I Am Them. Pt. 2

For years I have been interested in ancestry, as my father was before me, and I have not only done a great deal of research, and charted the same, but have compiled thousands of family records of all kinds on a personal hard drive; which I intend to pass it down among my descendants.

I have gleaned a myriad of information about my ancestors on both my paternal and maternal lines, and have traced some of the represented surnames back 8 or 10 generations. In fact, I’ve managed to trace one particular branch of my lineage, the Spencer’s, (among which my distant cousins, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Lady Diana are descended) to the end of the first millennium.

A significant amount of my time and effort has been devoted to my own last name. McDonald. (Son of Donald). My 3x great Grandfather, Isham McDonald, was born in what is now known as Northern Ireland, of Scottish parents, in 1747, and immigrated to America sometime thereafter. He served under “The Swamp Fox,” Colonel Francis Marion, and fought the British in South Carolina.

Isham’s son, William I, (for I am William II) owned not only a gold mine in Dahlonega, Georgia, but a couple of slaves who helped work it; (if it can be said that anyone can “own” another human being). My father, Henry, once traveled to the site, and the manager of a carpet mill on the property showed him the now defunct and dilapidated mine. While he was in the area, my dad met a couple of African-American men who bore our family surname, and discovered they were descendants of William’s slaves. 

Interestingly enough, I own a photo of Isham's grandson, John and his family, circa 1900. Over to the right of the picture stands a black sharecropper under a tree. It is thought he was one of William's freed slaves who stayed on after the Civil War.

Then there was Rev. Isom Peacock, my 4x great Grandfather, an itinerant preacher, who founded the first (not First) Baptist congregation in what would, ultimately, become the State of Florida. And strangely enough, the good reverend died at the grand old age … of 107; falling from a horse!

My mother’s side of the family are no less interesting.

There was Mary Jane Eldridge, my grandmother’s grandmother, who, it is believed, was the source of our supposed Native American ancestry. And who can forget the story of Alexander “Z” Chaney, who was falsely accused of having killed an old couple who ran a “mom & pop” store in southern Georgia, who was, subsequently, sentenced to life in prison, and who having been paroled by the Governor experienced a heart attack, and died the week of his release.

And then there was a fairly recent revelation.

Though my wife and I first met in the 4^th grade, and though strangely enough I was the first person to teach her about “the birds and the bees,” (all verbal to be sure) it was only in the 65^th year of our lives that we learned that we are…5^th cousins. It seems we share a common set of 4x great grandparents in our fathers’ lines, and it seems apparent we are related by way of our mothers, as well.

Of course, given the significant amount of research I have done, I was all too aware of dozens of my paternal and maternal surnames, and the countries of origin of countless of my ancestors.

However, it was only after I accomplished a DNA test that the multiplicity of my family origins were apparent.

70 percent British, Welsh, Irish, Scottish

28 percent western European, (including German, French, Danish, Italian, etc.)

1 percent North African (Arab)

1 percent Jewish

And though my mother had long since taken up residence in a nursing facility, she maintained a profound interest in her own family origins, and determined to accomplish her own DNA test which, as it fell together, I administered to her 1 week before …she passed away.

And since my mother contributed half of my chromosomal code, the results of her DNA kit were not totally unexpected, and were substantially similar to my own.

Substantially, but not altogether the same.

For you see, there was one especially interesting finding which was altogether missing in my DNA results; (perhaps due to the possibility that my mother’s results was so comparatively small, and mine would have been half again smaller).

It seems my mother registered 98.2 percent British/Irish/Scottish and Western European, and 1.8 percent Sub-Saharan African; a finding of which I am only now aware. The implication is that my mother was almost 2 percent …African-American, and almost 1 percent of my bloodline hails from that region of the world.

I have an old photo of my grandmother and my three great aunts, and two of the four, especially, were unusually dark. It was always conjectured that their complexion was simply an indication that there must have been a substantial ‘contribution’ of Native American DNA somewhere in the relatively recent past. However, my mother’s test results cast strong doubt on oral tradition.

Several weeks before my mother passed away she shared something with me that I’d never heard her mention during the 67 years she and I had been so well acquainted.

“When I was an adolescent my friends often asked me, ‘Are you part black?’”

And indeed, in early photographs, the evidence seems almost unmistakable.

And all the foregoing to say, the revelation that I am .9 percent African-American throws an entirely new light on what ‘til now was theory. Based on the percentage, one scenario would indicate that 1 of my 128 5x great grandparents was black; a great grandparent who, in all likelihood, will remain anonymous.

At any given time of the day or night, I find myself thinking about that individual, and the obvious method by which they made their way from some West African country to the shores of the new world. (And I can assure you that he or she in no wise came ‘first class’ on a modern luxury liner, nor did they go by way of Ellis Island). But rather, my ggggg grandfather or ggggg grandmother would have been chained, hands and feet, in the bowels of a slave ship, would have been forced fed some nasty soup or oat meal, and would have been exposed to the stench of their own bodily wastes throughout the course of a long and tedious voyage of the Atlantic.

Theory. Suddenly clothed in Reality.

As if to say,

“In your face, William I !!!”

If only for the worst decision you ever made. To take possession of, and commandeer the services of one or more of God's created beings. I love you, Granddad, but I can only wonder how you would react to the realization that the blood of slaves now flows in the veins of your progeny. Among whom is your very namesake, yours truly, William II.

We Americans are, indeed, a vast Melting Pot.

And I am thankful for the strength, commitment, diligence and faith of those who have preceded me, them upon whose shoulders I stand, and who in some ethereal manner continue to live vicariously through me.

I am them

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary, Vol. 37. Copyright pending

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