HistoricalTownMaps Blog

I have been given the honor to keynote the 6th annual St. George UT Family History Expo on February 26-27.   This will be a very different talk then the others I have given throughout the United States in 2009.    For two years I have been lecturing and blogging about technology, techniques, methodologies, and case studies around the conflation of physical geography, culture, historical maps, and genealogy as a strategy to crash through brick walls and create deep insight into our past.  I have been happy to share what I have learned in 11 years of field based research.

But what has been deeply moving for me - since my first lecture at a local genealogy club 6 years ago to my last talk in Northern California is the emotional connection - with real people looking for real answers.    I cannot tell you how many times in the last year I have been approached for help by people looking to reconnect with distant relatives, or having discovered that their parentage was in question, or that they were adopted,   or that their family had a horrible congenital condition and needed to warn unknown relatives, or just wanted to know where they come from - to have some sense of rootedness in this very uncertain age.  One woman in Redding California grabbed both my hands and with tears in her eyes said she was attending my DNA course because I was her last hope to find out who she was because her “life was a lie…”

I had blogged earlier about research that delved into the motivations of why people are interested in genealogy:

A desire for a professional or objective documentation of their ancestral past

A creative outlet for innate talents in research, writing, and ultimately as a gift to other and to posterity

Fulfulling a need to educate members of their family, especially the young, and about their antecedents

As a heritage activity that seeks to preserve the past and to pay homage to ancestors

As a means for coming to terms with the passage of time and death

A vehicle for self discovery

I think these are all very accurate - but the terms “desire”, “creative outlet”, “fulfilling a need”, “activity”, “coming to terms,” or “self discovery” obscure the underlying raw emotional motivation of millions of people researching their family tree.  Whether from religious conviction, a need to place themselves in context, reconnecting with family, discovering roots in an unrooted age, or finding the truth about their lives and their past - many people are looking for help, guidance, information, and support - especially the newbies.  And from those requests for assistance to the many tearful hugs and grateful notes of appreciation once help is provided - you know you can make a difference in peoples lives. 

In these days of Web 2.o, global connectivity, user generated content, social networking, and collaboration - all of us have an opportunity to “let our light shine” and make a difference.  Come to St. George and hear my unconventional and hopefully motivational keynote “Let Your Light Shine.  Let Their Light Shine.”   It will be addressed to vendors as well as genealogists, and family historians.  You won’t want to miss it!

Good hunting,

Bernie

Happy New Year all!  I spent part of the holiday break in Grantham New Hampshire, braving below zero temperatures (before the wind chill!) but had to make a run for home ahead of a storm that dumped over a foot of snow in the region.  Since that time I’ve already been back and forth to Washington DC, lower Manhattan, and then tomorrow morning I take the Oh-Dark-Thirty to Atlanta.

Hop to Hop to Hop.

One of the motivations for many genealogists is to discover their ancestral home or village on the east coast, or on the other side of the pond - to retrace those hops back through time.  Last night on the Facebook group page Piagginesi nel mondo I read the following post, roughtly translated from the original Spanish:

“Me, a piagginesi, will return to Piaggine in one week after 140 years. With great joy and pleasure will walk through the land from where my great grandfather came to America via Uruguay and did not return. I will enjoy to be with you, piagginesi, guided with the help and the generosity of the other part of my family located there…”

Piaggine to Uruguay to America.  Hop to Hop to Hop.

I also used part of my holiday break to review my DNA results reported by both 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA in a historical and geographic context.   My results came back with a mystery.  My mitochondrial DNA - which is passed maternally, came back as an H8 - a very ancient sequence.  H8’s have been described as “an ancient maternal lineage whose hand has rocked the historical cradle of mankind from the infancy of civilization” and “is evidence for the influence of Near East populations on the formation of their gene pool.”  Another description - “H8 was a relatively ancient offshoot of H that arose about 30,000 years ago, before the Ice Age’s peak, and moved east into central Asia. Today it is most common in that part of the world” and “unlike most other branches of H, haplogroup H8 is virtually unknown in Europe.”  Still another said “H8 are among the oldest subgroups of haplogroup H, tracing back to present-day Turkey and Syria about 30,000 years ago. Subsequent migration carried the branch eastward to the Altay Mountains of Central Asia, where it is common among speakers of Altaic languages such as Kazakh, Altay and Mongolian…

Near East?  Virtually unknown in Europe? Mongolia? I don’t get these hops!  On my trip to Italy two summers ago I pushed my maternal ancestry back to the early 1700s.  Other evidence points to residence many centuries earlier. And as I have written and lectured often, the physical geography of the Cilento region does not engender migration out of the region once you are there.  But DNA does not lie!

It was only after looking at historical maps, looking at parallel migrations for other DNA haplotypes, and reading regional histories did this conflicting data all of a sudden become very clear, have structure, and coherence.  In reviewing Genebase’s May 2008 report of mitochondrial DNA frequencies, outside of Central Asia,  H8s have the highest density in what is now Syria.  What was then:

Phoenician! 

Phoenicians, whose lands corresponds to present-day Lebanon,  coastal parts of Israel and Syria, refers to that culture exemplified by long distance seafaring, trade, and Mediterranean colonization.  To connect the dots - I needed some evidence of Phoenician colonization in the Cilento.   There is numerous evidence from other y-DNA (paternal analyses) that shows a distribution of males from the Near East westward through Italy:

 

Expansion of haplogroup E (y-DNA) from Africa to Europe from the pre-Neolithic to the Phoenician colonization (9500-800 BCE)

Just as important there are many historical references to Phoenician settlements and ruins in the Cilento.   So now, by conflating vital records, historical maps, history of the region, history of the Meditteranean, and my mitochondrial DNA, I now have a strong working theory that many millenia before my maternal ancestor’s hop to America in the late 19th century, that at least one Phoenician woman emigrated westward by sea to southern Italy, or perhaps her daughters and their female progeny via intermediate settlements in what is North Africa,  Sicily, or Greece.  

Phoenicia to Southern Italy to New York USA - a millenia-long journey recorded in my DNA.  Hop to Hop to Hop.

With a fully “tongue in cheek” nod to the megahit by the 80s all girl band The Bangles but more importantly in recognition to the long line of strong faithful women who shaped my life and destiny…

Hey all you H8s out there…

Walk like a Phoenician!

Good hunting,

Bernie