I watched an ethnic geneticist guy on Tiktok, who was doing a 'live', his audience being majorly of Moslems wanting to be told that the Palestinians are the true indigenous people of the Levant, and yet he couldn't give them that. Rather they align more with the Bedouins of Arabia; Israeli Jews have themselves some Mesopotamian alignment. Even religious history backs this up. Indeed the most indigenous peoples, still in the land, appeared to be a few minority Christian groups, kind of like the Copts in Egypt also being indigenous there, the Druze and the Samaritans. The Samaritans shared an origin way back with Jewish peoples, with their holy mountain being Mount Gerizim, atop which they had sacrificed animals to God. Whereas the modern Jews at some point relocated their holiest mountain to Jerusalems Mount Zion instead. Samaritan and Jewish men do indeed have the same male Ydna. It is said that when Jewish people were historically kidnapped into Babylonia, they were the town dwellers, and that the country folk, who remained in the Levant, it is they who would be known separately as the Samaritans. The Samaritans, whose own women were likely enslaved, had to marry women from outside of Judaism, and therefore when the mainstream Jews returned from Babylon they called the Samaritans half breeds and rejected any alignment with them As for the original Palestinians, as in the Philistines of Peleset, they were Sea Peoples, and although modern Palestinians had assumed their name, really there was no connection genetically between the old and the new. Rather, the original people of Palesta had dna closer to the Italians primarily and the Greeks secondly, the closest comparisons being to Italians of Campania, then Basilicata, and in continuing order, West Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Lazio, Molise, Abruzzo, Umbria (all Italian so far), and then Dodecanese Greek. Palestine is maybe, anyway, not an appropriate name to identify with for these modern 'Palestinians', because they claim to be indigenous according to a people they have no connection to. Although Palestinians often enough identify with their Arab identities, this in itself becomes an over simplification. Yes, as it is to be expected there is majorly the influence of Arab colonisers, the similarities hereon being mostly to the people of Yemen, there is also African dna in the mix, with other than that much similarity even to their Jewish neighbours, that is to Semitic Canaanites, for which, yes, that Mesopotamian element is in there too. This is likely due to some Jews, and Samaritans too, converting or being forced into Islam, maybe inbetween such eras having firstly adopted Christianity. Like really, one does wonder what happened to all those Samaritans, now a tiny community, and to all the Christians, the Middle East having been at one time a greatly Christian land. Thus it may be so that present Levantine Moslems were at one time pressured to to change their religious outlook and indeed did so in order to survive. The Jewish groups with the most Canaanite influence are Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, Syrian Jews, and all other Mizrahi Jews really, the Mizrahi being all those Jews who never left the middle east, as did the Sephardi's and Ashkenazi's. Ashkenazi Jews have 20% Canaanite dna, their European component being more closely aligned to Italians and Greeks, with their male Ydna shown to be of Middle Eastern origin. So Abraham, we know from scripture he had come from elsewhere, from the north-east, but Jews anyway are Canannites, in part, along with Mesopotamian. I'm curious as to how it is that, with the Jews having kept their purity during captivity, they would be of more distance from the homeland than their more mixed Samaritan cousins. Maybe always the poorer country folk, if that's indeed what the Samaritans were, were less of foreign influence, the wealthier townsfolk being more cosmopolitan. Even some of the Jewish male Ydna, a small part, comes from the Pathans, a people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Was Abraham from even further afield? Much struggle is reflected in the early scriptures, in the times when local peoples were pressured into being monotheistic, despite their natural preference to worship a variety of gods and goddesses, as well as the holy cow and the pillars of Asherah. In later centuries we can see that the locals were reigned in again, this time by Islam. One does wonder whether those locals, subsumed into yet another new religion, were captured enslaved women, sex slaves as such, for this being an Islamic endorsement. Because quite some of the Gazan patriarchal lineage is Arabic. Even a fair amount of the matriarchal dna is East African, indicating that the Arabic men who settled here brought with them not their own women family members from Arabia, but rather slave women from Africa. In this way one can see there has indeed been outside colonisation.
