melungeon Studies
Melungeon Match

It is clear that consumers, and many geneticists and medical professionals, underestimate the complexity of genetically determined diseases and their risk levels as measured by genomic testing. The question is whether it is ethically sound to sell consumers packaged DNA tests that could exaggerate their risk for say, heart disease, or render a false negative result. In one study, DTC testing on average handed out very slight risk factors across the board, lower than those known to be in the general population. Another study, the first of its kind, performs an experiment comparing traditional genetic screening by counselors to "insta-testing" by Navigenics. It looks like the technology of DTC has a long way to go, while our understanding itself of genetically inherited disorders is still in a rudimentary stage of development. Rather than exploring new sites and new tests the emphasis needs to be on interpreting the studies and data we already have.

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing services: what are the medical benefits?

Thierry Frebourg

Eur J Hum Genet 2012 20: 483; advance online publication, January 4, 2012; 10.1038/ejhg.2011.229

Full Text

The dictionary defines "megapopulation" as a very large one, from the Greek suffix mega, the same element as in "megabyte." In statistics, a population is the whole field from which you choose a sample or representative segment. Thus, to test American Hispanic/Latinos you might draw a sample of 400 people from a predefined population of everyone with a Hispanic surname in a telephone book.

How reliable and valid your sample is depends on methodology. By combining populations you can study a metapopulation (all related populations, for instance North and South American Latin or Iberian populations) or megapopulation (all populations with Iberian ancestry in the world).

Going from the small to the large, we  have then:

Individual

Sample

Population

Metapopulation

Megapopulation

Universe

In a census, the sample and population coincide; everyone is counted.

In population statistics, this hierarchy might look like this:

John Doe

Arizona Hispanic study (n=104, that is 104 persons in the sample)

U.S. Hispanics

North American Hispanic

Iberian American

Iberian or Part-Iberians in the World

At DNA Consultants, megapopulations are the broadest ethnic category calculated and reported to you. (We look at metapopulations, too, but only as a control measure.) Our database coverage is described below.

Megapopulation Names

and number of populations included

 

African 17

African American 28

American Indian 24

Australoid 3

Austronesian 6

Central Asian 39

Central European 13

East Asian 39

East European 8

European American 24

Iberian 32

Iberian American 61

Jewish 3

Mediterranean European 20

Melungeon 1

Middle Eastern 36

North Asian 3

Northern European 15

Romani 4

South Asian 35

Southeast Asian 12

 

 

Beyond Megapopulations (and percentage of total populations) These categories correspond roughly to what people used to think of as "race," a now-discredited notion. They are continent-specific, with African and Caucasian extended to North and South American African and European populations.

 

African   45     11%  

 

Amerind   24    6%

 

Austral 9    2%

 

Asian  67    17%

 

Caucasian  255    64%

 

 

 

Another Calculation We created these totals to see what kind of white versus non-white coverage the database has.

 

White  255  64%

Non-White  145   36%

Total 400 Populations

And that's all you need to know about megapopulations! But in case you're still confused here are some useful links:

Metapopulation in Wikipedia

Autosomal DNA Based Populations in atDNA 4.0 (DNA Consultants)
405 Populations with links to further information in many cases

What Everyone Always Wanted: Our New Megapopulations Report

30-Nov-2011
After a lot of hard work, DNA Consultants has introduced "bottom l... (more)

New Megapopulations: The Bottom Line
17-Nov-2011
Work by our head of statistics over the summer has made it possible to... (more)

Population Pages Are Coming!
09-Apr-2012
Have you ever wanted to know more about the populations you match? May... (more)

Short answer: pre-Roman times.

As is well known, Haplogroup E1b1b1 accounts for approximately 18% to 20% of Ashkenazi and 8.6% to 30% of Sephardic Y-chromosomes. This North African type appears to be one of the major founding lineages of the Jewish population.[i]

In Britain, this quintessential Jewish type (together with J, another telltale sign of Middle Eastern roots) is absent or negligible in many towns and regions but reported in elevated frequencies in Wales (Llanidloes 7%, Llangefni 5%), the Midlands (Southwell, Nottinghamshire 12%, Uttoxeter 8%), Faversham in Kent (9%), Dorchester in the West Country with historic harbors (7%), Midhurst in West Sussex commanding ancient sea-ports (5%)  and the Channel Islands, always an important crossroads of influences (5%).[ii] Bryan Sykes’ survey of paternal clans in England and Wales confirms significant traces of the E haplogroup which he dubs Eshu in southern England (4.9%) and Wales (3.1%).[iii] It reaches its highest point in Britain in Abergele, Wales (nearly 40%), an anomaly that has been attributed to Roman soldiers of Balkan origin but may have alternative and more complex explanations.

