Ancestry or Incestry: The Evidence is In!

by Tom Shafer

October 16, 2018

Okay, so I pulled you in with a dramatic and deceptive headline (fake news?).  But here you are now, so you may as well continue reading this well-written and fascinating entry.  As far as you know, there will be nothing here about incestry (a made-up word – and a funny YouTube “commercial” about incestry.com) – unless you want to share that your own ancestry search has led you to a no-branch tree.

Anyway, there seems to be much interest in genetic testing these days – and I don’t think this interest has anything to do with the squabble between President Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren.  Over the last three years, the cost of this testing has dropped significantly, and many of these companies are spending serious money to advertise their services (think AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage).  In fact, just last year (2017), AncestryDNA sold 1.5 million genetic testing kits on Black Friday alone.

I’m not sure what people are looking for with this, but I think most are just curious about their heritage in general – and are not necessarily looking for explanations about their genetic flaws and/or failures.  Some are likely trying to confirm long-standing family stories, while others are seeking any information at all because they have little-to-no-idea from where they originate.  Still others may have asked for a kit because they are tired of getting gift cards for Sears every Christmas.  They won’t have to worry about that this year – or maybe forever.

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Last year, I decided to get father-in-law Richard Seifried a kit for Christmas.  I may well have been a Black Friday statistic because I did purchase one of the Ancestry products.  I was mildly excited about it; my father-in-law is an honorary inductee into the Lakota Sioux tribe (conferred in a ceremony in Arkansas many years ago) and has always believed that his family possesses Native American blood.  However, his son had submitted DNA evidence to one of the services a couple of years ago, and those results indicated NO connection to the Native American population.  So, I was somewhat hesitant about possibly disappointing Richard and his Native hopes.

But I was bailed out.  My sister-in-law (who lives with us in the suite I originally built for my mother) announced a couple of weeks before Christmas that she had ordered the 23andMe kit for her dad.  Relieved, I started a search for another present for him, ultimately settling on a couple of books (one about Wounded Knee) and a cool wolf nightlight (Richard loves wolves!).

About a week before Christmas, the wife asked what I was going to do with the testing kit I had purchased.  I had no plan to “re-gift” it because we had covered everyone, so she suggested that I use it.  Having spent some time researching my family tree in the past, I knew (somewhat) what my ancestry data would look like: about one-third Native American, another one-third Irish-Scottish, and the last third Western European (specifically Belgium, indicated by my earlier research).  But knowing that from mere documents wasn’t nearly as dramatic as blood evidence, so I bit my own cheek, spit into a little vial, and sent it off to be analyzed (I wanted the lab technician to wonder a little).

Perhaps because I sent the sample in before Christmas, it came back quickly, in about four weeks.  For some reason, I was a little nervous about the results.  Was I worried that my genetic spittle would deny my prior genealogical work? Would I discover that my family was from the Far Eastern Pacific or somewhere in the Middle East – not that anything would be wrong with that?  Fortunately, I was pleased to read the final data (summarized for your perusal):

34% Ireland/Scotland

31% Native American (southeastern, south-central, central America)

26% England, Wales, Northwestern Europe (perhaps the Belgium part)

8% Germanic Europe

Migrations: Central Appalachia — Southern West Virginia settlers; Ohio River Valley — Indiana, Illinois, Central Ohio settlers; Lower Midwest — Virginia, Potomac River Valley settlers

So, there were no real surprises here. My dad’s side of the family left the coal mines of Belgium and Scotland — oh, and I guess Wales — to find a better life in the coal mines of West Virginia.  Part of my mom’s family left the pastures of Ireland to farm the fine fields of Kentucky and Indiana.  The other segment of her family descended from the Cherokee tribes of Tennessee and North Carolina.  Fortunately, I didn’t follow my dad’s side into the mines near Beckley, West Virginia (and neither did he); instead, I mined ignorance from the minds of my students and attempted to replace it with knowledge (I wasn’t always successful).  I sowed the seeds of knowledge with my students and harvested . . . eww, yuck . . . I think I’ll stop with the awful metaphors now.

I have fully embraced my Native American roots, as evidenced by all of the NA paraphernalia and books adorning the walls and shelves of my home.  However, my knowledge of the Cherokee language is seriously lacking – though I can say “I love you” (a’yv gvge’yui ni-hi, a phonetic spelling) and a couple of curse words (which I won’t repeat here). And, I have visited one of my homelands, Scotland, on two separate occasions — though honestly, it was the golf, not genetics, that lured me there.

A few weeks after I received my ancestry results, my father-in-law finally got his own, and, predictably, his DNA reported NO Native American blood.  Of course, he was disappointed but not surprised.  After all, his son’s prior results pointed to this outcome.  But for Richard, it doesn’t matter.  He has been embracing the Native world for much of his life (including his master’s thesis), and his honorary tribal membership is proof enough of his Native “blood.”  A genetic test is no match for a man’s passion.

If you haven’t done so already, I recommend that you play with one of the genetic services.  Perhaps you will confirm long-held family beliefs or discover new threads to your family story.  Either way, you may initiate some interesting dialogue with your families.  It will be far better for you to discuss Great Uncle Cyrus’s red hair or interesting facial features at Thanksgiving than bringing up Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, and poor Pocahontas.  Frankly, none of them are winners (conversationally), but Great Uncle Cyrus likely won’t elicit anger, curse words, or gunfire.  Gobble, gobble!

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