Saturday, August 27, 2011

Podcast Appalachia: The "Lost" State of Franklin

Podcast Appalachia 10: The "Lost" State of Franklin

LISTEN HERE

Hello and welcome to Podcast Appalachia. I’m John Norris Brown.

Today we’ll discuss the “lost” State of Franklin.

The “lost” State of Franklin was an unrecognized territory that sought statehood just after the War for Independence. Comprised of what is today Upper East Tennessee and the easternmost counties of Tennessee, but what was then part of North Carolina, the “state” existed for only four years. In spite of its failure, the Lost State of Franklin would capture the imaginations of generations of Americans.

In the mid to late 1700s, settlers in the region that would become the State of Franklin had always felt isolated in their new territory. Fairly or unfairly, they also felt their needs were being ignored by their state government in North Carolina.

Like any good mountaineers, they decided to take matters into their own hands. In 1772 they formed the Watauga Association, the first attempt at self-government in the area. The Watauga Association was something of a forerunner to the State of Franklin and became notable for declaring itself independent of British rule prior to the Declaration of Independence.
 Cont. here:

http://podcastappalachia.blogspot.com/2009/11/podcast-appalachia-10-lost-state-of.html

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Photographs of American Indians


Very interesting collection of photographs of American Indians:


"Location: The Achomawi homeland is in northeastern California."


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Native-American-Indian-Old-Photos/10150102703945578?v=photos

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Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Sallee Rovers

Hat Tip: Robin

There never was, nor ever can be again, such a perfect example of a confederation of the brethren of the sea as that of the Pirate Republic of Bou Regreg. Rabat and Sale were the twin cities at the heart of this Republic. They were both guarded by medieval walls that had been greatly reinforced by artillery fortresses dug into the outlying cliffs that overlook the dark, muddy waters of the Bou Regreg estuary from the north and the south banks. Submerged rocks, a line of forbidding cliffs, Atlantic reefs and a sand bar at the mouth of the tidal Bou Regreg made the estuary waters a very safe harbour.

It was from this secure base that the free-ranging pirate squadrons known as the Sallee Rovers set out to harass the sea-lanes, merchant ships and harbours of Europe. They were brilliantly successful for their ships crews were a kaleidoscope of international talent that allied the military élan of Moroccans and exiled Spanish Moors with Dutch, German and English professional skills. The crews spoke a lingua franca that was based on Spanish with a mixture of French, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic loan words.

The Sallee Rovers did not just restrict their operations to the capture of shipping but took the war into the lands of the enemy; landing raiding parties that returned with captives. Their notoriety as white slavers reached a crescendo in the mid 17th century England when a series of daring slave raids seized captives from St Micheals Mount in Cornwall and Baltimore in south-west Ireland as well as intercepting the cod fishing fleet off Iceland. The boasting verses in Rule Britannia about Britons never shall be slaves could certainly not have been written in those years. It has been calculated that in this period that there were more Britons labouring away as slaves and concubines in North Africa than as settlers in all of the colonies of North America put together.

http://www.travelintelligence.com/travel-writing/sallee-rovers

This fascinating subject can be pursued further in the book Christian Slaves; Muslim Masters by Robert C. Davis.





