Family Stories
Woman in the Middle | February 3, 2016There was a story on the front page of our local newspaper a while back that caught my eye. A professor at a local university says she has Cherokee ancestry. She also writes and does research about Native American issues. The problem is, there are folks who have researched her ancestry and say she is not Cherokee. Apparently this professor was told by her mother that she had Cherokee ancestry, and took it from there.
This story resonated with me . One of the things that Hubby and I discovered about each other when we were dating is that we both had been told that we had great grandmothers who were Native American. I guess we are not alone as there are several million Americans who think the same thing.
As I mentioned in a blog post about a year and a half ago, Hubby and I got our DNA tested to see what our ancestry was. Guess what? No Native American ancestry for either of us. Surprise! We were both a little disappointed. I know I was disappointed, not so much by the fact that I didn’t have any Native American ancestry, although that would have been cool, but because yet another interesting family story was proven to be just that, a story, with no basis in reality.
Another family story I heard growing up was that two bother’s on my maternal grandfather’s side of the family came to the U.S. from Ireland during the Civil War. One ended up fighting for the north, the other for the south, and they never saw each other again. When I started researching that grandfather’s genealogy, I discovered that there were no direct ancestors of his that came from anywhere during the Civil Way. All of his direct ancestors came here much earlier than the 1860s. I also couldn’t find anyone who came from Ireland. My DNA test did show some Irish ancestry, but I have no idea where it came from.
I find it interesting how we, as Americans, can get very caught up in where we came from. But when we base our identity on old family stories, that can be an issue, as I found out twice! We are all probably better off to just think of ourselves as American. After all, there can be no dispute about that!
Are you sure the tribes have shared their info with the DNA testers? They can be be pretty exclusive, from what I have been told.