Joseph Smith Locket

 So an update to this blog would be remiss without mentioning the new picture found with provenance suggesting it is the real deal. It came from a family member. 

It does take a little shine off the history we were provided as children. The paintings of the new great one true prophet are much more ephemeral than just a photo of a dude.

Source https://religionnews.com/2022/07/21/mormon-founder-joseph-smiths-photo-discovered-by-descendant-after-nearly-180-years/

Mitt Romney: King of the Gypsies

 So I found a blog once with the above title: Mitt Romney….King of the Gypsies?

It’s basic premise was that Mitt could be descended from “gypsies” based on his slightly darker complexion, the area of England he came from and the fact that his last name is “Romney” which sounds like Romani”.

It’s as off the cuff as this blog is… in other words, short on proof.  I’m looking for it and it’s buried in the googler somewhere.

In the meantime, I found this more studious and detailed article from the BBC, which probably has all kinds of implications and insinuations that only a true Brit would notice.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18422949

(I have to remind myself I am basically a CEU with a twist.)

If I ever dig up that funny blog, I will share. 

PS

Here’s a quote from the BBC article which is likely relevant to my own British ancestors and their reason for hopping on the boat.

Preston at the time was a desperately poor and dirty place, dominated by the cotton mills. 

"There were cholera epidemics. There was a lot of very bad housing - classic images of open sewers and pits running through the streets, so it was a pretty nasty place," says historian Aidan Turner-Bishop.

"Think of it a bit like the favelas on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, or places like the suburbs of Nairobi today. It was a pretty hard, pretty rough life, and there was a lot of infant mortality."

2024 Hello

So this is going to be a quick entry.  I have a lot of catching up to do with the wild speculation of the past.  

Personal genetic testing has come a long way from when I first started this.  When I started this blog, so much was a revelation to me.  I was learning that it was possible to be more than just a traditional WASP Mormon.  And I fantasized or hoped to draw conclusions that would prove some fantastic conspiracy.  And the DNA testing emboldened me that I could be all the people— Jew, Native American, African, etc. 

well new research shows I am still more diverse genetically than my neighbors but don’t really qualify as a minority or whatever I was going for. 

Long story short- the reason for my Middle Eastern DNA is not directly to my True Blue Mormon pioneer, cousin-of-Joseph-Smith dad.  It’s from my mother. 

In short, the mostly German man who admitted in a court of law to being my great grandfather was not. It appears the true sperm donor was most likely a man straight from Argos, Greece by the last name of Pullos. 

More later….😂

American Mormon Pioneer Portraits--a few cherry picked examples

https://archive.org/stream/pioneersprominen00esshrich#page/n6/mode/1up

More Dodecad V3

Dodecad is like Gedmatch 1.0, but I like the idea that since it is the original, it goes more to the heart of my family's origins. 

So after all my tooling about, I am looking at it again. 

What interests me is the disparity in Eastern European for CEU versus British.  It appears to the about the same percentage as for Scottish. Meaning I think that the immigrants to the British Isles were sort of ushered to Scotland. Someone could correct me if I am wrong.  

Mormons supposedly have a high British component, but from the DNA they look a lot more like the Scots.  Also, I wonder if having some Scandinavian helps bump up those Eastern European scores.  

What percentage of Mo's were Viking?  A girl of Mormon heritage from Sweden claims to know she "is a Viking".  Which makes me wonder what makes Viking offspring fall for the tale of secret migrations  from Israel to the New World. 

Maybe it's boat love. 

Dodecad V3 Spreadsheet

Who are the Ulster Scots?

I know we have Ulster Scots heritage on my dad's side.  The Craighead name is prominent in his lineage.  There is a long line of Presbyterian reverends who helped settle the country. For one of them, there is an amusing story which I can't accurately attribute right now, but it's about one of these ministerial men not being paid by his congregation.  It appears his sermons were so unpopular that Cotton Mather had to strongly suggest (I forget how exactly -- I think jail was mentioned) that the parishioners pay him.  They weren't willing to do so voluntarily.

 I was talking about my dad regarding this, and he thought maybe this preacher was like the preacher in the movie Cold Comfort Farm, whose sermons are so bleak that they make everyone tremble with fear.

Anyhoo.....the point is, we know we have Ulster Scots heritage.  What heritage we didn't know we had was Abkhazian.  It shows up on my daughter's Eurogenes K13, and elsewhere as well I do believe. 

It's not much -- just 1.8% on the Mixed Mode Population, which could be naming a lot of other influences as well.  But I was just looking it up to try to explain it to my daughter.  That is when I found this interesting website that notices a similarity between Ulster symbolism and Abkhazian symbolism. 

Some great pictures here

More attempts by scientific community to speciate a "Mormon race"

So, I like Discover magazine.

I like science.  I'm not religious, although I grew up that way. 

But, I think it's interesting the subtle ways that some of them still fall prey to a kind of snarky racism, a la Social Darwinism or eugenics.  I may be overstating my case a little bit, but.....

I suppose if I'm honest, I just viscerally disliked being thrown into a category when I first took this genetic test.  (The whole "CEU" thing.)  I didn't choose to be born Mormon, even though Mormons think I did.  (A Pre-existence condition.... inside joke, possibly influenced by current news.)

I had to make peace with the idea that I was genetically part of a group.  I also liked the genetic test for the ability to deconstruct that identity into its component parts, to better understand myself and my environment.  And now that I've been made into an ethnicity (let's go all the way, and call it a race), I can be actively offended at racial slurs that stereotype me according to my presumed background and presumed beliefs. (tee hee)

And just now, as I am looking at Discover magazine, and I am a little appalled at the way they talk about Mormons.  Do a search term for "Mormon" on their website.  It appears that since Mormons are the least favorite group of mainstream Christians, they are ripe for a flogging from the snarky bloggers who verbally strut their stream of consciousness over yonder.

I'm just not sure how an article with a title like this, especially in a blog called "Gene Expression," would get past a thoughtful editor:  Is Mormonism relatively weird or absolutely weird???

Two years later, the author appears to have a change of heart, or more like he feels some social pressure to not be so, um, xenophobic -- Mormonism isn't that weird  he lets us know, as he has crowned himself Decider of the Weird.  Interesting, since my Super Scientific Face Peering Technology has alerted me to the fact that in the US, he is a genetic outlier.   (That's what the scientists call oddballs, and I've seen a few comments on 23andme boards where some of them are happy that they aren't THAT....)







Then we have this one -- What does a generic Mormon look like? The answer probably won't surprise you.

So, I am trying to figure out just why I am offended by this.  It's kind of funny.  I think we all do it. My husband and I claim to have Mo-Dar -- the analog to gaydar, where you just kind of know when a person is Mormon.  "It's just that special spirit."  

I think it goes back to being pigeonholed. 

 No one has mistaken me for a Mormon recently, so it isn't that.

 I think you have to be actively living the lifestyle to give off the aura.  It could be the "eternal smile" of special underwear peering through one's shirt that really lets people know.  The lowdown from the urban mythology in Discover appears to be that Mormons are more shiny or something because of their intense spirituality....

"Perceptions of health were also responsible for differences in perceived spirituality, explaining folk hypotheses that Mormons are distinct because they appear more spiritual than non-Mormons."

Yes, they misspelled "Background".  And what the !@#$ is an "ecologically important group distinction"?  By face peering (it's like Joseph Smith and his peepstones, yo), you are saving the environment...?  I guess the "ROFL" is a clue that this is done at least partly in jest.

For some reason, the face in H reminds me of the Nauvoo Temple sunstone.  It's probably the focus on the face....