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Monday, August 22, 2011

Salee Rover in Wynah Bay

 March 11, 1889
The Melungeons
Meridian, Miss.,
March 11– Editors Constitution
Near a month ago an article appeared in The CONSTITUTION named Melungeons [this was the article by Swan Burnett] . I laid it aside in order to correspond with the writer, but the paper got destroyed and the name and address had not been noticed with care, and are forgotten. Excuse me then for addressing him through the same medium.
His name Melungeons is a local designation for this small peculiar race. Their own claim to be Portuguese is more generally known. Their original site is on the Pedee river in South and North Carolina . They were once especially strong in Georgetown and Darlington districts of the latter. Though called Portuguese – this does not indicate their true origin. I have no doubt local traditions, and the records still to be found in the Charleston library will give the true account. As dimly recollected, for I never made search with a purpose in view, it was thus in the primary colonial times of the Carolinas, Winyaw Bay was the best and most frequented harbor on the coast, and Georgetown more accessible, was more of a commercial town than old Charlestown., to that port British cruisers sometimes brought prizes.
Among these once was a Salee Rover, (*See Below) which was sold for the distribution of the proceeds as prize money. The crew consisting mostly of Moors, with a sprinkling of Arabs and negroes, were turned ashore free. Their complexion and religion prevented immediate absorption by the white race, and they found wives among Indians, negroes and cast off white women at a time when many of these last were sold by immigrant ships for their passage money. They became a peculiar people. They were the free people of color of the Pedee region so true to Marion during our revolutionary struggle and no other race in America retained such traditionary hatred of the British.
Your correspondent [whose name I am sorry to have forgotten] having a taste for ethnological studies will confer a favor upon that branch of early post-colonial record and legislative proceedings of South Carolina. He will find it sustained by the appearance of these people if he can find a few pure specimens–their physical structure, their hair, their teeth, and general features, though every trace of their Moslem religion and north African dialect may have long been lost.
Very respectfully,
Laurence C. Johnson


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Monday, August 15, 2011

History of the Banjo May Shed Light on Melungeon Origins

 Hat Tip: Don Collins

Mellungeons and Myth

INTRODUCTION

This article was published originally in the December 2002 issue of the Appalachian Quarterly, a genealogical magazine in southwest Virginia. Mountain people were at one time described as pure Anglo-Saxon. This was, of course, pure nonsense. Today some writers seem obsessed with describing mountaineers as mostly Celtic or Scots-Irish. The truth is that the mountain people have a varied ancestry, as do many people in America. I grew up among Gibson and Collins families in Knott County, Kentucky. Some members of a few families were very dark, with a distinctive Indian appearance, while some members had a more African American appearance. There were other local families that were said to have African American or Indian ancestry. Through genealogical research I have established that a very talented Knott County family of banjo players had a grandfather that was described as Mulatto in census records.
Gibson and Collins are common surnames among some remnant Indian populations. They are also the most common surnames among mountain families that are today described as “Melungeon.” There has been a lot of romantic nonsense written about Melungeons in various places, including the Internet. The Gibson and Collins families described today as Melungeon came originally from east Virginia to the border counties of Virginia and North Carolina. From there they migrated to southwest Virginia, northeast Tennessee, eastern Kentucky and to other areas. I have found that several other families in eastern Kentucky also followed this general migration path. It was through this migration path, I believe, that banjos and banjo songs entered Knott County.

MELUNGEONS AND MYTH

 Cont. here:

 http://www.banjohistory.com/article/detail/2_mellungeons_and_myth

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Friday, August 5, 2011

Those who previously Y-DNA tested at a Sorenson Genomics lab based company can now transfer in to Family Tree DNA!!!!

 
The Y-DNA Transfer program is the opportunity for those who previously Y-DNA tested at a Sorenson Genomics lab based company to take part in Family Tree DNA group projects and to retest at Family Tree DNA.
Transfer customers may choose a basic transfer of Y-DNA46 panel results that will allow them to view their results in a new account and to join group projects. These are the Transfer Y-DNA33 and the Transfer Y-DNA46. They do not include either database matching or haplogroup prediction.
Transfer customers may also choose to test the Y-DNA STR markers required for matching to Family Tree DNA's customers. These are the Transfer Y-DNA33 + Y-DNA25 and the Transfer Y-DNA46 + Y-DNA37. They include database matching and haplogroup prediction. However, they also require a new DNA sample.
Transfer options are:

Option Price Project Membership Database Matching Haplogroup Prediction
Transfer Y-DNA33 $19 Yes No No
Transfer Y-DNA46 $19 Yes No No
Transfer Y-DNA33 + Y-DNA25* $58 Yes Yes Yes
Transfer Y-DNA46 + Y-DNA37* $58 Yes Yes Yes
* If you upgrade after ordering a basic transfer, the cost will be $49 US.

More info here:


http://www.familytreedna.com/landing/ydna-transfer.aspx


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Friday, June 10, 2011

FREE Small Books History Genealogy

Here is a listing of the free small books available for download on this site.

