Man Finds Pirate in Bath

A new book claims that Blackbeard wasn't English, but North Carolinian.

Kevin P. Duffus said his review of archives and genealogical research indicates that Blackbeard was probably Edward Beard, son of a landowner in Bath in Beaufort County.

With the help of genealogists, Duffus has found a descendant of one of Blackbeard's known crew members, Edward Salter. Under prodding by Duffus, state officials are investigating whether a skeleton kept for years in a state archaeology lab in Raleigh is that of Salter, who lived out his life near Bath.

The bones were recovered in 1986 from a crypt near the Pamlico River. If DNA tests show that the bones are Salter's, the identification would establish that at least one of Blackbeard's men had family roots in Bath. [Link]

David Wilson? Meet David Wilson

Meeting David Wilson premieres April 11 on MSNBC.

David Wilson, a 28-year-old African-American journalist, journeys into his family’s past to find answers to America’s racial divide. Along the way he meets another David Wilson, the descendant of his family’s slave master. This discovery leads to a momentous encounter between these two men of the same name but whose ancestors were on the opposite sides of freedom. Through DNA testing, David determines his African roots and returns to his native land. [Link]

It's About Time Somebody Cleaned That Up

Archaeologists have found 14,300-year-old fossilized feces in a cave in Oregon.

DNA analysis of the dried excrement shows the people who lived in the caves were closely related to modern Native Americans. Their genetic roots reach across the Bering Strait to Siberia and eastern Asia.

"These are probably the ancestors of some of the Native Americans living in America now," said Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen. [Link]

I'm not sure that I would want to know if my DNA matched dried excrement.

There Still Be Blood

Paul Dye is confident that the Civil War battle flag in his family's possession is stained with the blood of his ancestor, William D. Whitehead. Others aren't so sure.

"It's a great artifact, but there's no way it could have gone into all the battles they claim it went into," says Greg Biggs, a military historian in Tennessee who has researched Confederate flags for 18 years.

Another historian, Keith Bohannon of West Georgia University, told the auction house that he suspected the regiment had replaced the flag months before Whitehead fell at the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

Word of the scholarly skepticism riles Dye. "If anyone has questions, I'll do a DNA test," he vows. "But I know that's my family's blood on that flag." [Link]

Ménage à Trois in a Test Tube

From the UK comes news that family trees of the future might need an extra branch.

Scientists believe they have made a potential breakthrough in the treatment of serious disease by creating a human embryo with three separate parents.

The embryos have been created using DNA from a man and two women in lab tests. [Link]

I'm Descended From a Blue-Eyed Mutant

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen say that all blue-eyed people—including me and every member of my immediate family—descend from a common ancestor, who lived six- to ten-thousand years ago.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch', which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes”.

Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” says Professor Eiberg. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” [Link]

NYT Gets to the Problem of The Root

The Washington Post has just launched an online magazine called The Root that aims to be a "Slate for black readers." One section of the site is devoted to helping African Americans trace their ancestry. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is editor in chief, and (the New York Times snidely notes) has a financial interest in getting readers to give up their DNA.

[The site] will also urge people to have DNA testing, which can help them trace their backgrounds to specific ethnic groups and parts of the world. It will offer links to companies that do the testing.

One such company the site will direct people to, www.AfricanDNA.com, is co-owned by Mr. Gates, a relationship that would be prohibited at some publications.

“I don’t see a conflict of interest,” he said, because The Root will fully disclose his roles and will link to every company that does the DNA testing. [Link]

You Gotta Spit to Git It

The founders of 23andMe are in Davos, Switzerland, plugging the European launch of their DNA testing service.

A stand opposite the lift on the first floor of the Belvedere Hotel is an ideal platform from which to promote their service.

"We're stopping everyone that comes past," says [Anne] Wojcicki, armed with 1,000 free spit kits and some fetching grey beanie hats, emblazoned with the words 'I spat!'. [Link]

What Else Is Watson Hiding?

A Slate article casts doubt on the claim that James Watson is 16% African.

The company that did the sequencing claims that each base was read an average of 7.4 times, but Kari Stefansson, whose company assessed Watson's heritage, says he found enough errors in the public genome to have doubts about whether the 16 percent figure will hold up. For example, he says there are places where it appears that Watson has two X chromosomes, which would make him a woman. [Link]

Ale in the Family

Members of the famed Guinness brewing family had their DNA tested to confirm their ancestor Arthur Guinness's claim that he descended from the Magennis chieftains of Iveagh, in County Down. It turns out that he descended from "the subsidiary McCartan clan, a far less eminent family."

The book [Arthur's Round: The Life And Times Of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness] explains that where Arthur's genuine ancestors, the McCartans, once lived is a small village called Guiness or Ginnies.

The name of which is derived from the Irish Gion Ais, meaning wedge-shaped ridge -- thus clarifying the roots of the famous surname.

However, the pretensions arose when Arthur Guinness married in 1761 and engraved a silver cup with the armorial bearings of the Magennises of Iveagh -- a lion, with the red hand of Ulster, and a boar. [Link]

He'll Go Down in Family History

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has a profile at Genebase. He needs to do some work on his pedigree, though.

"Rudolph's DNA "Rangifer tarandus" was sequenced by a group of scientists in 2005 (Genebank AB245426) - this is the real thing," said June Wong, Vice President, Laboratory Operations, Genetrack Biolabs. "Humans are genetically similar to many other creatures on earth, including approximately 85 per cent similarity to reindeer and surprisingly, 61 per cent similarity to the fruit fly."

