A landmark study has opened a new avenue for Black Americans to trace their ancestry
A genetic gateway to Black American ancestry: The Catoctin furnace in the U.S. and the stories of slavery and free workers
Researchers are taking a closer look at the Catoctin furnace using theDNA of forgotten enslaved and free workers to link them to people in the present. The research, published in the journal Science, taps into biotech company 23andMe’s database of genetic information from millions of direct-to-consumer ancestry tests. It opens a new kind of historical gateway for Black Americans, one that could help many others across the United States find out more about their heritage – and their relationships to one another.
A group of people led by David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School, generated ancient-genome data from the remains of 27 people found at the Catoctin Furnace, and made the data public.
“This search means that a for-profit corporation will be holding answers, and data about the larger descendant community will be inaccessible to community stakeholders, which further increases equity gaps,” Mooney says. Descendants and the community have a responsibility to lead and guide the research.
The analysis offers some clues into the fates of the workers. People with the same name are found across the United States. But those with especially high levels are concentrated in Maryland, suggesting that some former workers might have stayed put. The researchers also found clusters of people with high levels of Catoctin ancestry in the southern United States, which could be evidence that some enslaved people were sold and moved there.
The 23andMe customers with some of the highest levels of shared ancestry — descendants of a woman who died in her early 30s — live in southern California. Harney says there isn’t one answer. There are a few different stories reflecting the way these people were treated.
A genetic analysis of enslaved and free black workers at the Catoctin Furnace: a connection to a black man, Robert Patterson, who lived there during the 18th century
The workforce at the Catoctin Furnace became mainly white after 1850, and historical records offer few details about what happened to the enslaved and free African American workers and their families.
Researchers analysed the genes of people who were buried at the Catoctin Furnace and identified tens of thousands of living descendants in a consumer genetics database.
A method developed by Reich and his team was applied to a database of 9.3 million customers by 23andMe, a company based in San Francisco.
The researchers used a technique that takes into account shared stretches of DNA scattered about the workers’ genomes to identify their living descendants. The closer the relationship gets, the more stretches that two people share.
The initial attempts to find descendants failed, says Elizabeth Comer, the society’s president. The records from the site treated the enslaved people as property, making it difficult to trace their ancestry. They are not telling the story of these individuals. A population geneticist for 23andMe who worked on the study thinks that ancient DNA can be harnessed to make better products.
Crystal Emory never knew much about where she came from. She was taken from her mother by her family for being in an interracial marriage, which led to her moving between homes. She was at an orphanage in Pennsylvania. These experiences, she says, helped instill a need to find out more about her history.
“I just always wanted to know who my family was, and more about myself,” says Emory, 68, now retired from a career in IT. I started doing genealogy.
The historical society in Frederick County, Md. called to tell them about a village in the US that made utensils and bullets from the 17th to the 19th century. With the help of diaries and other records, they connected her to a free, land-owning Black man named Robert Patterson who lived in the area through much of the 19th century. Thanks to that, Emory was able to learn a little about the life he led.
Like Emory, Black Americans across the U.S. are missing significant parts of their ancestry. For many of them, written records directly linking them to the past are rare. The first Census in the U.S. that included all Black people took place in 1870. The thread usually ends when families are split by slave owners and traders who did not record family ties.
A wide range of relationships from great-great-great-grandchild to a first cousin were covered by those individuals who ranged in degrees of separation.
A landmark study opens a new possible way for Black Americans to trace their ancestry in the Catoctin furnace. Rev. M. Harney, J. Comer, F.O. Owsley, and
Some of the information about the lives of the people in the Catoctin is restored by Harney. “We highlight the family members that they have who are also buried in the cemetery. We also are able to discuss some of the health issues that they might have suffered from like sickle cell anemia, and also talk about their ancestral origins.”
“We don’t have any idea who these people were, because they’re anonymous within the cemetery,” said Elizabeth Comer, the president of the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society and a study author. “We have put together, using our genealogical research and our historical documentary research, a list of 271 names of enslaved individuals who worked at the furnace. But we are unable, at this point, to connect those names to an individual in the cemetery.”
The data that is gathered from this research can give anthropologists a idea of where the residents’ ancestors came from.
“You can tie people to specific areas in Africa such as west central Africa and Senegambia, if you want,” says Douglas Owsley, one of the study authors. Some people in Europe have a lot of European ancestry.
Fatimah L.C. Jackson, a bioethicist and anthropologist at Howard University, said the work was ground-breaking in many ways.
What makes the work of Harney et al. stand out? so pioneering is that the research was initiated by an engaged local community of African Americans and results were structured to meet the needs, priorities, and sensibilities of the larger African American community,” she wrote in a perspective article that accompanied the paper in Science. This is the way in which research should be conducted, and it is a good example of how future studies should be conducted.
Source: A landmark study opens a new possible way for Black Americans to trace their ancestry
Relating a descendant community to the history of the Furnace buried at the 1st August 1853 – the discovery of the first seven millennia ago
There are nearly 3000 people that the historical society is unable to reach due to being related to people who are buried at the Furnace.
The history has been obscured and it’s been eliminated from the narrative. We are meant to be connected with a descendant community both collectively and directly.
Researchers have used DNA from the remains of 27 people who were buried at the Catoctin furnace in US to link them to people in the present. They also identified clusters of people with high levels of Catoctin ancestry in the southern United States. They added that they have identified tens of thousands of living descendants in a consumer genetics database.