This is a commercial site and you need to go to the "Free Small
books"  in the middle of the page and click on the "here" to connect to the site.

http://www.dmkheritage.com/store/

Hope this helps some one in their research.

Free Books In Gallery:

GA:     History of Crisp Co. DAR  1916

 History of Washington Co. by Ella Mitchell, 1924

Ky: History of Russellville & Logan Co. by Finley

Old Kentucky Deeds: Lincoln Co. 1779-1787
 
Old Kentucky Deeds: Fayette Co. 1782-1794

N.C.     Marriage Bonds of Tryon County NC from 1769-1870.
    
Friends Records of Births and Deaths, Cane Creek, NC

     St. Bartholomew?s Parish, NC

     Bertie Co. Wills (1795-1840 abt.) NCHGR

     Bertie Co. Marriages 1762-1834 (1809-1819 missing)
NCHGR

S. C.     Annals and Parish Register of St. Thomas - St. Denis SC

     St. James Church, Goose Creek, SC 1706-1909

     Marriage Notices in SC & American General Gazette

     Chronicles of St. Mark?s Parish Santee Circuit
Williamsburg  Township, SC.

      French & Swiss Protestants in Charleston the Santee,
                 Naturalization Records 1695-96

    Vestry of St. Matthew?s Parish, SC   1769-1838

    History of Grandal Shoals (Cherokee & Union Co., SC

    History of Fairfield Co., SC  by Ederington

    The Parish of  St. Michael, SC

     South Carolina in the Rev. War. by A. Southron

Tenn.     History of Overton County, Tenn. by Goodpasture.

    Reminiscences of Early Settlements & Settlers of
McNairy Co.,  Tenn. by Gen. Marcus Wright

Va.       Lunenburg County, Va. Wills 1746-1825

   Frederick Parish, Va. 1744-1780, Churches, Chapels, etc.

   Revolutionary Soldiers and Sailors for Northampton Co.,VA

   Virginia Wills Before 1799 by Wm. M. Clemens


    Historical Sketches of ?Old Bruton Church?


Williamsburg, Va.

    Williamsburg Wills  Abt. 1750-1825

    Old Surry, Va.

     History of Hampton & Eliz. City Co. Va.  Tyler 1922

     Scotch-Irish in the Valley of Virginia by Waddell

Penn.     Penn. Marriages Prior to 1799

W.Va    History of Marion Co., W. VA.  by Geo. A. Dunnington

Sketches of Wood Co. W. VA  by S. C. Shaw

S-I         Scotch-Irish in America by Dinsmore

     Scotch-Irish in the Valley of Virginia by Waddell


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Sunday, June 5, 2011

William Holland Thomas; the only white Cherokee Chief

William Holland Thomas never knew his father, was raised by a single mother in a lowly mountain home, lacked any formal education, but was one of the most prominent figures in Western North Carolina’s history.

Thomas was the commanding colonel of North Carolina's sole American Civil War legion, Thomas' Legion, and was the only white man to serve as a Cherokee chief. His cousins included President Zachary Taylor and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It is widely believed that without Thomas's intervention there would not be the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and, to this day, the Eastern Band bestows honor and gratitude to their great white chief.

To read more about this fascinating man and the origins of the Cherokee Eastern Band: Click Here.
Thomas' Legion of Indians and Highlanders, commonly referred to as the 69th North Carolina Regiment, was officially organized by William Holland Thomas on September 27, 1862, at Knoxville, Tennessee. Its members were recruited predominately from the Western North Carolina counties of Haywood, Jackson, and Cherokee; East Tennessee also recruited many for the unit. The command initially totaled 1,125 men and contained an infantry regiment and a cavalry battalion. Its artillery battery, John T. Levi's Light Artillery Battery (a.k.a. Louisiana Tigers), formerly served in the Virginia State Line Artillery and was added to the legion on April 1, 1863. During the war, the unit mustered more than two thousand five hundred officers and men (included 400 Cherokees: the Cherokee Battalion).

For much more about Thomas' Legion: Click Here.

Note: Many Confederate units from Louisiana serving the Eastern Theater were known as Louisiana Tigers at various times during the Civil War, not just the one mentioned above.


