Several years ago, the National Geographic Society launched an ambitious program to study the DNA of volunteers more deeply than any other DNA study. They went back hundreds of thousands of years, tracing DNA changes that gave a picture of the proto-migrations of the ancestors of these volunteers, including me.
For some reason, earlier this year, they shut the program down.
But wow -- you wanna talk about migrations?
My DNA reveals, first of all, that I am 2.1% Neanderthal and 1.1% Denisovan. This led some waggish friend of mine to state that this means I am 3.2% extinct. Sometimes I feel like it.
It also means my ancestors range from France and Germany to Siberia, where the offshoot Denisovan branch was found in a series of caves, the Denisova Caves.
According to the National Geographic Society's study, the Genographic Project, "Most non-Africans are about 2 percent Neanderthal and slightly less than 2 percent Denisovan." Proof that Homo Sapiens and these cousins of theirs did interbreed.
These migrations are of my maternal line, since females do not receive the Y chromosome from their fathers; only sons do.
Our DNA carries genetic markers, records in the DNA of mutations that occurred as new DNA was added to the mixture that is us.
Note to White Supremacists: You are not as lily-white as you like to think you are.
The first marker in my DNA is referred to as Branch L3, and originated in East Africa around 67,000 years ago. It is one of two lineages of the first modern humans (homo sapiens) to leave Africa and go north or east. My folks got in early on the migration thing!
Within L3 marker carriers developed Haplogroup N, one of two groups produced by those L3 ancestors. That was about 60,000 years ago. Some ended up in parts of East Asia, others in southern Europe.
Possibly the first family squabble, though a genetic one rather than social, economic, religious, or political in origin, came when Haplogroup R arose out of Haplogroup N, about 55,000 years ago in West Asia.
These two groups lived and migrated together, and their descendants "dominate the European maternal landscape, making up 75 to 95 percent of the lineages there."
Hi, cousin!
Then, about 25,000 years ago, Haplogroup T arose out of R. This is the bunch credited with the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, in the Middle East. These people spread all over, carrying their newly developed agriculture with them.
Then came T2, about 19,000 years ago in West Asia. It spread across Anatolia (Turkey and its neighbors) and into Europe. This group is found in such varied places as Iraq (21% of maternal lineage), Croatia (16%), Greece (11%), Belgium (15%), Denmark (13%), and Switzerland (11%), among others. My mother has proven Swiss ancestry.
Finally, there's T2b, arising around 10,000 years ago, again in West Asia. It also went all over Eastern and Western Europe. It constitutes about 5% of the population of the British Isles, where my ancestors on both sides came from in the 1600s and 1700s.
My recent regional ancestry -- between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago -- is an interesting mix indeed.
I am:
45% Northern European. That's no surprise, really.
37% Mediterranean. That is a surprise, but it includes Iberia, and maybe explains my fondness for and facility with the Spanish language.
16% Southwest Asian. Total surprise! This includes the Arabian Peninsula, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. Wow.
2% Northeast Asian. Another surprise. This includes Japan, China, and Mongolia.
Well, there I am. More of a mixture than I would ever have thought.
I used to be impressed by my ancestors' migrations from Europe (mostly English, possibly Scots and/or Irish, and that little bit of Swiss) and across Canada and the United States. This totally blows it away!
The Genographic Project came under fire from indigenous peoples as racist, but I don't see it that way. In fact, it has shown me that there is no such thing as a "pure" lineage, or a "pure" race, as we all carry parts of many different peoples within us. I like that. I think it makes us way more interesting. I think it points up what I hold to be true: there is but one race -- the human race.
It is a real pity that the NGS cancelled the Genographic Project. I would have loved to know more.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
A to Z Challenge On the Move: F is for Florida
In the 20th century, members of both sides of my family -- the Packards (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Canada, Illinois, California) and the Reeds (Ohio and Indiana) -- have ended up in Florida.
My mother, born in Detroit, ended up in Florida as a child in 1920, and was raised here. Her adoptive father was a railroad freight agent in Pensacola. My father came to Florida after graduating from the Naval Academy and service on aircraft carriers, for flight training in 1937. He was born in California.
They married here, and their oldest child, my sister, was born here in 1938. My brother was born here in 1942, when my father came back to Florida, stationed in Miami.
We spent time here as a family in the early 1950s, as my father took various engineering jobs in Jacksonville and in Pensacola. Then we went back to California, as my father's family was there.
