I got into trying to understand just a little something about one-to-one DNA comparisons. One of my cousins, Dee, who was the daughter of Linda, who was herself the daughter of my nanny Eileen's sister, Molly, also had her DNA online on the useful Gedmatch site. For which I could compare shared segments of chromosomes between me and her and also with my Aunty Lolly (my fathers sister). In this way I worked out what on my own chromosomes was of our shared Maxted-Dolan ancestry, this being the DNA passed onto us by my great grandmother, Florence Maxted (and of her husband Percy, he was not included, because I had pretty much observed by now that there had been no cousin links between me and his ancestors other descendants, by which I could conclude he was not really my nanny Eileen's father, supporting a hypothesis I'd had anyway). So I worked out all the chromosomal chunks shared between us three, which I could then label as of Maxted-Dolan derivation, these segments being found on chromosomes 2, 5, 7, 11, 12, 16, 17 and 20. I had it confirmed that I was on the right track with this by looking at a distant cousin match suggested to me on Gedmatch, for the person of Kevin James Young, seeing that the DNA we had common to one another was on chromosome 12 at one of those aforementioned segments. It was for this, excitedly I knew it, that he had to be of this same lineage, from either somewhere back in William Maxted's ancestry or Irish Mary Dolan's, both these great great grandparents of mine being the parents of Florence Maxted. And sure enough he was! I had to suss out the links between us myself, there having been no online tree showing our connection. But he had listed online one of his family surnames as Swinden, and it so happened that I knew well of the Swindens, from where further back they connected to my own ancestors. Even I knew of this in my head without looking it up, that William Maxted's mother, who was Sarah Green, had two sisters who married Swinden brothers. Therefore I connected up our families, by which not only did I authenticate my own family tree researches in this regard, but I saw exactly where came from that DNA chunk found on my 12th chromosome (the range being between 88,000,000 and 129,000,000 on the said chromosome), this then being what I had inherited from the Lambeth residing parents of Sarah Green, either from her father Henry Green or her mother Elizabeth Harding. My research into this rather foreboding subject of DNA comparisons had paid off. This was my breakthrough of the day. What I found most strange was that my mother and my Aunty Lolly shared a segment of DNA; like what, how come?! I knew of no connections between their two families, and yet something was there, or so the DNA was suggesting. Maybe this came through their Irish ancestresses.
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My youngest childrens ethnic Myheritage DNA percentages arrived: Rosina: 44.8% South Asian; 38.6% Viking (Shetland); 13.7% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 1.9% Italian; 1% Finnish George: 33.6% Italian; 31% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Wesh); 19% Greek and South Italian; 7.4% Balkan; 4% Spanish Iberian; 2.4% Viking Shetland; 1.8% Middle East; 0.8% West Asia And so comparing theirs to mine: 64.3% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 24% Viking Shetland; 4% Greek and South Italian; 3.5% Spanish Iberian; 2.7% Italian; 1% Finnish
That ever mystery of George's dad is by this ethnic result once and for all sorted. He is my Georgio De Bello. Even there had come up a De Bello cousin match for him, this being to Leonora De Bella who was in her 70's and living in America, she being possibly a second or third cousin once or twice removed. I reacquaint with the results of my mothers own test results, through her there coming my Spainish and Italian, whereas through my father would come the Greek. 59.6% Celtic Irish and Scots - (the Welsh being from my father); 27.3% Viking Sheland; 7.1% English (I never inherited any of this, so neither did my children); 3.2% Iberian Spanish; 2.8% Italian And my Aunty Lolly, to represent my deceased father, who is her brother - although they would have had differing blends of their parents DNA:: 52.5% Celtic (Irish and Welsh); 25.5 Viking (not connected to my Shetland genes); 12% English; 9.1% North and West European, for example French, Dutch and German Really I have no way to know my fathers correct percentages as he died so long ago and I suspect his alotted amount was rather different to Lolly's, he being red haired and she so blonde.
I have cousins a little more distant who have done the Myheritage ethnic tests too, although their DNA will have the imput of people I have no connection at all too, but still its interesting to observe. They are both connected to me through my nanny Eileen, the mother of Lolly and my father. Firstly, Dee, descended from nanny Eileen's sister Molly. Dee's grandfather is Scottish and her father is a Londoner with the Welsh surname of Jones: 75.6% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 9.8% Baltic; 9.7 Viking Scandanavian; 2.7% West Asia; 1.4% Finnish; 0.8% Ashkenazi Jew Secondly, Dominic. He descends from a sister of my nanny Eileen's mother Florence who was half Irish. 39.2% Celtic (Irish, Scots and Welsh); 35.6% English; 18.6 North West European; 4.9% Viking Scandanavian; 1.7% Ashkenazi Jew In cousin matches, there is a second or third cousin who I quickly see must be related to me through pop, my Welsh grandfather, this being because my aunt Lolly and I share her as a common relative, but not Dee nor Dominic. Jane Keep, and indeed she does appear to have Welsh, ancestry. 