See our blog post "Right Church, Wrong Pew," arguing that the footprint of E in Britain is attributable to North African influence, not the descendants of Roman legionnaires from the Balkans.

In 2011, Llangefni  and Wrexham in North Wales became the focus of a call for local men to provide samples of their unusual DNA. A team of scientists lead by Andy Grierson and Robert Johnston from the University of Sheffield hoped to link the migration of men from the Mediterranean to the copper mined at Parys Mountain on Anglesey and on the Great Orme promontory nearby. A preliminary analysis of 500 participants showed 30% of the men carried E1b1b, compared to 1% of men elsewhere in the United Kingdom.[iv]

Significantly, Welsh tradition associates the Iron Age hilltop town on Conwy Mountain known as Castell Caer Seion with a settlement of ancient Jews. This site overlooks Conwy Bay on the north coast of Wales and lies on the ancient road between Prestatyn in Denbighshire and Bangor in Gwynedd opposite Angelsey.  In the Black Book of Caermarthen, the Welsh national bard Taliesin casually remarks in the persona of the battling hero,

When I return from Caer Seon,

From contending with Jews,

I will come to the city of Lleu and Gwidion.[v]

Lleu and Gwidion are the names of two other legendary figures; they are believed to be historical and to have lived in the early centuries of the Common Era or anterior to it.

It is hard to avoid the thought that the hilly area to the west of the town of Conwy, in North Wales was once inhabited by Jews.

Every year in the United States about half a million paternity cases are performed proving or disproving whether an alleged father is the true parent of a child. Sometimes there is a court order to do this; at other times, it is sheerly for personal information. The determination of parentage is made based on a simple comparison of a small rock-hard number of genetic markers in the DNA fingerprint of the child and alleged father. Samples are extracted from a 30-second cheek swab and processed at any of an estimated 2,000 forensic labs across the country. The standard in place since about 1997 has been a set of 30-32 biallelic or double values each person carries on loci spread across their chromosomes, making for a virtually unique identification signature that reflects the equal DNA input of mother and father (and in fact all grandparents and all ancestors).

Often termed CODIS markers (standing for Combined DNA Identification System), these alleles or variations are the magic numbers underlying the popularity of paternity tests as well as the national passion for jailing or exonerating crime suspects. If a value is found in the DNA profile of the child and is not present in the two observed values of the alleged father on the same locus, this constitutes what is known in the paternity business as an exclusion:  the alleged father is almost certainly not the true father. Conversely, if all the alleged father’s values can be detected in the child’s on each location, one after another, that male is judged to be the child’s biological father to a 99.999% certainty. Paternity tests are simple math.

A famous paternity test involved proving who was the true father of the baby born to Anna Nicole Smith in 2006. After her death in early 2007, several men came forward claiming to be in father, including a European prince, Anna Nicole’s bodyguard and a convict who had been a former boyfriend. Larry Birkhead pressed his case. When the results came in, he was declared by Bahamian court to be the baby’s biological father. The child’s original birth certificate was amended to show this.

Can paternity testing be used in a reverse process to establish the identity of a father, given only the child’s DNA profile? No, but with enough DNA profiles available for comparison the missing member of a family group can be reconstructed by comparing alleles they must share, called obligate.  Doing so is a matter of logic and statistics, mostly just either-or, deductive logic.

I became interested in reconstructing a parent’s profile after many of DNA Consultants’ customers inquired if such a calculation or estimate was even possible. Some were adopted persons who had no recourse to testing their parents, some knew one parent but not the other, and some had no access to parents. They were either uninterested or unavailable. In a special category were females who were only-children with both parents deceased who wanted to know something about their father, but who could not take a Y-chromosome haplotyping test, as they did not carry a copy of their father’s male DNA. In this respect, autosomal DNA testing is the great equalizer.

My father, Lawden Henry Yates, died in 1978. My mother, Bessie Cooper Yates, lived to the advent of DNA tests, but I failed to obtain any sample from her before her death in 2006. I had siblings and half-siblings still living, however, so in 2010, I constructed a family group autosomal DNA study with the help of Crystal Wagner at Chromosomal Laboratories/Bode Technology. The results were very satisfying. This paper and blog post will serve as a report to those who are interested.

