As the series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Spittoon will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Tim Janzen, M.D.
Many American families have a family legend that they have a Native American ancestor in their family tree. My family is no different.
We have two such stories, one from my mother’s father’s side of the family and one from my mother’s mother’s side.
The account of our American Indian ancestry on my grandfather Paul Youngman’s side is the best documented. The story from my grandmother Maude (McIntire) Youngman’s side is less well documented. Both stories are of interest and can potentially be established as being true using 23andMe’s Ancestry Painting tools as well as the Native American Ancestry Finder.
First I would like to provide some background about the family stories. Good genealogical records trace my grandfather’s ancestry back to Tarhe, a Wyandot Indian chief who was born about 1742, likely near Detroit, Michigan. Chief Tarhe was a relatively well-known Indian chief during that time period. He was the holder of the Treaty of Greenville that was signed in 1795 after General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeated a large force of Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
Chief Tarhe married Ronyouquaines, who is said to have been the daughter of Chevalier La Durante, a French Canadian who lived on Mackinac Island just off the northern tip of Michigan. Ronyouquaines was captured by the Wyandot Indians and was adopted into their tribe. Their daughter, Myeerah, married Isaac Zane, who was also captured by Indians at the age of 8 in 1762 and was adopted into the Wyandot Indian tribe. Their daughter Sarah Zane married a third captive, Robert Armstrong, who was taken by Indians near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a young boy around 1783. Robert Armstrong’s son John M. Armstrong (b. 1813) married Lucy Bigelow and they moved to Kansas in 1843 with the rest of the Wyandot Indian tribe after the Wyandots were forced to give up their land in Ohio. My grandfather, Paul Youngman, documented much of this history in a book that he wrote in 1975 titled Heritage of the Wyandots.
My maternal grandmother, Maude (McIntire) Youngman, said that her mother Harriet (Lawrence) McIntire also had Native American ancestry. In 1963 my grandmother’s cousin wrote a letter to my grandmother stating that their great-grandmother Margaret Perry (b. 1816) was a Choctaw Indian. The Chocktaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States. My grandmother believed this information to be true when I discussed it with her in the 1970s. Harriet Lawrence’s brother David Lawrence also told his grandchildren that his mother Mary McCleary (b. 1850) had American Indian ancestry.
Mary McCleary was the daughter of Moses McCleary and Margaret Perry. I have been somewhat skeptical about Margaret Perry’s reputed Native American ancestry over the years, particularly after I discovered that the 1880 U. S. Census indicates that Margaret Perry’s parents were born in Virginia. Research in recent years has indicated that Margaret Perry’s parents were Levi Perry (b. ca 1790 in Wales) and Elizabeth ____ (b. ca 1793 in Vermont).
When I received my 23andMe results three years ago one of the first things I wanted to do was to review my Ancestry Painting profile. I was not surprised when I found I have a segment on chromosome 6 that is Asian in origin, suggesting that I have Native American ancestry. When the results for my parents came back from 23andMe, the Ancestry Painting profile for my mother revealed that she has two Asian segments and that my father has no Asian segments. My mother’s two brothers also have Asian segments. One has six Asian segments and the other has five.
Additional relatives of my grandfather Paul Youngman have been tested by 23andMe including two first cousins and two second cousins. These cousins also descend from John M. Armstrong and their DNA results indicate that they each have between four and six Asian segments. My mother, her first cousins, and her second cousins on the Armstrong side have approximately 1% Asian ancestry as per their Ancestry Painting profiles. Since my mother is a great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Chief Tarhe one would expect that approximately 1/128 of her autosomal DNA came from him. The DNA evidence suggests that my mother does indeed have Native American ancestry and it seems highly probable that her only Native American ancestor within the past seven generations is Chief Tarhe.
