GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2003-03 > 1046626873


From: David Faux <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Re: mt DNA Results for a 103 Year Old Woman
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 09:41:13 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <18b.16fc7ef9.2b937473@aol.com>


Hello Beth: Thank you very much for your reply below.
I am quite familiar with the Melungeon groups and the other so - called "tri - racial isolates" from the Atlantic Seaboard and Appalachian Mountains. How fascinating. I will spend the day looking up information on the web concerning this most intersting group. It is also interesting to learn that my mother in law's mtDNA profile may help to support your proposal for the origins of the Melungeons.
Most of my mother in law's ancestors disappear into the hills, from Virginia through the Carolinas to northern Alabama to the Ozarks. It has been a source of frustration that I have been unable to locate European homes for any of them - now I think I understand why.
I know that the surname Wright (Rebecca Wright born about 1812 in Tennessee being my mother in law's great grandmother and being the one who indirectly provided the mtDNA) is found among the Cherokees who resided in Tennessee. Other surnames in my mother in law's ancestry such as Collins (from Georgia) and McDaniel (from Virginia) fall into the same category. As to forenames, Jemima (her paternal grandmother) and Sabra (her paternal great grandmother) are not very typical and may be suggestive of other elements within her mysterious Southern ancestral mix.
I suspected mixed ancestry, so I have requested PrintDNA testing from AncestrybyDNA (via FTDNA) and it will be very interesting to learn whether there is evidence of non - IndoEuropean genes.
Thank you for your input Beth. David.
wrote:Yes, David, your Mother-in-law's maternal DNA is very likely Melungeon -- an
Appalachian ethnic group which has been present since the 1500's in the
Southeastern United States. We have several ancestral lines who are proving
to have Semitic, Central Asian, Mediterrannean and Indo-Pakistani DNA -- both
paternal and maternal. Some Melungeon researchers (myself included) believe
that this is because we were originally a colony of Sephardic Jews and Muslim
Moors who initially arrived in the New World as Conversos. We have a growing
data base at Family Tree DNA, if you would like to add examine your mother's
scores in comparison to it. Welcome to the 'tribe' ; somehow from reading
your posts, I knew it was going to turn out this way. Beth Caldwell Hirschman


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Dr. David K. Faux, 4028 Larwin Ave., Cypress, CA, 90630, USA





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