My mother received a DNA kit for Christmas and got her results back today. I am beyond the moon about this because here it is, laid out in science, of the people that make me, me, through my mothers lineage. It's exciting. It's also a tad frustrating because how does it all fit together and I may never know the answer to that. My mother, however, is not excited by her results at all. It is because the faerie stories from the little that she knew are untrue. But, I want to delve into this, so lets, shall we? By faerie stories, I mean the stories passed down through her family that may or may not be true, and in the case of science right here, they are indeed untrue. My mother's story is sad. Who even knows what of it is true or not; or if any might possibly be half truths. Plus, it is rather weird that the people she is supposedly related to, don't show up in "these are your living relatives that you are related to" section accompanying her DNA results. Though, they should be, because she's been able to see Aunt so and so's daughter has an account, or this or that. Only, those people aren't there. So, as the story goes, in a tiny po-dunk corner of southern Mississippi, a 15 year old girl is raped by a married man of the community. Her parents take her away to have the baby a home for unwed mothers. The men of the community castrate the rapist and run him out of town (though I have my doubts about this for reasons I'll soon tell). The 15 year old girl has the baby at the home for unwed mothers which is, in fact, a baby black market. The baby is sold, under the table, to a couple older than the 15 year old girls parents. That baby is my mother. She is able to get the adoption papers unsealed in her thirties and finds her birth mother. Her birth mother tells her all of these faerie stories and my mother meets a whole bunch of people on her mothers line and their offspring. It is true that my mother did come from a baby black market posing as an upstanding birthing home, as she has the newspaper story, found through research, to prove it. My mother was birthed and then adopted from that place in 1948. However, to not have anyone who is related to her birth mother, who knowing her line through stories and a paper trail and knowing these people are on Ancestry, for them not to show up as any 1st - 5th cousins does seem a bit weird. Did that 15 year old give birth to a different baby? Was there a baby swapping thing going on, either conciously or unconciously? You would think someone would be in those groups of people. Surely someone decided to take the DNA test? The other things is that upon entering that community now, the members of said community have named the Highway in honour of the man who supposedly raped that 15 year old girl. So... apparently he wasn't castrated and run out of town, then? Or else that 15 year old girl, by then in her 50's and 60's, told my mother the wrong name. On purpose? Who knows! Was that 15 year old girl even raped? I wouldn't question so harshly about most people, but she was not a nice person. It's not even that she was raped, if she was. She was conniving and malicious. She was just not a nice person, and I think she probably wasn't even before she had a baby out of wedlock, whether that was my mom or an entirely different kid altogether. She also didn't hate men, and was not suspicious or untrusting of them. Seems fishy to me. There are a lot of questions that can't really be answered. Say this really is her birth mother and their family stories and genealogical paper trail are correct in so far as they know them to be. Well, that flies out the window right here with science. "Uncle Joe fought in WWII and he was so Indian that he didn't grow hair on his face and had to pretend to shave so as not to get into trouble." Right there, if that were true and she had a rather immediate relative who fought in WWII that had any portion of Native American, it would be at least 3% or higher. However, there is no Indigenous ancestry in my mothers line at all. There's also a story of this one Indian lady whose buried under the highway because that's where she died and another story of a Choctaw Princess. Only thing is, Choctaws have no princesses. Sure they do now, but it's a dignitary role to represent the tribe, and it only started in the 1950s. It's similar to Miss America or Miss Mississippi (or insert your state there), less beauty pageant and more of the dignitary side to it. Having friends of the Choctaw nation tell you that there is no such thing as a princess, historically, well, I totally called that faerie stories of mom's as BS. She wouldn't hear it though, her mom told her so, and apparently that's what she would rather believe. I was already on board with, "then no, she was not a princess" because Choctaw friends were telling me. They should know more than me, being a part of that community and their parents and grandparents and so on and so forth. To me, I was surprised there was no Indigenous and I was a little surprised that the African was so low. I really thought we would have more. But then who knows who the hell my mom is really a part of now. As I said, perhaps that woman wasn't even her biological mother. Also, we haven't tested my dad yet. There's no telling what is on his side, or if his paper trail is even remotely correct or not. If my mom's half brother takes the test and gets 1st - 5th cousins that are on his paper trail, then we'll know for certain that that