So what about my grandmother’s story that her great-grandmother Margaret Perry was a Choctaw Indian? Interestingly, there is no evidence from the DNA results that would confirm this story. Two descendents of Moses McCleary and Margaret Perry who are second cousins of my mother have been tested by 23andMe and neither has any Asian segments in their Ancestry Painting profile and the 23andMe Native American Ancestry Finder tool indicates they have no Asian DNA. If Margaret Perry was truly a Choctaw Indian then we would expect that any great-great-grandchildren of hers would be 1/16 Native American. Thus we would expect that approximately 6% of their DNA would be Asian in origin in 23andMe’s Ancestry Painting and in Native American Ancestry Finder and that at least some Native American segments would appear in their DNA. However, the lack of any Asian segments in these two cousins’ 23andMe results coupled with the fact that my mother and her two brothers have only about 1% of their DNA being of Asian origin would strongly suggest that the family lore that Margaret Perry was a Choctaw Indian is incorrect.
Autosomal DNA has the potential to reveal much about our ancestral origins. In my case 23andMe’s Ancestry Painting feature and the Native American Ancestry Finder tool have helped confirm my Native American ancestry on the Armstrong side of my family, but have disproved any Native American ancestry on the Lawrence side. I would encourage others who have been tested by 23andMe to review their results using these tools. You might be surprised with what you find!
Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor at South Tabor Family Physicians in Portland, Oregon. His interest in genealogical research goes back 35 years and he has particularly focused on Mennonite genealogy for the past 15 years. He has a web site that summarizes many different sources available for Mennonite genealogical research found at www.timjanzen.com and has given many presentations about Mennonite genealogy in the United States and Canada. He is the co-administrator of the Mennonite DNA project at www.mennonitedna.com. He also serves on the ISOGG Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree Committee. Tim is married to Rachel Janzen and they have four children.
DNA tribes reports North American Indians have no Asian DNA. Any comments?
@John Bears
Doug Mcdonald said my siberian (east asian) admix goes into my amerindian admixture. I’ve also seen other results from other people that get told the same thing by mcdonald regarding the east asian admix being part of Amerindian. DNATribes needs to recheck what they are saying.
For Native American ancestry, is it true that anything past 5 generations / circa 1850 will not show up on 23andme results?
Viewing DNATribes and specially Ancestry.com DNA recent acquisition of the Sorrenson / Genetree database, is 23andme behind the curve on this when identifying likely tribes for African Americans or Native Americans?
In regards to the Native American ancestry for Brown Univ. Pres Ruth Simmons you speculated that her maternal ancestry was Taino or Carib. Can you provide us with some information which would support that conclusion since the Gates program did not even mention her Hg?
My heritages dont add up to 99 percent but 101% thru 23and me. Why is that? 64% african, 31% European and 6% asian? Also my great-great grandmother was 100% cherokee. Why is there not native american indian blood detected?
@Nitosha Parham,
The 6% Asian ancestry you have is likely from a Native American Indian ancestry, probably your great-great grandmother who was Cherokee. You should have received about 6.25% of your autosomal DNA from this great-great grandmother. Assuming that you don’t have any Native American ancestry on any of your other lines, then it is reasonable to assume that the 6% of your DNA that was Asian in origin came from your great-great grandmother who was Cherokee.
@Longpole,
Native American DNA can appear on your 23andMe Ancestry Painting profile from ancestors who were born much earlier than 1850. In my particular case, the Native American DNA that is found in my relatives’ and my DNA appears to have come from Tarhe, a Wyandot Indian who was born ca 1742.
The issue of the origin of the Native American DNA found in African Americans is a very complicated topic and I don’t know that there is an easy answer to all of these issues. What we would like to know is the percentage of the Native American autosomal DNA that is found in the average African American that came from Native Americans in North America (likely primarily from the Eastern U. S.) and what percentage came from the Caribbean. We might never know the answer to that question. However, if a large number of Native American autosomal variants (primarily SNPs) could be determined to be of Caribbean origin and a large number of variants could be determined to be of North American ancestry, then we could likely start to get to the heart of this issue.
