The Genetic Genealogist

In October 2008, I reviewed an article by Dr. Alondra Nelson in the journal Social Studies of Science entitled “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry” (Social Studies of Science 2008 38: 759-783).  The article was about the complex interpretation of the results of genetic genealogy testing by African-Americans and black British.  Dr. Nelson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in NY.

On Friday, an article by Dr. Nelson appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Henry Louis Gates’s Extended Family,” which is an introduction and review of the current PBS documentary miniseries Faces of America. Regarding the genetic testing aspect of the show, Nelson writes:

If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. “Know Thyself,” the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. Whereas prior shows relied heavily on analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome (Y-DNA), yielding results that included at most about 2 percent of one’s complete genetic inheritance, in Faces techniques are used that probe deeper into more of the genome.

The technical aspects of genetic ancestry tracing are explained, but without sufficient social context, much the way a manual can tell you how to operate a car without explaining automobiles’ role in modern industry, the development of suburbia, or the emergence of youth culture. We can’t hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. But we can expect some acknowledgment and interpretation of technology’s limits.

It is likely that some genetic genealogists will instantly disagree with or discredit Nelson after reading this article, since it might appear that she is being critical of genetic genealogy, but I would disagree.  In my opinion, however, it is important to be aware of Nelson’s concerns, since they are concerns shared by many people across the globe.  For better or for worse, Faces of America will be many individual’s first introduction to genetic genealogy, and without seeing the whole series yet, I hope that Gates does a fair job of introducing this wonderful technology without glossing over its limitations, particularly as they might apply to minority or marginalized populations.

That being said, I also believe that the individual shares the responsibility for understanding this technology before deciding to undergo testing.  We are all responsible, in part, for our own education.

Rather than discrediting genetic genealogy, I believe that Nelson embraces the ability of genetic testing to help some people – and ultimately society – understand our present and our past, as well as how we are all so closely related, either through our genetics or through our shared history.  Indeed, the end of the article ends with the note that Nelson “is at work on a book about genetic ancestry tracing and African diaspora culture,” which I look forward to reading.

What are your thoughts after reading Dr. Nelson’s article?

Faces of America continues every Wednesday evening from 8 – 9 p.m. ET on PBS stations through March 3rd.

The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is a searchable database created from the U.S. Social Security Administration’s Death Master File, which contains the name and social security number of deceased persons reported to the Social Security Administration since roughly 1962.  In addition to being used by genealogists, the Death Master File and SSDI are used by financial firms and government agencies for various reasons such as preventing identity fraud.

A Genealogy Meme Using the SSDI

Michael Neill at RootDig has two posts – “Have You Searched for All Your Ancestors in the SSDI?” and “My in-laws in the SSDI” – that list his and his wife’s ancestors in the SSDI.  Michael has 7 ancestors, while his wife has 6.

This led me to wonder how many ancestors I have in the SSDI, and a very brief search led me to conclude that I currently have a total of 8:

1. Theodore LaBounty 1927-1983
2. Jane (Garcia) LaBounty 1931-1984
3. Theodore LaBounty 1903-1963
4. Goldiah (Blanchard) LaBounty 1906-1996
5. Roy Bettinger 1916-1975
6. Marley (Johnson) Snell 1889-1983
7. Victor Mullin 1901-1972
8. Clara (Fitzgerald) Mullin 1907-1997

Eventually I will have a total of 11 ancestors in the SSDI, but my parents and a grandparent are still, thankfully, living.  My wife also has a total of 8 ancestors in the SSDI:

1. Harlon Conger 1921-2005
2. Lois (Finney) Conger 1891-1975
3. John Alden 1900-1971
4. Margaret (Wolford) Alden 1902-1991
5. Inez Simmons 1891-1979
6. Albert Bacon 1895-1963
7. Guy Simmons 1921-1989
8. Margaret (Bacon) Simmons 1929-2007

Other Questions

Out of your ancestors in the SSDI, who had the earliest date of birth?  Mine is Marley (Johnson) Snell who was born in 1889, and my wife’s is a tie between Lois (Finney) Conger and Inez Simmons, both born in 1891.

How many of these ancestors did you meet (whether you remember it or not)?  I met 5 of my 8 ancestors in the SSDI, and my wife met 4 of hers.

How many ancestors do you have in the SSDI?

The Evansville Courier & Press has a great article – “At 97, life is worth a big fuss: Six generations gathered at matriach’s birthday party” – which contains a picture of six generations of the Moore Family of Indiana.  The picture shows a newborn and 5 generations of her ancestors; her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather, and great-great-great-grandmother!  It is truly amazing and I highly recommend clicking over to the article to see it.

