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Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Titanic and Other Fables
We can say with certainty two things about the ship. ONE: the Titanic sank in 1912 with about 1500 lives lost. TWO: the tragedy has entertained and amused a great many people and afforded others fame, wealth, successful careers. That enterprising people will find a way to turn anything to their financial advantage comes as no surprise. The accumulation of wealth is still admirable to many, no matter how it is achieved. But how can we account for the enjoyment of it, the sheer fun of it all?
I think two things have to happen. First, it is necessary to suppress any thought of the real suffering that took place during those hours for the victims, and for others, victims as well, for many years thereafter. Terror, pain, death, grief, loss. Those were some of the experiences. There were others, such as remorse, shame, anger, ostracism. There really is such a thing as survivors' guilt, and if the people didn't suffer that, they were made to feel as if they should. It doesn't take very much imagination to realize that misery was part of the Titanic experience - the biggest part for the more than 2000 passengers and crew. There were moments of joy, too. Many could rejoice that they survived, that their loved ones were saved. I suspect that pleasure came with a price attached, a nagging doubt, a question irritating and bedeviling one. Could I have helped someone else? Am I more worthy than those lost 1500?
If we could turn away from the human side of the disaster, it would still be interesting as a puzzle - how did it happen? How could it have been prevented? What can be learned from it? There would be a few books written, certainly some official investigations, a footnote or two in the history books. That seems to have been the fate of some other tragedies where many lives were lost. They are news for many at the time they happen, and of interest to a few long afterwards.
That isn't the story of the Titanic. The great, unsinkable, floating palace of 1912 is many stories. It is books, and movies, and documentary films, and games, jigsaw puzzles, pillow cases... Would you sleep well at night with your head resting on that image? It is merchandise galore. Do you know you can purchase a piece of coal that was loaded onto the ship? A load of it was retrieved by the scavengers in one of their treasure-hunting expeditions.
Many people have devoted their lives to celebrating the sinking of the Titanic. Others are more in the category of "buff," not really giving the tragedy their full attention, but letting it occupy a good share of their leisure. Why is that? What is the fascination? How did this romantic aura develop from such an ugly event?
I believe it is a result of the myths and legends, the sweet, sweet stories that became part of the folklore right from the beginning. Survivors told these tales, of course. There was no other source of information. Something was said by one, elaborated by another, inflated by the media types of the day, swallowed whole by the public. These yarns found their way into the early articles in newspapers and magazines, were further encapsulated in books, and passed down from one generation of "historians" to the next.
Syrup literally drips from the saga of Mrs. Strauss choosing death by her husband's side over saving herself in a lifeboat. The fable of Captain Smith handing an infant into a lifeboat just before he went down for the last time is another. And the band playing, as the ship sank, the hymn Nearer My God To Thee may take the prize as a cloying image. What Mrs. Strauss said and why she decided as she did can have more than one interpretation. The story of Captain Smith and the infant has been debunked, as has that particular piece of music being selected by the ship's orchestra.
There are other stories told just as gripping. The search for villains turned up many, and that is also part of the fascination. We Americans love a scapegoat; perhaps all people do. Ismay's escape and survival is wonderful to contrast with the babies in third class who drowned. Captain Lord of the Californian is another. He slept while the Titanic took two-thirds of its occupants to their deaths. He slept and ignored the jeopardy of that other ship, knowing full well it was in deadly peril. Does anyone believe that? Sadly, yes, many do.
Some of the fictions within the story of the Titanic are harmless. Surely, the families of the Strausses and of Captain Smith took comfort in a saga of heroism told of their loved ones. It makes no difference what the orchestra played. It may have made no difference that they played at all. One could argue that, but it would be an exercise only. It's irrelevant now.
There are other fables that weren't so benign. People were cruel to Ismay, cruel to Lord, cruel to their innocent families. We have some very wise sayings from a variety of sources, proverbs that concern making judgments. One I believe is Biblical and cautions people not to judge lest they be judged, and another about withholding judgment until one has walked in the other man's shoes...
The legend that I find most obnoxious of all is the hideous lie told about Alice Catherine Cleaver.
It may be that interest in the Titanic is waning now. It seemed to be pretty steady for decades, enjoying a resurgence when Dr. Ballard's expedition located the wreck, reviving again when the souvenir collectors visited the site, and peaking in a phenomenal manner with the publicity surrounding the most recent movie. The last mentioned event sent Titanic mania sky-rocketing. Every book ever published was reissued; new books were churned out with amazing speed; videos were patched together. As it turned out, the movie was more about young love than the tragedy of 1912, but interest in the ship ran its course. Perhaps.
If enthusiasm for all things Titanic is flagging, one does not see it on the internet. There are hundreds of websites devoted to the disaster. A few appear to have something to offer; others just repeat a little of this, a little of that. Some make no pretense at honoring copyright laws and publish the work of others' word for word. That's an issue for the copyright holders; but there is another issue for all of us. People's work is being copied, and so are people's errors.
And that brings me to the story of Alice Catherine Cleaver.
The Story As Told In Books and Videos, Repeated On Websites
Alice Cleaver was hired in haste by the Allison family, consisting of Hudson J. C. Allison, his wife Bess, their three-year-old daughter Loraine, and their 11-month-old son, Trevor. Mr. Allison was a wealthy investment broker from Montreal, and the family was returning from a horse-buying trip to England. Alice was employed as a nurse for the children, the previous servant having abruptly quit. She shared a room in first class with baby Trevor and a maid to Mrs. Allison named Sarah Daniels. This stateroom adjoined the one occupied by the Allison parents and Loraine. There were two other servants for the family traveling in second class. The entourage was, therefore, a family of four and four servants.
Unknown to the Allisons was the fact that Alice Cleaver had murdered her infant son three years previously. She was unmarried and distraught over the fact that the baby's father abandoned her, so she threw the child off a train. She was convicted, but a lenient jury felt sorry for her as did the judge. She was released early. The Allisons knew nothing of her past and hired her to care for their children on the voyage, particularly their infant son, Trevor.
When the ship was foundering, Mr. Allison left the staterooms to see what he could learn on deck. Alice grabbed Trevor and ran off, jumping into a lifeboat to safety. The Allisons searched and searched, unable to find their son. This next comment is repeated almost word for word in more than a dozen places. The Allisons never would have left the ship not knowing that their baby was safe; therefore, Alice Cleaver's abandoning Mrs. Allison and little Loraine clearly contributed to their deaths. Loraine was the only child in first class who was not saved.
Years later, a woman claiming to be Loraine Allison approached the Allison heirs and told a story of having been rescued and adopted by the man who got her to safety. There was more to this part of the story, but relevant here is the allegation that this imposter knew things about the family and had to have been coached by Alice Cleaver.