Please take a look at http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/ParraAJHG1998.pdf. Also read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade, particularly the section under “Triangular trade”. There is also an excellent document at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0002/000277/027738eb.pdf. My understanding is that the African slaves in the Caribbean intermarried significantly with the local native American Indians (who were also enslaved by the Spaniards). Their descendents formed the core of the slaves in the Caribbean. A portion of these slaves were imported to the U. S. in the 1700s and early 1800s. See page 6 of the document at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0002/000277/027738eb.pdf which describes the slave trade between Havana and the U. S. On our family vacation to Washington, DC, in 2001 there was an extensive exhibit about the importation of slaves from Africa to the Caribbean at the Smithsonian which I spent some time studying. I don’t know what percentage of U. S. slaves that were imported to the U. S. from the Caribbean and what percentage that were imported to the U. S. directly from Africa, but in any case I believe that the percentage of African Americans who have ancestors who were at one point slaves in the Caribbean is significant. I don’t think we can assume that all of the Native American ancestry we find in the DNA of current African Americans came from Native Americans who lived in the U. S. I think that a significant portion of the Native American genetic component of African Americans in the U. S. came from the Caribbean, Mexico, and possibly also from S. America. An article on Black Indians may be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Indians_in_the_United_States that offers additional insights. There is also an article in the April issue of the National Geographic starting on p. 123 that touches on this topic since it discusses the quilombos, the descendents of Native Americans and African slaves in Brazil. I share genomes at the basic level with a number of African Americans. The percentage of their DNA that is of Asian ancestry I see for those people in Ancestry Painting seems to range from about 2% to 6%. It may be higher in some African Americans.
Sincerely,
Tim Janzen
Thanks Tim. I believe my Autosomal results reflect this quite well. I have a 1% African 99% European at 23andme. I have two well defined African segments (no matches on these anywhere yet–including FTDNA and GEDMATCH) I do however have one match with a Mexican who is mostly Native American AND we match on a segment where he shows 100% Native American and me better than 50% Native American (on that segment). I also show small amounts of Oceania in some calculators and some other unusual results.
Although estimating the time frame for my African ancestor is fraught with problems my guestimate based on two sizable segments is 1700s-very early 1800′s and most likely was the parent of one of my female mystery women in the South or New Jersey/Maryland.
My guess is that this women is the source of the Native American that matches my match from Mexico. I also have 5 small (5-6cM) matches with men from Portugal all who match at least 2 of the others. This suggests to me that most likely there was some admixing again guestimating in a common Portuguese ancestor perhaps in 1500′s to 1600′s.
I have several Scottish ancestors (who were in Ireland later) at lest one of which appears to have immigrated to the Caribbean before come to America.
Its not hard to imagine a person with two mixed ancestry parents giving birth to a child who passes for white and passes their mixed genes—relatively undetected until now. So these small bits of admixture might indeed be real and have a plausible and perhaps eventually provable story.
Also regarding distant Native American—it appears likely that many Native Americans probably have admixing with Europeans going back centuries so that there is not as much detectable Native American as we might suspect. Both my husband and I show some small segments across the genome suggesting old admixing. This is a lot more prevalent than the History books tend to acknowledge.
Although not far into the book I will mention “The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade:1440-1870″ by Hugh Thomas for those that might be interested.
Regards,
Kelly
Hi
Thank you for posting your research and that of others.
My autosomal DNA test shows 90% European, 8% East Asian, 2% Native American,
which the lab suggested could be read as 10% Indigenous DNA, Americas.
Many of my European lines are known to me, early 17th century VA and MD English,
later end of 18th century, Anglo-Scots- Irish. I have assumed that there could be different
lines of Native American descent from both my mother’s and father’s families.
In further research, I find in several of these extended Colonial families
Native American marriages up through early 19th century, I cannot, however, determine a NA marriage in my direct line.