77.9% Celtic; 19.1% English; 3% Spanish Iberian So, Welsh for sure. Well, I got to looking at some of these proposed cousins to see how we may connect to one another, not just this Jane Keep, but two other matches. And though none had any obvious links, I got to researching their lineages and found them myself. Such is my zeal for researching. Jane Keep had only put that her grandparents were a Powell and a Bebb, and not even any other information at all, but regardless, I sussed her ancestry right back to Mary Thomas, who happened to be the daughter of two of my Welsh ancestors, Morgan Thomas and his wife Ann née Rosser. It was by checking all this out that I found a census I'd not seen before, for Ann when she was old and widowed living in Llanelli in 1891 with this aforementioned daughter Mary. And what was so amazing about this discovery was that languages spoken were listed and my Ann, despite everyone else in the household being English speakers, was herself a Welsh speaker. She didn't even speak English at all, only Welsh. Those who did speak both languages were clearly marked as doing so. And I worked out another Welsh cousin link, again which I had to research more to make sense of, this being to a Lionel Herbert Watkins. Thus I found that my connection to Lionel reached right back to the original George Harrison of Llanthony, Lionel descending from his daughter Sophia and me from his son William. The link to George Harrison was not a research even worked out at all by this distant cousin, but I'd sussed it. And I shall get to working out more and more of these proposed cousin connections I do suppose.
I have been looking up ancient Greek foods, after all I have this mystery 4% Greek in my DNA. And this really is quite mysterious, because a cousin who has had her DNA done recently, and who is descended from my nanny's sister, Molly, has no Greek like me. And whats more my Aunty Lolly, who is a full sister to my father has none of this Greek either. And yet certainly it comes through my father, as my mother herself has none of it. So, I am much in confusion, not understanding this at all. Like, at least Aunty Lolly should have some Greek!
So the traditional cheese of the Greeks, feta, has anciently been part of the Greek diet, and it has numerous probiotics, and conjugated linoleic acid, that are beneficial for ones health. For breakfast the Greeks ate various pancakes topped with feta, honey and sesame, or maybe the dough would include olive oil, honey and curdled milk. Or, they would dip barley bread in wine, eating this with figs or olives. The staple diet was grains of wheat, barley and millet with lentils, chickpeas, peas, lupin beans, olives, chestnuts, beech nuts, acorns, garlic, onions, artichoke, nuts, herbs, raisins, figs and pomegranate. Bitter vetch was also eaten, which needed several changes of boiling water to reduce the bitterness, and which was said to be good for ones health. Flat breads were mixed with feta and honey, and wine yeast used as a leavener. Bread was coarse and brown, as usual only the rich eating white bread. Barley was used for not only bread, but also for soup, drinks and dumplings. Food would be boiled, mashed or made into soup, to which then would be added herbs and olive oil. Spring water was the most popular ancient Greek drink, described by Pindar as 'as agreeable as honey'. Many philosophers simply drank water and kept to a vegetarian diet. Wine was watered down, straight wine being only for barbarians and said to lead to madness and death. Barley gruel was drunk, mixed with water and herbs. Of Neolithic times in general, there was cultivated wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, flax and bitter vetch. I suppose this would indicate that linseed (flax) is the oldest used oil. I shall get some to try from the health food shop. I got into looking at my aunty Lolly's ethnic DNA, which after all I had paid to get done on the Family Tree site. Apart from that which I had expected, British and Viking and some near European, there was a smaller amount of Greek which I do now know must come to me through my father. And, what was totally interesting, other than that, was a 3% Middle Eastern, 1% of this being from the east of the Middle East, that is from the Persian shores of the Caspian sea down to Mesopotamia, and the other 2% being from the west middle east, that is from Anatolia down through Lebanon and the Holy Land to the shores of the Red Sea. I was so excited by this that I couldn't sleep for ages that night, for I have long felt an emotional kind of connection to the Middle East, this being pre-Islamic, or at least non-Islamic, some connection to all the minority groups under threat in this fascinating part of the world. The next step for me is the free transferal of these results to other DNA platforms, Myheritage and Gedmatch. It was in then looking at my own DNA matches, that I spotted a new close one, quickly working out this was a third cousin descending from my Maxted line. And the tree he'd put online was so minimal that there was not even any mention of Maxteds, but as usual I had applied my detective skills. This cousin, Dominic, was just 20 years old, a scout volunteer working at the Holiday Inn and raised in Eastleigh. His mother, Jillian, then would be my second cousin, she being granddaughter to Lilian Norah Maxted, who was sister to my great grandmother, Florence Maxted. Chatting online with Aunty Lolly, about her ethnic DNA results, and sharing research I have done on the family, she talked of her grandmother (my great grandmother) Florence Maxted and of how she always took in lodgers, and had run a fruit and veg shop in Eastleigh on Desborough Road. It was far to visit, from Dovercourt in Essex to Eastleigh in Hampshire, but still the families would reunite twice a year. Lolly remembered Florence's sister, Lilian Norah, as being blind. As Jill, new found second cousin, would tell me later, Lilian Norah, who was her granny had suffered a stroke, due to an accident, at around the age of 40, hence