Closer To The Truth
Alice Catherine Cleaver was just what she purported to be when she was hired in England as nurse to baby Trevor. She had never killed a child. There had been a woman named Alice Mary Cleaver who threw her baby off a train. That woman died in prison.Mistaken identity? Mistake? That's some mistake, a slander that has gone on for decades.
As for Alice rushing off with Trevor and abandoning Mrs. Allison and little Loraine, letting this family search in vain for their infant son until it was too late to save themselves... Apparently that wasn't quite accurate, either. The only surviving witnesses to events in the Allison's stateroom were Alice Cleaver and Sarah Daniels. That is not the way they told the story. Mrs. Allison was hysterical and couldn't even dress herself. Both children were sleeping. Alice dressed their mother but still could not get her to act rationally. Alice picked up Trevor, told her employer she was seeking safety, and left the room. What transpired afterwards is based only on speculation. Judging from what was widely reported later, it was the family of the Allisons who surmised they stayed on the ship searching for Trevor. It was with them that the statement, "They never would have left the ship without knowing their baby was safe," originated.
Even if we believed that Alice just grabbed Trevor and ran, does it make sense that Loraine - the little girl not quite three - was kept with her searching parents? Would they not have put her in a lifeboat? Would they have sacrificed her as well as themselves when they couldn't locate the son?
Alice entered lifeboat #11 with Trevor. This particular lifeboat, equipped for 65 people, actually carried 70. It was launched at 1:25 a.m. Sunday morning, one hour and forty-five minutes after the Titanic collided with the iceberg. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m.
Trevor was reunited with family, who raised him. He died at the age of eighteen. Alice returned to England where she married and raised a family. As far as I could determine, she received no thanks from the Allisons or anyone else; no sweet stories have been told about Alice Catherine Cleaver.
The Labor Day Storm Of 1998 (My Story)
The Labor Day Storm of 1998
1:30 in the morning, and something jolted me out of sound sleep. For moments I was confused by the barrage of sensations - noise assaulted my ears; blinding flashes of light seemed everywhere; I was drenched. When the crash of thunder was punctuated by a horrendous cracking sound, I came fully awake. "The tree!" I thought. "The oak tree has come down!" I was only partly right.
My bed was shoved up against an east window to catch what little breeze there might be that hot night, September 7, 1998. It never rained in that window. It never rained in except for that night, when the wind and rain came from every direction. I was fully soaked just a minute or so after the infamous "Labor Day Storm" began across central New York State.
Some typical quotes:
"I've lived through hurricanes on Long Island, but this was worse." "I've never been so scared in my life." "There's so much debris everywhere it's like driving down tunnels to get through our streets." [said more than two weeks after the storm]
The local newspaper of the next day reported:
A fierce storm ripped through Central New York early this morning, killing two people at the State Fair, injuring at least seven others, blowing roofs off buildings and knocking out power to thousands of residents.
On the State Thruway, a tractor-trailer blown over by high winds lay on its side beside the eastbound lanes.
In Onondaga County, the storm swept through at about 1:35 a.m. Onondaga County Executive Nicholas Pirro declared a state of emergency at 2 a.m., restricting traffic to emergencies and essential services.
Pirro, who toured parts of the city at about 2 a.m. and surveyed the county by helicopter at about 7:30 a.m., said the storm was unprecedented in his memory. "As a lifelong resident of Syracuse, I've never, never seen a storm like this," he said.
In Syracuse, the city fire department reported that at least 20 buildings sustained serious damage, including walls and floors collapsing, roofs blown off and windows blown out.
Streets throughout the county were clogged with downed trees and power lines, and officials warned residents not to leave home except for emergencies. Centro canceled all its routes at about 6 a.m.
Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. officials estimated that at least 150,000 of its customers were without power this morning, including more than 80,000 in Central New York. Power outages darkened much of Onondaga County, and parts of Oswego, Cayuga, Madison and Oneida counties, Niagara Mohawk spokesman Dan Dupee said.
The utility said it may take a week or more to restore power for all customers, including those in Onondaga County. Downed trees and lightning strikes knocked out power in a path across the state from Niagara Falls to Glens Falls.
I don't know how many people got to read the paper that day - most neighborhoods across the region were surrounded by roads that were impassable.
All I knew that early morning was that something horrendous had happened. There was no electricity, and there'd be none at my house for the next five days. In the dark, and with the constant crashing of thunder and just as continuous flash of lightning, I checked first on my mother, reassured her, and then went looking for our cats. The door onto the screened porch had been left open for them to catch the air. I figured they'd be scared to death, but looking at the porch, I was nearly scared to death myself. Both outer walls were gone. I feared they'd gotten out and were injured or terrified in that storm. Closing the door, I grabbed a flashlight and toured the house. Found them all! That was the first time I had breathed, or so it seemed, since coming awake.
From another newspaper report:
This was no thunderstorm. That word does not describe it. Ron Babbitt knew that right away, inside his apartment on South Geddes Street. The wind and rain, through the window, swept pictures off his wall. The roar of the storm was almost deafening. He awoke Monday to learn the wind had destroyed the storage room next to his bedroom, blowing one whole wall at least three houses away.
"This was a twister," Babbitt said, as he picked through the debris. "It had to be."
Yet the National Weather Service is calling the storm "a derecho," a fast-moving assault line of potent thunderstorms. The winds were tornado-level, from 70 mph to as high as 110. "A derecho can actually be worse than a tornado, because it cuts a much larger swath," said Bill Hibbert, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
And there is a power to the word that says something we all know - Syracuse has never seen another storm like this.
It started with bursts of color, which masqueraded as heat lightning. Then you heard the rumble of thunder, and the breeze turned into a strong wind, which built into a monster that shook the whole house. Lightning flashed like mortar fire. The rain was so intense it turned windowsills into waterfalls.
It was a long, long night.
Daylight was hours away, so with no power, we sat in the dark waiting for dawn and the ability to really assess the damage. I took my flashlight outside, saw that the car had been spared - tree limbs had fallen all around it. The neighbors' houses seemed intact and they appeared okay. The huge tree across the road was down, uprooted, but the house's occupant was unhurt. I took a quick look at my back yard. A large tree on the next property also had been uprooted (an oak) and had wiped out a large section of our new wooden fence. Our own gigantic old oak tree was unscathed.
Daylight arrived in due course and with it came realization. That had been one hell of a storm, and the damage as far as we could see from our own property was very extensive. Some buildings throughout the area were destroyed, many damaged, but mostly it was the trees. They lay on the ground everywhere and every road was buried in tree branches and whole trees, with power lines down on nearly every street.
