Graphing FTDNA for Native Blood

It's common for people to find a unsubstantiated family myth regarding a long lost great grandparent of some tribe. It's part of the Rousseau ideal that native culture is somehow noble through its simplicity and to be admired. Indeed looking just at the surface of things at the time of first contact they had more advanced systems of hygiene and significant ecologically-sensitive agriculture. Those of us with genealogical evidence often find it scant due to the nature of the times regarding the personage and citizenship of a native person in the imperial Americas. As a Metis woman I am at a disadvantage that besides the myth and a lucky interview provided by James Sweinhart, a published journalist, that there is no physical connection I can grasp.

Cherokee Nation at Kansas City, 1994

As a anthropologist, I maintain a certain outlook from multicultural perspective but I have found it fails me when working with more traditional native american individuals. Often I am met with hostility which I believe is less to do with how I look, as some might presume, and more to do with the socioeconomics of tribal living. I certainly don't intend to be a bother and the only community I intend to pursue citizenship with would be the Metis peoples in my local Canadian/US sector. Due to the degree of mixture it simply seems idiotic to sequester anything more specific when indeed I am not specific. 

It is that mixture exactly that is the true topic of this post. After my 3rd party transfer to Family Tree DNA completed I uploaded it into GED Matches album to compare with ancestry original interpretation. It is notable to mention that ftdna actually reevaluated the chip itself not just the raw composite to my knowledge. For the most part I saw predictable and minute changes. Side by side I noticed that ftdna cited more africanized Moorish DNA as apart of my Iberian spectrum. When I reviewed MDLP 22 by chromosome it suddenly occurred to me to class out the asian decent populations and revise it for my native american blood. Trycyclic populations including the middle east are often misplaced amounts of plains native which is so intermixed that it more often registers as middle eastern.

On average I found that 20% of each chromosome was Asiatic derivative. Since the middle eastern connection is still debatable I also went a step further in removing the trycyclic and Asian components to search for individualized known samples of native american DNA. On average this left a 10-12% of each chromosome to be confirmed native american source which is above the threshold for founder markers. Each of the remaining populations confirmed in my chromosomes were set in known genetic regions allowing me to percentage out the confirmed strains by region. Of the 10-12% confirmed; 53% was Northern Hemisphere (Inuit derivatives), 38% was Americas proper, & 21% was trace matching aboriginal societies in the eastern hemisphere. Percentage peaks for the northern group rested on chromosomes 7, 16, 18 & 22. The Americas group peaked at 13 & 20, but only 20 was highly above the margin of error. Lastly the trace societies were highest peaked on 8 & 15 but not as impressively as the other groups. Overall it was North Amerindian which received the highest proportion spikes but it was also one of the least spread matches across the 22 chromosomes.

So I may be lucky enough to have numbers but it also comes down to personal experience and identity. Personal experience has always pushed me to look at aboriginal life in a learning capacity much like a child watching their parents. Even now I am writing my final paper for my degree program on Native American Studies. The expectations of that work is for me to be a participant but I've always been a participant even in times where I was so far away from the source. Part of my most loving experience was the short time I spent with the Cherokee Nation in Missouri. Despite outward appearance I was drawn in and allowed to participate culminating in a honorary membership. While it may have just been words it started me off on a journey I am still following now, as a Metis.

Family Historian: Hit or Miss

I've had a wonderful set of short messages this past week with a second cousin of mine. She brought up the woes of being a family history researcher. In particular she has been rather glum about family secrets and salacious stories. I've encountered a few of those myself and it seems that once you get past someone's reluctance you then have to deal with the next persons dismissal and anger at the facts. Some of my closer family has just discovered my work which apparently was of no value to them previously. I've suddenly found myself put upon with questions and angry dismissals of fact. Whatever romantic notion my father gave me of how important a family historian is must be on its last legs by now.

As a anthropologist I've been trained to look at the qualitative information but not to the disregard of hard quantative sources. I happen to revel in cultural quirks which seem irrelevant to other people. Corrections are one thing to approach but flat out disgruntled and condescending relatives are another. It is a part of my adaption into a specialization instead of a entire pedigree. In fact with the last angry message I've considered jumping ship. Then again I have to remind myself that the person complaining is not apart of my specialization itself. I am barely scratching the surface as it were of my French family history of the Detroit region.