Experts speculate that Rudolph's DNA holds a genetic marker that makes the likelihood of a shiny nose highly probable. Whether flight is a dominant or recessive gene in reindeer has yet to be determined. [Link]

Note: Just because your grandfather or great-uncle had a red nose does not mean that he was related to Rudolph. It is far more likely that he was a circus clown. A circus clown with a chronic drinking problem.

A Surprise in Jim's Genes

James Watson—who helped discover the structure of DNA, and suggested recently that black people are genetically inferior to whites—has had his own genome sequenced.

An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%.

The study was made possible when he allowed his genome - the map of all his genes - to be published on the internet in the interests of science.

“This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis. “It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.” [Link]

Based on Watson's own arguments, this means that he is 16 times more likely to say stupid things about race and intelligence than the average person of European descent.

They Didn't Mention That in the Musical

Nilda Quartucci says she's the illegitimate daughter of Eva Perón.

The first inkling Nilda had that she was Eva's daughter was in 1966 when she was a mother of two. Her husband Isaur - a banker she had married at 15 - claimed he had wheedled the truth from her father after hearing rumours.

"I was numb," said Nilda. "Then one day I was out with my father and I said to him, 'So, I'm Evita's daughter?' He said, 'Oh, your husband told you.'" [Link]

A bid to have Perón's embalmed body exhumed for a DNA test was turned down by the courts in Argentina. But, given the complicated history of Evita's corpse, it may resurface on its own one of these days.

Belle Letters May Identify Corpse

Belle Gunness was a serial murderess responsible for at least ten, and perhaps as many as forty or fifty deaths. She made a practice of enticing bachelors to her Indiana farm with advertisements in matrimonial columns, and then offing them.

Now Andrea Simmons wants to find out whether Belle is the same woman whose burned, headless body was found in the cellar of her farmhouse following a 1908 fire, or whether she escaped, as many suspect.

Simmons got permission from 63-year-old Suzanne McKay, a great-granddaughter of Nellie Larson, Belle’s older sister who lived in Chicago, to exhume the body. Because of the number of generations that have elapsed and the fact that McKay and her sister are descended from Larson’s son, Simmons said the forensic anthropology team decided not to use their DNA. The best DNA comparisons come from an unbroken line of female ancestors.

However, Belle’s letters to Andrew Helgelien, which once helped entrap him, could now help determine whether his killer got away with the farmhouse deaths, too. Some of the envelopes that Belle sent to Helgelien and his brother will be used to provide hoped-for DNA from dried saliva under the stamps and places where the envelopes are sealed. [Link]

For those who like this sort of thing, gruesome crime-scene photos may be found here.

I'll Wait for the Movie

Megan didn't think much of Edward Ball's new book, The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History through DNA. The reviewer for the New York Post was equally unimpressed.

Ball believes Americans ought to be more skeptical of science in general and of DNA testing in particular. That's not a bad piece of advice. But it would also be a good idea to be wary of the claims of self-absorbed writers. Especially one who informs us that “everyone has 16 great-grandparents," or who tells us of a man who married either the sister or the daughter of onetime Vice President John Garner. Ball refers to the bride as Garner's sister on one paragraph, and as Garner's daughter in the next paragraph. Which one was it? Well, Garner and his wife had one child, a son. Must have been his sister.

That's the great thing about writing. It's not exactly a science. [Link]

The Gipper's Off the Hook

The reason for George Gipp's exhumation has been revealed.

Ellen Weeks Easton said that she had often heard that her grandmother, Eva Bright, had dated Gipp while he was at Notre Dame. Eva became pregnant at the age of 18 and gave birth to a daughter just a few days after Gipp died in December of 1920 of complications from strep throat.

[Mike] Bynum said DNA tests completed late this week after a sample was obtained from the exhumation showed conclusively that Gipp was not the father of Eva Bright's daughter.

"The DNA match wasn't even close to those we had of tests from Eva's family," he said, adding that three tests were taken. [Link]

They Must Be From Far Eastern Pennsylvania

Charles F. Kerchner, Jr., has started a project to find Asian DNA in Pennsylvania Germans.

Kerchner’s project looks to prove or disprove that some people, or sub-groups, within the Pennsylvania German ethnic group may have a small but detectable percentage of Asian genetic content, possibly introduced into their ancestors’ genomes from the major invasions of southern Germany by tribes from Asia, such as the Huns and Mongol hordes more than a thousand years ago or of ancient times from the Scythians. [Link]

Harry's Hair?

Leila Cohoon's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri, has on loan a possible piece of a president.

Six baby blond tufts of hair could belong to the late Harry Truman.

"It's a hair wreath made in the neighborhood where Truman grew up," Cohoon said.

It was a common practice for women to weave hair belonging to friends, neighbors and club or church members into hair crafts.

Recently, with the owner present, Cohoon snipped one of the sections of blond hair to be tested for DNA. [Link]

Stage Fright Keeps Me From Swabbing

After watching Alex Haley's nephew Chris take his DNA test on Roots Television, I'm hesitant to do it myself. Does it have to be done in a public place while singing?

Did Ellis Island Admit Dismembered Woman?

Dr. Hawley Crippen was hanged in England in 1910, having been found guilty of poisoning his wife and burying her dismembered body in his cellar. DNA tests now show that the remains were not those of his wife, Cora.

The team concede that they may never discover what happened to Mrs Crippen, but several intriguing clues emerged during the research. Cora sang on the British stage under the name of Belle Elmore. Ten years after the trial, a singer with a similar name was registered as living with Cora's sister in New York. Records show that the same woman entered the US through Ellis Island from Bermuda in 1910 shortly after Mrs Crippen disappeared.

"Are Belle Rose and Cora Crippen one and the same?" asked Mr [John] Trestrail. "We can't prove any of that - that is another investigation". [Link]