I took the car and headed for the nearest hardware store to buy batteries, but the route was like a maze. I must have driven 15 miles to get to a store just 2 miles from my house. One block might be passable but the next one wasn't, and entire streets had no access. Trees had flattened dozens of cars, trapping many others in their driveways.
The hardware store was an adventure. People lined up and were escorted inside one at a time by the employees. A manager, a salesman, a stockboy walked with each customer, showing the way with flashlights. We were allowed to buy whatever we needed, had to pay cash, which was calculated on paper. I haven't seen that done in years! I bought batteries and a couple flashlights. Both items would become very scarce in Syracuse that week.
The rest of it for most of us was just surviving the tedium imposed by having no electricity. No radio, no TV, no reading after dusk, no music, no way to pass the hours 'til bedtime. I loaded 6 batteries into a radio, hating to use so many, not knowing how long we'd be without power. That radio was worth it, though. We kept in touch with what was happening across the region, and heard estimates about when electricity might be restored.
Food rotted in the refrigerator. More rotted in the freezer. Some people bought ice, and so did I, but it wasn't sufficient to save the food. A good many people had no facilities for cooking. We had a gas stove, so our meals were normal, and we could make coffee every morning. Many folks could not. We could heat water for bathing and dish-washing. Many could not.
Work crews from all over the Northeast came to help restore power. After five days, our street was finally visited by a crew from Pennsylvania. It was like the Cavalry showing up, the Marines landing. We cheered and decided Pennsylvania was the greatest place on earth and all its people were heroes. We waited and waited.....
It was dark again, and we sat in the windows, watching as bit by bit, street lights came on the next street over, the next block down. Finally, OUR lights came on.
We danced a jig, mom and I, one old lady and one getting there. We could stop trying to make conversation with each other, entertain each other, bore each other. She grabbed her book, I grabbed mine, and life was back to normal.
Confessions of an Adrenalin Junkie
I don't sky dive. I don't climb big mountains. I don't scale vertical cliffs. I don't stand in the way of hurricanes or chase tornadoes. I don't hunt serial killers, crash airplanes or sink ocean liners, but I do read about all those things, living vicariously with danger and disaster.
The ordinary life, such as mine, provides plenty of excitement and adventure.......dodging creditors, tolerating a disagreeable boss, finding new ways to cope with boredom, deciding among several dismal choices for dinner tonight, etc. The ordinary life, except for a fortunate few, needs to be spiced up with things outside of itself, such as surviving a storm on Everest or taking an unexpected swim in shark-infested waters. The safest way to perform such acts is to experience them vicariously, such as through books.
I read for hours every day. WHAT I read is something I don't always want to reveal. It can be said that I have a morbid curiosity, and that may be true. I prefer to think I am trying to kick-start my mind and attention out of their comfortable state, comfortable but completely ho-hum. How else would I meet the heroes and villains of real events, grow my compassion for victims of tragedy, gain admiration for those who survive against all odds? Wonder at those who knowingly sacrifice themselves to help someone else, often a stranger?
Morbid curiosity, adrenalin junkie, or just an ordinary person on an extraordinary quest? I may never figure it out and don't care if I don't.
The ordinary life, such as mine, provides plenty of excitement and adventure.......dodging creditors, tolerating a disagreeable boss, finding new ways to cope with boredom, deciding among several dismal choices for dinner tonight, etc. The ordinary life, except for a fortunate few, needs to be spiced up with things outside of itself, such as surviving a storm on Everest or taking an unexpected swim in shark-infested waters. The safest way to perform such acts is to experience them vicariously, such as through books.
I read for hours every day. WHAT I read is something I don't always want to reveal. It can be said that I have a morbid curiosity, and that may be true. I prefer to think I am trying to kick-start my mind and attention out of their comfortable state, comfortable but completely ho-hum. How else would I meet the heroes and villains of real events, grow my compassion for victims of tragedy, gain admiration for those who survive against all odds? Wonder at those who knowingly sacrifice themselves to help someone else, often a stranger?
Morbid curiosity, adrenalin junkie, or just an ordinary person on an extraordinary quest? I may never figure it out and don't care if I don't.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The 800 - Pound Gorilla In The Room: Our Genealogies Are Bogus
This is an expanded version of an older blog.
With the proliferation of DNA research being used in genealogy, this particular "gorilla" (what everyone knows is there but ignores) is the confirmation (not just speculation) that many of our male ancestors are not our biological ancestors. Estimates of the numbers vary, but the best research puts that at about 5% in modern Western societies. One person in 20.
Do the math. We have 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great great grandfathers, and 16 great great great grandfathers. That adds up to 31 male ancestors in just five generations. Chances are excellent that one or more of those men is biologically unrelated to us. Just that many generations take me back to only the year 1800. My family file, with excellent sources, goes back to the year 400 CE. That is with the best of the best in the way of sources - excellent, careful, reputable professional genealogists.
But the best of the best can tell us only who the fathers of record were, not who the biological fathers might have been. They are lost to history for all time.
This is what I am adding - the results of a little further thought and some simple calculations:
I picked at random just one 3rd great grandfather, to see what happens to my family history if I remove him as an ancestor.
I would lose 155 additional ancestors, as well as all the descendants of them that I have incorporated into my file. I couldn't even begin to calculate how many there are, without spending days in the process.
155 ancestors plus ??????? aunts, uncles, and cousins would make a hole in my data large enough to fly an Airbus A340 through it.
Unnerving? Most assuredly so, but it would be the result of only one incidence of false paternity in my carefully constructed family history. The finding of 5% of such occurrences virtually guarantees that there are many more imbedded in our genealogy.
Implication? I see that as implying our family history, for the most part, is bogus. And we'll never know where it goes wrong, how often, or how to "fix" it.
With the proliferation of DNA research being used in genealogy, this particular "gorilla" (what everyone knows is there but ignores) is the confirmation (not just speculation) that many of our male ancestors are not our biological ancestors. Estimates of the numbers vary, but the best research puts that at about 5% in modern Western societies. One person in 20.
Do the math. We have 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great great grandfathers, and 16 great great great grandfathers. That adds up to 31 male ancestors in just five generations. Chances are excellent that one or more of those men is biologically unrelated to us. Just that many generations take me back to only the year 1800. My family file, with excellent sources, goes back to the year 400 CE. That is with the best of the best in the way of sources - excellent, careful, reputable professional genealogists.
But the best of the best can tell us only who the fathers of record were, not who the biological fathers might have been. They are lost to history for all time.
This is what I am adding - the results of a little further thought and some simple calculations:
I picked at random just one 3rd great grandfather, to see what happens to my family history if I remove him as an ancestor.