I also had a awkward conversation with my sister this week after having reviewed some DNA research with my father. The insanity of patriarchal naming hit me out of no where in the fact that I carry the surname Grant yet don't have any of its DNA as a daughter. Then again the same would be said for my mothers side that by a juvenile interpretation of genetics I could also not be a Jones. Unspoken irony then to the fact that my research is focused almost distinctly on my matriarchal lines. Still perhaps that is the answer to having any work undervalued that in truth the relevance of that complaint comes from your perception of your place in those families. Simply adjust ones world view and it seems to seldom matter what facetious opinions people hold except for the sake of accuracy. Then again when people are suffering under the delusion of self serving bias its a fat chance that they can admit to the validity of facts even in the presence of documentation.

So who am I researching for myself or my family? I started this all to learn about my origins and connect to family members that were lost. Now suddenly the ones I've always known are resentful that I'm searching. As the black sheep you'd think I'd have more freedom but maybe that is what they are afraid of...finding family more like myself. I am lucky at least to fit into my own little immediate group of four.

DNA Updates and Forthcomings

Well GEDmatch has finally finished with the re-tokenizing of my DNA pack. It seems that some of the simulations had errors which were pinging mostly in unrelated ethnic results but nonetheless gedmatch decided to rerun new editions for errors. This changes my results to a small degree. The smallest changes are to do with my largest portions. My European percentages are now farther east with 47% a solid mix of Fennoscandia and the Slavic countries bordering Russia. At this time my Celtic/British strains are only 6%. I am still left unsure which country provides the dominant amount of my 34% Mediterranean. Northern Italian and Iberian are both cited. The near east populations matches continue to tantalize me if only because I cannot find their source genealogically.  Roughly 10% of my blood is still Persian which I find amazing.

The more drastic changes have come in the form of my smallest amounts. While initially HarappaWorld and MDLP both cited my mesoamerican DNA from the Muscogee it is now something else. In a sense it could be a more accurate result. About 5% of my result is from South Amerindian and Arctic Amerindian. The latter would correspond to my mother's Mi'kmaq heritage. From what I've gathered online the south is most likely representative of Cherokee. I rather guess that does make more sense since there were only small amounts of exogamy in my direct relations. As the Cherokee are fairly wide, the bands can simply interchange children without looking in another region. Eurogenes still says Mayan...Ugh! But it also indicates a southeast Asia portion as well as oceanic which are barely above threshold.

What I do still find strange is my Samoyed and Berinigan DNA. They are very small amounts but I'm not sure which region to classify them under in my processing of this. I gather for the most part I work on a three category system; European, Asiatic & American. If it doesn't fit those groups than it's wasteful knowledge.

I also took a look at the new ancestry ethnicity predictor. I do find it helpful that they separated my Irish and British blood apart. That makes me confused however about whether Scottish is really the same as British. According to their diagrams it is separate and I have none. My new ancestry numbers are: 52% Great Britain, 21% Scandinavian, 15% Irish, 8% Iberian, 2% Grecco-Italian, 1% Eastern European and <1% Western European. At least that is more interesting than my original pie of British, Scandinavian and unknown. Still I find it very odd that Ancestry states my British as high as 50% when all other groups dictate that it is <26%. Consider for one that as of currently all the calculators for gedmatch place me at 6%. I think it makes ancestry look stupid. I still hope however to upload to FTDNA for my maternal test and correspond my admixture there. My tight budget might make it a Christmas gift to myself.

Ancestry: Autosomnal versus MtDNA

DNA doesn't stop with the percentages you find in tests. Often it takes a further investigation into the history of the populations you represent. I have already found a state of questionablity regarding my amount of Middle eastern DNA. In hopes of diving into my alleles and chromosome results representing my aborigional american DNA I also came across the issue of similarity between Appalachian tribes and middle eastern sample groups specifically Berbers. Of special consideration was the Cherokee contribution on my father's side which is intermixed with Muskogee-Creek. The Creeks are known to carry Mayan DNA while the Cherokee often carry, at least autosomnally, markers that are indistinguishable from middle eastern composition to most calculators. The same can be said of other central Appalachian groups while north and south populations are either Beringian or Mesoamerican of some variety, respectively. Therefore for lack of genealogical evidence it is possible that a result as such is perhaps a false positive. 