why she was blind, for which she was also unable to talk properly. Aunty Lolly said even Florence's sight wasn't so good, for which she had as a child read aloud the horse listings for her, the family having been quite partial to a flutter. Florence always made a big bowl of soup every Saturday and everyone came round to make their bets and partake of her soup, always such times being such fun. Sometimes they would win, though the bets made were only ever small. AuthorSusie 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. Absolutely, on this day, my mind was being blown by my supposed gypsy connections which more and more are revealed to be authentic, and not only that, the gypsies I am connecting with are helping me to understand more about my genetics. One fellow, Les Batt, was going out of his way to reveal the connections I have to his Romany compatriots. And not only that, for also he understands the tools which reveal specific populations and tribal groups which one is linked to. It is Les that is blowing my mind, and how lucky I am that he helps me to see what otherwise may have escaped me. Apart from the fact that I have tonnes of Viking Orcadian Scandinavian DNA and tonnes of Irish (I don't know where my Welsh pop fits into all this), I learnt that despite what MyHeritage had reported to the contrary I did have English DNA after all and it is of Cornwall (and how can I even understand how that fits in). And there is some Dutch and West German, which could be accounted for by my Norfolk ancestry, as Europeans were known to have brought the cloth trade there. This information was all so, so, and overall to be expected. What was mind blowing was other than that. Not only did Les give me lists of recent influences for the grandparents of both me and my mother, but he also presented totally exotic lists of secondary influences beyond that, and put his own time to preparing maps of the journeying of my ancestors out of India and into Central Asia - so the Genographic Project was correct about my central Asian link after all - and such a big influence he also showed me had come from the Caucasus mountains (I had been correct in focusing research here in the past too then); my ancestors had dwelt in Afghani-Pakistani border regions (no Pakistani separation back then mind you and this would have been known as part of India). One marker is to be found in Anatolia (where maybe the blending with Armenians had come in). One line travelled down through the Middle East into Egypt and across to Morocco, maybe that very gypsy journey into the south of Spain I'd recently been learning about. After Les showed to me that I had distant connections to him and other gypsies of the Romany group, he one by one presented to me more and more interesting details in relation to Gedmatch. A Utility K13 list, with its Oracle 4, shows the major imput from all four grandparents, which appears overwhelmingly Irish, with of course Orcadian, West Scottish, and the southern English (I wonder if this would tally with my Forest of Dean ancestry), as well as southern Dutch and west and north German. This was the first level of genetics I got and is of recent genetics. Totally I see that Irish is the strongest element. The next revelation Les came up with was the Oracle 4 in relation to my mothers own grandparents. This revealed, amongst all the expected Scandinavian Viking influence, which would account for Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Orcadian and nothern Dutch (although that last may still be to do with a Norfolk connection), an addition of Irish (which we've definitely known), and south-eastern English (Norfolk and London), but the real surprise in all this then came out, and it is Basque French. The French Basque is no minor element but is strongly present and is the second biggest influence beyond the Viking imput. Oh, could it be then that her grandmother Mary Ann's Greenwich mother Maria's appearance was really French Basque. Les pointed out that the Basques had not only remained in their Pyrenees enclave, but they had also made a home for themselves in Ireland, hence the black hair sometimes seen there. This presents then that Maria's Basque look, if that indeed is what it is, could have come to England via Ireland, rather than directly from France. Interestingly I read that the language of the Basques has similarity to tribal languages in the Caucasus, where my very mtDna has its origins. And Les Batt was revealing so much more to me. The Basque French is recent ancestry, beyond which there is so much more ethnic variety. I had asked Les if there was any way to know if one truly has Romany ancestry, pointing out that 11% of my DNA has been detected to be Mediterranean. Really for this one would have to detect a link to India itself, with the subsequent journeying towards Europe of these peoples. And Les found this for me, using the K13 Oracle, which specifically looks at markers shared with Asian peoples, along with usually looked at influences. For my mother, behind the primary source of Orcadian, British, Norwegian and Dutch, comes the secondary source, where are ones further back ancestors, and what shows up is not only French Basque in high proportions, but also a large amount of Iberian Spanish/Portuguese. As Les says, this even being what he had expected, this shows my mum's ancestors travelled widely in Spain. Not only have the old Irish been seen to have a link to both Spain and the Basque Pyrenees , but the gypsies had for so long dwelt in Spain, for which gypsies tend to have a big presence of Spanish DNA. There is so much of this Spanish influence in my mothers DNA, along with French, and interestingly, considering that I was drawn to spend a month exploring this island, some Sardinian. The Basque is not something in isolation then, but part of vaster exploration of the whole Iberian