DNA Update on Native Blood from Mary Beaton, Newfoundland

A very quick update on my DNA results in my mother’s family line from Newfoundland, regarding Mary Beaton, our 5th/6th great grandmother. My uncle tested positive for Native American (more accurately, Canadian-Mi’kmaq) blood on 23andme (an American test), as well as another of my mother’s cousins from the same line (different sibling), all descendants of Mary Beaton.

The trace percentage is consistent with the number of generations to my mother, uncle and cousin (5-6 generations from Mary Beaton, b. around 1800 on Burnt Island, Exploits, Nfld, Canada). Both 23andme and AncestryDNA change their DNA compositions frequently, so a trace percentage can appear and disappear with each rendition.

However, this evidence is good enough for me. Especially when there is no guarantee of inheriting any of the native DNA; that they did shows the legend is founded on truth: my 6th great grandmother Mary Beaton was indigenous, Mi’Maq, and her DNA carried through all the way down to my mother’s generation, however trace.

(I don’t think my mother needed this evidence, as her nature is so close to the land, the trees, the water, that once I had a dream that her spirit name was “Peacewater”).

The second proof of native blood is the book River Lords* that includes Mary Beaton’s son’s comments on his mother’s Mi’kmaq origin, and how she worked at the house of Captain Peyton alongside the last Beothuk, Shanawdidhit.  Please see previous post for more information. Here is a possible picture of Mary Beaton (left) and Shanawdidhit (right), both born around 1800 in the same area, Exploits River, Newfoundland.

Possibly Mary Beaton, ant 1850s.

Shanawdhidit “Nancy April” The Last Beothuk, Nfld

What also surprised me about my Uncle’s DNA results were the 8.6% Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France; 0.7% Portuguese; and trace 0.1% North African (with a matching DNA relative in Morocco) – but that’s another story!

*Book ref: Amy Louise Peyton. River Lords, Father and Son: The Story of the Peytons and the River Exploits, 2nd ed. St. John’s, NL: Flanker Press, 2005, ISBN 1-894463-51-X.

 

My Irish Blood

After many years of searching for my Irish ancestry, I have many names, but fewer places. Without visiting Ireland, and connecting with flesh and blood relatives here and abroad, my trail grows stale.

It’s time to be Irish, and not pursue.

Ireland explains my poetic, lyrical nature, my love of Celtic music, my father’s wicked sense of humour, my flash of temper, good looks (hey!), and dreamy love of the coastal worlds and spirit worlds, the “thin places” of my homeland within. I can’t escape it. It is as near to me as my nose!

Rather than try to find my Irish roots, I am becoming them. Claiming my inner and outer reality, not by DNA, not by the relatives I have found, nor the hypothetical places I have traced with my hand on a screen leaning over books too long. No, Ireland has been with me all along.

My heart sings and my imagination dreams,

The romantic singer, free bourne spirit leaping and dancing

The marvellous look on my face when you’ve struck my last nerve

The sound of my feet on the ground, the way they don’t quite touch 

As I am always “somewhere else” eyes far off 

Sounds, plays, movies, foods, music, laughter, cabins in the wood

Stone houses alongside craggy lanes

It’s all me

I haven’t changed a bit!

I will find you one day

Like a dog chasing its tail!

You are mine, you are the beating of my mind and heart

My love of nourishing soul food in teary conversation

Lost in each other’s bright faces

Life! a parade of sparkling waywardness

That always leads me home

Loving, laughing, feeling, smiling,

Tapping, mimicking, greeting, hugging,

Spilling a mug or two

A jig, a halt, a saunter, a milieu

Pubs and sea food

Black ale known as stout and hearty stew

I may eat veg but my soul goes back to the earth  

The fire and the salt and the sweet smell of the hearth

Ah God, you are my distant refuge, and as near as a dear friend to me.

 

Why Research My Family History?

Sometimes I wonder if I escape to the past to discover my ancestors when I am feeling the most lost in my own life.  Is that such a bad thing?  In the absence of elders, in the absence of a community that we once felt vital to our existence, tribal even, we create our own connections across the cosmos – sometimes virtual, sometimes spiritual, and sometimes ancestral.  These connections are vital, though the people may be dead.  It is my belief that they do live on in us, and that they fashion our existence out of their own.  Their dreams and wishes become our own, remodeled for the 21st century.  There really is no difference between us – only flesh and mortar.  The building blocks change.  The desire to change does not.

Why research my family tree right now, in the middle of everything else a  “suburban” wife, mother and creator needs to do:  Make lunches, pack bags, walk the dog, kiss the kids goodnight, connect with my spouse…  Not to mention the other things:  goals and passions, work-related material, new business ventures, mistakes, travels, wonder, newness.  Why invite the old into something so vitally new and different and now?  Why invite question into what is already so questionable?

Perhaps we invite our families in, past and present, because those questions invite real answers.  Though everything else, the present and the future, remain quite uncertain, the past invites reflection, comfort and meaning, and gives us a sense that we are not alone – that we are well connected to our roots, and that we can yet blossom to fully aware and alive human beings.  This tree is good.  This tree is where we are standing, and everything that came before us stems out beyond us in every direction.  No wonder we feel overwhelmed!  But, what a blessing.

I have been tracing my family tree with my grandmother for about 20 years now.  It has been a great blessing to connect with her and see her as a little girl, a mother, a wife and even a confused human being, just like me.  With all her aches and pains she doesn’t complain much. She is just happy to share her story, and share in the adventure of learning where we come from and who our ancestors were.  She is one of mine, though we may not think of it that way, because I know she will not be here forever.  She is 92. I may be able to call her next week, now, but it will not always be the case.

I have spent most of my time with my grandmother recording her, transcribing, writing furiously, shuffling through photos, videotaping and asking questions.  Just in case.  That may seem morbid, but this is the way stories are passed down – oral histories are rare, and so it is my job to capture them in any way possible.  Modern technology is a genius.  Once the role only of  mothers and grandmothers, now we are all collective storytellers, creators and communicators – “Skyping” and “tweeting” across the globe our own life history. Why not include those who traveled before us and make it a family history?

Even in the movie Avatar, the ancestral tree was the most sacred.  Though the villagers were seen by modern audiences as more advanced in some ways – in their understanding of their interconnectedness to all things – they would still visit the dangling limbs of the ancestral tree, lit with the intelligence and whisperings of their ancestors.  This was their home. Their adventure. Their playing ground.  They were not going “back”, they were going forward.   Perhaps that is what I am doing too.

Ancestors, whisper to me, and take me home.