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Monday, May 30, 2011

What is a real Indian Nation? What is a fake tribe?

Fraudulent groups passing themselves off as tribes have become big business during the past two decades, with more than 200 that claim to be some sort of Cherokee tribe. However, there are only three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes: two in Oklahoma and one in North Carolina. Many of the would-be Cherokee "tribes" are cultural societies or history clubs, whose members may or may not belong to any of the federally-recognized tribes. Still others are harmful, and some are even created for criminal purposes.


False tribes distort genuine Indian history to explain their very existence, and typically members know little about the true culture they claim to represent.

 Excerpt from "Sovereignty At Risk" document

You can go here and register to access this site.


If you don't want to register, just download the file listing fraudulent tribes:




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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Europeans in Tennessee Prior to 1796




Tennessee Timeline Before 1796


  • In the Summer of 1540 the Indian villages in the valley of the Tennessee River were ransacked by a strong mounted company of Spaniards from Florida. Before entering Tennessee, they had followed Hernando De Soto through what is now Georgia and the Carolinas, believing that somewhere in the vast reaches of the wilderness there would be treasure cities to plunder. From the Tennessee valley the Spaniards moved westward for almost a year. Many of them - including grim, iron- willed De Soto - had looted with Cortez in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru and, as a matter of course, they massacred the Indians and burned their villages when they failed to find gold. They followed bison trails and Indian trade-paths, wandering south at times into Alabama and Mississippi. In April 1541 the remnants of the party planted the flag of Spain on the bluffs of the Mississippi River and made camp near the present site of Memphis. After raiding Chickasaw villages nearby for food and mussel pearls, they crossed the river to continue searching for the will-o'-the-wisp gold they were never to find.








  • More than a century passed before there is record of another white man entering the territory. In 1673 a woods ranger named James Needham was commissioned by Abraham Wood, Virginia trader, to scout the possibility of trade with the Overhill Cherokee whose towns lay along the Little Tennessee and Tellico Rivers. Accompanied by Gabriel Arthur, an indentured servant, and several Indians from the Cherokee Lower Towns, Needham twice crossed the mountains into Tennessee. On the second trip he was killed by the Indians.


  • Cont. here: http://www.tngenweb.org/pre1796/timeline.htm





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    Thursday, March 24, 2011

    The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White



    I am now reading this fascinating book and while it is not about Melungeons specifically, much of it is applicable. And the author does mention Melungeons on three pages in a much better and more accurate assessment than is usually accorded.

    The author contends that there are millions of American who have no clue they have one or more African American ancestors. This phenomena is due to most families who got "white enough" choosing to pass for white. The social, legal and financial benefits were just too tempting to do otherwise.

    Three families are traced in this book; the Walls, Gibson/Gipsons, and Spencers with information about allied lines. Modern day descendants are interviewed. One man only learned of his origin through extensive Genealogical research.

    This is a well researched and written treatment. The author is very fair and impartial. His detailed descriptions of Civil War battles are worth reading the book for. If an officer made stupid mistakes and needless sacrifices of his men, this author states so regardless of which side that officer represented. This carries over into much of the retelling of historical events. And at the end of the day you come away with the understanding that these people were first and foremost human beings, mothers and fathers, doing their best to survive and make a better world for their children.


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    Wednesday, March 16, 2011

    Great Grandma was a Full Blooded Cherokee Princess ~ Now What????

    Roberta Estes copyright 2011

    So you've become interested in your family heritage and someone told you that your great-grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee princess.  You find this quite interesting of course, and would like to find out more.  But where do you turn, what do you do, and can DNA testing help you?  Let's look at your options one at a time.

    First, let's just be honest here.  Your great-grandmother was probably NOT a full blooded Cherokee Princess.  I've heard this story thousands of times - even in my own family - and it's simply not true.  There are two reasons it's not true - but don't give up -  keep reading - there's light at the end of the tunnel!

    Reason 1 - The Cherokee didn't have princesses. 

