For many years I have been interested in the history of my family.  The advent of computers has sped up this process and recently a new tool has been added to the process–DNA analysis.  

           Recently when I was in Texas, I noticed that the genealogy web site, Ancestry.com, had a half price sale on their DNA tests.  I had been wanting to perform these tests for a long while but was unwilling to shell out the big money to do it.   I broke down and ordered the tests–the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA test for me and the mitochondrial DNA test for my father.

          There are several other companies that offer the most common tests being done at this time–the Y chromosome test and the mitochondrial DNA test.  The Y chromosome is of course the chromosome that determines maleness.  Males have the X and Y sex chromosomes, whereas females have two X chromosomes (XX).    During the formation of the eggs and sperm (meiosis),  all the so called homologous chromosomes which contain the same basic type of DNA, pair up and often exchange segments of their DNA (crossing over).  This results in the changing of the base sequence which is the genetic code. 

          The Y chromosome is a small chromosome and crossing over with the X chromosome normally doesn’t occur as often as it does with the other pairs of chromosomes (Check out my entry on June 21, 2007 for more information on the Y chromosome).  As a consequence the sequence of bases on its DNA doesn’t change around as much as other chromosomes.  Any changes in the base sequence usually comes about by mutations, or small changes in the base sequence.

          The rate of this mutational change can be estimated, and since the genetic code on the Y chromosome is not as subject to natural selection as is the code on the other chromosomes (autosomes), this mutation rate can be used to estimate how long ago a change occurred when comparing the Y chromosomes of two different men.  Also the Y chromosomes can be compared to see how closely related two men are.

          The mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) is a whole ‘nother creature.  Whereas the nuclear DNA is passed from one generation to the next via the eggs and sperm (gametes) and controls the various genetic traits through the synthesis of enzymes, the mitochondrial DNA is not found in the nuclear chromosomes but in the mitochondria which is a small structure (organelle) in the cell which is responsible for the aerobic reactions of cell respiration–combining food with oxygen to produce lots of energy.

          The mitochondria has a fascinating history, and is believed to be a once free living bacteria, partly based on it’s loop-shaped chromosomes, as opposed to the rod-shaped chromosomes found in us and other Eukaryotic creatues.  Check out the endosymbiotic theory when you have time.

         Once again, like the Y chromosome, the DNA in the mitochondria is not that subject to the influence of natural selection and it does not go through a shuffling process (independent assortment) or crossing over as the nuclear chromosomes do, thus it will not change unless a random mutation occurs.  Apparently the mutation rates in mDNA is higher than the nuclear DNA which makes it useful in comparing lineages.

       The Y chromosome is passed from father to son and can be used to determine information about a male’s paternal ancestry.  The mDNA is found only in the area outside of the nucleus, thus sperm can not pass on mitochondria from the father since only the head of the sperm (containing half the normal number of chromosomes) enters the egg at fertilization.

       The egg (oogonium), on the other hand being a large cell, contains mitochondria which are passed on to the cells of the resulting children after fertilization.  Thus the mDNA is only passed from mother to offspring of both sexes.  Therefore, the mDNA is useful for determining information on the maternal ancestry of a person.

          I am now receiving the information on these tests and will in the coming days talk about the results.

  I couldn’t resist including this model of DNA copied from Wikipedia

    During my study of my family’s genealogy, I became interested in surnames.   Perhaps it is because I have such a common surname, but when I encountered some of the more unusual surnames in my family history, they tended to attract my notice.  The history of surnames is interesting also.  In most parts of the world people were only given one name with no surname.  This varies by region however with some areas, China for example, having had surnames since 2852 BC, almost five thousand years if the legends are true.  Surnames were gradually adopted in most countries with some, Turkey and Japan, only adopting surnames fairly recently.

