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Confused about ethnicity

Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 16 Sep 2012 6:43PM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 17 Sep 2012 12:51PM GMT
Surnames: Collett, Horn, Robinson, Sylvester
My mom and I have been doing research on her paternal grandmother's family, which had settled in Butte, MT, whose ethnic background has always been a huge mystery to us.

Growing up, my mom was frequently mistaken for Italian or Greek because of her dark, Mediterranean appearance. She and her sister remember hearing from their dad that his mother's family was Native American, but he was being facetious. Meanwhile, my mom's aunt told her son they were French Canadian. What's more is that the aunt had all these pictures of the family, but once told her son she was going to throw them away or burn them because "nobody would care about the people in them." On top of that, my mother remembers her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother reacting negatively when they observed that she actually resembled her paternal grandmother. So it's obvious that whatever these people were, there was an effort to hide it, and we've been trying to figure it out ever since.

We recently, for the first time, got to see pictures of what these people looked like, and it honestly has us flummoxed. As you can see from the photos, they all look pretty exotic - too much so to simply be dark-complected people of British descent or Black Irish - and we've looked into numerous possibilities - Jewish, Romani, Melungeon, etc. - but have come up short in every case. Census records going back more than 200 years all say they're WASPs.

There are other things, too. According to Census records, my great-great grandparents were both born in Utah, my great-great grandfather, Marion Collett, to a Mormon family, and my great-great grandmother, Laura Horn, to a family originally from South Carolina. But when my great-grandaunt filled out her dad's death certificate, she said he was born at sea, while my great-great grandmother's obituary says she was born in Canada. Also, they had an older daughter, Waneta, who committed suicide in 1909 on the night before her wedding, which was to take place in Helena. With exception to my great-grandmother, who married an Irish Catholic, the other sisters all married men who had similar appearances; Lucretia married George Robinson, from Milwaukee, and Pearl married Howard Sylvester, from Kansas.
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Re: Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 12:55PM GMT
Classification: Query
Autosomal DNA will answer your questions regarding your ethnicity.

http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2012/04/02/a-review-of-...

Re: Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 1:49PM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 17 Sep 2012 1:50PM GMT
We are planning to do that early next year, but we want to explore all our other options in the meantime. It could be that they were adopted, but it was either never recorded or we just haven't been able to dig up the records.

So far, there seems to be a general consensus among other people viewing the photos that they look Mediterranean - I've heard Mediterranean French, Jewish, Romani, Portuguese and even Bulgarian.

Re: Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 2:16PM GMT
Classification: Query
Could be all of the above. Human migration is not a static event and our ancestors all come from somewhere picking up along the way a diverse genetic history.

Yep - the document trail can be a real problem especially when ancestors never declared the same information twice.

I've been told by those with knowledge on the subject that you really can't use appearance as a good marker to ethnicity because of recessive and mutative genetics. Although I did notice that your ancestors do share a prominent nose. It's not unlike the noses on my father's side of the family. However, my great-great grandparents come from Germany.

I would be interested in the DNA results when you have them could you post them here?

Re: Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 3:35PM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 17 Sep 2012 3:53PM GMT
I suppose we could...

I understand what you mean, but if they were something like German, I'm pretty sure my grandfather and grandaunt would be open about that with their kids instead of being evasive about their identity, and I don't think those features would have carried through all the way to my generation (my dad is a blonde of German descent, and my maternal grandmother was Irish and pretty white-looking, but I still have dark hair and eyes, and some of my cousins are even darker).

I don't know if it's discernible from the photos, but my great-grandmother was very, very dark and looks almost Arab or Latina in a lot of the photos we have, and nothing like northern Europeans; her mom was pretty dark as well, as were her sisters.

People knew my mom, her sisters and grandfather were something different immediately upon seeing them, and often treated them pretty badly as a result. They weren't just dark-complected northern Europeans like Rowan Atkinson or something; we wouldn't be doing this research if we thought that was the case.

Re: Confused about ethnicity

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 6:45PM GMT
Classification: Query
Best of luck to you with your research.
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