European, African, Asian -- 23andme 1.0

I first found myself doing genetic testing at 23 and me because they announced they had finally been able to map the human genome enough to definitively state whether your genes came from one of three places -- Africa, Asia or Europe.  Apparently these distinctions are fairly facile to make from a genetic perspective, although as I have learned, there are so many human groups with so much overlap that you begin to wonder why you should make any distinctions in the first place.

Because you can.... I guess.

Being of somewhat thrifty aspect (some would call it a Mormon thing), I didn't want to pay for genetic testing just to found the somewhat blase and fairly obvious fact that I was 100% European.

I was somewhat obsessively combing through Ancestry.com and pilfering the work of the more faithful, trying to find the origins of all my ancestors. Including the women!  The genetic contribution of women to the gene pool is 50%, my friends.  Even if the surname contribution is 0%,  due to forces I will have to rationalize elsewhere.

Anyway, during this usually boring, but sometimes enlightening exercise, I found the full names of my ancestors listed in a page of  Melungeon research.  I can't find it now, but I promise I will try again.  The page appeared to be research done by a member of the Bunch clan, who are apparently one of the certified core Melungeon clans.  I actually worked with a fellow who was of Mormon ancestry, and whose surname was Bunch.  So, the fact that I found some of my ancestors on this page was.... revelatory.

The names were --

 James Wilson

Birth 5 Feb, 1788 in Rutherford, North Carolina, United States
Death 1821 in Rutherford, Tennessee, United States

Ellender Eleanor Shelfer

Birth 1780 in Jones, North Carolina, United States
Death 1843 in Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois, United States


As it so happens, these folks are also in my husband's family tree, making us 7th to 8th cousins.

My research indicated that Wilson was from Ireland and Shelfer was Palatine, German.  Nothing to indicate they were tri-racial isolates -- Portuguese, African or Native American.

However, methinks, this could mean somewhere along the line I could have DNA-proveable ancestry that is African and/or Native American.  Thus began the genetic testing.