That brings me to another interesting point regarding researching population groups. My high percentage groups contain the prefix paleolithic. It is important not to overlook this point because it places the history of those people much farther back in the human migration process (it can also indicate a period of isolation). The inclusion of the term beringian also points to a Asiatic admixture of the paleo-eskimo groups spanning from Russian Siberia through Greenland into Canada and Alaska. There is no consideration for any non Inuit first nations group in my results so far. Given my most recent addition of Indian blood I am wondering if perhaps that means the mother of my great grandma Catherine was also a Mi'maq woman along with a more removed grandmother from Nova Scotia. 

I have a favorite photo taken of myself after my parents divorce with a black and white camera. At the time I noticed that I appeared very Asiatic if not Eskimo due to the mongoloid feature of my eyes and wide face, these features are most notable in the mornings. 

A next step I would like to take is ordering a mtdna test, most likely from familytreeDNA for price points sake. It's another consideration I have made regarding Ancestry.com's poor assessment of my little genetic rainbow that perhaps the exclusion of know admixture as "noise" is not the only way they pigeonhole people. While I have a beautiful plethora of source populations I also have very distinct Y-DNA and mtDNA strains from European origin. My father's y-dna is I1a, now called I-M253, which comes from Fennoscandia especially Denmark. This prehistoric movement of  Danish Vikings was apart of the early population of Anglo-Saxon regions in Great Britain. This haplogroup also asserts the fact that according to myth our branch of the Grant clan is a relation of Haakon Siggurdsson and his brood. Haakon's lineage is just one of the possible origins to the Grant clan. 

Maternal dna would be a new chapter into who and what I am. The genealogical record unfortunately stops short with Elizabeth Paterson my 8th maternal grandmother in Kirkgunzeon, Scotland. I would assume given her location and the families association with Ireland that my maternal line may be Pict. This could also be gross generalization based on birth location. Elizabeth is a 18th century woman giving plenty of time for known mass migrations including the historical banishments of eastern Jews who migrated west in 1300, 1400, 1600 and 1700 AD. Autsomnally and from rare alleles it is predicted that I have a middle eastern haplogroup though as I said above error is possible. I am hoping for a surprise but I would be happy with any result. Further research is always warranted.

Unzipping My Raw DNA, Part Two

I don't believe that most people are prepared to make the jump in amateur genealogy to that of the intermediate especially with the inclusion of genetics. When the veil is lifted and you see who you are deep in your cells and atoms it can be either encouraging or feel as though all your work has been through colored glasses. Genetic testing is probably a positive for those whose ancestors were static and the acculturated generations match those that actually make up your being. I'm having the rather mirror-house experience where the recent does not match not only who I am as a person, but also is a falsification or at best over-simplification of the real genetic source.

The time it's taken to run the simulators and compile them into a single excel document however has given me enough pause to collect most of my thoughts. I have to remember that the exotic is mostly deep ancestry so it would not be relevant necessarily except for some quirks. Yet the mirror house experience is that, everything is exotic, at least in comparison to the records and beliefs of those still living today. Working first with admixtures there is a varying degree of interpretation still to the amount of 'white' that I am. Ancestry's estimate was 52% British isles/34% Scandinavian, on the whole roughly 80-90% carbon white.

Harrapaworld, Asia map, disputes this number with only a maximum of 48.5% European. 'Africa 9' on Dodecad echo's a similar opinion that I am 67.5% or less European (including Indo-European as strictly white). Dodecad World version 3 places this number closer to 52% with the rest highly africanized Iberian or west/southwest asian. Eurogenes perhaps gave the most honest admixture result due to it's definitive sub sects. North Sea, which includes water bound parts of Scandinavia as well as the British isles rests at only 20%. JTest states that of these European groups only 25.4% is wholly white and inadmissible as Jewish. I am only 3% however above the noise level (2.5%) for Azkenazi Jewish heritage so the direct line there is remote. Yet the large chucks of central and eastern European do echo the ancestry given my fathers genetic test.