    Reason 2 - Unless your great-grandmother was living on the Cherokee Reservation in either Oklahoma or North Carolina , she probably wasn't full blooded.  The Cherokee east of the Mississippi were relocated in the 1830s in the ordeal known at the Trail of Tears.  You can read more about that at this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_removal.   A census was taken at that time, and even then, few Cherokee were "full-blooded".  Many were admixed with mostly European traders, but a few with African Americans as well.

    The Cherokee who were allowed to remain east of the Mississippi were already living outside of the reservation, were citizens of the states in which they lived and owned land, living mostly as Europeans, not Native people.  Most were Native women married to white men.  Today they form the Eastern Bank of the Cherokee and mostly descend from people on the original Baker Roll.  You can search the Baker Roll here - http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/baker.php.

    Given a generation length of 25-30 years on the average, the Cherokee removal was between 6 and 7 generations ago.  IF your ancestor was full blooded at that time, and IF they married a full-blooded white person for every generation since, you would be 1/64th Cherokee and great-grandma would have been 1/8th.  Of course, there are a lot of IFs in that statement.

    Now, the good news.  Many times, where there is smoke, there is fire.  If your family carries the oral history that you have some Native ancestry, you probably do.  These stories tend to become exaggerated over time and also tend to lose track of the correct generation.

    Let's talk about some things you can do to discover your Native heritage.

    1.  The census is your friend.  Thankfully, the census has been indexed and is available online.  Some years are available free by using Heritage Quest, available though most libraries via the internet with a library card.  Check with your local library.  Personally, I use Ancestry.com but it requires a subscription for most years.  In the census, if your ancestor was of mixed heritage and it was visible, they may be noted as mulatto in the census.  There were only three categories, black, white and mulatto.  In this context, mulatto meant mixed.  Find them in every census available.  The census began in 1790 and in most places, the census is available every 10 years, except for 1890 which was destroyed.  Sometimes their ethnic designation changed from census to census and even one mulatto finding is a significant hint.  Check their siblings too.

    2.  Where did they live?  The census will tell you not only where they lived, but where they were born and where their parents were born.  Often you can track the family back in time. If your ancestors were Cherokee, they would have been living where the Cherokee tribe was located.  On the map below, you can see where the Cherokee and other tribes were found before removal in the 1830s.

     
    3.  The word Cherokee has become generic, like the word Kleenex.  Many people who descend from now defunct tribes have lost their tribal name.  The Cherokee are the best known tribe east of the Mississippi, and therefore many families have assumed for years that the Cherokee were their ancestors, when they were not.  In the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, many tribes were nearly decimated and their remnant people joined together.  You can read about this in my paper titled Where Have All the Indians Gone? Native American Eastern Seaboard Dispersal, Genealogy and DNA in Relation to Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony of Roanoke. This paper is available free on my website, but was originally published in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.  It discusses the various tribes, their locations as well as their fates at length.

    4.  There are Native resources you can check.  There were several rolls taken beginning in 1817 and ending in 1924.  You can see them at this link - http://www.tngenweb.org/tnfirst/rolls.html.  The most famous and useful are the Dawes Rolls and the Guion Miller Roll, both of which are used to document tribal heritage and at that time, enrollment in the tribe.  You can search the final rolls index for free at this link -  http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/finalindex.php.  Many legitimate Cherokee enrolled, and many families with a history of Native heritage attempted to enroll as well.  Most were declined because even then, they could not prove their connection to the Cherokee.  However, if one of your family members, or their siblings, or cousins attempted to enroll, the application is chocked full of genealogy information.  These applications are the Holy Grail of Native American genealogy research.  Notice on the bottom of this page that you can also search other rolls as well.  You can also search at www.footnote.com using the collection title "Dawes Packets".

    5.  You can engage others to help you in your search.  A company called Cherokee Roots has published a significant amount of information in book format and will also assist you in your search.  You can see their products and services here -  http://www.cherokeeroots.com/.

    How Can DNA Testing Help?

    DNA testing can help you in a number of ways, depending on who is available to test.

    There are three kinds of DNA testing for genealogy.  All three test different parts of the human DNA and for different genealogy reasons.