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I began looking into Vijay Krishna's genealogy. Francos had recommended me to him this, and actually it turned out Vijay's brother had researched much himself, but yes, more could be done, like bringing these names and dates to life with old newspaper stories. Vijay's brother had also tested his dna and what a grand mix was there, mostly Irish, English, and especially the midlands, Scottish and Swedish, and then, because Vijay's absentee granddad, Tim Forde, was a black man from Barbados, there comes up African amounts of Benin and Togo, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana, as also there being Welsh, German and even 1% Indian. It's that small Indian part that Vijay tunes into so much with his passion for Vaishavism and kirtan. It was on Vijay's mothers side, Karen being her name and she having died a couple of years back, that I began looking at her Dahl ancestors, a lineage originating from Sweden, back to a Moses, alias Maurice Dahl, who came to England with his Irish wife. Very soon I was uncovering skeletons in the family closets. Karens grandfather, Andrew Victor Dahl, was in the newspapers a few times, once for receiving a stolen motorbike, for which he got ten months in prison, and earlier than that there was a story about him having left his family house after his fathers death due to his mother having got herself married to another man. Some great rift was there, maybe between him and the new man of the house, and one time calling round, and being refused entry, he broke into the house and stole away with some clothes and cutlery. For this the family got the police after him, in consequence of which he tried to commit suicide, twice, once while in the police station, trying to cut his own throat, and the other time in the cell, attempting to hang himself. As Vijay said, on hearing this from me, he was sure not even his mother knew such stories. Andrew Victors Dahls father, William Dahl, was traumatised already in his own life, due to his mother having died when he was tiny. His mother, Mary Dahl, was addicted to drink and one night on coming home drunk she fell down some steps, thereby severely injuring her head. She was removed to the workhouse and there died. Researching more of Vijay's family history I saw that one of his relatives was a harmonium maker, 18 year old Joseph Wilson, in Birmingham back in 1881, which was naturally interesting considering that Vijay was such an adept of the harmonium now, the drum, harmonium and his singing voice being what his musical career was all about.
Jess, who was my friend Mac's new lover, visiting from the north of France, invited me to join her for a drink up at Rennes le Chateau and there we got to talking of families, genealogy and dna. Jess has had her dna done and is a very exotic mix, British, Portuguese, Middle Eastern and African (some very black African at that) and then there's Indian, some 4% of South Asian and Central Indian. Jess, whose father is Algerian and whose mother was adopted, has noted from tracking down her real granny, who nevertheless does not now want contact, that even she is brown eyed. This granny claimed the mysterious inknown father of Jess's mother to be South American, which would maybe correlate with the Portuguese dna, within which maybe comes the Indian ancestry from the time when Goa was a Portugese colony. So Jess's ancestry does look most interesting. While still in that garden café I began researching Jess's genealogy, simply on my phone, and in doing this I was much impressing her. This mystery she has of wishing to solve who is her mothers true family. I soon found out that she has some Irish ancestry, which Jess was so pleased to hear. I looked more at Jess's genealogy when I was back home, focusing this day and all the next on research. As with Mac's family, the Irish contingent were in the military, one having been a 'professional cricketer', and they moved here and there, even doing a stint in America, before settling in Oxford. One ancestor died young in the first world war, his memorial being at Ypres. Another ancestor drowned in a harbour while trying to retrieve a sinking boat. And so I shared with Jess both hand written papers and print-outs of her family tree which I had researched. It's interesting that, one of her ancestors having drowned, Jess herself has a strong fear of the deep ocean.
Amanda and I both looked into the genealogy of her ex, Richard Stanley the film maker, but she could present nothing to work on other than that he was the son of Leonard Stanley and Penny Elton Miller. They had been South Africa based, but I could find nothing on them. Richard's great grandfather, who Richard had often talked of, also written of in his wikipedia, was the great explorer, Henry Moreton Stanley, of the famed 'Livingstone I presume' quote. And yet on examining this I found that it could not be so. Henry Moreton Stanley was a most controversial figure, who was brutal in his African conquerings and a bisexual lover of boys, one of whom was his adopted black African son. But as for biological children, that didn't happen, at least not with his wife, with whom he had adopted a son, Denzil, not a blood descendant at all. Nor had Denzil had any children, himself merely adopting a step-son. This proclaimed ancestry was pas possible. The next day I was back to trying to suss Richard's family tree, not this time his professed descent from the explorer, Henry Moreton Stanley, which I had seen was nothing more than a fantasy. His family I could see was indeed African based, his father Leonard being in the civil service in Rhodesia. I even found Leonard's birthday and ship journeys he'd been on between England and Africa, but nothing more. As for his mothers side, with her I could go back a-plenty, to the old Mallet family of Devon, who held lands there since as far back as the times of Henry VIII. Typically Stanley was a gypsy surname and Richard did have something of the gypsy look, being black haired and black eyes. (to be continued)
