I sometimes contemplate buying a DNA program, but they cost $99, and I suspect they would confirm what I already know--that half my genes are from Britain, and the other $44.50 worth are from Southern Germany (maybe a few from Switzerland.) I don't anticipate any surprises, but failure to anticipate is the definition of surprise, so the question remains: Would I be $99 better off if my expectations were confirmed, or $99 worse off if they weren't?
I don't know much about my Germanic genes. They were carried to America by my Great-Grandparents sometime between 1870 and 1880. My impression is that these ancestors were Catholics in Germany, but became Congregationalists in the bracing air of Massachusetts. It's also possible that an ancestor named 'Koch' was Ashkenazim, or Anabaptist. Either would be fine.
My British genes came to New England in two tranches--about half arrived under sail in the 1600's, and the rest zipped over by paddle-wheel steamer in 1866. Grandma Barker was always a bit dubious about her Johnny-come-lately husband, a kindly man with suspicious Episcopal tendencies--so uncongenial to her Congregational heritage. They didn't marry until she was thirty, so maybe she had to take what she could get. Anyway, I am among the (possibly unintended) consequences.
Like all Yankees, even of the 25% dilution, I have searched for a Mayflower antecedent. The best hope is the ship's carpenter, Peter Brown. Everyone with a Brown in their ancestry looks to Peter, but there is some obscurity in the early record, leaving the issue in doubt. On the other hand, researching the Brown connection reveals that Great Grandmother Pelton was a cousin of John Brown. Oh... nothing serious, a second or third cousin, at least a generation removed. She probably wasn't aware of it, herself, and with all the time that has passed I don't suppose 23+Me can tell us much about it. For what it's worth, the three of us were born in the same town, all firmly opposed to slavery.
I think about Cousin Jack now and then--and wonder how someone from our not-at-all-fanatical, family was so eager to kill you (and your wife and children) to demonstrate how right he was. The question becomes more pertinent as each day passes. Kansas was the shopping mall of the 1850's--full of innocents beleaguered by armed wind-bags, shouting their way toward violence. Nobody was listening to anyone else.
Part of the answer can be found in Jane Smiley's brilliant novel, THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON, wherein an intelligent, but poorly educated, woman (aged thirty, by coincidence) marries her last hope, a Boston intellectual determined to live by abolitionist principles. They move to Kansas, carrying with them a box full of 'Beecher's Bibles', carbines purchased for 'Free State' settlers by his friends in New England.
When her husband is murdered, Lidie follows his killers into Missouri, seeking revenge. She suffers a miscarriage and is rescued by the daughter of a prominent slaveholder. The daughter, Helen, and her supposedly devoted house slave, Lorna, nurse Lidie back to health.
Smiley is one of our greatest writers. Her novel reveals the conflicts, both internal and external, that bedevil her heroine, and the tragic consequences of adhering to principles, while ignoring the humanity of other people. No other novel is as relevant to today's political situation, or as poignantly true in its human story. The three women, Lidie, Helen, and Lorna, lead three different, but almost equally tragic, lives.
As often happens in a Jane Smiley novel, things end badly.
How could they not? The book is populated by armed blowhards, shooting off their mouths and their guns. All around the three women, men taunt and damn each other, boasting, shouting and shooting their way toward 1860. It didn't have to end that way. If only Franklin Pierce had been a better President... or... or, if only everyone had shut up for a moment and listened. But part of the truth of the novel is our knowledge that, just beyond the last page of her story, our great national tragedy is about to begin.
The book should be required reading.
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