Step One
I was fortunate to have the participation of three half-sisters by my father, along with his second wife, their mother. Comparing mother and daughters I was able to verify the obligate alleles each daughter must have received from the mother.

Autosomal alleles are fixed in our genealogy, have little or no mutations (unlike YSTRs, which mutate from generation to generation, as do mitochondrial nucleotide positions, though more gradually over time)[*] and derive from both parents equally by recombination at the moment of conception. They are copied and preserved without change in every cell of our bodies. The mother is responsible for half of the equation.  By a process of elimination the other number on each row of the lab report must represent the father’s contributions.  This method is completely logical and unequivocal. There can be no other answer to the problem. No studies suggest these pieces of our double helix DNA change significantly in transmission from one generation to the next or mutate over time in genealogies. Their values and patterns are strictly attributable to heredity.

Step Two
The father’s alleles are confirmed by a comparison with three children by his first wife, my mother.  

Step Three
By the same watertight process we can now proceed to the mother’s reconstructed DNA profile. In it, we can expect to visualize the final piece of the puzzle, proceeding from the known to the unknown according to the immutable laws of autosomal DNA and genetic inheritance.

We have arrived at my mother Bessie Yates’ DNA profile by a multi-step process of extrapolating it using three of her children and three children by her husband’s second marriage, along with the test results of my half-sisters’ mother. Seven tested profiles yielded two reconstructed ones. In the process we have also recovered my deceased father’s DNA profile.

Separating Mother and Father’s Contributions to Ancestry
Having overcome these hurtles, I was most interested in the utility of the results. I felt confidant about the method. But what excited me most was to see how my own autosomal ancestry results might be respectively apportioned in my parents. For this, I ran a DNA Fingerprint Plus on them both. The findings were very satisfying to me personally, helping solve many questions I had always had about what ancestry I got from my father, what from my mother and what from both.

Let’s start with American Indian admixture. My own DNA Fingerprint Test, as well as percentage tests through another company, suggested a relatively large amount, perhaps one-quarter all told by various measures, but family tradition had placed Native American heritage solely on my mother’s side. To be sure, my mother gave me a Native American mitochondrial haplotype, indicating a female line going back to a Cherokee woman in Georgia, traced as far back in records as 1790. Extensive genealogy research showed, however, that my father’s great-grandmother was also a Cherokee with the surname Thomas from North Carolina. What did the new autosomal DNA profiles say?

On a rough measure, I have received a “double dose” of Native American II, a marker co-relating with 80% of 24 tested American Indian populations in the atDNA 4.0 database. (Two siblings and one half-sibling received only single doses.) This seemed to indicate that I had some degree Native American (not possible to say how much) from both parents. True enough apparently, judging from the top world matches for my mother and father. I give here the top ten for comparison.

 

Mother Rank World Population Matches 1 Russia - Chukchi (n = 15) 2 White - Maine (n = 151) 3 Native American - Athabaskan (n = 101) 4 Swedish (n = 311) 5 Hispanic - U.S. (n = 199) 6 El Salvadoran (n = 296) 7 Native American - Choles - Chiapas (n = 109) 8 Portuguese - Azores (n = 100) 9 Argentinian - Patagonian - Chubut (n = 320) 10 Korean - Western U.S. (n = 63)

 

Father Rank World Population Matches 1 Melungeon (n = 40) 2 White - Canadian (n = 164) 3 Belgian - Flemish (n = 231) 4 Native American - Saskatchewan (n =105) 5 India - Indo-Caucasoid - Brahmin (n = 110) 6 Native American  - Minnesota (n = 191) 7 India - Indo-Caucasoid - Kayastha (n = 103) 8 Japanese - Central (n =164) 9 Argentinian - Santa Fe (n = 562) 10 Brazilian - Sao Paulo (n = 113)

 

My mother’s Native American population matches were slightly higher and more numerous than my father’s, including more peoples like the Chukchi and Mongols, but my father’s were not inconsiderable in their own right. Here’s how their two megapopulation rankings look:
 

Mother North Asian 1 in 35 billion Northern European 1 in 632 billion Central Asian 1 in 747 billion American Indian 1 in 827 billion European American 1 in 856 billion Iberian American 1 in 1 trillion Iberian 1 in 1 trillion Central European 1 in 2 trillion Melungeon 1 in 2 trillion Mediterranean European 1 in 2 trillion