Finally, my mother brought my sister, my brother, and me back to Florida after Dad died, to be with her adoptive mom and sister for help with raising us. That was in 1954. Mom's biological sister and brother also lived in Florida. Later, a Packard aunt and uncle also relocated to Florida.
Though I was born in California, I have lived most of my life here, and now I consider myself "Floridated."
Within Florida, my husband and I have taken our family from Jacksonville, where he was born and raised, and where our older daughter was born, to St. Petersburg, where our younger daughter was born while my husband was stationed there in the Coast Guard.
After he was released from active duty, we returned to Jacksonville. We lived there several years, then made a short migration to the county just south-southwest of Jacksonville, where we live now.
During our time in our present home, we have separately spent time outside of Florida. My husband took a special assignment in the Coast Guard that had him living in New Orleans for a year, then he spent almost another year in Washington, D.C., in connection with that same special assignment. I spent a month in Seville, Spain and almost two years back in St. Petersburg, earning a master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Our older daughter married a man who was also born in Jacksonville, and their son was also born there. After all our peregrinations, we've become a Florida family.
My mother, born in Detroit, ended up in Florida as a child in 1920, and was raised here. Her adoptive father was a railroad freight agent in Pensacola. My father came to Florida after graduating from the Naval Academy and service on aircraft carriers, for flight training in 1937. He was born in California.
They married here, and their oldest child, my sister, was born here in 1938. My brother was born here in 1942, when my father came back to Florida, stationed in Miami.
We spent time here as a family in the early 1950s, as my father took various engineering jobs in Jacksonville and in Pensacola. Then we went back to California, as my father's family was there.
Finally, my mother brought my sister, my brother, and me back to Florida after Dad died, to be with her adoptive mom and sister for help with raising us. That was in 1954. Mom's biological sister and brother also lived in Florida. Later, a Packard aunt and uncle also relocated to Florida.
Though I was born in California, I have lived most of my life here, and now I consider myself "Floridated."
Within Florida, my husband and I have taken our family from Jacksonville, where he was born and raised, and where our older daughter was born, to St. Petersburg, where our younger daughter was born while my husband was stationed there in the Coast Guard.
After he was released from active duty, we returned to Jacksonville. We lived there several years, then made a short migration to the county just south-southwest of Jacksonville, where we live now.
During our time in our present home, we have separately spent time outside of Florida. My husband took a special assignment in the Coast Guard that had him living in New Orleans for a year, then he spent almost another year in Washington, D.C., in connection with that same special assignment. I spent a month in Seville, Spain and almost two years back in St. Petersburg, earning a master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Our older daughter married a man who was also born in Jacksonville, and their son was also born there. After all our peregrinations, we've become a Florida family.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
A to Z Challenge On the Move: E is for England
England is where Samuel Packard lived in 1638, the year he took his wife and infant daughter on a crowded, dangerous voyage to the New World, to the Plymouth Colony.
Samuel hailed from the village of Stonham Aspal, in Suffolk. The house where he was born still stands, though it was recently on the market and I fear for its survival. Such an innate fear comes from living in Florida, where a great deal has been destroyed in the name of development. The church where Samuel was baptized also is still standing.
Samuel's family adhered to the Church of England, but Samuel himself became a Separatist. This led him to migrate to the New World.
I have chronicled the Packard migrations from Samuel down to my own father in other posts in this series. I won't rehash them here.
I do not know how long the Packard family was in Suffolk, but they were there at least from the time of the Domesday Book enumerations. At that time, there were a lot of men named John all around England. I don't think there were that many Johanns, but the Packard listed in the Domesday Book was Johann Packard, living in Stonham Aspal.
This raises the possibility that Packard was originally not an English name, but a German one. England and Germany are closely united in many ways, from the German origins of the English Royal Family to the language. For all its thievery from languages such as Greek, Latin, Spanish, French and many others, English is at its very root a Germanic language.
Another hint to the possibility of the name Packard being German is a tidbit I found on my way to looking up other things. Most Packards in the United States descend from Samuel, the original 1638 emigrant. But not all. Looking in Immigration and Naturalization records, I came across a fellow named Packard whose birthplace had been Germany. He entered the U.S. from Mexico in the early 20th century, along with his Mexican wife and their child, who had also been born in Mexico. Apparently, Herr Packard had been in Mexico for some time.
So it is interesting to delve not only into the migrations of people, but also the migrations of the names we bear.
Samuel hailed from the village of Stonham Aspal, in Suffolk. The house where he was born still stands, though it was recently on the market and I fear for its survival. Such an innate fear comes from living in Florida, where a great deal has been destroyed in the name of development. The church where Samuel was baptized also is still standing.
