For my birthday my partner bought me a 23andme genetic ancestry testing kit. This is where family oral history and legends meet science. Puzzles, enigmas, and hidden secrets might perhaps be revealed and explained.
First – it was a factor in my parent's divorce – whose son am I? The man named on my birth certificate whose family name I carry, was my mother's husband, but he had his doubts about being my father, especially when blind drunk. My mother divorced him to protect us from him, and the courts agreed, denying him any access or even communication with either myself or my brother. When my brother reached twenty-one and I thirteen, he stopped paying maintenance. He was prepared to provide support for what he believed to be his child, my brother, until they reached adulthood, but not for the cuckoo.
One May, nine months before my birth, my mother was called away from our family home in Herefordshire, to the island of Jersey to look after her mother, who was recovering from a stroke. She remained on the island for the next three months. There she met and became close friends with a Scotsman, who became my god-father. Hence my nominal father's deep suspicion. How could I be his if I was born in February?
So, am I part Scottish with cousins, distant or otherwise, to be found in and around Aberdeen where my god-father and his ancestors came from, or anywhere else in Scotland for that matter?
The answer was unambiguous. Not a trace of Scottish ancestry, but a pool of paternal third and fourth cousins in the North West England where my nominal father's family came from. And more, confirmation of his family story that his grandmother was German. I have almost exactly 1/8 broadly Franco-German genes inherited from just one individual, according to the results. There is a pool of 3rd and 4th cousins in North West Germany, which does point strongly to the truth of the oral history that my father's grandmother came from Hamburg, although my cousins are mostly to be found in North Rhine-Westphalia. And it confirms absolutely that I am his son.
It turns out the cuckoo was not a cuckoo.
But there are also a few paternal Irish ancestors, not a hint of which was in the family oral history. Are they related via my paternal grandmother, of whom I know very little beyond her being born about 1876 in Oxfordshire? There are, according to the results, paternal 3rd and 4th Irish cousins with whom I share either a common great-great-grandparent, or a great-great-great-grandparent. (Grandparent x3 or x4)
Now comes the most curious family legend. It is on my mother's side. We are supposed – it was said darkly and secretly and as an explanation for the diminutive appearance of my mother and so many of her mother's relatives – that we are part Japanese.
This made little historical sense. My grandmother was born in 1880, and Japan was a closed country until 1854. Hardly time for the genes to travel from the islands of the Far East in time to make my great-grandmother part Japanese, especially given that she was an itinerant fieldworker, who gave birth to my grandmother in a workhouse in the Severn Valley in Worcestershire in the English West Midlands. Family appearance apart, it seemed impossible.
Sometimes we should trust oral traditions. The genetic test results show there are distant Japanese cousins! What's more, there are also almost twice as many Filipino cousins. The Filipinos were a complete surprise.
Most strangely of all, there is a clear genetic marker for Arabian Peninsula heritage! Distant, but unmistakable.
What? How? Where on earth would Japanese, Filipino and Arab genes get mixed up? And how would they end up in my grandmother, my mother and me? What history is buried in this?
And then there is the other surprise. I have a lot – and I do mean a lot – of 3rd and 4th cousins on my mother's side in South West Ireland, in Munster, and especially around Cork. Not a hint of that in our family's oral history. How and when did that come about?
The clue to the Irish side lies in my maternal great-grandmother's occupation: field worker. The second clue lies in the degree of relationship. My Irish relatives share either a great-great-grandparent, or a great-great-great-grandparent (grandparent x3 or x4) with me. That puts the common ancestor as having lived in Ireland in the first half of the nineteen-century. About one-million Irish, especially peasants and farm works, fled the Great Famine between 1845-52, particularly from the South West where the famine was at its worst. The work they would have known, and found most easy to get in Britain, was field work: casual labour picking the crops. The same work as my great-grandmother.
The Severn Valley, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and up the Avon into Warwickshire, had masses of seasonal field work, as did the neighbouring Wye Valley in Herefordshire. Day work was to be had from the first of the asparagus in April until the last of the potatoes in October, and even a little cabbage, sprouts, leeks, cauliflower, parsnips and broccoli picking through the winter. This in addition to masses of employment fruit and hop picking to be had during the peak season in the summer and autumn. It was a tough and hard life, often sleeping in barns, or sheds, under hedges, or even in the fields, and being paid a pittance for the weight of crops picked. Winters often drove people into the workhouse.
