Blood Tests Reveal Sikhness

Routine tests run on blood donated by Bob Goddard suggest that the Englishman has some exotic ancestry.

The 64-year-old's rare combination of blood groups has revealed he could be related to the last Sikh royal family, who once owned the Koh-i-noor diamond.

Further research into Mr Goddard's family tree has shown that his great grandfather may have been Prince Freddy, second son of Maharajah Duleep Singh, known as the "last king of the Sikhs".

Mr Goddard said he discovered that his grandfather, Charlie Goddard, who was born in 1888, was the illegitimate son of an unmarried serving maid at Breckles Hall in Norfolk.

"She would never reveal the father's identity, but it was rumoured he was an Indian prince who stayed there," he added. [Link]

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.

Genealogy vs. Family History

Schelly Talalay Dardashti blogged recently about a debate sparked by an article in the Lebanon Daily News. James M. Beidler's "philosophical question about whether we should call ourselves genealogists or family historians" elicited responses from adoptees to whom the distinction really does make a difference.

Mary Eleanor Urso of Florham Park, N.J., wrote that her birth record is in Louisiana — “a state that will never open birth records to adoptees.”

“I have been restricted to the genealogy of my adoptive parents,” Urso wrote. “When I get to my generation, I put ‘adopted’ by my name and by the name of my three adopted siblings and my parents’ branch of the family tree stops there. ‘Family history’ and genealogy are not and will never be one and the same. It’s as simple as that.” [Link]

As a genealogist, family historian, former philosophy major, and uncle of seven adopted nieces (three of whose adoptions were finalized on Monday), I suppose I'm qualified to comment on this.

The genealogy of "genealogy" leads to a Greek word that may be translated as "race," "family," or perhaps (depending on context) as something else. If I were translating a passage from Aristotle, the exact meaning would matter. In determining how the word "genealogy" is currently used, and even in prescribing how it should be used, Aristotle's opinion matters far less. The fact that the English word "pencil" shares its root with the Latin word for "little penis" shouldn't keep us from pulling one out at the Family History Center.

Genealogy and family history are commonly distinguished in two ways (some have suggested a professional/amateur distinction, which I don't find persuasive):

1. Genealogy is concerned with genetic ancestry, while family history may include non-genetic relationships (adoptive parents, step-parents, etc.)
2. Genealogy is concerned with names, dates, and places, while family history is concerned also with biographical details that "flesh out" the lives of its subjects

I tend to think of genealogy as a field that embraces family history (all family historians are genealogists, but not all genealogists are family historians), since it would be difficult to record a family's history without reference to names, dates, and genetic relationships. Then again, it would be difficult to engage in genealogy without also engaging in family history. The biographical details sought out by the family historian are often the clues necessary to establishing lineage. In practice, the second of these distinctions may be less important than some suppose, and the common conflation of "genealogy" and "family history" may be, in many cases, justified.

It is the first of the distinctions that provoked the most passionate responses to Beidler's article. Though adoptees are most directly affected, anyone who discovers a "non-paternity event" in his family's past faces the decision whether to follow the genes or to follow the surnames—or to follow both. The answer depends not on disputed definitions but on one's answer to a second, larger question: What's the point of genealogy and family history research?

I won't attempt to answer that question, but I will say this: The choices and experiences of one's ancestors can have a great influence on one's life. This is true whether one is genetically indebted to these ancestors or not. I was dismayed to read this comment from an adoptee:

"I am not interested in researching a family to whom I am not related by blood — it’s not my ancestry. I find it interesting hearing stories of my adoptive parents’ relatives and ancestors, but it’s really the same as listening to my neighbors or co-workers talk about their families’ past."

I will spend the rest of my days making sure my nieces never share that sentiment.

Mary's Immaculate Record of Conceptions

Onorato Vacketta came to America as a boy, but returned to Italy to marry and start a family.

He came back to the U.S. in 1891, leaving his wife and two children and arriving in New Orleans, trying to earn a living in the sugar cane fields.