woman wasn't her mother. He was not adopted out and it's highly unlikely that the hospital would have made a baby switch, where it's totally plausible that a black market home for unwed girls would. Anyway, that's one whole kettle of fish to think about. Another is, well, everything else. Nothing is spot on, just a generalized area. I understand that, but at the same time I'm like, "But... which ones? I've left of Senegal and Iberian Peninsula, because it's just Senegal/The Gambia for the first and Spain/Portugal for the second; easy to type out. Part of my mothers story is that the man who fathered her was Italian or French. But this doesn't mean much, as a story, from podunkville, simply because his surname was either weird enough to not be British or that he wasn't white enough to be British, because everyone in that community said they were English. This, I think is the more likely theory of what went down. Besides the man who is tapped as being the father had an English last name, so how is that French or Italian again? Unless the real guy was, and this other guy, who is venerated in the community, was the guy at all. Nevertheless, my mom is not only upset about the non-existant Native American, but also that there is no Italian there. She keeps thinking it will pop out of hiding somewhere on that page with, "Hi! I was here the whole time. Teehee!" What's interesting though, is that when I read the list of countries in the Europe West region I said, "Ah ha! We're German. Cool!" My sister said, "Ah ha! I knew we were French!" It doesn't say that we are difinitively either of those. The ancestry could be from one of the other five countries listed in that region, or some mixture of the group of seven. It could be French and Belgium or German and Swiss... or neither. But it's interesting to see what each of us wanted it to be. So, that is the case with all of these. It could be one or a combination or two or more of the countries listed in each region. I just do not know. But, it's also neither here nor there, because with DNA, you share a part of your genome with people in the region. So, I suppose technically it is all, even though if you were to break it down and follow a paper trail you would find which particular nationality. So, technically in a roundabout way we are related to this Slovakian guy that used to come into our coffee house. And I'm related to my exchange student friends from Germany. And we're related to my sisters exchange student friend from Sweden. I have a genome that says that I am <1% of all of those people in Europe East. To me, while I understand that there is a difference in numbers, so that <1% is not the same as 3% or 7% or 39% or 48%. I know this. But, I'm still part of that <1% for the peoples in The Iberian Peninsula, Senegal, and Eastern Europe. It's exciting to know that somehow I am also these people. Those <1% groups are just as important to me as all of the other numbers. They're there. They're real. I don't know exactly how they connect, but they're there. Hell, I don't really know how any of it connects. We still don't know the real identity of my mothers birth father. Even if that man named on the highway sign is him, I can't follow through with that, because I don't know anything about him. But whoever he was and whoever the mother is, or whatever was told vs what's real, here it is, man. Which brings us to The Iberian Peninsula and Senegal. Just from reading that <1% is 1750 or before and that Spain and Portugal were trolling that western coast of Africa and picking up slaves for the New World and that Senegal was THE port of choosing in the early days... How can I not be inclined to think that a Senegalese ancestor of an unknown to me (and undetermined tribe) was captured and taken to The New World as a slave and... and what? The Spanish/Portuguese person had a kid with them? And that kid ended up in the Georgia to Louisiana region that they say my ancestors migrated to and then that kid is how everything connects? I just don't know. But somehow there is a Spanish (or Portuguese) person and a tribe member from Senegal mixed up in there, yet it doesn't show me how they connect to this migration thing or me sitting in this chair right now. I don't even know how the Eastern European is in there. One of those peoples migrated to Western Europe and bada bing bada boom and Bob's your uncle? There are a lot of possibilities for that, since there are a lot of peoples in both groups. The Scandinavian. Is that from Norsemen coming to Britain all those long years ago? Or is that more recent considering it's 7%? If it's close in age to now, who was this Scandinavian woman or man and how did that play out, I wonder? So, even though there arises a whole messa questions from this, it really is awesome. It's more than I knew, stumbling in the dark of legendary "family" tales. These are real starting places. Instead of the entire world, at least somethings have been pinpointed now. It's actually refreshing even if it is thought inducing and also perplexing. So, even if this woman right here; my mother, is finding it all hard to swallow, her offspring certainly aren't. My sister and I are over the moon about all of this. All because this woman right here had children, do we even exist to know what her chemical make-up is, which in turn is part of us.
Science is so fascinating!
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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