![]() A friend in South Africa, Julan, has jumped at the chance to have her genealogy looked at, saying she has black African blood in her, though in seeing her one would never know. It was her ancestor Wilfred Bernard Smith who had 'black blood', and even Julan's own mother had been bullying nicknamed 'Golly' at school. I quickly found a newspaper article about this 'black' grandfather of hers, about both his first wife and second wife sharing the same house with him, and of the nerves his second wife had from having to share a kitchen with the first, and of how he then sought legal action to throw out the first wife and the children by her, in which he was successful. The thrown out wife was Julan's granny. Julan's other grandfather, Harry Briant, drove lorries that had big cement mixers on the back. And his own father, so Julan was told, was a rag and bone man, and officially, as I would see, a horse handler. Getting more into Julan's genealogy, I was making progress with her 'black blood' lineage, finding a tragic accident for Wilfred Smith's father, Frederick, a chocolate maker for Fry's Chocolate Company, whereby, while at work, aged 26, he fell to his death down a lift shaft, leaving young Wilfred fatherless at the age of three. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. My hoped for link to the gypsies falters yet more when I seen that even on the DNA oracles others in my online Romany group have had specific mention of there being Romany ethnicity and I have not. They have all been raised in the travelling lifestyle though, and if I do have links myself they are further back. So who knows. The thing with autosomal DNA its that it really looks at recent generations. Which does make my central Asian, Caucasus, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean results all the more curious. What to speak of the African traces to ancient jungle dwelling pygmies, probably the most fascinating African type of DNA one can have. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I still puzzle over my new autosomal update, for as far as logic will concede, the Spanish and French parts of my ethnic make-up suggest alternative fathers to otherwise husbands, somewhere along the line, and quite recently too. If Lyall Inkster, my Scottish grandfather, accounted for the Scandanavian, ie. Viking DNA, that leaves only 55% of British DNA to share amongst the three remaining grandparents. I have long anyway doubted my nanny Eileen Spencer's paternity, her mother Florence Maxted having been 9 months pregnant when she married her Percy in a registry office. And so the French part may account for this, she having been a barmaid in a port, so it may be that she was romanced by a French amour, visiting on the ships, who then returned home, never to be seen again. Or could that be the Spanish mixed with European, and what, African? Oh, how can I know? Anyway, it does look like Percy Spencer had accepted to play daddy to someone else's child. If only I could test other family members to understand this more! And other than this, somewhere, there has to have been another hidden paternity, to account for the rest of the foreign blood. And I do think this must have been on my granny Isabelle Bane's line, somehow, as both my pop George Harrison's parents looks are in our family. Could it be that Irish Thomas Seagrove also was not the father of Mary Ann? She was he firstborn of her mother Maria Harrison, she of the exotic looks, who similarly may have been the result of a foreign romancer. It could be that Maria herself may have been Spanish, mixed with Armenian and whatever else. How do I logically even try to resolve all this. Although her genetic contribution would be equivalent, in average terms, to 6% of my DNA, she could have contributed a larger chunk, as any amount of DNA can be passed on, it does not have to be uniform at all, so all really is complex in such matters. I can discount, actually, that my Eastern European is potentially Jewish. I'd not seen before that there was a separate results part relating to Jewish DNA, two categories, one for Ashkenazi and one for Sephardic, both being 0%. 0%'s, as such, are indicated for all the America's, all of Central and Eastern Asia, all the rest of Africa (but for the Central South African part), all Jewish types, the eastern part of the Middle East, nothing of Finland, not Siberia, nothing of South East Europe, and not Oceania. There isn't a separate category for Ireland, which is included in the British Isles. The great known archaeological site within the South-Central African area, of which I have 2%, was prior to European colonialism the 'Great Zimbabwe'. The vaster area is that which had led to Swahili culture. Arab traders had early on come to this region, since the 8th century, before which these lands were isolated, with some farming and iron working and many hunter-gatherer tribes. The earliest peoples here created rock art of which there are numerous examples. Another new section deals with ancient European origins, as revealed by the autosomal testing, something I'd not seen before, which shows I have more hunter-gatherer DNA than farming or metal workers: Hunter-gatherer 46% Farmer 41% Metal Age Invader 13% AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Familytree has perfected and updated its ethnic autosomal interpretations. And how crazy it is that, yes, before I was told I had some small Central Asian component, which is east of the Caspian Sea, which had got me all excited for its exotic appeal, but this has now been whacked back west and south of the Caspian to Armenia and Turkey. With a new ability to consider trace percentages I have been told I have Middle Eastern, that is the Levant, and Eastern European, both which I had not known of before. And whats more, to blow my mind all over again, I have some 2% Central South African! I almost feel, on being told this one day and that another day, that this science is too new even to be relied upon. Everything I have felt to believe is really fragile in this regard. And my matriarchal origin, is it really of the Caucasus, when it does seem that an