He became ill and returned to Italy in 1895, and returned to the U.S. in 1897 – moving from New Orleans to Chicago and several other Illinois cities working in the coal mines and, eventually, coming to Westville.

In 1901, he wrote his wife, who now had four children, that he was thinking of coming home.

"It wasn't talked about back then, but it seems that there were more children each time Onorato came back to Italy," said descendant Tom Jenkins of Danville. "Mary said to send her the tickets and she and the children would come to him." [Link]

No, Mr. Jenkins is not alleging that Mary conceived children in her husband's absence, but rather that the couple made up for lost time during his visits. Just to make sure, I checked the 1910 census, which shows that the Vackettas had children aged 18, 14, and 13, all born in Italy, and four more children born in Illinois. Another son, Giorgio "Vacchetto," aged 20, passed through Ellis Island in June of 1910. Those ages are consistent with the dates of Onorato's trips to Italy.

Be Prepared For an 'Oops'

Any genealogist who's put off DNA testing because he's confident where his Y chromosome came from might want to reconsider.

Genetics students, reports Steve Olsen, are commonly taught that 5% to 15% of the men on birth certificates aren't the biological parents of their children.

As more people opt to have DNA tests to check for genetic diseases or to explore family history, the more geneticists are discovering false paternity assumptions.

"Any project that has more than 20 or 30 people in it is likely to have an 'oops' in it," says Bennett Greenspan, whose company, Family Tree DNA, traces ancestral links. [Link]

His Persistence Paid Off

Here's a family that'll cause your genealogy software to pitch a conniption fit.

After confessing to him that she was still in love, an elderly Mexican woman aged 91 years said "Yes" to her 98-year-old boyfriend - with whom she has lived for 70 years and has 42 great-great-grandchildren - and the pair finally wed last June 2 in Guanajuato in the center of Mexico. [Link]

A Veep Dark Secret

It took genealogist Brenda Gene Gordon many years to discover that she is descended from a U.S. Vice President

How on earth could Brenda Gordon not have known that her great-great-great-grandfather was Vice President Richard M. Johnson? Wasn’t this fact passed proudly from generation to generation inside her family?

No, it was not.

Why not? Because the woman who bore Johnson’s two children – a woman named Julia Chinn – was, by law, a Negro. [Link]

Johnson was clearly a man ahead of his time, who made no effort to hide his relationship with the woman he had "inherited" from his father.

For example, nearly twenty years after Johnson's retirement, it was brought up during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. Douglas insinuated that Lincoln approved of interracial marriage. Lincoln deflected this charge by saying that the only distinguished person he knew of who felt that way was "Judge Douglas's old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson." [Link]

Where There's a Will, There's a Way to Keep It Secret

I've written before about Robert Brown's claim that he is the illegitimate child of the late Princess Margaret. Now Brown wants to take a peek at her will to see if it might prove his claim. Problem is, wills made by members of the Royal Family are not open to inspection by the public.

If individuals in general were allowed to claim the right to represent the public and seek judicial review, there would be "anarchy", counsel said. "This week Mr Brown; next week Mr White, Mr Pink, Mr Green."

This principle was established to avoid "busybodies, cranks and mischief-makers". Mr [Frank] Hinks said: "With all due respect, this applies to Mr Brown. He is suffering from a delusion." [Link]

Evidently very little respect is due Mr. Brown.

There Was Jell-O in Her Genes

Elizabeth McNabb was 19 in 1974 when she began her search for her birth mother. Fourteen years and a court order later, she was given access to her original birth certificate in Salem, Ore. She soon after made contact with her birth mother, Barbara (Woodward) Piel, and learned that she was the product of an illicit affair.

McNabb's great-grandfather, she also learned, was Orator Francis Woodward, a Leroy, N.Y., entrepreneur who purchased a business making a flavored gelatin known as "Jell-O" from his neighbor for $450 in 1899.

