Thank you both.
I’m currently reading “It’s All Relative” by A.J.Jacobs (author of “The Year of Living Biblically” and “Drop Dead Healthy”). He spends about a year looking at, using, and interviewing others about all the DNA testing services and online genetics/family tree websites.
It’s interesting, informative and laugh out loud funny.
In the Dateline story, the girl’s biological mom was adopted, and the daughter wanted to find out about her family so did one of the tests (23 and me, ancestry.com or one of those) and thats how all this came to light.
@jym626 Thanks for that; I must have zoned out for a minute or two because I definitely missed that piece and puzzled over it at the end!
Some scholars have done interesting sociology on why so many white families have a family myth about American Indian lineage, particularly Cherokee lineage. (The Cherokees were seen as a “civilized” tribe.) Every white grandma in Oklahoma seems to have the same story. This may have been a way for families to deal with their discomfort about benefiting from displacement and genocide. It was more acceptable than admitting that some forbear had African heritage, or even Greek or Middle Eastern heritage. It may also have been because white Americans created our own mythology about perceived Indian cultural merits like being stoic, proud, in harmony with nature, etc., and then wanted to put on that cloak themselves.
My MIL got it done and found something like 3% Sub-Saharan. Her family “identifies” as Caucasion but in our neck of the woods it is not uncommon to find some African-American lineage. Sure enough, after some extensive digging, she found that a plantation owner ancestor had fathered 6 children with a mixed-race slave from an adjoining plantation. One of those children (1/4 African-American) moved to the big city after the Civil War, married a white man and passed as white for the remainder of her life. Her own children were not told that she was born a slave.
And not all parents are biologically related to their children.
My aunt (my father’s sister) had bought into the “Indian Princess” great grandmother thing, even though the paper trail then and the DNA now both say that we are basically 100% British & generic northern European. Like I’ve said before, the largest Indian tribe in the US is the Wannabes.
I don’t know that she harbored any guilt or discomfort over the displacement of the Native tribes. IMO she wanted it to be true because it is something of a romantic notion and she was a romantic at heart. She probably wanted to be descended from European royalty or nobility too, although I didn’t ever hear her claim that.
Pretty much anyone with ancestry in Europe is descended from some European royalty from way back.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/07/charlemagnes-dna-and-our-universal-royalty/
(Similar can be said for other ancestral regions and their royalty from way back.)
Another of my 1st cousins on my mother side got her results back and turns out we are related on my dad’s side too- as both her and her son came up as matches for my dad’s first cousin and his children (the ones we didn’t know even existed until I did my DNA.) Very distant though as probable relationships is 3rd-5th cousins.
@ucbalumnus , I was discussing my genealogical work with my hairdresser, and she disclosed that her family tree goes back to the same crowned head if England that mine does, through an early colonial ancestor. Not all that surprising, considering that
- The easiest line to trace is always the rich one
- If you had even one land owning fore-father in what’s now the USA during early colonial times, they had a pretty limited circle to marry into, tying families together even more closely
- Most of them fathered many many children , so many many thousand descendants by now.
And yes, my grandmother claimed to be part Cherokee. Her parents lived briefly in what’s now Oklahoma. If there was any truth to that, I didn’t inherit a single gene.
Interestingly enough, DH’s ancestors did range far to find spouses. Eg, the Georgia landowner marrying the Maine gal. Granted, their paths likely crossed in New York City. And her father was a sea captain, his family had business that relied on sea shipping (and more relatives also seafarers.) Other ancestors ranged broadly across the south for partners. Several went from there to colleges up north. Doing that research, it surprised me how mobile these folks were, even as far back as the Revolutionary War era.
Side note. Our bff and DH’s early American immigrant ancestors lived in the same colony. There’s also later intersection in broader areas of New England. Fascinating.
Based on the posts here, I went ahead and shared my results on 23andme.com to see how many matches there are in their database. I don’t think I’ll be linked to any crimes 
Anyway, I was surprised to see a second to third cousin pop up in the results with my maternal grandmother’s maiden name (2.41% match). There’s also a second to fourth cousin match with my last name (1.07% match). The most weird match in the database? A *third to fourth cousin/i with a woman whose last name (with an unusual spelling) is the same as my wife’s niece, who just moved in with us to complete college here after SIL’s passing late last year.
One note about the “Indian” legends in families. I have one on my father’s side and it goes back to the 1700s. According to a family history book on his side, back in the 1770’s a teenage girl was rescued from the Indians in Kentucky (apparently, her settler family was massacred in KY/ VA and then the Indians were massacred several years later … people played for keeps back then). She ended up being the “grandmother” in official court records in KY in the early 1800s. I haven’t personally verified this … but may take it up in 10 or so years when I’m put out to pasture (retired). I think DNA technology will be a potent tool in the new investigation!
What’s funny is that I’m truly a Stripes-esque person: my ancestors were kicked out of every decent country in Europe! Then they left the overly “civilized” KY in the early 1800s for TX and CA. Where I am right now is becoming too “civilized” for me and I’d like to move farther away from the city now that D18 is headed to college.
Here is an interesting use, they are trying to match dead Jane and John Does to their families in the same way they found the Golden State Killer.
The latest advice is to save all those old envelopes. In the not so distant future, it may be possible to extract DNA from an envelope your ancestor licked, especially if the envelope was opened with a letter opener, so that the licked flap hasn’t been exposed to air. And, no, I’m not joking.
A friend of mine recently found out that her ex and at least one of his siblings were sired by a well-known urologist who worked with male infertility…and used his own sperm to artificially inseminate the female half of the couples he worked with! Her sister-in-law found this out when over 20 half-siblings popped up on 23-and-me. Apparently they actually have a FB group!! doG knows how many are out there who haven’t happened to do the test! No one knows if the ex’s parents were aware whose sperm was being used.
Sounds awfully unethical to me… I don’t know how long this doctor made a habit of doing this, but for this family it was circa 1950.
His obituary, from the early 90s, says he’s survived by his wife, one child, and grandchildren. I wonder if they are/were aware of the multitude of other descendants. I would find it disturbing, personally.
If the child or grandchildren did the DNA test and found numerous previously-unknown relatives, that may inform them that something was going on…
There have been several cases of doctors who have done that, though I don’t recall any dating back that far. But it makes a certain amount of sense. He wanted his practice to be successful, so he found a way to pad his numbers. Who knows how it started - maybe patients who he confirmed were infertile, or had low sperm counts, but he didn’t want to tell them he couldn’t help.
@Consolation - I just saw that situation on a “Law and Order” rerun!
This guy was a fairly prominent researcher, not a guy trying to pad a little practice.
I would venture to guess that a monumental ego may have played a part. B-)