peninsular and beyond. And for sure this fits in with the autosomal results I was already told of by the general DNA testing companies. There's no defining, as such, as to whether this Iberian DNA is due to either Irish or gypsy influences, or both, although its pretty much accepted that genetic mixing has gone on between Irish travellers and European-Asian ones, and I think I can assume the same in my own case too. Now this is all fascinating enough, but my own K13 oracle is even more so. For beyond all my great influence of Irishness, which is of primary source, is the secondary aforementioned mass of Caucasus mountain tribes, central Afghani and Indian. This is as aspect of me, the ethnic colour of my being, whether it is through my mother or father, that not being clear as yet. It does look as if my more ethnic components aren't even through my mother, or at least they don't show up on her own oracle. And so has manifested a massive list of tribal peoples, by which an entire map of journeying across Asia can be plotted, with tribal names such as Ossetian, Balkar, Brahmi, Balochi, Kabardin, Georgian, Abhkasian, Makrani, Adygei, Afghan Tadjik, Kalash, Nogay, Chechen, Burusho, Afghan Pashtun, Kumyk, Sindhi and Tabassaran. Wow, in wishing to find ones exotic self how much more exotic can it get! Like we know Europeans came out of Africa via the Middle East. But this something totally different! An attraction I have had in my life to India, and the lands thereabout, reflects exactly where my ancestors have been. Les came up with three maps, one for the Asian journeying, one for the Iberian, and another of the total picture which includes every single discovered influence (which includes Greek, south east European, Cyprus as it looks to be (another place I'd like to go), Sicily, Egypt, the Levant and Morocco, all this being revealed by the Dodecad V3 test analysis. I am thrilled to bits with these maps. And of course by all the obscure tribes that have been listed. I looked up information on those tribal groups: Ossetia is of the Caucasus, the highest point in the landscape being Mount Kazbek and being part of the old Sillk Road. Other Caucasus groups are revealed, the Balkars, many of whom fled into Europe when the Mongols invaded, the Kabardin with their interesting belief that the soul of the ancestors watches over us, a soul which one is to perfect by honour and compassion, the Georgians, who had maintained their Christian identity even in the face of great pressure from neighbouring Moslem empires, Abkhasian whose land of the soul is on the shores of the Black Sea with its ideal mildly subtropical climate, a part of the ancient kingdom of Colchis, where is the worlds deepest cave (the Crows Cave), the Adygei Circassians, the Nogay who have been linked to the Golden Horde, who on settling in the Crimea became Crimean Tartars, still proud of their nomadic traditions which they consider to be superior to settled life, the Chechen who are fiercely independent and egalitarian, who had migrated to the mountains from the fertile crescent and are tall with all eye and hair colours, including red hair, and who are considered to be more European than Asian, with a strong connection to nature and love of freedom (their greeting 'marsha oylla' means 'enter in freedom', they are a happy and witty people, and it is they who, who with their diverse genetics, have this connection to the Basques, far more than they have to neighbouring east Europeans, the Kamyk of northern Dagestan, and the Tabassaran, also of Dagestan. And: On the edges of Afghanistan are the Brahuis, a relict people of Indian type, and the Balochi, a desert and mountain people living with the Pashtuns on the Persian plateau, though originally from the shores of the Caspian Sea (they are known to have plundered travellers in the desert and their singing and dancing women folk are known for their lullabies), the Makrani former mercenaries who to this day are found in the Gujarati princely states of Kathiawar, the Tadjik who are Persians who emigrated to central Asia, being former Zoroastrians with their fire temples, Aryans and Buddhists, the Kalash who are a unique aboriginal tribe practising animism, and whose women embroider their dresses with cowrie shells (elopements are part of the culture, even if with already married women), crows representing the ancestors (sadly this tribe has been targeted by local Muslims and militants), the Barusha who are the Hunza people, famed for living more than a hundred years, and being from north of the Himmalayas, their stunning scenic land associated in legend with the lost kingdom of Shangri La, the Afghani Pashtuns who are Pathans of unclear origin, originally being Buddhists, Hindu and Zoroastrian, worshippers of the sun and of Nana, and the Sindhi of what was West India, originally tribes of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with Mohenjo Daro being one of their larger settlements. Having looked at all that I don't see such a bold connection to southern India, as mapped by Les, although having said that, the Brahui were speakers of a Dravidian language and are thought to have come from Karnataka. I think, also, that with such nomadic travelling ancestors, one must consider that they not only would have travelled westwards but eastwards too, as along the Silk Road, forming colonies and cultural links to other groups, and in such explorations being isolated from their origins, absorbing at least partially into surrounding populations. Therefore myriad peoples are seemingly linked to, whereas the connections may rather have been later, and no one has ended up of one pure type of anything. Whatever was our African origin, this has diversified into so many exploratory tribes, chiselling such unique, differing identities, all who will re-emerge ultimately back into one vast people, like the expanding