Southern heritage is much more pronounced than Ancestry claimed with some rare alleles coming from Cyprus, Lithuania, and East Asia. Spain and Northern Italy are the founders of my southern heritage with only one so far found in the genealogical record. Dodecad World 9, for example places me at 72.5% Atlantic_Baltic, 25.5% Caucusus/Southern European and around 1.5% Amerindian. 1.5 is interpreted over and over as either Asiatic or Amerindian, notably however it is inferred as Mexican/Central American Indian when addressed. It also increases as high as 3-8% given the presence of oceanic, papuan, beringian and east asian derivatives. If this was a test I don't believe that 20-53% is ever a passing grade so why would I ignore the beautiful multicultural heritage I have.

So what about the estimations given by Ancestry.com? Well I think I figured that out partially inspired by a comment by the authors of GEDMatch's algorithms. "It not just the presence of a unique factor but also the presence of that percentage compared to like individuals." Thus unique factors on chromosomes could be viewed as noise and with strict interpretation ignored completely as genetic drift for known populaces. With the wars over centuries of the Germanic tribes then it would be easy to assume a known factor level of 'noise' and thus exclude it altogether. I believe this is how Ancestry.com applies their ethnicity predictor so it is most simplified and accurate for Europeans, no doubt their largest consumer at whole.

So what am I? Very roughly estimated in admixture...

• 26-40% Southern European (Spanish, Italian, Iberian, Sardinian) 
• 18-24% British Isles/North Seas (Great Britain, France, Scandinavia) 
• 12-26% Middle Eastern (Persian, Near East, West Asia)
• 8-10% Eastern European (West Germany, Balkan, Slav)
• 3-8% Asian/Amerindian (Mezoamerican, Beringian; East-South Asia, Oceania)
• 3-5% North African (Mozabite, Morroccan, Byaka)

Unzipping My Raw DNA, Part One

It's no secret that I was wholly unimpressed with the ethnicity finder on Ancestry.com and it's lack of features. So now that the voices of the many have been heard and my raw data is available I've tried to resist the urge to spread it around like jam on the internet. My first stop was GEDMatch who unfortunately are having server issues because of so many new Ancestry submissions. Moving on then I headed over to Interprenome that is headed by Stanford university science department staff/students.

This new emulator took me from too little data to quite substantially too much!

One of the questions that came about for me was the only unique factor on my AncestryDNA page was a small portion of unspecific southern european. I have been racking my brain and looking for any cooralation in my records that could account for that. The only match I made was to the obscure Italian women who married into the FitzAlan royalty quite far back in my tree's centuries. I am of the opinion that I also need a more specific study journal of my findings since I recall while working inside the Aleramici family in my tree I also came across some women of Spain. The non-specificity even lead too some uncomfortable considerations of probable NPE's and adoption excuses. Interprenome has provided me a unexpected answer in the pan-euro scale. I am quite well into Spanish distribution.

The issue remained of my Cryptozoic-Jewish history supposedly among the women of my father's father ancestry. So using the Asia logarithm I found myself well placed among the Pathan, Sindhi, and Hazara. My closest east/central asian is the Miao Zu people of southern china. To be honest I had no expectations of the Asia group so to find myself clearly defined as a Persian descendant I abesolutley had to know whether I placed on the Pan-Judica map.

Yet another surprise lay for me. I do not place close enough for an exact kinship among the Jewish sample studies. My personal opinion on this is then that I don't have actual Jewish ancestry except to such a minor degree. My Persian history however is echo'ed twice over by my closest match being Iranian and Turkish.

The accuracy of this information of course isn't proven until I run the raw data through GEDMatch. I am hoping to learn my MTDNA haplogroup which according to Interprenome is probably (N1 derivative), but that is just a random guess with very little knowledge behind it.

I look forward to my GEDMatch being finished...hopefully sooner than 4-6 weeks... in order to review these findings and demolish any errors or misgivings I have.

Metis On All Sides

Recently I've come across an interesting fact regarding Ancestry and family legends. As my Father's story goes, a grandmother accused his Father of having Jewish ancestry. I was searching for that angle so hard that I was genuinely surprised to find a different answer. My fathers paternal great grandmother did not carry Jewish ancestry but she did hide a branch of Muscogee (Creek). My father's Metis heritage is Anglo-Metis occurring first in Virginia and then travelling through North Carolina to Oaklahoma. Anna Dabney was the most recent ancestor who was considered a full tribal member. Her Children appear on the Rolls including the 1835 Trail of Tears. The boys of her family however all appear to have inherited their grandfathers status of "Cherokee by Blood". Tracking down the tribes to which I have a family history has been somewhat difficult considering the non-status of Metis here in America.