Father European American 1 in 20 trillion Northern European 1 in 185 trillion Jewish 1 in 204 trillion Iberian 1 in 274 trillion Iberian American 1 in 728 trillion Central European 1 in 919 trillion Middle Eastern 1 in 924 trillion American Indian 1 in 1 quadrillion East European 1 in 2 quadrillion Mediterranean European 1 in 2 quadrillion

These results confirmed that my father did have some Native American, although evidently not as much. They also suggested that although both bore about the same mixture of European and Native American ancestry (including high matches to Melungeon), my mother had a more pronounced Native American cast, her highest match being to North Asian, one of the supposed Asiatic feeder populations of Native Americans, whereas my father’s top match was European American. Based on profile frequencies, my father was five times more likely to be European American than American Indian if subjected to forensic profiling, whereas my mother was 18 times more likely to come out as a Siberian Native than Northern European. Sometimes, it seems, exotic ancestry rises to the top. My overall conclusion was that my mother probably had 3/8 and my father 1/8 Native American heritage, which corresponds to their proved genealogies.

In my own profile, combining those of my parents, here are my megapopulation results:

 

Self (Donald N. Yates)

North Asian	1 in 3 billion
Central Asian	1 in 12 billion
American Indian	1 in 25 billion
East Asian	1 in 42 billion
European American	1 in 42 billion
Northern European	1 in 44 billion
Iberian American	1 in 50 billion
Central European	1 in 70 billion
Iberian	1 in 75 billion
Melungeon	1 in 103 billion

According to these frequencies, my mother and father’s Native American ancestry reinforced each other in me to make my top four matches Native American (or Siberian-Mongol-Turkic), so that I am about twice as likely to be graded into the Native American category by population statistics than the European. Similar conclusions emerged from my siblings’ tests, and a diminished presence of Native American indicators was confirmed in my half-siblings, although their mother seemed to evince some Native American as well as my father, the shared parent. All participants in this study had grandparents born in North Alabama.

Further observations are possible. For instance, I was surprised to see a large indication of Jewish ancestry in my father’s profile. Genealogy confirms as much, as the family surname is Hebrew (an anagram of Ger Tzedek similar to Katz, Kohen Tzedek). The emigrant Yates figure was reportedly an English Jew in seventeenth-century Virginia. My mother also showed Jewish ancestry. Both parents matched Melungeons, an Appalachian ethnic type suspected to have Sephardic Jewish forebears. My father’s family included uncles named Josephus, Manaen, Irbin, Azariah, Lazarus and Sherith—apparently his Middle Eastern matches were truthful to a partial Muslim background. My mother’s mother was named Palestine, and the names Isaac and Jacob were ubiquitous in her family tree. But neither side of the family claimed any Jewish heritage. It was left to autosomal DNA to reveal that hidden inheritance.

Although never performed before to my knowledge, this method of reconstructing autosomal profiles can be useful to others seeking to recover unavailable relatives’ genetic fingerprints and to separate parents’ contributions to their children’s ethnic and ancestral stories. Since it is based on immutable markers in DNA it rests on more solid ground than Y chromosome alleles or mitochondrial mutations. The challenge in exploiting the method is to have enough subjects in your family group study. In my case, I was fortunate to have a prolific father with six living children. I would like to conclude by thanking all my siblings, half-sisters and my father’s widow. Their participation made it possible to present a true first in DNA genealogy.

Read the working paper
A Method of Reconstructing Parentage and Ancestry by Autosomal DNA Profiles

Go to Learn about DNA

 

 

 

 

Lorton, VA – February 13, 2012 – Bode Technology (Bode), a leading provider of forensic DNA services, announced today the acquisition of Chromosomal Laboratories, Inc., a leading provider of DNA testing for immigration and private paternity.

By adding this expertise to its portfolio of service offerings, Bode will utilize its vast international and domestic presence to provide best inclass immigration paternity and private paternity testing to clients worldwide. Bode is a whollyowned subsidiary of SolutionPoint International, Inc.

“Chromosomal Laboratories has established an excellent reputation through its focus on clientservice, fast turnaround and high quality,” said Barry Watson, CEO & President of Bode. “Their focus on immigration and paternity testing complements Bode’s strengths in forensic casework and databasing, and enables us to expand our domestic and international offerings. With the increased use of DNA for immigration purposes and recent changes in the marketplace, we see opportunities for significant growth.”

“Having admired and respected Bode Technology as a competitor in forensics for years, I am extremely excited and proud that Chromosomal has this opportunity to join their team,” said Vladimir Bolin, CEO and co-founder of Chromosomal Laboratories, Inc. “The ethics, vision,resources and leadership of the Bode team is beyond reproach, and sets a solid foundation for Chromosomal’s technical and market leadership in the coming years.”