and then contracting universe. Along this multi dimensional journeying we experience such a blossoming of all that can be, while gathering a trillion personal stories, and I can't not but be fascinated. One thought that does come to me is that this mapping is not so much a road journey that one group of ancestors made. It is more like a river, into which flow not only springs, but also other complexities of rivers. It is not that every tribe was visited and a blending of peoples then enacted, all as part of the journeying of an edge of India people; but rather fewer people were met with, who already had long experiences of connecting to the various groups in their lands. As I can see, there is one big group of Afghan, old India, mountain tribal, and central Asian. And the other big group displays the huge variety of all the tribes of the Caucasus mountains. With emphasis being on the very edges of old India, it does not seem that any exodus came from what is modern India itself. Rather, since the exodus, tribes who remained have journeyed in quite the other direction, into India. Those met on travels westwards already had complex mixtures in their genealogies, again back to the symbolism of the river. Whatever may have been her complex Caucasus origins, a girl may have met others of my lineage nowhere near there, but in Anatolia or Greece, Italy or Spain, or Ireland. Also, though I do seek proof for gypsyness in my family, it has to be admitted that there still is nothing concrete. There could be other reasons why my people travelled across Asia, the Silk Road appearing to have quite some relevance; so that they may rather have been traders, missionaries, or explorers who set up distant colonies. My head has been so full on absorbed in all this, so that I have kind of reached overload with it and need to have a break and return with freshness later. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I joined on facebook a Romany gypsy group 'Romany Ancestry UK' to see of this can help me to discover if I have genuine gypsy roots or not. The surnames I have in my family, which I suspect to be gypsy, were indeed authenticated as being so. Many of the gypsies in the group totally know their ancestry and are full blown traveller gypsies, and while on the one hand their welcoming friendliness goes deep and provokes an excitement in me, I on the other hand fear I am an imposter. Matching my Gedmatch to theirs was not at first yielding anything, until I came upon a Jones member, gypsy raised and still identifying as such. She and I hadn't got a close link, but it was a link nevertheless. My gypsies, if indeed they were so, diverged a long time back, so finding any connection is good. On that Gedmatch I discover further anayltical tools that can detect so much more in relation to ones ancestral types, as if what the testing companies normally tell us is but the cream on the cake only. How reliable such tools are I don't know, but I begin to look at them for more information. Like on this I can see there is a link to India, and really if I am gypsy this is relevant, this being where gypsies originated. Even the suspected African pygmy link is there - the Baka pygmies, Hadza and Khoi-San. Mediterranean and Asian is confirmed, and at higher amounts than I'd previously been told. Even the Red Sea component is shown. When along came Ian on his scooter, and I made him some tea, naturally we got to talking about my gypsy researching, and Ian told me something he had not before, which was that he was part gypsy. His mother had told him this. So I just had to get into looking at that side of his ancestry. I had researched his mothers line before, right back to French Huguenots, but this research was lost, disappeared with the death of a former computer. His gypsies were from Wales, relocated to London. His gypsy great grandfather was never spoken of by the modern family, in an effort to bury the memory of him. Naturally I am one set to revive him and bring him back to life. And my childhood boyfriend, having the name of Chris Lee, I messaged him asking him if he was of the gypsies, and he told me that indeed he was. Even his father had told him they were descended from Gypsy Rose Lee. It's like Luke Owen said, there are many of us around, but you have to ask the right questions. Meanwhile, I was getting more and more responses from the British Romany's that we did have, albeit distantly, some blood connections. I have never quite known if it is my fantastical thinking that always seeks some exotic people to identify with. And after all, the exotic would still only be a smaller part than what is my greater solid chunk of Britishness. But regardless of what is in the majority, that is not all I am. Such is incomplete, and it is the more mysterious parts of myself I seek to know. This journey I've been on, of trying to understand, has been a long one. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I watched some documentaries about gypsy peoples, always fascinating, of Bulgarians, Russians, and Romanians, their child marriages, barefoot dancing, and of girls staying home. When I see such old style traditionalism something there has an appeal. Its that bohemian kind of freedom, of no school and nomadism, of ethnic long skirts, and yes, bare feet. Its a kind of hippy style I myself have had. It is interesting that my mother has this 2% eastern European and myself 1%. I have already considered that the Mediterranean DNA I have may be gypsy. And now, on looking at an Irish gypsy documentary, I see a picture of old world traditional gypsies with the features of my County Kerry Irish. This is the first time I consider that my Sugrue/Sheehans may also have been gypsy. The gypsy theme in my families past is really but a fanciable one with no solid facts, but I do have some fascination about this. Modern gypsies don't