The disparaging term used for such itinerant field workers was diddikai. Not proper gypsies, but living like them. It was a term used of my grandmother's family, usually with the addition of the word "dirty". Being a 'dirty-did' was a school yard insult when I was young, used for the most despised children among us. "They are no more than a bunch of dirty-dids" was an insult thrown at families who lived on the margins of society: untrustworthy, skiving, thieving, drunken, brawling and disreputable. A heritage to be lived down.
But how did a woman, my great-grandmother, whose life was doing such work have Japanese, Filipino and Arab genes?
There is one place in the world where such mixing of genes is not that uncommon: Manila in the Philippines. It is estimated that around 2% of Filipinos have Arabian genes as a result of the 2,000 year old seaborne trade between Arabia and the islands. The Arab dhow was a great trading ship and linked together Arabia, especially Oman, with India, South East Asia, and the islands of the East Indies.
Anyway, Sinbad, let's call him, appears to have left his genetic footprint in Manila sometime in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, to give the degree of genetic presence he has in my genes.That would explain the blend of Arab and Filipino, but what of the Japanese? Now that is a real problem.
During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the Chinese were not allowed to trade directly with Japan. That could only be done through Manila. As a result, Chinese and Japanese trading communities grew up there. However, in 1639 Japan became a closed country, and the Japanese community in Manila began to shrink as a result. There was only one way any connection with Japan could be maintained. It was via the Dutch East India Company, who were given the right to have a trading post in Nagasaki harbour. That was for the next two hundred years Japan's only connection with the outside world.
The Dutch were not allowed into Japan, but had to stay in their trading colony on a small artificial island in the harbour. Japanese were allowed to visit for trade, and the local governors made sure that Japanese women were made available for the 'comfort' of the Dutchmen. Some of the women married Dutchmen. As a result they and their children were not allowed off the island. Their only option was to leave with their husbands when his time as a trader ended, making their way to Manila, often via Macau, a Portuguese trading city on the mouth of the Pearl River in China, where a small community of Japanese exiles grew up. The Dutch dominated much of the East Indies trade after 1647 when they won the right to trade directly with Spanish colonies, making direct trade between Nagasaki and Manila possible.
A very few Japanese took passage on Dutch East India Company ships from Nagasaki, knowing it would be extremely unlikely that they would be allowed to re-enter Japan if they returned. There were three types of people who took those risks. The very adventurous, those fleeing Japan, and Japanese hidden or secret Christians. The latter maintained a tenuous and very secret connection with the Catholic Church and community in Manila. Christianity in Japan was banned in 1614 and all known Christians had been exiled or executed by 1650. Thereafter Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”) survived very secretly, some even travelling to Manila to train in Catholic seminaries, risking certain death if they returned and were discovered.
My genetic results suggest that someone Japanese left Japan for Manila sometime in the eighteenth century. Were they the wife of a Dutch trader? Someone looking for adventure? Someone fleeing? Or a Hidden Christian? We shall never know. It is very likely they became part of the Japanese community in Manila. They, or their close descendent, must have had a child with a Filipino-Arab.
Alternatively my ancestor may have come from the residual (pre-1639), and mostly Christian, Japanese community in Manila. However, the presence of distant relatives whose grandparents x3 or x4 were born in Japan suggests a post 1639 and not a pre-1639 Japanese origin of the genes.
That's got the mix of Japanese, Filipino and Arab prepared in Manila. But how did it get from there into Britain? And then on to mix with my great-grandmother's family?
The Philippines were held by Spain, who governed the country from Mexico City. Their trade routes from Manila led eastwards across the Pacific to Mexico, and then onwards across the Atlantic to Spain. The Spanish did not allow their colonies to trade directly with the British. The Dutch, who could trade with the Spanish colonies, controlled the trade westwards through Malacca or Batavia (Jakarta) and on via Cape Town at the tip of South Africa, however, their ships were not allowed to dock in Britain. The British Navigation Acts reserved trade from producer countries into British ports to the producers own or British ships, effectively shutting the Dutch out of their highly profitable trade as a middleman shipping exotic goods to Britain or its colonies from the both West and East Indies.