Chromosomal Laboratories, founded in 2004, maintains AABB accreditation for relationship testing activities and ISO 17025 accreditation in forensics. It provides relationship and forensic services both in the United States and internationally. Operating out of its state-of-the-art facility in Phoenix, AZ, Chromosomal Laboratories has provided services for samples from every state in the United States and approximately one hundred countries.

DNA Analysis from Fingerprints

Fingerprints are routinely used in crime scene investigations to characterize individuals associated with forensic evidence. However, fingerprints are sometimes smeared or incomplete and cannot be interpreted or used for further analysis. The use of mtDNA for the identification of fingerprints would be valuable in forensic investigations. The research department at The Bode Technology Group has developed a method to obtain mtDNA from processed fingerprints on both non-porous and porous substrates.

The research department at The Bode Technology Group is currently developing methods to obtain STRs from processed latent fingerprints. Many of the same substrates and chemical processes used for mtDNA recovery will be tested for STRs. Updates on our research will be posted periodically on the company's website.

Oxford Nanopore has perfected a DNA sequencing machine that can decode your DNA within hours rather than days. The new nanosequencing technology would revolutionize the industry.

Read the report in the Guardian and hear what scientists are saying.

The sequencing of the human genome capped off the 20th century's tireless search for genetic causes for all diseases.  But epigenetics is the hot new science now. Dr. Anne Marie Fine, a Scottsdale physician, certainly thinks so. Dr. Fine spoke in Paris recently on Epigenetics and Beauty and next month will present a paper called "Dining at the Epigenetic Cafe" in Monte Carlo, Monaco at the largest European physicians' anti-aging conference.  In June she will present a paper entitled "Epigenetics and the Autosomal DNA of Human Populations: Clinical Perspectives and Personal Genome Tests at the University of British Colombia, Canada," with Donald Yates, principal investigator at DNA Consultants, along with participating in a 90 minute colloquium on epigenetics, autosomal DNA and ethnic identity.  Clearly, epigenetics is stealing the show!

From the Fine Center for Natural Medicine News, here is how Dr. Fine describes epigenetics and its promise:

"Epi" literally means "above" so epigenetics are the influences from above that affect the DNA. Epigenetics refers to modifications to DNA and chromatin, the protein scaffolding that surrounds the DNA, that persist from one cell division to the next, despite a lack of change in the underlying DNA sequence.  So the "epigenome" refers to the interface between the environment and the genome.  This is the basis behind the new science of epigenetics- how the environment affects the cellular DNA. Cells are bathed continuously in a sea of changing environmental conditions.  This means the epigenome is dynamic and responsive to environmental signals especially during development, but also throughout life.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that stress, environmental chemicals, and nutrient deficiencies are some of the biggest factors that promote epigenetic changes to the DNA.  In addition, some of these changes in gene expression persist long after the exposure has stopped.  What this means is that these changes can transcend generations.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh stated in the journal Medical Hypotheses in 2009:

It is becoming clear that a wide variety of common illnesses, behaviors, and other health conditions may have at least a partial epigenetic etiology, including cancer, respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive, and autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric illnesses, obesity and diabetes, infertility and sexual dysfunction.  Effectors of epigenetic changes include many agents, such as heavy metals, pesticides, tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hormones, radioactivity, viruses, bacteria, basic nutrients, and the social environment, including maternal care.  It has even been suggested that our thoughts and emotions can induce epigenetic changes.

"Incredibly, only about 2 percent of diseases can be attributed to locked-in single gene mutations," says Dr. Fine.  Most disease occurs as a complex interaction between genetic susceptibility and the environment.  This means, while there are genetic predispositions,  there are environmental triggers that actually start the disease, but also environmental factors that protect against developing the disease.   The key is to understand which factors promote disease, and avoid them, and which protect, and seek them out.  Our genetic makeup doesn't necessarily determine our biological fate.  "Genes may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger," says Dr. Fine.

James Watson once said that the double helix contains a library of detailed information about all generations of our ancestry "if only we could read it." Combining epigenetics and the advances in autosomal DNA tests, we are beginning to read the whole of human medical, evolutionary and ethnic history, at least in outline form. 

Well, not completely. According to Larry Moran, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, "We can say that only 90% of the human genome has been sequenced and the remaining 10% falls into 357 gaps scattered throughout the genome." Read all the numbers at Sandwalk - Strolling with a Biochemist.