Valentine Collins .... Facts or Fiction ? Part 4

Part 4 of this series, sometimes things are way beyond 'Hogwash' , this is one of those times. This misinformation about Valentine Collins' DNA, is probably the worst yet. The reason I say this, is because these 2 people who put a 'spin' on these DNA results had an agenda, plain and simple.

Bboth of these people are self identified Melungin descendants, I have no reason to believe that either has any ties to to the Historical Melungeons,  not for nothing, they belong to the 'One Size Fits All Melungeons'.

The problem I have with these two, is that they published in their book 'When Scotland Was Jewish" my 12 marker DNA results, kit number, markers and all. This was done without my permission.

They have my results marked as 'Portuguese' ? And they have this all figured out with a 12 marker Y-DNA test ? Give me a break, this is so sad it's hilarious.

Hirschman posted this on the Rootsweb Melungeon-L list on June 30, 2003, when she was 'recruiting' people for her project:

"Here's what I think we will find (my hypothesis): Appalachia was largely settled by persons of Iberian (~ 75%), Semitic (~15%), Indo-Pakistani (~5%),and sub-Saharan African ancestry (~5%), some of whom intermarried with Native Americans (~5%). The persons called Melungeons by Pat Elder will exhibit this same ethnic composition. "  Hirschman's hypothesis

To me, it appears Hirschman tweaked my DNA results to prove her 'hypothesis'.

To give you a background on how this came about , here is the text from another blog post I made on 7/28/14 :  

"I first got involved with Genetic Genealogy in June of 2003. Self identified Melungin Dr. Elizabeth 'Shiksa' Hirschman posted on the Rootsweb Melungeon list that she was offering to pay for a 12 marker Y DNA test, for Melungin descendants. I applied, was accepted and it’s all history from there.

A few weeks later I received my swab kit and mailed it back to FTDNA, and in early September 2003 my results were emailed to me by FTDNA, showing that my haplogroup was E3a. I had no idea what that meant, but quickly found out what E3a was:

"Haplogroup E3a is an African lineage. It is currently hypothesized that this haplogroup dispersed eastward and southward from western Africa within the last 3,000 years, by the Bantu agricultural expansion. E3a is also the most common lineage among African Americans."

My haplogroup’s name evolved over the years from E3a to E1b1a to E1b1a8a and now is shown as E-P278 (shorthand).

I was a little surprised at those first results, as my family’s story was "Our Collins, were once Indians". I just switched gears and dealt with the new facts. I'm still looking for the Native American female.

When my first results came back from FTDNA, I emailed Ms. Hirschman, she told me my results were really 'Jewish' and had some song and dance about France and Portugal, she told me she would run my results past Brent Kennedy, that was the last I heard from her.

I still have copies of her emails to me, with headers, complete in their original form.

That 'researchers' project never went anywhere, it was orphaned.

In fact, this cretinette was data mining for her book, along with Donald 'meshugganah' Yates,"When Scotland Was Jewish". I was appalled to find my DNA results published in this 'book', and to be labeled 'Portuguese' ?

No one in my family ever claimed Portuguese, there is no Genetic evidence of any relationship to Portugal, or to Jews for that matter. No matches in FTDNA’s Family Finder atDNA test, nothing on Ysearch, nothing on GEDmatch, no connection what so ever.

The fact is, my Collins line is brick-walled in the mid 18^th century, so there is no paper trail to prove this constructed myth.

What gets me is these people never asked my permission to publish this data in a book, nor did I sign any type of release form.

In hindsight it was foolish of me to trust these snake oil salesman. I guess these 2 'scholars' either failed or didn’t take any courses in ethics."

Here is another link to a post I made on 9/1/2014 'The  Other Melungeon DNA Project'

Another question I have, is why my 12 marker DNA results were published in a book concerning Scotland ?  Maybe Yates and Hirschman know something that I don't, but that is highly unlikely.  

Here are the DNA tests I've taken, with dates and company:

Y-DNA12  Completed  8/29/2003 FTDNA
Autosomal Markers Panel 1 Completed  06/04/2007 FTDNA
Y-DNA37 Completed  09/01/2007  FTDNA
Y-DNA67 Completed  09/03/2008  FTDNA
SNP test D9S919  Completed     09/05/2008  FTDNA
Deep Clade-E Completed  11/18/2010 FTDNA
Family Finder  Completed  07/18/2012 FTDNA
SNP test L372  Completed  02/01/2013 FTDNA
SNP  test Z1704  Completed  02/01/2013 FTDNA
mtDNA Plus  Completed 01/28/2014 FTDNA
mtFull Sequence Completed 01/28/2014 FTDNA
Y-DNA111 Completed 04/04/2014 FTDNA
Genographic 2.0 (Geno 2.0) Completed 10/17/2014  National Geographic
Genographic 2.0 Transfer Completed 10/15/2014 FTDNA

(I had my raw data from Gen 2.0 transferred to FTDNA, then down loaded that combined data to GEDmatch)

My DNA data is also on Y-Search

My present Y-DNA Haplogoup is, in 2 different formats:  E1b1a1a1d1 M96 > M2 > U209........E-CTS10652

Even with all these test and 100's of hours of research, I still can't find a connection to the Portuguese or to the Jews. If that were the case, I'd have no problem with it, as I'm looking to who my ancestors were, not what they were.