My Mother’s Mother’s Mother’s Father’s Mother (whew!)

The picture led me to wonder who was my mother’s mother’s mother’s father’s mother (following the same lineage in the article’s picture), and whether I ever met her.  After consulting my family tree software (maybe I could have done it from memory, but I thought I’d save some time!), I discovered that her name was Jemima Cooper.  I never had the opportunity to meet Jemima because she died 53 years before my birth.  She would be 118 years old today.

Then I wondered how many of my other relatives in this generation I had met.  Unfortunately I never met any of my 32 great-great-great-grandparents since the last one died in 1940 (over 35 years before I was born).  Likewise, I never met any of my 16 great-great-grandparents, although I missed the death of the last one by just 13 years.

Of the 3 great-grandparents who were alive when I was born, I met all 3 (born in 1889, 1906, and 1907).  Marley, born in 1889, died in 1983 and one of my earliest childhood memories is of meeting her.

Who Do You Remember?

Did you know any of your great-great-great-grandparents?  Great-great-grandparents?  Who is the oldest relative you remember meeting?

Article via Thomas MacEntee.

An article in the United Arab Emirate newspaper The National (wikipedia) does a terrific job of highlighting recent research from Family Tree DNA.  The story – “DNA could illuminate Islam’s lineage” – discusses research that has attempted to elucidate the Y-DNA signature of Mohammed.  Although Mohammed did not have a son, he had a daughter who married her paternal second cousin, thus passing to Mohammed’s grandchildren the same Y-DNA.  From the article:

“For almost 1,600 years, the title Sharif, Sayyed, or Habib has been bestowed on Muslims who have been able to trace their roots back to the Prophet Mohammed through intricate family trees, oral histories and genealogical records. But now an American DNA lab says it may have identified the DNA signature of descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, and perhaps the prospect of a direct, more accurate means of confirming or identifying such a connection.”

The caveat, as the story briefly mentions by the phrase “if their oral tradition is accurate”, is that no one has an authenticated DNA sample directly from Mohammed.  If there were, this type of research would not be needed.  Instead, the conclusion that it might be Mohammed’s Y-DNA is based on testing individuals who are likely to be descended from Mohammed and looking for a common Y-DNA signature.  Until a DNA sample from Mohammed is obtained (likely an impossibility), the conclusion will not be 100% proven, which means that any information about this conclusion should also contain info about this caveat.  Of course, as all genealogists know, almost none of our conclusions about ancestry/descendancy are 100% proven, especially when they are based at least in part on oral and paper records.

Sharifs DNA Project at FTDNA

There is a public Sharifs DNA Project at Family Tree DNA, which contains the following information:

“Sharif’s are people who claim to be descendant from the Prophet Muhammad, Peace on him, through the two sons of his daughter Fatima Ezzahra, which are Hassan and Hussein. The descendants of Hassan and Hussein sons of Ali Ibn Abi Taleb spread all over the world and particularly in the muslim world from Indonesia to Moroco. There are actually hundreds of thousand of people who are claiming to be be Sharifs. Some of them have a lot of genealogy documents heritated from fathers to sons and which contain many data about the genealogy trees.”

Perhaps the deduced Y-DNA signature is there?

Twitter

I first announced this story early this morning via twitter.  If you are a twitter user and would like to follow me, just click below:

This has been a great week for The Genetic Genealogist, and I just wanted to send out my gratitude.

First, TGG was included by Chris Dunham of The Genealogue in his list “10 Genealogy Blogs Worth Reading” at Blogs.com!  I’m truly honored to be listed among the other great bloggers in the article.  (Like Chris, I was recently asked to create a Top 10 list which I believe will be posted soon, but my list focuses more on genetic genealogy and personal genomics blogs).

And second, TGG was listed as #9 on the ProGenealogists list of The Top 25 Genealogy Blogs of 2009!  The rankings were based on “overall content, Technorati rating, and industry experience.”  It is an honor to be included among this group of incredible bloggers.  Be sure to visit the website to check out the other blogs on the list.

Thank you all!

In my genealogical research, I have sometimes found myself missing the trees by focusing on the forest.  I think it happens to many genealogists – we get caught up in the research, the dates, the places, and we forget that there was so much more to people than their vital statistics.

This can happen to genetic genealogists as well.  The connection between the results of a DNA test and the individuals in our tree can be easy to forget and difficult to visualize.  Take the results of an mtDNA test, for example.  The results are obtained from a tiny piece of DNA that has traveled thousands of years (and often thousands of miles) through hundreds of individuals to end up in your cheek cells and on the tip of a swab.  Everyone’s mtDNA is the product of an amazingly rich story that has largely been lost to history.

