Friday, January 16, 2009

Like sand through the hourglass...

I was talking to my mom the other day about how crazy the past year has been for our family. To protect the innocent I won't go into (too much) detail, but let's just say there have been lots of surprises and enough drama that any soap opera writer would be inspired.

One of the recent developments happened after my brother participated in a deep roots ancestry DNA study. The results of the test tell you where your distant ancestors came from. Since my mom is an amazing genealogist, we have our family history going back for years, and as far as we knew all our predecessors were straight up European. So it was a little surprising when my brother's results came in and revealed that he was one eighth Native American. That means one great-grandparent was full Native (or multiple great-greats, or even more great-great-greats, and so on.) Despite her thorough research, my mom had no idea we had any Native American ancestors, so naturally she was curious about where that lineage could have come from. She remembered that my great-grandfather (her grandfather) Fred used to talk about his father working with the Indians in Colorado. And thus her theory was born. She thinks Fred was actually Native American and adopted. There's no proof of this yet, but the pieces seem to fit; he was dark complected and in pictures he looks nothing like his siblings who were all fair. At the time it was normal not to talk about a child having been adopted, especially a child of another race. Fred ran away from home at the age of 15 and had no contact with the rest of the family after that – my grandfather never even met his aunts and uncles even though they lived fairly close to them.

Here's where it gets juicier (and, coincidentally, ties into a recent post.) My grandfather's brother married a girl who happened to be their first cousin. They were shunned by the family and pretty much cut off all contact, especially after they had a child who was born with Down Syndrome. If my mom's theory about great-grandpa Fred being adopted turns out to be correct, they aren't really first cousins at all – in fact, they would have no blood relationship whatsoever. So the whole family drama would have happened for no reason. Does that sound like the plot of a depressing turn-of-the-century novel or what?

We may never know the truth, but my grandfather is waiting for the results of his own DNA ancestry test to determine if the Native American line goes through him. If not it may come from my dad's side. Either way, if the test is accurate I may have a whole line of family history I never knew about. Which is really cool. As long as I don't find out later in life that I also have an evil twin in a coma.

10 comments:

  1. My sister-in-law's brother did the dna test and came back 29% Native American (which was a surprise). Apparently her brother asked their grandmother about it, and she got really quiet and refused to say anything, so now they're all wondering if she had some kind of affair or something. Quite the family mystery.

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  2. how fun to try and figure out a family mystery!

    possibly worse than finding out you have an evil twin in a coma, would be your parents revealing to you that you were born a boy, but they wanted a girl.

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  3. and have you read the seriously so blessed blog? it's hilarious--completely a satire on all our lds blogs, I'm addicted. I love it. it's on my list.

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  4. Very interesting! I love learning about family heritage! I have some Native American ancestry but I don't know much more than that. :) Let us know what happens!

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  5. Wow! I found you through Sharkbait. What an interesting crazy story. I love a good mystery...

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  6. Holy crazy Batman! You'll have to keep us updated! Just like any good soap opera, I'm hooked! Too bad DVR won't work for this.

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  7. How fascinating! I would love to know how it all turns out. Kelly's great or great-great grandmother was Indian, some NWestern tribe. I think my kids are 1 generation too far out to get any financial aid as native americans, though. Funny to think of Kelly qualifying, though, blond and blue-eyed.

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  8. Oh, and I have to say, his sister totally looks Indian. Dark skin, long black hair. All the other kids are fair with blond hair and blue eyes, but Sara looks adopted. I wonder if it's that rogue Indian gene!

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  9. Arianne, You usually have to be at least 1/4 Native American to qualify for education grants/scholarships, so I wouldn't have qualified anyway. But my mom would have!

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