I would lose 155 additional ancestors, as well as all the descendants of them that I have incorporated into my file. I couldn't even begin to calculate how many there are, without spending days in the process.
155 ancestors plus ??????? aunts, uncles, and cousins would make a hole in my data large enough to fly an Airbus A340 through it.
Unnerving? Most assuredly so, but it would be the result of only one incidence of false paternity in my carefully constructed family history. The finding of 5% of such occurrences virtually guarantees that there are many more imbedded in our genealogy.
Implication? I see that as implying our family history, for the most part, is bogus. And we'll never know where it goes wrong, how often, or how to "fix" it.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Death Penalty"
I am opposed to my government venturing into the area of killing its own citizens. Killing is a brutal act. The body resists its own murder and it dies hard.
Extinguishing life can be done without physical pain; veterinarians do it all the time. Our pets don't understand what is happening, so psychic pain is less than it would be for a fully aware human being.
The government, sanctioned by the people, kill for reasons that seem sufficient to many. The victim has been convicted of doing something extraordinarily bad.
Conviction isn't proof that he did it, and mistakes are made. That is justice gone bad in the worst possible way.
Can we speak of the pain and suffering of his family, friends? Should we speak of that? Doesn't that open a door onto our own guilt - knowingly and willfully causing agony to people who have been convicted of nothing?
"Capital punishment" is cruel, can't be undone, and causes misery to many innocent individuals, often for their whole lives.
Can we extend our compassion even to the "unworthy"? We, not they, own our emotions, and compassion is the best of them.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
~Dalai Lama
Extinguishing life can be done without physical pain; veterinarians do it all the time. Our pets don't understand what is happening, so psychic pain is less than it would be for a fully aware human being.
The government, sanctioned by the people, kill for reasons that seem sufficient to many. The victim has been convicted of doing something extraordinarily bad.
Conviction isn't proof that he did it, and mistakes are made. That is justice gone bad in the worst possible way.
Can we speak of the pain and suffering of his family, friends? Should we speak of that? Doesn't that open a door onto our own guilt - knowingly and willfully causing agony to people who have been convicted of nothing?
"Capital punishment" is cruel, can't be undone, and causes misery to many innocent individuals, often for their whole lives.
Can we extend our compassion even to the "unworthy"? We, not they, own our emotions, and compassion is the best of them.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
~Dalai Lama
Saturday, March 28, 2009
We Lost!
The exclamation point in the title stands for all the disappointment - amounting to a lot of psychic pain for many - in Syracuse University's defeat in the NCAA tournament last night. So many hopes dashed and much grief ahead today for some. Why do we get so wound up over a game that we ourselves are not playing?
Are sports nothing more than a twisted outlet for inborn aggression and competitive instincts? If so, they serve a good purpose. I am less likely to bludgeon my neighbor into insensibility for parking on my lawn, and New York State is less likely to declare war on New Jersey.
If basketball is winding down, can baseball be far behind?
Batter up!
Are sports nothing more than a twisted outlet for inborn aggression and competitive instincts? If so, they serve a good purpose. I am less likely to bludgeon my neighbor into insensibility for parking on my lawn, and New York State is less likely to declare war on New Jersey.
If basketball is winding down, can baseball be far behind?
Batter up!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Genealogy is for the living
Family history published on the internet or elsewhere may be about the dead, but it is for the living. It is irresponsible and disrespectful when details are included that would hurt, embarrass, or otherwise cause pain to the living. This can happen when family tragedies are discussed too close to the time of their occurrence, when there are living relatives and friends still grieving for the lost person/people. A rule I follow: when I have to choose between the welfare of the living and "historical" information about the deceased, the living trumps the dead every time.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
There's something about Twitter
Twitter is either a huge waste of time or a very profound opportunity to view the world through different eyes. Whichever, I am finding it very entertaining. It's tempting to Twitter too much twaddle, but that's the internet. We can't reform it.
William Tecumseh wrote in a letter, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." There are many things we can't refine - the inevitability of disease, disability, and death; the coming of winter to northern regions; the ultimate loss of our loved ones; the arrival of Monday mornings. And the internet.
Love it, hate it, live with it, or..........
Find another hobby.
William Tecumseh wrote in a letter, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." There are many things we can't refine - the inevitability of disease, disability, and death; the coming of winter to northern regions; the ultimate loss of our loved ones; the arrival of Monday mornings. And the internet.
Love it, hate it, live with it, or..........
Find another hobby.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Non-paternity Events
Have been thinking long and hard about that 800 pound gorilla - what it means for genealogy, and for my efforts in particular. I did pull this together, as the tip of the iceberg of publications on the subject:
NON-PATERNITY EVENTS
Science July/August 2007
The unintended consequences of genetic screening for disease
by Steve Olson
Who's Your Daddy?
A few months ago, I sat down at my desk to open a letter that could tell me whether my father was really my father. In fact, that letter could tell me whether the men going back 10 generations on my paternal side were the biological fathers of their children.
I wasn't caught up in some bizarre multigenerational paternity suit. A scientific officer at a genetic testing company knew that I was interested in genealogy, and he had offered to run my DNA through a sequencer. A few weeks earlier, I'd swished mouthwash inside my cheeks, sealed the mouthwash in a tube, and mailed the tube to the company.
My doughty Scandinavian ancestors passed the test. My DNA revealed no obvious instances where the man named on a birth certificate differed from the man who was my biological ancestor. But I was lucky. Many efforts to trace male ancestry using DNA terminate at what geneticists delicately call a "non-paternity event." According to Bennett Greenspan, whose company, Family Tree DNA, sponsors projects that attempt to link different families to common ancestors, "Any project that has more than 20 or 30 people in it is likely to have an oops in it."
The law of unintended consequences is about to catch up with the genetic-testing industry. Geneticists and physicians would like us all to have our DNA sequenced. That way we'll know about our genetic flaws, and this knowledge could let us take steps to prevent future health problems. But genetic tests can also identify the individuals from whom we got our DNA. Widespread genetic testing could reveal many uncomfortable details about what went on in our parents' and grandparents' bedrooms.
The problem would not loom so large if non-paternity were rare. But it isn't. When geneticists do large-scale studies of populations, they sometimes can't help but learn about the paternity of the research subjects. They rarely publish their findings, but the numbers are common knowledge within the genetics community. In graduate school, genetics students typically are taught that 5 to 15 percent of the men on birth certificates are not the biological fathers of their children. In other words, as many as one of every seven men who proudly carry their newborn children out of a hospital could be a cuckold.