    A white paper is available that explains this at http://www.dnaexplain.com/Publications/Publications.asp titled DNA Testing For Genealogy: The Basics. 

    The first type of DNA testing is Y chromosomal testing.  Men given their Y chromosome to their sons, which is what makes them male.  Women don't have a Y chromosome, so they can't contribute any part of it to their sons.  Therefore, the father's Y chromosome is passed intact to his sons.  He inherited the same chromosome from his father, and his father from his grandfather, on up the paternal tree, which fortunately matches the surname.  Therefore, men can test their Y chromosome to see if they match another man of the same surname to see if they share a common ancestor. 

    Based on the results, men are grouped together in larger groups called haplogroups, and there are two Native American haplogroups that men fall into.  This identifies them as Native American.  In our situation with great-grandma, this won't work, because she did not have a Y chromosome.  However, if you know who great-grandma's father was, you can test his male descendants (of the same surname) today to see if maybe great-grandma's Native ancestry came from her father.

    The second type of DNA testing is mitochondrial DNA testing. Women give their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to both sexes of their children, but only the women pass it on.  Men do not contribute their mitochondrial DNA to their children.  Therefore, in the current generation, men and women can both test, but when testing ancestors, the person to test today must be descended from the woman in question through all females to the current generation.  In our case, if you are descended from great-grandma only through females, meaning your mother, and her mother, then you can personally test to see if great-grandma was Native through her mother.  Like with men, women's results are grouped together in haplogroups and your haplogroup will tell if your maternal ancestor was Native on her mother's side.

    If you are unlucky and you don't descend from great-grandma through all females, meaning she is your father's grandmother, for example - you're still not out of luck.  Find someone who descends from her through all females and ask them to test.  If she has a son left living, he can test as well.  What if she had no female children who had female children or sons left living?  Then move up the tree a generation to her mother and see if she had any female children who had female children. 

    The third type of testing is called autosomal testing.  It tests all of your DNA and one of the results is a percentage of ethnicity.  This tells you how much of 7 basic worldwide groups you are, including Native American.  This test is quite accurate back about 5 generations and beyond that, can sometimes pick up minority ancestry.  Even 1% is enough to confirm the oral history as accurate.  Looking at your family tree - if your Cherokee ancestor was 5 generations back in time, you would be 3.12% Cherokee.  If your Cherokee ancestor was really great-grandma and she was full blooded, you would be 12.5%, which is plenty to be detected using autosomal testing.

    There are differing types of DNA tests for genealogy and various quality factors.  I strongly recommend that you use Family Tree DNA for testing purposes for a number of reasons.  First, they don't "guess" at your haplogroup, they test. Other firms attempt to extrapolate, and many times, incorrectly.  Second, they have the largest data base for comparison to others who have tested - and you may well find cousins you didn't even know you had.  Third, they have projects you can join, for free, and obtain discounts if you order your tests through projects.  Projects can be surname projects or projects such as those focused on Native Americans - and you can join an unlimited number.  Each project has an administrator who is a volunteer, but generally very helpful.  Lastly, they are one of only two firms to use the latest technology for autosomal testing (as of 2011) which tests over half a million autosomal locations.  You just can't do the ethnicity predictions accurately with only a few locations.  Some firms try to do them with as few as 15 and 21, as compared to half a million.

    The tests can be ordered at www.familytreedna.com and they are the Yline test for males, the mitochondrial test for female ancestors and the Family Finder tests for ethnicity percentages.  After your testing is complete, if you want more information about the DNA results and an heirloom report, you can also order a Personalized DNA report, either at Family Tree DNA or at http://www.dnaxplain.com/shop/features.aspx.

    Enjoy your search for your family!!!  It's a journey you'll never regret.


    [1] http://mapoftheunitedstates.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/trail-of-tears-map/





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    Great Grandma was a Full Blooded Cherokee Princess ~ Now What????

    Roberta Estes copyright 2011

    So you've become interested in your family heritage and someone told you that your great-grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee princess.  You find this quite interesting of course, and would like to find out more.  But where do you turn, what do you do, and can DNA testing help you?  Let's look at your options one at a time.