I soon learned that most of the surnames in my family background could be categorized into about four categories: (here is a good site discussing this)

Occupation: Some names reflected the person’s job.  Smith is so common because almost every community had somebody that worked in metal (black referred to the appearance of iron).  Other occupational surnames include: Cooper (maker of barrels), Taylor, Fletcher (putting feathers on arrows), Carpenter, Miller, Tanner, Mason, Chandler (candles), Crowder (played the Crowd, a medieval stringed instrument!),etc., etc.  Some of the occupations, once so common, are no longer around.  Here is a list of some of the more common occupational surnames.

Location: Names indicating place of origin.  For example one of my family names is Ham.  It appears that the Hebrew meaning of this name is “hot.”  However the English origin of Ham, referring to a house, borough or village, is probably where my family got the name.  Names ending with these location suffixes include:  -ley and -leigh referring to a clearing, also hill, brook, well, and -ton, -wick, and -stead referring to a farm.  Also surnames of this class could have originated from an attempt to differentiate a person: John of Topeka, Ralph from Wichita, etc.

Patronymics: These refer to  names  which refer to the father’s name.  Some end in -son or -sen: Olafson, Erickson, Anderson, etc. often of Scandinavian origin.  Other endings indicating “son of” in other countries include the following: -Ap (Welsh), Mac (Scot), Fitz (Norman), -wiecz (Polish), -poulos (Greece), -ez (Spanish).  These later became shortened and modified further increasing the variety of names.

Characteristics: These surnames referred to some aspect of the person, his appearance or personality.  Eric the Red, Black John (Black often referred to the person’s hair).  Longfellow is another name referring of course to a tall person.  One must be careful though because some obvious names are not so obvious (e.g. stout could refer to an easily irritated and noisy person).

     I have a few names which give me problems.  Their origin is interesting to speculate upon:

Plair: this is probably a derivation of Player which is an occupational surname of an actor or musician or a nickname for somebody in sporting contests.  Or so some say.  Another possibility is the French plaire: to please.

Petill: I have no idea what the derivation of this is.  This entire line is a source of frustration.  I suspect it is of French origin since many of this surname are French and since it is said that my great great grandmother of this name was French.

   One of my great interests is genealogy.  I became interested in tracing my family history quite a few years ago, from talking to my father’s mother who was part of a great, close-knit clan of Walkers.  I caught fire from her and immediately began researching my family history.  I haunted libraries and courthouses, making special trips to small towns in various states, searching through little country cemeteries, and in a short time I had gathered a large amount of data.  

          I was very lucky in having young parents and young grandparents.  All but one of my grandparents were in their thirties when I was born (one being thirty-four), and as a consequence, I had access to their memories and information which I mined.  My mother’s father was especially full of stories about his family and childhood and took great delight in regaling us all.

     This was before computers revolutionized the field.  Once I had access to the internet using various genealogy programs, the rate of information acquisition began to increase exponentially.   After trying several programs, I settled years ago upon Family Tree Maker.  I’ve been very satisfied with this program for many years—-until recently that is.  One thing that irritates me is that they seem to have increased their number of upgrades but continue to charge full price for them.  Also I found that my Family Tree Maker 16 was not compatible with Windows Vista.

     I have spent a huge amount of time preparing some books on the genealogy of my family.  I have a modest number of people (approximately 4500) compared with the tens of thousands that others have added to their genealogy, but I found that I could not open and preview these books in Windows Vista.  When I found there was a patch, I immediately downloaded it but it didn’t fix the problem.  I have found other suggestions online that promised to fix the problem, but which proved to be totally ineffective.  I still could not preview the books on Vista.

     So, having no luck using FTM 16 with Windows Vista, I went ahead and purchased Family Tree Maker 2008 which was billed as being compatible with Vista.  When I loaded this program today, I found that the program no longer supported the writing of genealogy books, but now required that the information be sent to Ancestry.com so that they could put the book together–at a substantial fee of course.  Also according to some reviewers, the program was released far too early and was chock full of bugs.

       So…I reloaded FTM 16 back onto my old computer which runs Windows ME,  and it runs just fine.    My advice is to avoid FTM 2008 if  you want to use the program to write  your own genealogy books.  There seems to be always a tendency towards taking simple effective programs and making them into cumbersome, slow, bloated dinosaurs.