Non-paternity rates appear to be substantially lower in some populations. The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which is based in Salt Lake City, now has a genetic and genealogical database covering almost 100,000 volunteers, with an overrepresentation of people interested in genealogy. The non-paternity rate for a representative sample of its father-son pairs is less than 2 percent. But other reputed non-paternity rates are higher than the canonical numbers. One unpublished study of blood groups in a town in southeastern England indicated that 30 percent of the town's husbands could not have been the biological fathers of their children.
Even with a low non-paternity rate, the odds increase with each successive generation. Given an average non-paternity rate of 5 percent, the chance of such an event occurring over 10 generations exceeds 40 percent.
Most people can't look that far back on their family trees, but I can. Someone on the Olson side of my family once spent an inordinate amount of time tracing the family's male lineage. My relative's genealogical research indicated that my father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father migrated from Finland to Norway in the middle of the 17th century. If that is the case, I have a particular connection to that man.
Men pass most of their Y chromosomes down to their sons intact and unadulterated. I therefore have the same Y chromosome as my father, and his father, and so on. (In fact, all men living today have inherited the Y chromosome of a single man who lived about 50,000 years ago, probably in eastern Africa. But mutations have slowly changed the Y chromosome over many generations, which is why the Y chromosomes of Finns generally differ from those of Greeks. Nevertheless, over the course of 10 or even 100 generations, the changes typically are small and the heritage is clear.) The continuity of the Y chromosome is how we know that Thomas Jefferson almost certainly had children with his slave Sally Hemings: Her direct male descendants have the same Y chromosome as Jefferson's paternal uncle, who presumably had the same Y chromosome as Jefferson. (Similar tests can reveal whether sons and daughters are really descended from their mothers and grandmothers, though non-maternity is much rarer than non-paternity.)
My Y chromosome turned out to be as Finnish as sautéed reindeer-I al- most certainly inherited it from that 17th-century Finnish émigré. But even if my Y chromosome had turned out to be suspiciously un-Finnish, I probably could have come up with a story to protect my legitimacy. I could have said that my Finnish ancestor was the descendant of a Mongolian invader, or the son of a trader from Istanbul, or even a Spanish diplomat fallen on hard times (though in fact I know that he was a peasant farmer). I could have said that one of the men in my paternal lineage was adopted after his mother and father died. The imagination is a wonderful balm for bruised expectations.
But genetic tests don't lie, which means that our imaginations may be in for a workout. For example, groups of people in many parts of the world trace their lineage to particularly prominent male ancestors. In some cases, genetic tests reveal a kernel of truth behind these stories. Genghis Khan's Y chromosome really is widely distributed in Asia, for instance. Still, many of these stories have social rather than genealogical roots. "Many times we romanticize about the different groups that we have ancestry with," says Rick Kittles, a geneticist at the University of Chicago who founded the company African Ancestry. When Kittles has told clients that their genetic tests don't coincide with what they believe, a few, he says, have been shattered.
Frankly, I hadn't thought much about these issues before sitting down to open that letter from the genetic testing company. If I had, I doubt I would have agreed to the test. If my Y chromosome was not what I expected, would I tell other family members about it-including my teenaged son? Would I have been tempted to encourage my brother, then my male cousins through my father's brothers, then my male second cousins through my grandfather's brothers, and so on to be tested so that I could determine where the non-paternity occurred? I think we'd all have been better off assuming the best and shunning the test.
But the pressure to undergo genetic testing is about to increase. New technologies are reducing the cost of sequencing DNA. Researchers are now establishing extensive databases of DNA sequences combined with health information so they can link specific genes to diseases. And once the contributions of our genes to common diseases are discovered, everyone could benefit from DNA testing. Already, the Personal Genome Project at Harvard University is seeking volunteers who are willing to have their DNA sequences and medical information posted on the Web for biomedical purposes, even though the project warns that a person's DNA could be used to "infer paternity or other features of the volunteer's genealogy."
Two of the men most responsible for the sequencing of the human genome-James Watson and Craig Venter-are making most of their genomes available on the Web. But if their sons ever decide to have their DNA tested, they could face the same situation I did in opening that letter. Watson has kept part of his genome private because he doesn't want his sons and the public to know whether he has a genetic variant predisposing him to Alzheimer's disease; he seems unconcerned about what the rest might reveal.
Genetic counselors have been struggling with the issue of non-paternity for years. When a child is born with a genetic disorder, the parents may go to a counselor to learn whether they should try to have more children. If tests reveal that the presumed father of the child is not the biological father, most counselors will tell only the mother. But a vocal minority insists that paternity should be known to all.
So far, the expense of these tests has limited their use to cases like the one above, where a serious genetic disorder is already apparent. But what will happen when people begin sequencing large parts of their DNA routinely, to see whether they are vulnerable to specific diseases? If you discovered a predisposition to heart attacks or prostate cancer, and medications could reduce your vulnerability, wouldn't you want to tell your siblings and cousins? And shouldn't they be tested, too? Yet in the absence of stringent and possibly unattainable privacy protections, widespread testing will lead to many unpleasant surprises.
Geneticists have only begun to think about how to protect people from knowing themselves too well. But they probably should have seen this problem coming a long time ago. An oft-quoted definition of their field is: "Genetics explains why you look like your father-and if you don't, why you should."
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/paternity
Non-Paternal Event (NPE)
This page was original titled False Paternal Event
15 December 2006
Non-paternal event, non-paternity event, false paternal event, false paternity, misattributed paternity: all these terms refer to a break in the Y chromosome line due to a formal or informal adoption, name change, "extramarital event" (infidelity), child known by other surname (mother's maiden name, stepfather's name), etc. There's no agreement about the rate at which these occur (the 5%-10% frequently reported as being used by geneticists may be based on folklore). Using a conservative estimate of 2%, in a group of 50 participants, we might expect that at least one would not match at all.
There is always a possibility that you could get disappointing test results. Samples that vary by three or more markers from the main group may do so for a number of reasons. One possibility is that they represent distinct lines either older or younger than the currently observed most frequent line. Another is that there has been a non-paternal event at an unknown time in the past. This means the male tested may be carrying the surname but his Y chromosome does not appear to be associated with that surname.
Types of non-paternal events include but are not limited to:
Pregnancy outside of a marriage
Pregnant female married man who was not father of child
Adoption (formal or informal)
Man married pregnant widow
Children known by step-father's name
Man took wife's name and/or children given the wife's surname
Man changed name - various reasons
Aliases
Illegitimacy - child given mother's surname
Clerical error in recording administrative data such as assigning a name to the wrong person
It should be stressed that adoptions were quite common in every age: parents died by disease or war and a relative took in the children and raised them with their name, daughters had children out of wedlock and the grandparents (or other relatives) raised the children as their own. A teen-age girl who gets pregnant by one boy and marries another - for whatever reason - might be a more frequent occurrence than maternal infidelity in earlier generations. Taking into consideration the strong pressure against "unwed mothers" until the last generation or so, one might expect such cases to account for some of the paternal irregularity indicated by Y-chromosome testing. Very young mothers of first-child sons in the line could be indicators for a higher probability of this phenomenon.