If either Hirschman or Yates can prove me incorrect , as the saying goes 'Where's the beef ? '

This misinformation is so off the wall I'm gonna give it the Mandingo  'No Bozo' seal of dis-approval.  

 

The Other Melungeon DNA Project

Yates Profile of Melungeons

"In 2010, Donald Yates self-published a paper entitled "Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern Appalachia" on his website. The paper was not subject to academic scrutiny or peer review. For analysis, Yates used a tool based on OmniPop which uses as input the 21 CODIS autosomal markers.

The original OmniPop tool was designed by Brian Burritt of the San Diego Police Department as a tool created to differentiate between people, specifically to determine their primary race, not to compare them for similarities. He created the OmniPop spreadsheet from 225 police and forensic articles that had been published and referenced Codis marker information about people from specific populations. How these populations were identified, how the individuals were identified as members of that particular population, and by who are all questions that remain unanswered and probably vary depending on the article and situation in question.Furthermore, a normalized distribution of the world populations is not represented in OmniPop.

The output of the database, population matches, is dependent solely on the distribution of the populations input and which of the 21 marker values are selected to be utilized in the analysis.

Burritt’s commentary regarding genealogists using OmniPop for genealogical ethnicity comparisons is that they were using a tool not created for this purpose and were over-analyzing the results.

Yates uses the OmniPop derived tool to evaluate and report on the results of "40 self-identified Melungeon descendants" and reports on "the probabilistic predictive results of Melungeon ethnicity."

Yates states that, "Of the participants, 21 were born in eastern Tennessee or adjacent states. The birth location of about 20% were unknown. Nine came from a single extended family. There were 11 siblings and 11 parent-child pairings. Many not closely related were distantly connected. Surnames were consistent with a list published by Kennedy and included Adams, Barnett, Caldwell, Carter, Collins, Cooper, Douglas, Elliott, Goode, Goodman, Goins, Hall, Jones, Kennedy, Mize, Ramey, Sparks, Starnes and Stewart. Of these surnames, only Goins, Goodman and Collins are included in the Core Melungeon grouping and of those in Yates study, it is unknown if they have a genealogical connection to the Hawkins/Hancock County families. Genealogical and/or relationship information was not provided.

Yates reports that his population group showed notable levels of Jewish, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic, Middle Eastern, Native American, African and Iberian ancestry. In summary, Yates concludes that the Melungeons are not primarily drawn from ancestries in northwest Europe but represent an amalgam of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, North African, African and Native American ethnic groups. He further states that the Melungeon founders were probably neither British nor Christian and that the "Arab and Turkish-descended Melungeons probably shared Muslim traditions" in addition to "Sephardic and Ashkenazic" religious practices.

When compared to other autosomal analysis tools and when compared with a known genealogical pedigree chart of the testee, OmniPop has proven deficient as a reliable measure of ethnicity.

In the paper, Revealing American Indian and Minority Heritage Using Y-line, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-Chromosomal Testing Data Combined with Pedigree Analysis, the author analyses various ways to interpret CODIS marker results using OmniPop and provides a comparison of OmniPop's reliability for an individual whose ethnicity is known and proven using a pedigree analysis methodology. For an individual with 23% proven German heritage, 22% proven British Isles heritage and 14% proven Dutch heritage, OmniPop reported Caucasian as the most common element, followed by Poland, Belgium, Mexico, Spain, Michigan Native American, Indian, Serbian and Norwegian. No British Isles results were listed, as British Isles locations are not contained in the OmniPop reference data base, nor did results include Germany or the Netherlands. This discrepancy is problematic and certainly raises questions as to the reliability of OmniPop based results. It is interesting to note that OmniPop, when applied as intended by Brian Burritt, to identify primary race, as opposed to identifying minority admixture, was correct. Most individuals can readily identify their primary race without using OmniPop, but in a police environment, it would be a very valuable tool.

It would certainly be easy to inadvertently skew the resulting matches to be heavily in favor of a specific population if articles dealing with reference samples of that particular population were included disproportionately in the reference data base.

The high level of interrelatedness within the test population of Yates study raises other concerns as well as the variety of family surnames included. Yates used Kennedy's expanded surname list.

Also of concern are the participants' "self-identification" as Melungeon. As the administrators of the Melungeon-Core (Y-line), mtDNA and Family DNA projects, we receive daily e-mails from people who have found Melungeon information on the internet and have "self-identified" as a member of that population based on a wide spectrum of erroneous information. Self-identification may be a criteria for consideration, but it is not a selection criteria for inclusion.”


From: "Melungeons,A Multiethnic Population" 


Disclosure: I am NOT endorsing Donald Yates or DNAConsultants, the opposite, I wouldn't touch either with a 12 ft. vaccinated pole. Cretinitis can be contagious.....