Barbara Piel died in 2003, but it took until last week for McNabb to be granted her share of the multimillion-dollar Jell-O fortune.

On Friday, a unanimous New York Appellate Division, 4th Department, panel ruled that McNabb legally constitutes a "descendant" and "living child" of her mother, Barbara W. Piel, under trusts established by Piel's mother in 1926 and 1963.

McNabb -- an office manager who has with her husband cared for more than 160 emergency-care foster children -- now stands to split those two trusts with her two half-sisters. Her one-third share totals approximately $3.5 million. [Link]

Mexican Mennonite Marriage Muddle

Hundreds of Mennonites now living in Canada may lose their Canadian citizenship because their ancestors married in Mexico. Some 7,000 of the church members moved to Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s, and many have returned to Canada in the years since.

Many of them married while living in Mexico, and that's what is causing the problem now. They were married by the church, and Mexico doesn't recognize church marriages as being legal.

That means their children were born out of wedlock, and they — along with their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren — are not eligible to be Canadian citizens. [Link]

Mistress to Mrs. in One Year

I found an interesting selection at Google Books called The Geography of Marriage: Or, Legal Perplexities of Wedlock in the United States, published in 1889. The author notes inconsistencies in the marriage laws of various states, and expounds upon the dangers of miscegenation, of polygamy, and of living in Arizona.

A mistress or concubine up to the present time has never been accorded the rights and privileges of a wife, and it has come to be a maxim that mere concubinage can never drift into matrimony, nor become wedlock by lapse of time. This rule, however, has been reversed in Arizona, by a law passed February 28, 1887, whereby it is declared that parties who have lived together as husband and wife and continued to do so for a year, shall be considered as having been legally married; and if either die within the year the same result follows, and the children are declared legitimate. Within the geographical limits of Arizona, therefore, if nowhere else on the globe, it is possible to become husband and wife without getting married at all. [Link]

According to Wikipedia, Arizona banned common-law marriages in 1913, shortly after becoming a state.

The Greenbrier Ghost Contest

Juliana Smith and Ancestry.com are offering a prize to the first person who can identify the illegitimate child of The Greenbrier Ghost, Elva Zona Heaster.

In a nutshell, Elva gave birth to a son out of wedlock in 1895, married a guy named Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue in 1896, had her neck broken by Shue in January of 1897, and haunted her mother until he was arrested. But what became of her child?

Whoever identifies Elva's offspring first gets an Ancestry.com World Deluxe subscription (or upgrade or extension). How hard could it be to chase down the child of a ghost?

Did the Princess Hide a Pregnancy?

Robert Brown, an accountant born in Kenya in 1955, claims to be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret, and 12th in line to the British throne.

At the heart of his claim is a meeting he had with a woman he believes to have been Princess Margaret when he was a young boy in Nairobi.

"I don't recall ever seeing her before but I know this woman spent some time with me. I remember we were playing games and during the day she told me that I must be on my very best behaviour because one day I might be king of England. That meeting has stayed with me and kept me going. Although I don't think I ever saw her again."

A key part of his case is that at the time of his birth, the Princess is described in at least one report of the day as [having] been confined to bed with a "hacking cough". [Link]

"Hacking cough" is, of course, an English euphemism for the expulsion of a child from one's uterus.

Politician's Ancestors Made Strange Bedfellows

Sweden's new Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has an enviable family tree. According to the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, his great-grandfather was the illegitimate son of a Latvian maid named Emma Dorothea Reinfeldt and John Hood—a circus director from New York with peculiar culinary habits.

John Hood was born around 1850 to a black mother and a governor from Borneo, if we are to believe the version put forward by a man who also claimed to be a cannibal and a connoisseur of dogs, cats and rats.