A result indicating a non-paternal event would certainly be a disappointment to most participants. But your name is legally your name and a small sample size could be misleading. A DNA sequence suggesting a non-paternal event could be that of the original bloodline - e.g., 20 people are tested, 19 are very similar and yours is clearly different. It could be that the 19 descend from the same person 300 years ago who was adopted while your line links to the original blood line going back 800 years.
FAULTY RESEARCH
Faulty research can result in a non-match or a match to a different line than expected. For example, suppose a researcher traces an ancestor named John R. Kinney to an 1850 census in MO. The census indicates he was born about 1819 in MA. The researcher finds a publication about an MA Kinney line and looks up all the Johns in the index. He finds a John Robert Kinney, Jr., born in 1819, listed as a son of John Robert Kinney, Sr., who was born in MA. There is no additional information about JRK, Jr. The publication traces the family back to 1635 in England. The inexperienced researcher thinks this must be his John and links the line to the family in the publication. Later, a DNA test of the researcher does not match two other participants from the 1635 line. This could be due to a non-paternal event but it also could be due to faulty research. If the DNA project has many participants, our researcher may learn that he links to a different Kinney line (error was due to faulty research). If it is a large project and he has no matches, he will have to consider the possibility of a non-paternal event.
_____________
Some of the above was adapted (with permission) from the Blair surname project web site. The site also includes helpful DNA 101 and FAQ sections http://blairgenealogy.com/dna/
See also:
Subject: Non-paternity rate [was Re: [DNA] Father-son Study by Univ of AZ] - December 07, 2004
http://archiver.rootsweb....GY-DNA/2004-12/1102428402
The Abstract Factory
http://abstractfactory.bl...-is-rate-of-mistaken.html
The above refers to "how many bastards are there, anyway?" at:
http://unauthorised.org/a...ogy/august-1996/0125.html
Who's Your Daddy?
Short report on: "Who's Your Daddy?" "Measuring Paternal Discrepancy and Its Public Health Consequences." Mark A. Bellis et al. in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Vol. 59, No. 9, pages 749-754; September 2005.
http://www.discover.com/i...ov-05/rd/whos-your-daddy/
December 19, 2005 World Science
Aug. 12, 2005 Courtesy BMJ Specialty Journals and World Science staff
http://www.world-science....ernews/050812_dadsfrm.htm
< . . . . "misattributed paternity." That's the phrase I employ from time to time now, as it covers both NPE and glitches in the paper trail. >
Ann Turner, November 13, 2006, post to ISOGG at yahoogroups.com, Subject:Re: [ISOGG] FW: Ysearch at the Conference.
http://freepages.genealog...opp/DNA/falsepaternal.htm
One in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, researchers find
Aug. 12, 2005
Courtesy BMJ Specialty Journals
and World Science staff
Around one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, new research suggests. The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
http://www.world-science....ernews/050812_dadsfrm.htm
At this point in the narrative we need to introduce the factor to which geneticists politely refer as 'non-paternity' - the term used when a child's father, the name on the birth certificate, is not the biological father. When a son bears the surname of his father but does not carry his genes there are only a few explanations available. The most straightforward, and innocent, is that the son has been adopted and taken the surname of his adoptive father. Of course, the same happens to adopted girls, but they will most likely not transmit this name to their children and they will certainly not pass on a Y-chromosome either. Y-chromosomes are only ever passed between father and son. Women just don't have them. The second explanation is that the entire family adopts a new surname. This was not a common practice in medieval England but it certainly was in Scotland, where a man often took the name of the clan chief on whose lands he lived or in whose army he fought without being related to him. That leaves us with the third and final explanation for the discordance between surname and Y-chromosome - infidelity by, or possibly rape of, the woman. Biologists have a rather more brutal name for it - extra-pair copulation. If a woman has a child with a man other than her husband and if that child is brought up within the family and is given the family name, the link between name and genes is broken. If the child is a boy, he will inherit his father's surname but not his Y-chromosome. That will have come from his mother's lover, or from her assailant, and not from her husband. When he has sons of his own, it will be this man's Y-chromosome that is passed on. Even if there are no non-paternity events in later generations, the link between the Y-chromosome and the original surname cannot be rescued. It is severed for good.
Bryan Sykes
http://www.wnyc.org/books/29529
Extensive list of studies through the years
http://www.childsupportan...sattributed_paternity.htm
NON-PATERNITY EVENTS
Science July/August 2007
The unintended consequences of genetic screening for disease
by Steve Olson
Who's Your Daddy?
A few months ago, I sat down at my desk to open a letter that could tell me whether my father was really my father. In fact, that letter could tell me whether the men going back 10 generations on my paternal side were the biological fathers of their children.
I wasn't caught up in some bizarre multigenerational paternity suit. A scientific officer at a genetic testing company knew that I was interested in genealogy, and he had offered to run my DNA through a sequencer. A few weeks earlier, I'd swished mouthwash inside my cheeks, sealed the mouthwash in a tube, and mailed the tube to the company.
My doughty Scandinavian ancestors passed the test. My DNA revealed no obvious instances where the man named on a birth certificate differed from the man who was my biological ancestor. But I was lucky. Many efforts to trace male ancestry using DNA terminate at what geneticists delicately call a "non-paternity event." According to Bennett Greenspan, whose company, Family Tree DNA, sponsors projects that attempt to link different families to common ancestors, "Any project that has more than 20 or 30 people in it is likely to have an oops in it."
The law of unintended consequences is about to catch up with the genetic-testing industry. Geneticists and physicians would like us all to have our DNA sequenced. That way we'll know about our genetic flaws, and this knowledge could let us take steps to prevent future health problems. But genetic tests can also identify the individuals from whom we got our DNA. Widespread genetic testing could reveal many uncomfortable details about what went on in our parents' and grandparents' bedrooms.
The problem would not loom so large if non-paternity were rare. But it isn't. When geneticists do large-scale studies of populations, they sometimes can't help but learn about the paternity of the research subjects. They rarely publish their findings, but the numbers are common knowledge within the genetics community. In graduate school, genetics students typically are taught that 5 to 15 percent of the men on birth certificates are not the biological fathers of their children. In other words, as many as one of every seven men who proudly carry their newborn children out of a hospital could be a cuckold.