have a good reputation for their feuding and crimes and for the dominance of their men over the women. But I do see that there were certain qualities further back, in regard to their closeness to nature, their love of music, the closeness of families that help one another in life's journeying, and their living separate from societies overbearing demands and rules and regulations, posings and limitations. I watched more gypsy documentaries, one being a tragic perspective, and one a so interesting historical account. On a visit round to Jeremy's I talked with him about gypsies, this being topical now, and on account of realisations I'm now having that a real reason why I find myself unacceptable in the eyes of some people, how I get judged and have even had social services bloody turned onto me, basically being disregarded, is because I have 'the gypsy' in me. So does Jeremy and he also is easily dismissed. I have at least, potentially that is, 11% of me being gypsy and that is just of the Mediterranean type, as whatever else in me is of gypsy derivation would up that number to an unknown amount. Those Irish travellers I may be linked to, it may be that they are descended from the original nomads of Ireland, before all other invaders came and took over their lands. Either way, eastern or western, these gypsies have kept themselves freer from societies neurotic imposed standards and hoity-toity impositions. I am free too in this regard. My kids may get dirty in their play, so what. I know how to rough it and don't mind clutter and chaos in my life. I don't poof up in general my appearance. I don't insist my kids go to school or do homework. I prefer them to be free, to just be natural. I accept handouts if need is there without getting hung up or guilty. I stole as a child. I can't be done with small talk. And I don't know how to deal with authorities and even avoid all that. And right now I feel that all this is because of the gypsy in me, that 11% plus. I get this from both my parents. And then there's Jeremy, with plenty of money and yet he chooses to scavenge food in bins. Its not that we are 'low class' as lower classes don't accept us either. And middle classes exceptionally judge. Higher classes, rather curiously, can actually accept because they have no need to prove themselves and appreciate individuality, that old British eccentricity. Both Jeremy and I have gypsy in us, as far as I can work out, and not from modern times, but further back. And I have so been attracted to India where the gypsies originated. My Irish Sugrues were dysfunctional, this I have discovered, and this has kind of helped me to understand more my own dysfunctionalism. And to comprehend all now within the greater context of gypsyness makes more sense and has more impact. Because this is as if a whole family clan which was lost is now refound. And for this I have attained some identification along with group pride, and this sense that all the hoity-toity judges do just that because they sift through those around them marking out who is of worth and who is of them, their type, their people, and all this even though their people have enslaved, attacked and persecuted others. This is why I refer to their ill placed hoity-toity superiority complex. So I would sum up one trouble stirring critic from my village with her 'oh you come to the pub and lay your sleeping child on a bench while partying' (horror of horrors) - not worthy of being a mother then, this being what is in her head. Yes, well, I breastfed my children, I carried them around, and slept with them. I stayed with them, rather than going off chasing money and a career, rather than leaving them with a child minder. I took them along with me on all my travel adventures. I have a nomadic soul. I am free and you are not. But its your society, your rules, and you can just phone anonymously child protection services and get my darlings taken away from me. Because the way you and others think life should be lived is so limiting and all not in your box is condemned. So long I thought others picked on me because I am gentle and not assertive. How could I have any satisfaction in this matter, that being pleasant makes me inadequate. With new understanding, that it is my gypsyness attracting hostility, then its not so personal and against my own lack. It is rather a war on my tribe. And now I have a people to align with and I would rather feel I am with them than your uptight communities in which I never belonged. I have always been an outcaste, an outsider. My standards are different to yours, more relaxed. You are the lines on the pavement and I am the spaces between and beyond. My mother has 7% English in her, unlike me, and its that Anglo-Saxon in her that despises all that is not of civilisation and posturing. I don't have that same brake on me, of what has been more free flowing in our ancient peoples and their ways of relating to the world. This is how I can attune more to more natural elements in my being. So it is, that of such things I talked to Jeremy, though not in such detail. And people nowadays call the travellers Romanys, not gypsies, or at least some people assert this. But either way such names reflect places long lived in since leaving India, whether Romania or Egypt. The gypsy word gets labelled as fake and erroneous along with the statement that never really had travellers come from there. And yet the brilliant documentary I'd watched revealed that the gypsies did go to Egypt and still are there, and even by that north African route had travelled to the south of Spain. Around Granada they lived in cave houses and spoke of coming from Africa, and this is even though others of their people crossed Europe and came down into Spain from other directions. Even in Egypt, some family stories talk of having been in Hungary before going down to Africa. Although associated