However, we as genealogists can do our part to connect the DNA to as much of the story as possible and prevent further loss.  In your own recent past, who were the people that contributed your mtDNA, your Y-DNA, or your autosomal DNA?

Visualizing My mtDNA Line

This is a compilation of the five most recent generations of my mtDNA line over the past 125 years, as shown in photographs:

From Cora to me, my mtDNA traveled 2100 miles and 93 years.

Visualizing my Y-DNA Line

Here is the seven most recent generations of my Y-DNA line over the past 200 years, as shown in photographs:

Did you notice that everyone except my son in this compilation is wearing a tie?  From George to me, my Y-DNA traveled 164 years but just 70 miles.

HT: These photographs are modeled after a similar construct that John Gabourel posted to a genealogy group I belong to.  I thank him heartily for the idea.

I’ve been working on a presentation regarding the future of genetic genealogy, and one aspect of that future is the ability to trace DNA (SNPs, mutations, haplogroups, etc…) through recent history as the result of combining extensive genomic sequencing with massive family tree information.  Although the ability to do this will have many uses (both for genealogy and for personalized medicine), it will also raise a number of privacy issues, as a recent paper suggests.

A New Privacy Study

In “Inferential Genotyping of Y Chromosomes in Latter-Day Saints Founders and Comparison to Utah Samples in the HapMap Project,” author Jane Gitschier uses a combination of FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) and Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (http://www.smgf.org/) to elucidate the Y-chromosome signature of two founders of the LDS Church.  Gitschier then used that information to determine whether anyone who contributed DNA to the HapMap project was related to these individuals via the Y-chromosome (none appeared to be).  However, Gitschier was able to predict the surname of many of the HapMap participants using these databases.

This research is related to two posts I wrote last October about using genetic genealogy results to determine surnames (“DNA Could Reveal Your Surname, Of Course,” and “More On Revealing Surnames Using Genetic Genealogy”).  I first mentioned this research last September when I highlighted some of the most interesting abstracts submitted for the American Society of Human Genetics’ November meeting (see here).

The Abstract:

“One concern in human genetics research is maintaining the privacy of study participants. The growth in genealogical registries may contribute to loss of privacy, given that genotypic information is accessible online to facilitate discovery of genetic relationships. Through iterative use of two such web archives, FamilySearch and Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, I was able to discern the likely haplotypes for the Y chromosomes of two men, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, who were instrumental in the founding of the Latter-Day Saints Church. I then determined whether any of the Utahns who contributed to the HapMap project (the “CEU” set) is related to either man, on the basis of haplotype analysis of the Y chromosome. Although none of the CEU contributors appear to be a male-line relative, I discovered that predictions could be made for the surnames of the CEU participants by a similar process. For 20 of the 30 unrelated CEU samples, at least one exact match was revealed, and for 17 of these, a potential ancestor from Utah or a neighboring state could be identified. For the remaining ten samples, a match was nearly perfect, typically deviating by only one marker repeat unit. The same query performed in two other large databases revealed fewer individual matches and helped to clarify which surname predictions are more likely to be correct. Because large data sets of genotypes from both consenting research subjects and individuals pursuing genetic genealogy will be accessible online, this type of triangulation between databases may compromise the privacy of research subjects.”

As announced by Mark Tucker at ThinkGenealogy and Shelly Talalay Dardashti at Tracing the Tribe, CEO of FamilyLink.com Paul Allen tweeted the following yesterday:

“Starting job description for ‘chief genealogy officer’ who will help manage GenSeek–directory of all the world’s genealogy sources.”

You can learn more about GenSeek – a comprehensive genealogy website including the Family History Catalog 2.0 – at “What is this GenSeek of which you Speak?” from ThinkGenealogy.

This is an interesting development and suggests that innovative developments in genealogy are continuing and that they can be profitable (for instance, see Geni.com’s latest round of VC).  In the past few months, FamilyLink.com, Inc. has hired a new a new president (Steve Nickle), vice president (Jim Erickson), and chief technology officer (Allan Carroll).

For those who are not familiar with FamilyLink.com, the company’s recent press releases contain a great summary:

FamilyLink.com, Inc. is a family of services that includes WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilyHistoryLink.com, WebTree.com, and the We’re Related and My Family applications on Facebook. The focus of the company is to bring families closer through innovative online services. A combined global audience of 11.5 million unique individuals visits the Web properties owned and operated by FamilyLink.com, Inc. each month to generate 28 million monthly page views. We’re Related is one of the fastest-growing social networks for genealogists as well as other family members with more than 16.5 million users. The application helps individuals find relatives on Facebook, keep in touch with family members through news and status updates, build family trees, and share photos. Those who use We’re Related actively participate in guiding the product roadmap through an online forum and direct feedback.