My working list so far consists of the following:

• Metis of the 3rd Generation
  None in USA; Michigan, USA
• Mi'kmaq of the 9th Generation
  Bear River First Nation; Annapolis, NS
• Muskogee of 8th generation
  Muscogee Creek Nation; Tulsa, OK
• Cherokee of 6th Generation
  Appalachian Cherokee Nation, Montross, VA 

     This revelation is not lost on me considering the finding of Metis ancestry on both sides of my maternal grandfather's parentage. The Mi'kmaq is documented however to far removed for a tribal membership and I assume Pottawatomie for my Metis grandmother but recentness hasn't met me with much paper evidence. This is due in part no doubt to her birth shortly after the fire that consumed Detroit in 1805. Another aspect would be the probability of a "country marriage". After all her father not only flees the area when the British take the fort, he also marries again after her mother in a legal fashion sometime around 1834. Peter never returns to Michigan by all accounts. Two generations now in order to create me and my sister, peoples of varying degree of native blood but all Metis have found each other. That has to be meaningful considering I now find myself near marriage to a half-blood Ojibwae.

The feeling that I was different and more alike a different people than those I encountered been a lifelong occurrence. This is something I have been discussing with my Native Studies teacher at University. She is absolutely thrilled to learn what traditions bled through all the years of lost identity for my families. Small things like aboriginal art (Mi'kmaq) and hand-me-downs no one could assertain too. For me however it was personal and spiritual experiences, including reciprocity that is unlike modern sensibility.

Forms of Respect

So I'm dog sitting this week and with the house empty I've located the records the Canadian Military sent my mom about her Father. Besides copying them I decided to look up some specifics. For one thing my grandfather Harvey was in twice as long as I thought. He began in September of 1944 with the 1st Battalion of Kings Own Rifles of Canada. What's more interesting is the rank waffling he did. Before he was moved to the RCAF he achieved the rank of Colonel. Yet because he did at most costal defense he relinquished that rank and pay increase. After a leave of absence that I believe resulted in my uncle he returned to the war. This time not as a rifleman but a instructor he obtained the rank of acting Sargent. Yet again and to the annoyance of my grandmother I'm sure he relinquished the rank and pay privileges. I wish he was alive today to talk about he rationale for not keeping a military legacy.

I'm thinking that I may try to collect flashing and medals to create a framed memorial. Considering I have little to know hand me downs from my grandpa I'd love to make representations I him. Another interesting find this week was looking into the pedigree of some of my father's grandmothers I came across more Welsh relatives. That echo's the genetic profile I have from Ancestry's DNA test. There is also a new addition to my extended family this week which prompts me to think about children. My fiancée and I share a strong Irish and Austro Bavarian percentage. I imagine our children will be named in that fashion but of course I am titillated alone by the Jones of Wales tartan I found online during some late night browsing. 

Plain, Simple, and Often Unsightly History

It's been a while since I posted new findings partially because my subscription is up but also I have been having a breather from this hobby while I focus on my health. The last few days however I became aware of a new television program placed on Hulu regarding the second World War. If you haven't watched "The Promise" I would recommend seeing it once just to open your perspective on world conflicts a bit more.

Having just finished the series this morning I can say that I have never been happier in my life that my Grandfather Harvey had not been sent overseas from Canada to serve with the British forces during the occupation of Israel. It is acctually apart of history I hadn't heard till now. This is maybe in part due to the fact that american schools teach very patriot-centriclly avoiding most especially when discussing war. My grandfather was lucky to escape as much conflict as possible during the war however his brother, Henry Charles, was not so lucky and died during 1944. Two of the other grand uncles I have may have also encountered a similar end but my access to records is minimal.

Last year my mother ordered a copy of Grandpa Harvey's war records. We knew he had served in WWII and in fact shipped off to a base in British Columbia with his brother Murray (who later married the stewardess that covered that flight). Having forgotten to make notes I can't be certain but I believe he enlisted with my Great Uncle Max, his brother in law by my Grandmother's sister. From the records my grandfather fulfilled his training quite well as a private in the Canadian corps of the British army. His transport to active duty overseas however was brought up short by the diabetic neuropathy in his legs though at the time they didn't define the cause. While his brothers and peers went over to die at the end of the war my Grandfather was left on base to fulfill rank duties there.