    First, let's just be honest here.  Your great-grandmother was probably NOT a full blooded Cherokee Princess.  I've heard this story thousands of times - even in my own family - and it's simply not true.  There are two reasons it's not true - but don't give up -  keep reading - there's light at the end of the tunnel!

    Reason 1 - The Cherokee didn't have princesses. 

    Reason 2 - Unless your great-grandmother was living on the Cherokee Reservation in either Oklahoma or North Carolina , she probably wasn't full blooded.  The Cherokee east of the Mississippi were relocated in the 1830s in the ordeal known at the Trail of Tears.  You can read more about that at this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_removal.   A census was taken at that time, and even then, few Cherokee were "full-blooded".  Many were admixed with mostly European traders, but a few with African Americans as well.

    The Cherokee who were allowed to remain east of the Mississippi were already living outside of the reservation, were citizens of the states in which they lived and owned land, living mostly as Europeans, not Native people.  Most were Native women married to white men.  Today they form the Eastern Bank of the Cherokee and mostly descend from people on the original Baker Roll.  You can search the Baker Roll here - http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/baker.php.

    Given a generation length of 25-30 years on the average, the Cherokee removal was between 6 and 7 generations ago.  IF your ancestor was full blooded at that time, and IF they married a full-blooded white person for every generation since, you would be 1/64th Cherokee and great-grandma would have been 1/8th.  Of course, there are a lot of IFs in that statement.

    Now, the good news.  Many times, where there is smoke, there is fire.  If your family carries the oral history that you have some Native ancestry, you probably do.  These stories tend to become exaggerated over time and also tend to lose track of the correct generation.

    Let's talk about some things you can do to discover your Native heritage.

    1.  The census is your friend.  Thankfully, the census has been indexed and is available online.  Some years are available free by using Heritage Quest, available though most libraries via the internet with a library card.  Check with your local library.  Personally, I use Ancestry.com but it requires a subscription for most years.  In the census, if your ancestor was of mixed heritage and it was visible, they may be noted as mulatto in the census.  There were only three categories, black, white and mulatto.  In this context, mulatto meant mixed.  Find them in every census available.  The census began in 1790 and in most places, the census is available every 10 years, except for 1890 which was destroyed.  Sometimes their ethnic designation changed from census to census and even one mulatto finding is a significant hint.  Check their siblings too.

    2.  Where did they live?  The census will tell you not only where they lived, but where they were born and where their parents were born.  Often you can track the family back in time. If your ancestors were Cherokee, they would have been living where the Cherokee tribe was located.  On the map below, you can see where the Cherokee and other tribes were found before removal in the 1830s.

     
    3.  The word Cherokee has become generic, like the word Kleenex.  Many people who descend from now defunct tribes have lost their tribal name.  The Cherokee are the best known tribe east of the Mississippi, and therefore many families have assumed for years that the Cherokee were their ancestors, when they were not.  In the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, many tribes were nearly decimated and their remnant people joined together.  You can read about this in my paper titled Where Have All the Indians Gone? Native American Eastern Seaboard Dispersal, Genealogy and DNA in Relation to Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony of Roanoke. This paper is available free on my website, but was originally published in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.  It discusses the various tribes, their locations as well as their fates at length.

    4.  There are Native resources you can check.  There were several rolls taken beginning in 1817 and ending in 1924.  You can see them at this link - http://www.tngenweb.org/tnfirst/rolls.html.  The most famous and useful are the Dawes Rolls and the Guion Miller Roll, both of which are used to document tribal heritage and at that time, enrollment in the tribe.  You can search the final rolls index for free at this link -  http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/finalindex.php.  Many legitimate Cherokee enrolled, and many families with a history of Native heritage attempted to enroll as well.  Most were declined because even then, they could not prove their connection to the Cherokee.  However, if one of your family members, or their siblings, or cousins attempted to enroll, the application is chocked full of genealogy information.  These applications are the Holy Grail of Native American genealogy research.  Notice on the bottom of this page that you can also search other rolls as well.  You can also search at www.footnote.com using the collection title "Dawes Packets".