with musicians historically gifted to Persia, gypsies also have plenty of military words in their vocabulary hinting that they had also been employed as warriors, maybe against the Islamic colonisations of the near East. In Egypt, although it has put them in danger, there are still gypsies who have kept apart from Islam. Either way, in Egypt they have lived on the peripheries, surviving through their music, by their dancing girls, even prostitution, whatever must be done to survive. The Egyptian gypsies admit that crime has also been a part of their overland journey. Although long in Persia, Islam drove them out from there into Turkey which was then safely still part of the Byzantine Empire. With ottoman conquerings they had to travel on yet again, into eastern Europe. There they were legally forced by the civilisation around them into slavery. This brutal history of imposed slavery could go a long way to explaining the modern degradation still affecting these people, their impoverishment, drug and alcohol addictions, family neglect, and unsafe settlements. For they had been broken. Hitler had rounded up so many of them for his death camps. But some escaped all that, having instead gone down to Egypt and all the way round to southern Spain. Their music and songs are also their healing, from all past inflicted sufferings, emotional turmoils channeled into creative sustenance. That passionate music has anciently the quality of depth still found in Indian bhajans. And they never lost their goddess Kali, transforming her at the very least into the Christian Sara Kali in the Carmargue of France. Those gypsies that crossed Europe, I am both of them and the southern Spanish. And it appears that the gypsies soon enough both encountered and interbred with the nomadic Irish. When I see in my DNA that I am Anatolian, middle eastern, eastern European, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and have some French too, well, this is all the journey they took. More and more, then, I make sense of this Mediterranean Europeanness I have as being, at least in part, of gypsy derivation. Anciently gypsies had a sense of their own nobility as a people and when they first came to Britain were even seen as such. But attitudes changed and they had to adapt or disguise who they were or else soldier on regardless. I can't even express just how much happiness I have knowing my roots all the more and how much that means to me. And others will say that the past is irrelevant, but such words are of no consequence to me, because for me our family roots are part of our divinity even. And by this we find our vital historical place amongst the teeming masses of faceless people who have no stories. Not at all is the past an irrelevance and I have long known this. I have travailed so hard over the years to uncover such forgotten history, that which was reduced to but mysteries and disregarded shadows, while yet being essentially part of who we are, unknown and yet vital. I know that new age spiritually motivated people, of whom I have often situated myself, want to escape the body and the material, into a void, and I had originally accepted something of this dismissiveness, but not anymore. Because it is the totality that is relevant, being part of the miracle of evolving life, being precious, divine, and deserving to be honoured. All my research now leads somewhere and it feels so good. I am gypsy; it is the only way to make sense of the diverse patch-work of association with so many countries, places they travelled through and dwelt in. I'm happy to know. I'm gypsy and viking and Irish and Welsh. My dad disliked his Welshness and my mum her Irishness, but I love it all. And my squatters of the Forest of Dean, who were people outside of any parish, they were travellers too! Red haired, natural, rebelling against any imposed authority, they had no home but the forest, where they made their huts and repeatedly saw them destroyed, and then built more. Evicting them was a nonsense as they were homeless and belonged nowhere. There was nowhere else for them to go. They were extraneous to the system. All lands beyond the forest had been enclosed, partitioned and claimed, everywhere divided into parishes where people belonged, but not them. And what kind of travellers they themselves were, who knows. But I am so happy. I have made sense of a past that otherwise would not have been known. And I knew of Shetland Vikings and Welsh and Irish and Forest of dean, but I never knew of gypsies. If some of the elders of our family knew of this they preferred it forgotten. But I have discovered it anyway. It wakens a whole part of me, reinvigorates what was lost and yet was always there. And that feels so good. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I have more ethnic DNA results to consider, as I have transferred my mothers results now to Myheritage, which always presents a different perspective. What I can take of interest from this, amazingly, is that although having recieved Celtic-Pictish DNA from both my parents, there is in my mothers DNA a specifically English type of DNA, of which she has 7%, which I did not inherit; not a half, not even a drop! I have no English DNA; I am totally of the Welsh, Scottish and Irish types. My mother is part English and I am not! The large amount of French, Swiss, Italian my mother was said to have by Familytree is much minimised by Myheritage, down to 6%. Somehow this does present as more realistic, and she now has more Scandinavian than me, by 3%. Her British is much higher than Familytree's analysis - 59% British, 7% specifically English and 27% Viking. Of her 6% European it is not so far off half-half for both France and Italy. This, by deduction, reveals that my 1% Finnish is through my father and also from my father is this strange 4% of Greek, which also would cover some of the southern