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I need some help from someone who knows about DNA.
I recently found out that my paternal 8th great grandmother Eechje Claessen (b. 1682 d. 1767) was Dutch and born in New Netherlands colony of NY. She married an English officer named Bartholomew Pikkert. I have not yet dug deeper on this into Dutch records but she was referred to as an old mulatto woman in Sir William Johnson's papers with whom he had a land dispute and wrote of Eva as Eve in many reports he logged. It is said she was likely the daughter of a slave owner and one of his female slaves. So naturally for my white family it was an interesting development and when I told them they were quite excited about it. But when my AncestryDNA results arrived yesterday there was no African content and my family are further suspicious about my talent as a genealogist.
If Eva were truly 1/2 white and 1/2 African and is the only mulatto ancestor is it likely that the percentage is so small that it would not show up as a trace region? Or is it untrue that Eva was mulatto?.
If she is your 8th great, and you have no ancestors that are duplicated in your tree, then she would be one out of 1,024 potential 8 greats (or about 0.08% vs. 99.92% for the other 1,023).
I need some help from someone who knows about DNA.
I recently found out that my paternal 8th great grandmother Eechje Claessen (b. 1682 d. 1767) was Dutch and born in New Netherlands colony of NY. She married an English officer named Bartholomew Pikkert. I have not yet dug deeper on this into Dutch records but she was referred to as an old mulatto woman in Sir William Johnson's papers with whom he had a land dispute and wrote of Eva as Eve in many reports he logged. It is said she was likely the daughter of a slave owner and one of his female slaves. So naturally for my white family it was an interesting development and when I told them they were quite excited about it. But when my AncestryDNA results arrived yesterday there was no African content and my family are further suspicious about my talent as a genealogist.
If Eva were truly 1/2 white and 1/2 African and is the only mulatto ancestor is it likely that the percentage is so small that it would not show up as a trace region? Or is it untrue that Eva was mulatto?.
Autosomal DNA is basically inherited randomly... it's quite likely that you might not have any DNA from an ancestor that far back. In fact the general rule of thumb is you are only guaranteed to have DNA at least 5 generations back in each branch. You certainly have noticeable DNA from an ancestor that far back, but not *all* of them.
Basically if you found African DNA it would prove you have African ancestry, not finding African DNA doesn't disprove it if it's that far back.
It's entirely possible you didn't inherit any DNA from her, or her mother, meaning you didn't inherit any markers that would show up as African on a DNA test.
Okay I am the OP and I think my dilemma has deepened but got interesting too.
I was unaware that the term mulatto describes more than one admixture of races. I presumed it referred to Africa/European mix, but now I found it can also describe Native Indian/European also Native Indian/African.
The Dutch colony used slaves African, Native Indian, and European. I yet do not know which combo my 8th great was but I think it might be more likely she was a member of the tribe either rescued by them or born of them.
It has been said that Tribe were welcoming and protective of slaves who escaped into their care.
Eva Claessen is more likely a Mohawk mix the evidence being that the Mohican tribe gave her land and also comments of my late Uncle who once said we have Mohawk blood. He said this long before the internet.
All of this is what makes genealogy so much fun and so much of a challenge at the same time.
I need some help from someone who knows about DNA.
I recently found out that my paternal 8th great grandmother Eechje Claessen (b. 1682 d. 1767) was Dutch and born in New Netherlands colony of NY. She married an English officer named Bartholomew Pikkert. I have not yet dug deeper on this into Dutch records but she was referred to as an old mulatto woman in Sir William Johnson's papers with whom he had a land dispute and wrote of Eva as Eve in many reports he logged. It is said she was likely the daughter of a slave owner and one of his female slaves. So naturally for my white family it was an interesting development and when I told them they were quite excited about it. But when my AncestryDNA results arrived yesterday there was no African content and my family are further suspicious about my talent as a genealogist.
If Eva were truly 1/2 white and 1/2 African and is the only mulatto ancestor is it likely that the percentage is so small that it would not show up as a trace region? Or is it untrue that Eva was mulatto?.
NY in 1767 was under British control and has been British for 100 years prior. Your black ancestry mouth appear very minimal. If it offers you any consolation. I'm 2 percent native American from a South American tribe, 1/3 European and about 2/3 black African. I have a European male paternal DNA from my father side and an African maternal DNA from my mother's side.
Last edited by Bronxguyanese; 07-14-2016 at 09:42 PM..
I need some help from someone who knows about DNA.
I recently found out that my paternal 8th great grandmother Eechje Claessen (b. 1682 d. 1767) was Dutch and born in New Netherlands colony of NY. She married an English officer named Bartholomew Pikkert. I have not yet dug deeper on this into Dutch records but she was referred to as an old mulatto woman in Sir William Johnson's papers with whom he had a land dispute and wrote of Eva as Eve in many reports he logged. It is said she was likely the daughter of a slave owner and one of his female slaves. So naturally for my white family it was an interesting development and when I told them they were quite excited about it. But when my AncestryDNA results arrived yesterday there was no African content and my family are further suspicious about my talent as a genealogist.