Armenian link is arising, which is to the south of there. Anatolian Armenian Christian, this does appear quite possible. It could be this that has blended with the Levantine, and even the African, which has me confused of what to make of it all. The Africans could have been slaves in the Arab world, or from some past colonial interbreeding with locals. So many potentially fascinating stories are there which I will never know. And even this is not such a vast number of generations back. How exotic could it get, to know discover this ancestral connection to Africa, in the dark jungly south, where is Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and South Africa. And how watered down this is in me already, so pale and freckly, so very English looking. That black haired, ivory skinned ancestress in Greenwich, Maria Harrison; such a mystery resides within her. Was she a combination of Armenian, Levantine and African; is this why her distinct looks? My friend Deepak had once suggested she may be Armenian, with her un-British looks, and maybe he was indeed tuning into something. I need to locate the previous percentages that were given to me, to compare. I recall there had been Mediterranean, which has now been pinpointed to the Spanish peninsula. Other than which there is a whole connection to France, and/or its neighbouring lands, which I'd also not known of. British is naturally my main ethnic make-up with its Viking addition and of European there is in total 97%, though all then adds up to 105% and not 100%. The is the up to date percentages, then, which make up my autosomal ethnic mix: British Isles 55% Scandanavia 21% West & Central Europe 13% Spanish Peninsula 8% Turkey/Armenia 2% Eastern Europe 2% Levant (Asia Minor) 2% African (Central-South) 2% The Eastern European, which is from Poland to the Ukraine, is also a surprise. This is where the Ashkenazi Jews were located, so a link would be there, at least of having lived among them. This would concur with dreams I've had of being pursued by Nazi types and having to escape, and why I so feel to defend Jewish people who have known centuries of persecution even into modern times. Again, there could be an admixture into rarer types of peoples, via Ukraine, where indeed an ancient type of my matriarchal DNA has been found, as my friend Satshanti had recently pointed out to me. So, maybe my Eastern European type is indeed Ukrainian. With such a subject, all can only be guessed or assumed. These are but whispers of a past otherwise lost to us. But Africa, oh, Africa, how could I have know this was not just anciently the mother land, but something so much closer, still in my being. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I watched on the internet a whole black American ex slave genealogy series which was so interesting. General research was combined with the addition of DNA study, which much appeals to me. The black gentleman who made the series turned out to be only half African and half European, and he did have pale parents, while being darker himself. This analysis was uncovered by a an admixture DNA test. How fascinating that is. Some slaves had even mixed with native Americans (red Indians) and some with Chinese imported labourers. Many have European Y-DNA in their male lineage, because of slave owners having had children with their women slaves. Therefore it is the matriarchal DNA that has to be followed to source back to an original tribal area of Africa. For almost all this will work, though not for our gentleman producing the film, who was most surprised to find that not only his male lineage, but his female too, came from Europe. Yet another newly developing DNA test, though, can look at all the middling DNA, in between the Y and the Mt, focusing just on this mans black parts, and in this way parts of Africa could at last be pin-pointed for him. It does get me thinking, I should get back into this DNA support of researching, but I also know I need ample money to do so.
My friend Scottish Anne was talking with me about the genealogy her family has started discovering. So, I decided to update and elaborate on what I had also formerly found for her. Thus, I found for Anne an ancestress in the obscure Hearts Content in Newfoundland. And I found plenty of esteemed middle class ancestry for her. A thrilling find. Yes, I love genealogy research, always. Though having lived as a married woman in London, England, Anne's Newfoundland ancestress, Edith, returned to Canada at the age of 52 with her daughter Rose and sons Herbert and Philiip, and was not accompanied in this by her husband. Revealed information showed she had no occupation other than home duties. She was born in Newfoundland, of Irish race, her religion being Church of England, and her nationality British. She intended to settle down in Canada, staying there permanently. She had lived in Canada before, she being born there, though she left as a child. Her father was a government doctor, it seems to read, but he was no longer living. She left Canda before to get an education. The money in her possession was £200. She could read and had paid for her own travel. She was destined for Winnipeg, Manitoba, to a friend Miss Drury at 275 Mountain Avenue. Her nearest relative in England was her sister Mrs Hurst of Berwick Lodge, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Clevedon being where she bought the travelling tickets. Most interesting for me to hear of was the tales of Anne's childhood in Gambia. Till 11 years old she had lived there. One of her siblings was lost to malaria; they'd all caught it, though only one died. Her mother, Joan, ran a school for the Africans in her garage. Anne's father worked in exports and imports, and she remembers travelling in a van with him, giving locals tasters of tea to entice them to adopt it into their diets. No animals were allowed in the family home, so Anne had to wait for her parents to fall asleep before smuggling in for the night a wild cat she'd secretly adopted. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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