Non-paternity rates appear to be substantially lower in some populations. The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which is based in Salt Lake City, now has a genetic and genealogical database covering almost 100,000 volunteers, with an overrepresentation of people interested in genealogy. The non-paternity rate for a representative sample of its father-son pairs is less than 2 percent. But other reputed non-paternity rates are higher than the canonical numbers. One unpublished study of blood groups in a town in southeastern England indicated that 30 percent of the town's husbands could not have been the biological fathers of their children.
Even with a low non-paternity rate, the odds increase with each successive generation. Given an average non-paternity rate of 5 percent, the chance of such an event occurring over 10 generations exceeds 40 percent.
Most people can't look that far back on their family trees, but I can. Someone on the Olson side of my family once spent an inordinate amount of time tracing the family's male lineage. My relative's genealogical research indicated that my father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father migrated from Finland to Norway in the middle of the 17th century. If that is the case, I have a particular connection to that man.
Men pass most of their Y chromosomes down to their sons intact and unadulterated. I therefore have the same Y chromosome as my father, and his father, and so on. (In fact, all men living today have inherited the Y chromosome of a single man who lived about 50,000 years ago, probably in eastern Africa. But mutations have slowly changed the Y chromosome over many generations, which is why the Y chromosomes of Finns generally differ from those of Greeks. Nevertheless, over the course of 10 or even 100 generations, the changes typically are small and the heritage is clear.) The continuity of the Y chromosome is how we know that Thomas Jefferson almost certainly had children with his slave Sally Hemings: Her direct male descendants have the same Y chromosome as Jefferson's paternal uncle, who presumably had the same Y chromosome as Jefferson. (Similar tests can reveal whether sons and daughters are really descended from their mothers and grandmothers, though non-maternity is much rarer than non-paternity.)
My Y chromosome turned out to be as Finnish as sautéed reindeer-I al- most certainly inherited it from that 17th-century Finnish émigré. But even if my Y chromosome had turned out to be suspiciously un-Finnish, I probably could have come up with a story to protect my legitimacy. I could have said that my Finnish ancestor was the descendant of a Mongolian invader, or the son of a trader from Istanbul, or even a Spanish diplomat fallen on hard times (though in fact I know that he was a peasant farmer). I could have said that one of the men in my paternal lineage was adopted after his mother and father died. The imagination is a wonderful balm for bruised expectations.
But genetic tests don't lie, which means that our imaginations may be in for a workout. For example, groups of people in many parts of the world trace their lineage to particularly prominent male ancestors. In some cases, genetic tests reveal a kernel of truth behind these stories. Genghis Khan's Y chromosome really is widely distributed in Asia, for instance. Still, many of these stories have social rather than genealogical roots. "Many times we romanticize about the different groups that we have ancestry with," says Rick Kittles, a geneticist at the University of Chicago who founded the company African Ancestry. When Kittles has told clients that their genetic tests don't coincide with what they believe, a few, he says, have been shattered.
Frankly, I hadn't thought much about these issues before sitting down to open that letter from the genetic testing company. If I had, I doubt I would have agreed to the test. If my Y chromosome was not what I expected, would I tell other family members about it-including my teenaged son? Would I have been tempted to encourage my brother, then my male cousins through my father's brothers, then my male second cousins through my grandfather's brothers, and so on to be tested so that I could determine where the non-paternity occurred? I think we'd all have been better off assuming the best and shunning the test.
But the pressure to undergo genetic testing is about to increase. New technologies are reducing the cost of sequencing DNA. Researchers are now establishing extensive databases of DNA sequences combined with health information so they can link specific genes to diseases. And once the contributions of our genes to common diseases are discovered, everyone could benefit from DNA testing. Already, the Personal Genome Project at Harvard University is seeking volunteers who are willing to have their DNA sequences and medical information posted on the Web for biomedical purposes, even though the project warns that a person's DNA could be used to "infer paternity or other features of the volunteer's genealogy."
Two of the men most responsible for the sequencing of the human genome-James Watson and Craig Venter-are making most of their genomes available on the Web. But if their sons ever decide to have their DNA tested, they could face the same situation I did in opening that letter. Watson has kept part of his genome private because he doesn't want his sons and the public to know whether he has a genetic variant predisposing him to Alzheimer's disease; he seems unconcerned about what the rest might reveal.
Genetic counselors have been struggling with the issue of non-paternity for years. When a child is born with a genetic disorder, the parents may go to a counselor to learn whether they should try to have more children. If tests reveal that the presumed father of the child is not the biological father, most counselors will tell only the mother. But a vocal minority insists that paternity should be known to all.
So far, the expense of these tests has limited their use to cases like the one above, where a serious genetic disorder is already apparent. But what will happen when people begin sequencing large parts of their DNA routinely, to see whether they are vulnerable to specific diseases? If you discovered a predisposition to heart attacks or prostate cancer, and medications could reduce your vulnerability, wouldn't you want to tell your siblings and cousins? And shouldn't they be tested, too? Yet in the absence of stringent and possibly unattainable privacy protections, widespread testing will lead to many unpleasant surprises.
Geneticists have only begun to think about how to protect people from knowing themselves too well. But they probably should have seen this problem coming a long time ago. An oft-quoted definition of their field is: "Genetics explains why you look like your father-and if you don't, why you should."
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/paternity
Non-Paternal Event (NPE)
This page was original titled False Paternal Event
15 December 2006
Non-paternal event, non-paternity event, false paternal event, false paternity, misattributed paternity: all these terms refer to a break in the Y chromosome line due to a formal or informal adoption, name change, "extramarital event" (infidelity), child known by other surname (mother's maiden name, stepfather's name), etc. There's no agreement about the rate at which these occur (the 5%-10% frequently reported as being used by geneticists may be based on folklore). Using a conservative estimate of 2%, in a group of 50 participants, we might expect that at least one would not match at all.
There is always a possibility that you could get disappointing test results. Samples that vary by three or more markers from the main group may do so for a number of reasons. One possibility is that they represent distinct lines either older or younger than the currently observed most frequent line. Another is that there has been a non-paternal event at an unknown time in the past. This means the male tested may be carrying the surname but his Y chromosome does not appear to be associated with that surname.
Types of non-paternal events include but are not limited to:
Pregnancy outside of a marriage
Pregnant female married man who was not father of child
Adoption (formal or informal)
Man married pregnant widow
Children known by step-father's name
Man took wife's name and/or children given the wife's surname
Man changed name - various reasons
Aliases
Illegitimacy - child given mother's surname
Clerical error in recording administrative data such as assigning a name to the wrong person
It should be stressed that adoptions were quite common in every age: parents died by disease or war and a relative took in the children and raised them with their name, daughters had children out of wedlock and the grandparents (or other relatives) raised the children as their own. A teen-age girl who gets pregnant by one boy and marries another - for whatever reason - might be a more frequent occurrence than maternal infidelity in earlier generations. Taking into consideration the strong pressure against "unwed mothers" until the last generation or so, one might expect such cases to account for some of the paternal irregularity indicated by Y-chromosome testing. Very young mothers of first-child sons in the line could be indicators for a higher probability of this phenomenon.
