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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2008-04 > 1208444914


From: "Dan D." <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Book: DNA, Promise and Peril
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:08:34 -0400


I don't trust too much family lore. It can be indicative, very useful, but never 100% accurate. Sometimes the family tries to hide something or embellish its roots and you end up with misrepresentation.

>From my own family, I did some research on my maternal grandfather's lineage. I asked my grandfather to give me the first name of his own grandfather. He thought it was Dimitrie (Romanian name) like in Demetrius. Even about his father we thought, according to a copy of my grandfather's birth certificate (the copy is from 1916, while his birth was in 1904) that my great-grandfather Petru (Peter) would have been born in 1864 in a town called Gyula, now in Hungary. When I actually found the Mormon Church microfilms, Petru was born on the 16th of September 1866, not in Gyula, but in Kupa puszta, a place further south and baptised in another city, Battonya (all these places are in SE Hungary, close to the border with Hungary). My grandfather's own grandfather was actually named Gavrila (like in Gabriel), the guy named Dimitrie being an elder brother. I now even speculate that Petru barely knew his family, since his mother died when he was young, as most of his grandparents and he must have relied on his older brother. His name being mentioned often in the family, it "migrated" to becoming "his father". I also know now Gavrila's parents, Gligor and Ana, even Gligor's father, Vasilie (like in Basil). The latter was born in 1771 and died of cholera on August 15, 1831, in Gyula, at age 60.

So yes, family lore can provide some clues, but you can end up a bit further than reality.

And even with the church records, how do I know exactly that the parents were the stated ones? Only DNA can prove it, if one day more people with the same last name can validate their paper trails and have a similar ancestor via coalescence.

Cheers,
Dan> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:19:09 -0500> From: > To: > Subject: Re: [DNA] Book: DNA, Promise and Peril> > How nice that they have nice families with accurate memories and few secrets.> > Perhaps someone needs to go over their monthly bills with them too.> Cable TV? Cell Phone? Internet? I bet they pay more than a basic 12> marker test every single month for these things. Frivolous and> ancestrally uninformative. ;-)> > On 4/17/08, <> wrote:> > This is what the McCabes think about genealogy DNA testing:> "These laboratory analyses are expensive. Studies indicate that an> individual's knowledge of his or her ancestry is relatively accurate.> In medical genetics, we know that one of the least expensive and most> powerful genetic tools available to us is a good family history. The> decision to carry out DNA testing for ancestry will be up to the> individual. A far less expensive and excellent alternative available> to many of us is to learn about our ancestry from the elders in our> families. In addition, relatives' stories will have far more cultural> meaning than biological measures of ancestry."> > > > -- > Regards,> Rebekah> ISOGG Resource Coordinator> Volunteer Administrator: H mtDNA Project; Q yDNA Project; Scandinavian> yDNA Project> Co-Administrator: I1a yDNA Project> "dedique cor meum ut scirem prudentiam atque doctrinam erroresque et> stultitiam et agnovi quod in his quoque esset labor et adflictio> spiritus"> Ecc 1:17> > -------------------------------> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
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