    5.  You can engage others to help you in your search.  A company called Cherokee Roots has published a significant amount of information in book format and will also assist you in your search.  You can see their products and services here -  http://www.cherokeeroots.com/.

    How Can DNA Testing Help?

    DNA testing can help you in a number of ways, depending on who is available to test.

    There are three kinds of DNA testing for genealogy.  All three test different parts of the human DNA and for different genealogy reasons.

    A white paper is available that explains this at http://www.dnaexplain.com/Publications/Publications.asp titled DNA Testing For Genealogy: The Basics. 

    The first type of DNA testing is Y chromosomal testing.  Men given their Y chromosome to their sons, which is what makes them male.  Women don't have a Y chromosome, so they can't contribute any part of it to their sons.  Therefore, the father's Y chromosome is passed intact to his sons.  He inherited the same chromosome from his father, and his father from his grandfather, on up the paternal tree, which fortunately matches the surname.  Therefore, men can test their Y chromosome to see if they match another man of the same surname to see if they share a common ancestor. 

    Based on the results, men are grouped together in larger groups called haplogroups, and there are two Native American haplogroups that men fall into.  This identifies them as Native American.  In our situation with great-grandma, this won't work, because she did not have a Y chromosome.  However, if you know who great-grandma's father was, you can test his male descendants (of the same surname) today to see if maybe great-grandma's Native ancestry came from her father.

    The second type of DNA testing is mitochondrial DNA testing. Women give their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to both sexes of their children, but only the women pass it on.  Men do not contribute their mitochondrial DNA to their children.  Therefore, in the current generation, men and women can both test, but when testing ancestors, the person to test today must be descended from the woman in question through all females to the current generation.  In our case, if you are descended from great-grandma only through females, meaning your mother, and her mother, then you can personally test to see if great-grandma was Native through her mother.  Like with men, women's results are grouped together in haplogroups and your haplogroup will tell if your maternal ancestor was Native on her mother's side.

    If you are unlucky and you don't descend from great-grandma through all females, meaning she is your father's grandmother, for example - you're still not out of luck.  Find someone who descends from her through all females and ask them to test.  If she has a son left living, he can test as well.  What if she had no female children who had female children or sons left living?  Then move up the tree a generation to her mother and see if she had any female children who had female children. 

    The third type of testing is called autosomal testing.  It tests all of your DNA and one of the results is a percentage of ethnicity.  This tells you how much of 7 basic worldwide groups you are, including Native American.  This test is quite accurate back about 5 generations and beyond that, can sometimes pick up minority ancestry.  Even 1% is enough to confirm the oral history as accurate.  Looking at your family tree - if your Cherokee ancestor was 5 generations back in time, you would be 3.12% Cherokee.  If your Cherokee ancestor was really great-grandma and she was full blooded, you would be 12.5%, which is plenty to be detected using autosomal testing.

    There are differing types of DNA tests for genealogy and various quality factors.  I strongly recommend that you use Family Tree DNA for testing purposes for a number of reasons.  First, they don't "guess" at your haplogroup, they test. Other firms attempt to extrapolate, and many times, incorrectly.  Second, they have the largest data base for comparison to others who have tested - and you may well find cousins you didn't even know you had.  Third, they have projects you can join, for free, and obtain discounts if you order your tests through projects.  Projects can be surname projects or projects such as those focused on Native Americans - and you can join an unlimited number.  Each project has an administrator who is a volunteer, but generally very helpful.  Lastly, they are one of only two firms to use the latest technology for autosomal testing (as of 2011) which tests over half a million autosomal locations.  You just can't do the ethnicity predictions accurately with only a few locations.  Some firms try to do them with as few as 15 and 21, as compared to half a million.

    The tests can be ordered at www.familytreedna.com and they are the Yline test for males, the mitochondrial test for female ancestors and the Family Finder tests for ethnicity percentages.  After your testing is complete, if you want more information about the DNA results and an heirloom report, you can also order a Personalized DNA report, either at Family Tree DNA or at http://www.dnaxplain.com/shop/features.aspx.

    Enjoy your search for your family!!!  It's a journey you'll never regret.


    [1] http://mapoftheunitedstates.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/trail-of-tears-map/





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