A result indicating a non-paternal event would certainly be a disappointment to most participants. But your name is legally your name and a small sample size could be misleading. A DNA sequence suggesting a non-paternal event could be that of the original bloodline - e.g., 20 people are tested, 19 are very similar and yours is clearly different. It could be that the 19 descend from the same person 300 years ago who was adopted while your line links to the original blood line going back 800 years.
FAULTY RESEARCH
Faulty research can result in a non-match or a match to a different line than expected. For example, suppose a researcher traces an ancestor named John R. Kinney to an 1850 census in MO. The census indicates he was born about 1819 in MA. The researcher finds a publication about an MA Kinney line and looks up all the Johns in the index. He finds a John Robert Kinney, Jr., born in 1819, listed as a son of John Robert Kinney, Sr., who was born in MA. There is no additional information about JRK, Jr. The publication traces the family back to 1635 in England. The inexperienced researcher thinks this must be his John and links the line to the family in the publication. Later, a DNA test of the researcher does not match two other participants from the 1635 line. This could be due to a non-paternal event but it also could be due to faulty research. If the DNA project has many participants, our researcher may learn that he links to a different Kinney line (error was due to faulty research). If it is a large project and he has no matches, he will have to consider the possibility of a non-paternal event.
_____________
Some of the above was adapted (with permission) from the Blair surname project web site. The site also includes helpful DNA 101 and FAQ sections http://blairgenealogy.com/dna/
See also:
Subject: Non-paternity rate [was Re: [DNA] Father-son Study by Univ of AZ] - December 07, 2004
http://archiver.rootsweb....GY-DNA/2004-12/1102428402
The Abstract Factory
http://abstractfactory.bl...-is-rate-of-mistaken.html
The above refers to "how many bastards are there, anyway?" at:
http://unauthorised.org/a...ogy/august-1996/0125.html
Who's Your Daddy?
Short report on: "Who's Your Daddy?" "Measuring Paternal Discrepancy and Its Public Health Consequences." Mark A. Bellis et al. in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Vol. 59, No. 9, pages 749-754; September 2005.
http://www.discover.com/i...ov-05/rd/whos-your-daddy/
December 19, 2005 World Science
Aug. 12, 2005 Courtesy BMJ Specialty Journals and World Science staff
http://www.world-science....ernews/050812_dadsfrm.htm
< . . . . "misattributed paternity." That's the phrase I employ from time to time now, as it covers both NPE and glitches in the paper trail. >
Ann Turner, November 13, 2006, post to ISOGG at yahoogroups.com, Subject:Re: [ISOGG] FW: Ysearch at the Conference.
http://freepages.genealog...opp/DNA/falsepaternal.htm
One in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, researchers find
Aug. 12, 2005
Courtesy BMJ Specialty Journals
and World Science staff
Around one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, new research suggests. The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
http://www.world-science....ernews/050812_dadsfrm.htm
At this point in the narrative we need to introduce the factor to which geneticists politely refer as 'non-paternity' - the term used when a child's father, the name on the birth certificate, is not the biological father. When a son bears the surname of his father but does not carry his genes there are only a few explanations available. The most straightforward, and innocent, is that the son has been adopted and taken the surname of his adoptive father. Of course, the same happens to adopted girls, but they will most likely not transmit this name to their children and they will certainly not pass on a Y-chromosome either. Y-chromosomes are only ever passed between father and son. Women just don't have them. The second explanation is that the entire family adopts a new surname. This was not a common practice in medieval England but it certainly was in Scotland, where a man often took the name of the clan chief on whose lands he lived or in whose army he fought without being related to him. That leaves us with the third and final explanation for the discordance between surname and Y-chromosome - infidelity by, or possibly rape of, the woman. Biologists have a rather more brutal name for it - extra-pair copulation. If a woman has a child with a man other than her husband and if that child is brought up within the family and is given the family name, the link between name and genes is broken. If the child is a boy, he will inherit his father's surname but not his Y-chromosome. That will have come from his mother's lover, or from her assailant, and not from her husband. When he has sons of his own, it will be this man's Y-chromosome that is passed on. Even if there are no non-paternity events in later generations, the link between the Y-chromosome and the original surname cannot be rescued. It is severed for good.
Bryan Sykes
http://www.wnyc.org/books/29529
Extensive list of studies through the years
http://www.childsupportan...sattributed_paternity.htm
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The 800 Pound Gorilla In The Room - Serious Threat To Our Genealogy
The 800 Pound Gorilla In The Room - Serious Threat To Our Genealogy
With the proliferation of DNA research being used in genealogy, this particular "gorilla" (what everyone knows is there but ignores) is the confirmation (not just speculation) that many of our male ancestors are not our biological ancestors. Estimates of the numbers vary, but the best research puts that at about 5% in modern Western societies. One person in 20.
Do the math. We have 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great great grandfathers, and 16 great great great grandfathers. That adds up to 31 male ancestors in just five generations. Chances are excellent that one or more of those men are biologically unrelated to us. Just that many generations take me back to only the year 1800. My family file, with excellent sources, goes back to the year 400 CE. That is with the best of the best in the way of sources - excellent, careful, reputable professional genealogists.
But the best of the best can tell us only who the fathers of record were, not who the biological fathers might have been. They are lost to history for all time.
Implication? I see that as implying our family history, for the most part, is bogus. And we'll never know where it goes wrong, how often, or how to "fix" it.
References upon request.
With the proliferation of DNA research being used in genealogy, this particular "gorilla" (what everyone knows is there but ignores) is the confirmation (not just speculation) that many of our male ancestors are not our biological ancestors. Estimates of the numbers vary, but the best research puts that at about 5% in modern Western societies. One person in 20.
Do the math. We have 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great grandfathers, 8 great great grandfathers, and 16 great great great grandfathers. That adds up to 31 male ancestors in just five generations. Chances are excellent that one or more of those men are biologically unrelated to us. Just that many generations take me back to only the year 1800. My family file, with excellent sources, goes back to the year 400 CE. That is with the best of the best in the way of sources - excellent, careful, reputable professional genealogists.
But the best of the best can tell us only who the fathers of record were, not who the biological fathers might have been. They are lost to history for all time.
Implication? I see that as implying our family history, for the most part, is bogus. And we'll never know where it goes wrong, how often, or how to "fix" it.
References upon request.
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