It looks very difficult for someone from Manila in the eighteenth century to have reached Britain. Spain or Portugal, yes. Holland, possibly, but Britain no. However, things were changing. A window of opportunity for such a journey was opening up.
In 1762 the British East India Company ceased control of Manila, and held it until 1764. Thereafter they carried on what became known as the "English Country Trade". The East India Company hired Indian ships to trade between India and Manila, thus getting around the Spanish ban on their colonies trading directly with the British.
Now we have a bridge. Did someone of Japanese-Filipino-Arabian decent work their passage from Manila to India, and then, being a seaman and "knowing the ropes" (quite literally in those days), was taken on as a seaman on an East-Indiaman? The Filipinos are famous as seafarers, and even today crew many of the world's super-tankers and giant cargo carriers. The Navigation Acts allowed up to 25% of the crew of British ships not to be British. Such employment would land our intrepid gene-carrier in England, but in London where the East India Company ships docked.
We now need to get them, or their descendants, to being field workers in Worcestershire. The degree of separation suggests there are at two or three generations between our supposed seaman and his descendants arriving in Worcestershire.
Looking at the genetic report, we must once more turn to Cork in Ireland. This may seem odd, as the British East India company was a London company with exclusive rights to trade east of Cape Town, South Africa, rights it protected zealously. It ships sailed from London, and returned there, once laden with the exotic goods gathered into its stores in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. So how come Cork? The answer lies in Britain's war time regulations intended to protect its shipping from the predation by privateers, pirates, and enemy fleets.
The Royal Navy operated a convoy system during the time of the American War of Independence (1775–83) and during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1794-1815). Homeward bound ships gathered at St Helena in the South Atlantic and were escorted to Cork, from where they continued their homeward journey in safer waters. Outward bound ships gathered at Cork, waiting until their numbers were large enough to form a convoy, and the required Royal Navy ships were ready to escort them. Being laid up in Cork harbour provided the ships with opportunity to be provisioned with supplies of fresh water, beers, salt meat and butter, a provisioning trade on which the city thrived.
It also provided opportunity for crews to enjoy some shore leave, which they did, particularly in an area strangely called the Holy Ground, considering its reputation for dispensing to sailors the entertainments they desired. Many a child resulted. Was this where our Arabian–Filipino–Japanese sailor left his genes? If so, it is easy to understand how such a child born in poverty would be swept by the Great Famine into England and into taking what work they could to survive. That work more often than not was as field hands picking the crops. It is thought that many Irish became travellers at this time, moving as work gangs from farm to farm. Exactly the life to which my grandmother was born.
How much reliability can be given to any of this? A little. 23andme claim that up to six generations of ancestors can be traced with a reasonable degree of reliability. After that it becomes increasingly less so. However, I think Sinbad's genetic footprint, of which they are pretty sure because of its identifiability as trace ancestry, is key, and points to Manila.
So my genetics seem to have the imprint of the Arabian sea-trade, the Dutch East India Company monopoly of trade with Japan, the genetic melting pot of Manila, the seafaring traditions of the Filipinos, the "English Country Trade" between Manila and India, the ships of British East India Company, the convoy system between St Helena and Cork, and the Great Irish Famine.
There is one other imprint, and a very ancient one at that. My maternal haplotype carried by my mother's mitochondrial DNA: H1u. A variation that probably evolved in the Iberian peninsula in what are called Ice Age refuges, and then moved north filling the Atlantic seaboard lands as the ice retreated, being found among the first post Ice Age settlers in the Hibero-British Isles. My mother's lineage is extremely ancient in these islands and may indicate a south west Irish heritage, taking us back once more to Cork and Kerry.
This in addition to my having a German grandmother on my father's side who sought work in England as a governess. She accounts for about 12.5% of my genes, with the remaining 1% of broadly Franco-German genes coming from elsewhere; otherwise, I am, according to the report, horribly British and Irish, some 86.4%, squeezing the Japanese-Filipio-Arabian genes into what is left: just a trace level, but a trace with an interesting history.
