Hi Chatters. I need some DNA help please.
I am looking at the DNA results for Fred H (I am using an initial only as the man was born in 1922 and is still alive).
His maternal line is Alaska native with no suggestion of any white ancestors. His DNA shows him as 36% native (North American & Andean). His paternal line has two known white ancestors.
DNA tester: Fred H b1922
Fred's father: George H Jr b1881 (father white / mother 1/2 native)
George H Jr's mother: Marg b1861 (1/2 native / 1/2 white, possibly Jewish)
George H Jr's father: George H Sr birth year & ethnicity unknown died after 1886 (white)
I have 2 conundrums.
- Is Fred H's great grandfather (father of Marg) Jewish as oral history cites; if not can I discern what his ethnicity was?
- Is it logical to deduce that Fred's paternal grandfather (George H Sr) was Irish given that Fred is 41% Irish and only 1 generation removed from Fred?
Conundrum 1: Background re Fred's great grandfather
Oral history says Fred's great grandfather (father of Marg) was a Jewish man named Levy. Margaret's native uncles came for her about 1870 and took her home from a Hudson's Bay fort to Alaska when her native mother died. It further reflects that two of her white uncles came for her to bring her back to the family, and indeed, two Levy "uncles" are in the next village to her in the 1900 Alaska census (though she would have been 40 years old at the time, so much too old to be returned to the white family.)
I see no indication of any Jewish ancestry in Fred's ethnicity analysis though he would only have been separated from his supposed Jewish ancestor by 2 generations. I have the ethnicity description for a young woman 5 generations separated from her Jewish ancestor who is connected through the same native tribe and one of the Levy brothers. She shows 10% Jewish, a strong indicator making me think Fred's should show some Jewish if the oral story is correct.
Conundrum 2: Background re George H Sr
Fred's paternal grandfather is known to have been white. He is said to be George H and, indeed, there was a white man of that name who started a cannery in the vicinity in Alaska in the early 1870s. While no census records exist for the area until 1900, I have tracked George H Sr though a number of transactions with San Francisco business men & last identify him in a village in Alaska an 1886 newspaper article which reflects he is an "old-timer" (possibly indicting age 60 or more)
While George H Sr was still in the area, Fred's grandmother, Marg started having children with a native man by 1884.
I have been unable to identify any white people of DNA matches with the surname H, though many of the white people who went north to Alaska in that time period were "running" from something so H may have been an assumed name.
Fred's 41% Irish ethnicity (including 497 matches to Galway, Ireland) lead me to think that Fred's paternal grandfather was an Irish man, perhaps George H Sr (if he was living under an assumed name) OR another Irishman.
Are these two conclusions reasonable, and/or are there other possible conclusions that could be reached about Fred's two white ancestors given the ethnicity analysis?