I don’t often post pure genealogy on this blog, but I thought I would take a break from genetic genealogy and join in on the Genea-Bloggers Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt, which was:  “Upload your favorite picture and talk about it on your blog. Answer the who/what/when/where/why of the subject matter and explain why it is your favorite.”

Although it is nearly impossible to pick a single favorite from my extensive photo collection, I chose the following photo as one of my favorites:

People (L to R): Frank Bettinger (my great-grandfather), Angeline Taylor Bettinger (my great-great-great-grandmother born in 1815!), Ward Bettinger (my great-great-uncle), Melissa Albro Bettinger (my great-great-grandmother), Edgar Bettinger (my great-great-grandfather), and George Bettinger (my first cousin three times removed).  Unfortunately, I never met anyone in this photo, although I’ve heard a great deal about them.

Date:  I estimate that the photo was taken between 1898 and 1901, based on two facts.  First, Angeline died in 1901 meaning the photo must have been taken before then, and the second is that Ward – who appears to be at least ten years old in the photo – was born in 1888, suggesting that the photo was taken after 1898 or so.

Place: Probably the Bettinger Family Farm in Jefferson County, New York.

Why is this my favorite?

What’s not to love in this photo?  It’s an amazing collection of three generations of my surname family and includes four of my direct ancestors.  The photo also captures a moment in the final years of my great-great-great-grandmother Angeline, an incredibly interesting woman who was born in 1815.  And lastly, it is most likely taken on the grounds of the Bettinger Family Farm where my ancestors lived for 150+ years.

Maybe a little genetic genealogy?

OK, I can’t help but sneak in just a little tidbit of genetic genealogy.  I share a Y-chromosome with every male in this photo!  In fact, my Y-chromosome passed through two of the people in photo before reaching me: Edgar and Frank.  Interestingly, if I include my son, I have photographs of seven generations of my Y-chromosome line going all the way back to 1812 (196 years).

I recently wrote about using genetic genealogy to potentially identify a male’s unknown surname.  Although I had in mind using DNA to find an adopted male’s biological surname, the method has numerous other applications.  For instance, it can be used in an attempt to identify the surname of a male who has forgotten his biological surname.

A Mystery Man

Just before 7 a.m. on August 31, 2004, an adult male was found lying next to a dumpster behind a Burger King in Richmond Hill, Georgia.  He was naked, beaten, sunburned, and covered in bites from fire ants.  Benjaman Kyle, as he has decided to call himself (note the BK connection), eventually recovered from his physical ailments but was unable to remember anything about himself or his past.  To this day, he cannot remember anything, although he claims to have vague memories or affiliations for certain things.  For example, he appears to have some background knowledge of restaurant equipment and design.  Surprisingly, he does not match any known missing person report, and no one has come forward with knowledge of his identity, despite considerable media coverage.  For more background information about Benjaman Kyle, see “A Real Live Nobody” in SavannahNow.

A Suggestion for Benjaman Kyle

So how can genetic genealogy potentially help Benjaman?  He could, for example, join the Adopted Group Project at Family Tree DNA and order a 67-marker test (more info here).  Armed with these results, Benjaman could mine the public databases – including FTDNA’s database, Ysearch, and Ybase – to look for matches.  If he finds a very close match (for instance, 67 out of 67 markers), then there is a strong possibility that the two individuals will share the same surname, or at least reveal a starting point for further research.  The largest caveat to this method is that one of Benjaman Kyle’s male relatives must have taken a genetic genealogy test and made the results available.  However, given that as many as 500,000 to 800,000 people have already undergone genetic genealogy testing and as many as 50,000 to 100,000 people try genetic genealogy every year, it is certainly possible that a male relative has been tested.

Recent Research

In October, I wrote “DNA Could Reveal Your Surname, Of Course,” which discussed a new paper from the lab of Mark Jobling (see the project background here).  His research suggested that there is a 24% chance that two men who share the same surname share a common ancestor through that name, and this increases to nearly 50% if the surname they share is rare. The press release for the paper stated: “the fact that such a strong link exists between surname and Y chromosome type has a potential use in forensic science, since it suggests that, given large databases of names and Y chromosome profiles, surname prediction from DNA alone may be feasible.”

Thus, I recommend that Mr. Kyle use genetic genealogy to potentially identify his biological surname.