I am wondering if any NA nation in VA or MD has tested for higher East Asian DNA
than any others.
Regards
Will
Since 23andme only detects Native American ancestry back five generations there is still a possibility of Native American ancestry prior to that time. While interesting and informative, these dna tests are not 100% conclusive.
That’s correct. We would have a hard time detecting percentages below 1 percent or admixture that happened five or six generations (roughly 200 years ago).
I am very disappointed with how the results of 23andme is shown, by lumping me into a big percentile of 99.8 of european that says NOTHING. I was looking for something on my mom s dna showing percentage of possible Jewish dna and oh guess what that s been lumped into a big pile so not happy. Also I know there was more native american dna than showing up, so I did not get the information I was looking for verification Oh, when I first saw the ad it said Both maternal & paternal dna can be shown and guess what I am now told that only my dad s dna can be determined by a male relative. oooops.
If I were to get tested, would it show my grandmother born 1806 in Tennessee, as being Cherokee? We don’t know anything about her early life, except that she was a Cherokee Indian Would it be better if my brother got tested?
Can read the 1% admixture up to only the past 200 years? My Maternal “English” Great GrandDad landed at JamesTowne in 1607, living over a decade with the Rappahannock Tribe. The ensuing maternal (14 generations) & paternal (13 generations), Scott & Welsh. Both, my teeth & 2 Daughters teeth are ‘shoveled’ which is a primary indicator archaeologically for verifying Native American heritage; no body hair & our eyes are green in color, just to comment. That’s 400 years or are we genetic throwbacks? Confusing. I am in the process of ordering the 23andMe DNA kit. Would we be viable candidates or be excluded for the 1% ? Thank You.
Would not a better source for determing u.s. native american dna come from the Choctaws that never left Mississippi? Although some of them did father african and european children, for the most part the majority of them remained as a community amongst themselves even before they were granted a reservation in 1945. Even today I don’t think they allow anyone less than 1/4 to become an enrolled citizen. If you check the 1860 U.S census for Mississippi, you would find very few choctaws on the census rolls -less than 10. Yet after the civil war, in 1870-1880, U.S. census rolls indicate their numbers suddenly increased from near a 1000 in 1870 to nearing 2000 afterward . And also, testing Mississippians (both Blacks and Whites) claiming to be Choctaw and that can supply photos of their relatives they claim to be part Native American; and can tell a viable relationship between their family and the Mississippi Choctaws that has been passed on through family lore; And as well reecite some story passed down told by Choctaws in order to compare their dna against the two would be a giant step foward since dna comparison for european and african ancestry is becoming well established. You would by this way have filtered out with just 2 to 3 request that left more plausible candidates for your testing. you may just have enough customers that originated from Mississippy already to initiate such a project. You already have the dna, all is needed is the required evidence that can be requested by way of email for the mixed and then gathering the participation of some Mississippi Choctaws to submit dna samples in order to complete the gathering of what is needed for evidence. Or maybe not
My grandmothers, grandmother is suppose to be full blooded Western Abenaki (Sally Starr who married Butler Wood) in the 1800′s in Maine – where my maternal family (my mtDNA is H7a, incidentally ) has lived for generations. Family lore says that she may have some African ancestry as well as her features are very dark for an English, Scots – Irish lass ! However my recent “23 and Me” ancestral composition designates that I am 99.9 % European, mostly Northern with some traces of Southern European with ZERO % of Eastern European, Asian, African and Native American ancestry. Can I just chalked my assumed Abenaki and as well as my supposed African ancestry as just “folk lore” ? I guess that my grandmother’s “darkness” can be just attributed to her Irish heritage !
I am a little disapointed because I know I have native american cherokee my 3rd great grandmother nancy agness( donnelly)husband was william john taylor. were fullblood on my mother side but why is this not showing up on my dna thing here im new at this my father side has different native american in it but i do not have his dna to test.how can I find out what if any native american am I? it shows british, and irish, scottish I already knew this .