In fact by the time of his release from duty he had been given the rank of Acting-Sargent. That is not however the rank under which he was dismissed from service. He refused to accept the step in pay and rank just before his leaving because it had already disrupted his home life, (no doubt the 8 year difference between his first and last child as well as five years between middle and last) but also he felt unfit for the title given that he never experienced combat himself.

My grandfather has always been amazing to me in that same way as were his brothers and father who ran 'Earl Jones and Sons' in Windsor, Ontario. Grandpa Harvey took a job with the Shell Oil company but he also invested in other interests the biggest being the local Lions Club. My grandmother, his wife, was not entirely dis involved either as she volunteered for some years with the Red Cross, a suit that my second eldest cousin followed when she coauthored a book about it. All I have of my Grandfather today are some pictures and a lot of tears. When he passed I was only 5 years old and was so afraid of the changes that occured in him from his last few strokes I couldn't be held. That's a guilt I carry though I know he was reasonable enough to know why I was frightened. He showed me my first live fish under the short docks across from his old yellow house on the Detroit river. Being so little I was able to look between the slats and see them in the water. I also remember his office, though as a little child it looked like a personal library to me.

I can understand the power of grandfathers even though I've lost both of mine now. My Grandpa down from Missouri, Joseph Lincoln, also missed the war because of a Heart condition and like my northern Grandpa he served in local duty though as a personal secretary since he had gone to a 2 year college. Grandpa Jo showed me how to plant grass seed with straw so it wouldn't blow away. I'm just as happy with these memories knowing that I've lost them as people and it would be pointless to wish it all never happened because I wouldn't have the joy at all. So I am thankful many times over that both my grandfathers were saved from service abroad thought it may have hurt them to be left behind.

...and that's why I like Highland Cows!

A while before I got heavy into genealogy itself I had stumbled upon physical anthropology. While it has been debunked for quite sometime there is a certain level of accuracy it portrays. Most people would remember it from it's use for eugenics during the Nazi regime but that is truly not it's purpose. Today shows like "Bones" still use it to determine ethnic range for deceased and often facial reconstruction has to incorporate some of it to give a accurate result. It is simple fact that Asian's have higher and more delicate nasal cavities whereas African peoples tend to have a wider ridge across the nose. These facts have really no purpose at all except for being used as a tool themselves.

So after learning what I was looking for in the sub-race characteristics I began the process of taking profile pictures and head measurements. For the most part I came up with the generic Dinaric group which is most profound accross europe itself. Upon asking some other intrested students to also look at my findings they came up with East-Baltid and I simply laughed it off as a result of my weight. After all the majority of my research has led me to geographic populations that would have the Dinaric classification or even a Nordic trait. However I should not have overlooked it so quickly I think.

A while back I discovered a cousin on ancestry named Jane Storm. Until then I hadn't focused on the German grandmother of my own french line at all, Lezelie Brunner. However Lezelie's parentage leads straight back to the Sturm (Storm) family that I share with Jane. Today i have come across an interesting fact regarding the couple at which I join Jane's heritage. Johann Jacob Brunner who married Maria Barbra Sturm, had parents that both came from the Kingdom of Bavaria. This would be close enough to the edge of Germany that it would fall within the range of the East-Baltic characteristic type. So perhaps I was not only a bit to quick to judge but also a bit biased against Germany itself. After all it is quite put down in American classrooms as the mastermind of both World Wars. Obviously I have more to learn.

My genetic profile on Ancestry however leans towards a Nordic and British heritage at least in my active DNA. British however brings up the Borreby group trait which is in someways mistakable with East Baltic because of the wide face. Being over 86% north European though makes me more inclined to believe that my hybridization of types is within those groups. My mother, for example, is naturally blue eyed and dark blonde yet my Dad is a obvious Borreby with Mediterranean hints. Speaking of disparity my Ancestry DNA match to my father was unlocked recently and I see that my 8% southern European does not come from him! This was a bit of a shock but it is interesting since I have yet to match my mother to anything except it's neighbors Germany and France. If I am a Borreby at my core however that explains why I think Highland cows are the most adorable barn animals I've ever seen.