If Eva were truly 1/2 white and 1/2 African and is the only mulatto ancestor is it likely that the percentage is so small that it would not show up as a trace region? Or is it untrue that Eva was mulatto?.
I got interested in this because we might have common ancestors.
Consider the source and context of the mulatto label ...a property dispute between the English noble and a cantankerous widow and her son. She and Pikkert sold liquor to the Mohawk Indians and might have swindled them out of property. This would have made her pretty notorious.
Eechje Claessen is the subject of some confusion but in earlier records she seemed to be consistently and reasonably documented as Dutch in records I looked at. Because of aliases and murky spelling many of the old Dutch lines are hard to track down.
Possibly her mother was Maritje Swart as stated in some records. I'm descended from Maritje's sister, Neeltje Swart. They were from the Schenectady area. The Swarts were early settlers and there are land connections to the Van Der Volgens.
Her father was (maybe) Claus Lourense Van Der Volgen...alias Van Purmerend, an early settler of Schenectady. He had a son, named Laurens Claese Van Der Volgen who was captured by Indians in 1690 and lived among them for eleven years as an Indian, according to family stories. He was Eechje's brother and so there was sort of an Indian connection but not by DNA. The brother was fluent in Mohawk and other languages and served as a translator. She apparently also spoke Mohawk. I found this with a google search that led to various family lists and an online book ''History of Schenectady Patent'' (1883)
You may have seen the 2010 narrative by David Faux that claims she was the daughter of a slave in Schenectady named Claus and ties that, then, to Johnson's 'mulatto' label. Maybe so...but I've not seen any other similar reference to that slave connection. There were slaves in Schenectady-- seven adult male slaves in the 1715 census. Also, when a Mohawk was converted to the Dutch church they were given a Dutch name which further confuses things.
We may have common Swart ancestors and my DNA test shows no African or Indian traces. I would probably not expect anything to show up as a reportable DNA trace that far back.
Okay I am the OP and I think my dilemma has deepened but got interesting too.
I was unaware that the term mulatto describes more than one admixture of races. I presumed it referred to Africa/European mix, but now I found it can also describe Native Indian/European also Native Indian/African.
The Dutch colony used slaves African, Native Indian, and European. I yet do not know which combo my 8th great was but I think it might be more likely she was a member of the tribe either rescued by them or born of them.
It has been said that Tribe were welcoming and protective of slaves who escaped into their care.
Eva Claessen is more likely a Mohawk mix the evidence being that the Mohican tribe gave her land and also comments of my late Uncle who once said we have Mohawk blood. He said this long before the internet.
All of this is what makes genealogy so much fun and so much of a challenge at the same time.
Keep those answers coming....
Glad you posted this. I was going to state this that the mullato portion may have been part white/part native or even part east (Asian) Indian and part white and not African. Asian Indians were also present during the colonial period of America, I have run across accounts of them being labeled as slaves/indentured servants and they mixed with both the native population and whites along with blacks. I recently found information that one of the original bishops of the AME church (African Methodist Episcopal, one of the first African American established religious churches) had an Asian Indian bishop who had been raised primarily around black Americans.
I have a lot of mullattos in my family and recently discovered records as well of a "mullato" woman in my ancestry who actually was described to be part Native (Pamunkey) and part white. She married a "mullatto" man who was "born of a white woman" and was part African so lots of mixture in that line. I am black but have distant cousins who I have connected with who identify as white and were surprised that they were part black (some have done DNA ancestry testing and were between 3% and 25% black/African, all were only about 1% or less native).
I think we have more representation because this particular line of my family married into another tri-racial family, that was a white/Scots Irish man who married a "mullatta" woman who was part African and part native.
Okay I am the OP and I think my dilemma has deepened but got interesting too.
I was unaware that the term mulatto describes more than one admixture of races. I presumed it referred to Africa/European mix, but now I found it can also describe Native Indian/European also Native Indian/African.
Mulatto is supposed to refer to someone part African but it was misused sometimes. Of course, someone part African, part European, and part Native American would still be considered Mulatto, but someone part Native American, part European with no African shouldn't have been labelled Mulatto. If you look at the enumeration instructions for any of the censuses, Mulatto only refers to people who are part African. But a lot of people probably were taking guesses at the backgrounds of slaves and perhaps assuming an African background when there was none.
I have a probate record of my ancestor describing his slaves - one woman is first described as "negro" but then later described as "yellow". I still don't know which is correct, either one could be wrong.
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