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Archiver > SCT-ISLEOFMULL > 2002-06 > 1023267238


From: Kimi Reith <>
Subject: re: DNA testing
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 01:53:58 -0700


Fascinating story about the Smolenyak family testing DNA to find a shared
ancestor. I think I just hit "re-wrap" to get it formatted correctly,
JMcIntyre - thanks for posting it. Took me two days to read.

The "Duped Daddy" segment gave various possibilities for why the shared male
ancestor everyone was expecting turned out to be non-existent, including
infidelity on the part of wives. One other somber but I think more likely
possibility than female infidelity during the 18th or 19th centuries, is
that one's female progenitors might have gotten pregnant as a result of
rape. This is common in war-torn areas especially, not that sexual violence
against women isn't common anyway.

To me the explanation that made the most sense in this case was that the
name Smolenyak meant "Black" and was probably adopted by unrelated men to
describe a physical characteristic or an occupation, like the English
"Black" for blacksmith, or the "tar" possibility already mentioned (a
roofer, or a woodburner?). If the failed match had been due to infidelity
or even to rape, wouldn't at least some of the brothers and sisters have
come up a match with a long-ago Smolenyak daddy's genes?

Recently I was handed a booklet tracing Gilbert genealogy from 1548 - 1954.
I'd just learned the Gilberts were related to me through a great great
grandmother I knew nothing about. After thumbing through the whole booklet
I suddenly realized I'd overlooked exactly how this huge mass of data had
any bearing on ME. I finally found the fact of my great great grandmother's
birth and marriage to my grandfather's father, a Sayle. Sayle was a name
that meant something to me because it was my mother's maiden name, but to be
honest, the name Gilbert has no associations for me and therefore the
connection seemed remote.

Yet the Gilbert g-g-grandmother connection is no more remote than that of
ancestors sharing my actual family name, Reith. I suddenly realized how
unbelievably more complex the entire web of family history is. Maybe
everyone else on the Mull list has already groked this concept, but it hit
me like a ton of bricks. It seems to me that by tracing the few names we're
aware of in our family trees, we're actually only in possession of the
minutest portion of our histories. Each time a couple produces offspring,
those kids have an equal contribution of genes from both parents. But the
women get lost in the shuffle; usually we can only trace the names and
connections of the male lines of our parents. The names of the women the
men married pop up to an extent, but we can't usually trace the women's
families very far. Often little or nothing was recorded about women. Even
in the case of that Gilbert great great grandmother, I only know of the part
of her history that deals exclusively with male progenitors with the name
Gilbert; I have no history on each of the female progenitors that
contributed equally to her ancestry.

My family history seems a little arbitrary or random to me now, like trying
to determine heads or tails for millions of pennies flung up into the air,
when all but 6 or 8 of them have rolled out of sight under the bureau, or
focussing on and tracing the paths of a few threads through a large woven
blanket - what about all those other threads that have no names but are just
as much a part of the woof and warp of our genes?

Interestingly, DNA can also be traced through matrilineal lines, but I've no
doubt this isn't offered commercially. I learned this listening to a
fascinating radio interview with a scientist researching matrilinealy
transferred genes. By obtaining a large random genetic sampling of women of
supposedly exclusively European ancestry, this scientist was able to
demonstrate that some shared female ancestors far back in antiquity with the
women of an obscure and geographically isolated island in the Pacific. I
can't remember the details of this because I heard the interview about 15
years ago. But the outlines stuck with me, because rather than show how
isolated we all are from each other, it seemed to illustrate the potential
connection between all people.

(I do have MacLean ancestors from MULL, BTW.)

Yours,
Kimi Reith

Who's that?!
http://www.kimreith.com/



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