Reinfeldt's ancestor cut quite a dash on the Stockholm scene in the late 1880s and was said to be a great hit with the ladies. One newspaper, writing about Hood in 1880, describes him as, "an elegant vagabond with fine manners, a real dandy with a golden bracelet and a distinguished, stately appearance". [Link]

Clansmen's Claims are 'Codswallop'

Ranald MacDonald of Edinburgh will be inaugurated next month as the first new Chief of the MacDonalds of Keppoch in 158 years. But some of his fellow clansmen believe that his claim to the title is, quite literally, illegitimate.

They maintain one of his ancestors, Alexander, was born in 1832 out of wedlock. And they are warning the new chief that there will be no welcome for him in their historic heartland.

At his home in Edinburgh's Lauriston Place, Mr MacDonald dismissed the illegitimacy claims as "codswallop". [Link]

A Royal Bastard

From The Scotsman of Dec. 5, 2005:

Cameron revealed as a cousin of the Queen, but he's from 'wrong side of the blanket'

RHIANNON EDWARD

THE Tory leadership favourite, David Cameron, is related to the Queen through William IV's illegitimate daughter, genealogists have claimed.

The old Etonian's Royal connection was uncovered by researchers at Debrett's, the British aristocracy and genealogy bible.

[snip]

[Debrett's editor-in-chief Charles] Mosley joked that the family connection could be of use should Mr Cameron make it to No10. "It might break the ice to have a bit of a link when the new chap takes over and meets the Queen," he said. "It will allow them to exchange jokes and ask: 'How are you, cuz?'"

However, a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace was less amused, saying: "We wouldn't comment on that."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Genealogical Curiosity On Trial in Texas

From the Austin (Tex.) American-Statesman:

Kenedy case arrives at Texas Supreme Court

Court to decide if Austin judge had jurisdiction to order body dug up

By Jeremy Schwartz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, September 30, 2005

Past the desolate miles of stunted mesquite, in an ornate and meticulously tended South Texas cemetery that rises out of nothingness, lies a body that may be worth nearly a billion dollars.

[snip]

[John G. Kenedy Jr.], a hard-drinking bon vivant, was long assumed to have died in 1948 without heirs, sterile from a childhood case of the mumps. But the descendants of a maid on the sprawling Kenedy Ranch claim Kenedy fathered an illegitimate child with her, a secret kept for generations.

[snip]

Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman ordered an exhumation in January 2004. Lawyers for the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust and John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation argued that Herman lacked the jurisdiction or the authority to make such an order and that even if Ann Fernandez is Kenedy's daughter, she would not be able to reopen Kenedy's long-settled estate because of statutes of limitation.

"We don't dig up bodies simply for someone to satisfy some genealogical curiosity," argued attorney Michael Hatchell.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

New Addition to Bill of Rights?

From the (Fort Worth, Tex.) Star-Telegram of Sept. 26, 2005:

Lawyers fight over exhuming millionaire's body

Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO - Lawyers are scheduled to argue Thursday before the Texas Supreme Court whether to exhume the body of rancher John G. Kenedy Jr. for DNA tests to determine if the supposedly sterile millionaire fathered a daughter with a maid.

At issue is an inheritance estimated between $500 million and $1 billion - including a 400,000-acre, oil-rich ranch near Kingsville - left to two charities.

In the lawsuit, Dr. Ray Fernandez and his mother Ann Fernandez claim Kenedy had at least one out-of-wedlock child with Maria Rowland Goates, Ann's mother.

"Morally, everyone has the right to pursue their lineage and family history. There is no reason to try and cover that up," said Ray Fernandez, 45, the medical examiner for Nueces County.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Make Room for Daddy's Surname

From Sun.Star Pampanga (Philippines) of Sept. 22, 2005:

Illegitimate kids can now use dad's surname

By Reynaldo G. Navales

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Illegitimate children may now use the surnames of their fathers.

This is provided for under Republic Act (RA) No. 9255 amending Article 176 of Executive Order No. 209, otherwise known as the Family Code of the Philippines.

However, the same law states that a father has to acknowledge the child who wishes to use his parent's name.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

In related news, thousands of U.S. servicemen formerly stationed in the Philippines have suddenly stopped answering their telephones.