Samuel's family adhered to the Church of England, but Samuel himself became a Separatist. This led him to migrate to the New World.
I have chronicled the Packard migrations from Samuel down to my own father in other posts in this series. I won't rehash them here.
I do not know how long the Packard family was in Suffolk, but they were there at least from the time of the Domesday Book enumerations. At that time, there were a lot of men named John all around England. I don't think there were that many Johanns, but the Packard listed in the Domesday Book was Johann Packard, living in Stonham Aspal.
This raises the possibility that Packard was originally not an English name, but a German one. England and Germany are closely united in many ways, from the German origins of the English Royal Family to the language. For all its thievery from languages such as Greek, Latin, Spanish, French and many others, English is at its very root a Germanic language.
Another hint to the possibility of the name Packard being German is a tidbit I found on my way to looking up other things. Most Packards in the United States descend from Samuel, the original 1638 emigrant. But not all. Looking in Immigration and Naturalization records, I came across a fellow named Packard whose birthplace had been Germany. He entered the U.S. from Mexico in the early 20th century, along with his Mexican wife and their child, who had also been born in Mexico. Apparently, Herr Packard had been in Mexico for some time.
So it is interesting to delve not only into the migrations of people, but also the migrations of the names we bear.
A to Z Challenge On the Move: D is for Detroit
I have devoted three blog posts in this series to my father's line, so it is time to talk a little about my mother's.
My mom, Martha Shideler Reed, was born in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. She and I had something in common: we each did not like our middle names much. Family history has reconciled me to mine. The fact that hers came from the surname of a young social activist in Logansport, Indiana at the turn of the 20th century apparently had no effect on Mom.
Her family was not as peripatetic as my father's. I have not gone back far enough to discover the family's origin. The name Reed could be either English, Scots, or Irish. From some things I know about the Reeds and their attitudes and behavior, I have a sneaking suspicion that they were "lace curtain" Irish. But as yet, I have no evidence. I find the family in the United States in the early 1800s, in a slow westward movement that ended up in Ohio and then in Indiana. In Indiana, towns associated with my Reed line are Monticello, in White County, and Logansport, in Cass County.
There were railroad men in the Reed family. My great-grandfather Francis Harvey ("Frank") Reed was a conductor. My grandfather Benjamin Franklin (also called "Frank") was a switchman in a railroad marshaling yard. My adoptive grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed's oldest brother Perry Wilmer Reed, was a freight agent.
Francis Harvey Reed married Florence Elizabeth McKee 10 September 1884 in Monticello, White County, Indiana. Francis H. had been raised in Monticello when his family lived there. His work for the railroad had stationed him in Logansport, and that is where the new bride and groom set up their house. That was the end of their migrations. Their children, however, ended up scattered to the four winds, ending up in such places as Washington state, California, and Florida.
Benjamin Franklin Reed married Ruth Ella Nave, who was from South Bend, Indiana. She worked to support her widowed mother, a situation frowned upon by many whose notion was that "nice" girls did not work, no matter the circumstances. But eating is preferable to starving, so Ruth became a telephone operator. Married in November of 1913, the couple had three children by December of 1916. They got an early start, according to some in the family. In October of 1917, Benjamin Franklin Reed was killed in a railroad accident in Detroit, where he worked in a railroad yard.
According to my aunt, my mother's sister, the Reed family was not fond of Ruth Nave, possibly both because she worked for a living, and because the growth of her and their son's family had been, shall we say, rapid beyond the customary. My aunt said that the Reeds "ganged up" on Ruth Nave, and took her daughters, Margaret, the second child, and Martha, my mother, the youngest. The oldest, a son named Donald, was 16 by the time all the family rearrangement had taken place in the early 1920s, and he stayed with his mother. These three siblings were not reuinted until the 1950s, when all had ended up in Florida, scattered among the Tampa Bay area (Uncle Don), Orlando (Aunt Margaret) and Jacksonville (Mom).