parts of Bulgaria, Old Yugoslavia, and Italy. As before, the differences in results confuses. Which one is more reliable, this is the question, but this cannot be known now; it is only something time can tell, if ever. Comparing with the original Genographic project these other later reults, there is still this strange claim, only by them, that I am 3% Central Asian. Quite mysterious still. As is this African, Middle Eastern and Anatolian that only shows up with Familytree. So, of British I have variously been given 48% (Geno), 55% (famtree), and 64% (myheri), which is not to dissimilar, the range being of 16%, so take your pick. Why the different percentages given, I still don't understand, but, regardless, this makes up the larger part of who I am in genetic terms. And, as revealed by Familytree, this is all of Celtic-Pictish type. Viking-Scandinavian is 38% (Geno), 24% (myheri) and 21% (famtree), the second largest part of my genetic make-up with a range of 17%, pretty similar again to the British range. Again, take your pick. By Geno I am 11% Southern European, which matches Myheritage at almost 11%, broken up into Spanish, French, Italian and Greek. It is only Famtree that greatly ups this percentage to 21 or maybe 22%, most of that being French-Italian at 13%, but then there being this whole extra Iberian at 8%. Without that Spanish it wouldn't be too different from the others. But the Spanish is there! And Greek at 4% with Myheritage is also, confusingly, there. Finally come all these traces revealed by different company analyses, the Eastern European, Anatolian, Levantine, Finnish, African, and Central Asian, very minimal parts of my DNA which not every company detects. And small amounts are challenging to detect anyway, small enough to be a part of who I am, so small that my children may not inherit any such DNA themselves. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() My mothers ethnic DNA results were in. And, well, I have to say that they quite took me by surprise, because despite already having discovered that my own matriarchal DNA is exotic, the small exotic ethnic DNA percentages I have are not actually through her, but rather they are given to me by my father. She does not have them. The Middle Eastern, Anatolian and African are not at all from her. Our ancestresses leaving the matriarchal homelands, then, was in no way a recent event. What also surprises me is not only does she have less British DNA than me, but also less Viking. This means some of my Viking DNA has to come from my father. Her own Shetland blood must not have been pure Viking after all, but mixed with Pictish types/original island dwellers. The Spanish DNA is not from her, so is of my father. The French DNA, which overlaps into Northern Italy, is from her and she has a huge amount of it, 46%, almost half, which is certainly confusing to me. I only inherited 13% of the French-Italian from her, rather than 23%, sure proof there that what one inherits can be uneven and random and even differ among siblings. So it is that I can now make more sense, or maybe not much sense, of the origin of my own DNA. Oh, and I almost omitted it, that Eastern European I myself have at 1%, well, it comes through her, she having it at 2%. Her British is 35%, and her Scandinavian-Viking is 17%; really, with her inbred Shetlanders I would have expected more like 50% but not so. Having made assumptions about the family origins in light of DNA before, I am lax to go making any more assumptions. But I have to attempt to do so anyway. The huge amount of French-Italian she has, though seemingly equivalent to one of her parents, could rather come through two grandparents, for instance, Mary Ann Seagrove's black haired mother Maria Harrison, could have been Italian, and this would leave D'Auvergne Bane potentially bringing in some French. Even he has the name of a French department! Now, unless his Bane's and Bean's were from an interbreeding of French Huguenot settlers, not much watered down at all, then he could, as I have speculated before, have been adopted or an illegitimacy of his 'big sister' Alma's, and if this was connected after all with the D'Auvergne Barnards, all could make sense, as these colonials of India had, possibly, originated from France and the Channel Islands. By deduction I can speculate the origins more of my own father. Eileen Spencer's, his mother's own paternity, has always been a question mark, and with his British imput being more than my mothers, this would account for my pop George Harrison's Welsh and Forest of Dean, combined with my fathers mothers part Irish. This leaves a bundle of Spanish with rarer exotica and his Scandinavian. I am going to suppose here, with nanny Eileen Spencer having been so freckly fair, that her mystery father was a Scandinavian seaman, her mother having worked in the port; entirely guess work, of course. And I have even more guesswork. The London Maxted-Green-Roberts who I have contemplated previously to have gypsy heritage, well, it seems even more likely now, which would be why Iberian DNA is showing up. Gypsies are associated with a distant Indian tribe, and yet in all their travels did they not mix with locals of the lands they inhabited, did not runaways and people expelled from their own communities join them? Spanish, Anatolian, Middle Eastern, and somehow that bit of African added too... And if not the Maxteds, who may have been Old English mixture with Viking rather than gypsy, at least the Greens and Roberts are surnames associated with gypsy people. And, again, who knows where other illegitimacies have been? So, these are all my first thoughts anyway in trying to make sense of the matter. Certainly these latest results so amaze and give me much food for thought. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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