My mother was placed with the oldest Reed brother, Perry, and his wife Mary LeSourd, of Sleeth, Carroll County, Indiana. There is not much left of Sleeth; it's practically a ghost town, so I've been told. The town was named for Mary Reed's mother's family. Perry Reed and his family are found in the 1910 census in Chicago, where their daughter, their second child Elizabeth, was born in 1910. They are missing from the 1920 census. I have looked in Chicago, in various locations in Indiana, and in Pensacola, Florida, where Perry was a railroad freight agent. My theory is this: in April of 1920, there is a very small notice in the Logansport Pharos-Reporter to the effect that Mr. Perry W. Reed, of Pensacola, Florida, was visiting relatives in the area. The visit was to take custody, I'm fairly certain, of four-year-old Martha. I would imagine Perry's wife Mary was with him, to care for the child on the journey home to Pensacola. They were on the move from one location to the other, and that is the way they got missed in the census. The final adoption decree was issued later in 1920 in Pensacola. My mom's journey to Pensacola was but the first in many migrations, as she married a young Navy officer, Arden Packard, in Pensacola, 16 July 1937. Their story is told in the first in this series of posts, On the Move: A is for Arden.
My mom, Martha Shideler Reed, was born in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. She and I had something in common: we each did not like our middle names much. Family history has reconciled me to mine. The fact that hers came from the surname of a young social activist in Logansport, Indiana at the turn of the 20th century apparently had no effect on Mom.
Her family was not as peripatetic as my father's. I have not gone back far enough to discover the family's origin. The name Reed could be either English, Scots, or Irish. From some things I know about the Reeds and their attitudes and behavior, I have a sneaking suspicion that they were "lace curtain" Irish. But as yet, I have no evidence. I find the family in the United States in the early 1800s, in a slow westward movement that ended up in Ohio and then in Indiana. In Indiana, towns associated with my Reed line are Monticello, in White County, and Logansport, in Cass County.
There were railroad men in the Reed family. My great-grandfather Francis Harvey ("Frank") Reed was a conductor. My grandfather Benjamin Franklin (also called "Frank") was a switchman in a railroad marshaling yard. My adoptive grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed's oldest brother Perry Wilmer Reed, was a freight agent.
Francis Harvey Reed married Florence Elizabeth McKee 10 September 1884 in Monticello, White County, Indiana. Francis H. had been raised in Monticello when his family lived there. His work for the railroad had stationed him in Logansport, and that is where the new bride and groom set up their house. That was the end of their migrations. Their children, however, ended up scattered to the four winds, ending up in such places as Washington state, California, and Florida.
Benjamin Franklin Reed married Ruth Ella Nave, who was from South Bend, Indiana. She worked to support her widowed mother, a situation frowned upon by many whose notion was that "nice" girls did not work, no matter the circumstances. But eating is preferable to starving, so Ruth became a telephone operator. Married in November of 1913, the couple had three children by December of 1916. They got an early start, according to some in the family. In October of 1917, Benjamin Franklin Reed was killed in a railroad accident in Detroit, where he worked in a railroad yard.
According to my aunt, my mother's sister, the Reed family was not fond of Ruth Nave, possibly both because she worked for a living, and because the growth of her and their son's family had been, shall we say, rapid beyond the customary. My aunt said that the Reeds "ganged up" on Ruth Nave, and took her daughters, Margaret, the second child, and Martha, my mother, the youngest. The oldest, a son named Donald, was 16 by the time all the family rearrangement had taken place in the early 1920s, and he stayed with his mother. These three siblings were not reuinted until the 1950s, when all had ended up in Florida, scattered among the Tampa Bay area (Uncle Don), Orlando (Aunt Margaret) and Jacksonville (Mom).
My mother was placed with the oldest Reed brother, Perry, and his wife Mary LeSourd, of Sleeth, Carroll County, Indiana. There is not much left of Sleeth; it's practically a ghost town, so I've been told. The town was named for Mary Reed's mother's family. Perry Reed and his family are found in the 1910 census in Chicago, where their daughter, their second child Elizabeth, was born in 1910. They are missing from the 1920 census. I have looked in Chicago, in various locations in Indiana, and in Pensacola, Florida, where Perry was a railroad freight agent. My theory is this: in April of 1920, there is a very small notice in the Logansport Pharos-Reporter to the effect that Mr. Perry W. Reed, of Pensacola, Florida, was visiting relatives in the area. The visit was to take custody, I'm fairly certain, of four-year-old Martha. I would imagine Perry's wife Mary was with him, to care for the child on the journey home to Pensacola. They were on the move from one location to the other, and that is the way they got missed in the census. The final adoption decree was issued later in 1920 in Pensacola. My mom's journey to Pensacola was but the first in many migrations, as she married a young Navy officer, Arden Packard, in Pensacola, 16 July 1937. Their story is told in the first in this series of posts, On the Move: A is for Arden.
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