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Date Posted: 11:07:57 08/28/12 Tue
Author: george tilmon (blackfoot cherokee and maya)
Author Host/IP: st-66-99-0-49.chipublib.org / 66.99.0.49
Subject: Re: Testing for Indian DNA
In reply to: Eddie Davis 's message, "Testing for Indian DNA" on 09:18:00 09/08/01 Sat

>Hi Everyone,
>
>This is a long message, but it explains why we ran a
>DNA test to determine Indian descent.
>
>I'm the group administrator of Vaughan Pioneers, a
>group of over 80 descendants of William and Fereby
>(Benton) Vaughan. Our ancestor, Fereby, was said to
>have been Cherokee and the story has been passed down
>for over 100 years. It is in published books and we
>even have a mound of papers from where her descendants
>(mostly grand and great grandchildren) tried
>unsucessfully to gain membership in the Cherokee
>Nation in Oklahmoma in the 1890s.
>
>The story of Fereby is that she was of some degree of
>Cherokee blood and lived in the Cherokee lands in what
>is now Eastern Tennessee or Western North Carolina.
>She was born around 1750. William Vaughan, the story
>continues, was a trader among the Cherokee and they
>married. They lived in VA, TN and then came and
>settled in Northwest Arkansas before the Old Settlers
>group was moved to Oklahmona. They lived for a time
>across from a Cherokee village, but soldiers made them
>move as it was considered Cherokee land where they
>were living. So they moved further north in Arkansas
>and there they and their family stayed. Fereby died
>in Madison County, AR in May of 1850.
>
>In the 1880s and 1890s, her descendants made a massive
>and very determined effort to gain membership in the
>Cherokee nation. My great x 3 grandfather, Ben
>Vaughan, was Fereby's grandson and he lived with his
>grandparents for a while. Ben served as Sheriff of
>Madison County and various other political offices for
>many years and was well respected and loved. He made
>a sworn affidavit that his grandmother was known to be
>"Cherokee by blood" and in his affidavit mentioned
>Looney Tah-lon-teeski who visited his grandmother and
>claimed to be her cousin. Other family stories
>mentioned that Fereby was a cousin to Chief Doublehead
>and somehow related to a Blackfox. Some said she
>descended from Cherokee Chief Moytoy. All the
>Cherokee applications to the Cherokee commission in
>the 1890s (and there were a lot from the Vaughans)
>stated that Fereby was a granddaughter of Chief John
>Looney, who was (they said) 3/4ths Cherokee.
>The Vaughans even got some members of the Cherokee
>government to make affidavits for their cause. One of
>the Rattlinggourd family swore that he knew that
>Fereby was Cherokee.
>
>However, all this effort didn't work, as Fereby, being
>born in about 1750 and living as a white her whole
>adult life, was either too old to appear on any rolls,
>or was married to a white man and living as a white
>woman. So the claims were rejected.
>
>Fast forward nearly 90 years and some of her
>descendants have began looking into ways of trying to
>prove her Cherokee ancestry. First we looked into
>John Looney. John Looney, the 3/4th Cherokee was born
>in 1776, and so obviously couldn't have been Fereby's
>grandfather, or even father. We feel that her
>Grandfather was a John Looney, and we even learned her
>mother was also named Fereby, but this John Looney was
>not the 3/4ths Cherokee Chief. I think they grabbed
>on to the Chief, either mistakingly thinking he was
>the same as their ancestor, or else using the man with
>the same name as they knew he would appear on the
>Cherokee Rolls that they needed to have an ancestor
>appear on in order to become members of the Cherokee
>Nation.
>
>We've been frustrated in our attempt to find evidence
>other then "Family Stories" of Fereby's Cherokee
>ancestry. So in early Summer of 2001, I stumbled
>across testing for MtDNA. Fereby was said to have
>gotten her Cherokee ancestry through her mother
>(Fereby Looney) and so her MtDNA, which is passed down
>intact from mothers, would show American Indian MtDNA
>if she was indeed of Indian ancestry on her mother's
>side. We knew that MtDNA testing only shows one
>branch of a very large tree, and if it is not a direct
>female line, then the branch is broken. Still, it was
>worth the test.
>
>We had a member of our Vaughan Pioneers group who was
>a direct female descendant of Fereby and she aggreed
>to take the test. About 25-30 members of the group
>each chipped in $10-$20 each to pay for the test and
>we used the facility mentioned in Absentee Cherokee's
>webpage to run the test. We waited anxiouly, all
>summer (it seemed) until in late July, the test
>results came back in. Indian MtDNA is made up of a
>certain group of mutations (harmless) that all
>fullblood Indians share. Types A,B,C,D, and X are the
>Indian types, called Haplotypes. They don't show
>tribal descent, only Indian descent, and all Indian
>tribes have an intermixing of the 5 Indian Haplotypes.
>
>Anyway, when Fereby's great x 5 granddaghter, who
>shared her MtDNA test came back, we were saddened to
>learn that Fereby's MtDNA was type H, and was, in fact
>the most common type of MtDNA in Europe. Her MtDNA
>perfectly matched a subgroup of type H called the
>Cambridge Reference String. This test shows that
>Fereby was not 100% Indian and that on her mother's
>side, there was a white ancestor. We all were
>devistated, but we are slowly getting over it and we
>know that it doesn't mean that she wasn't part
>Cherokee, only that there was some mixture. My guess
>is that Fereby was not more then 1/4th Cherokee.
>
>Anyway, I posted this to encourage any of you thinking
>of doing MtDNA testing. It is a great test, and
>Y-Chromosome DNA is also, though that is done on male
>descendants.
>
>By the way, I actually have another Absentee Cherokee,
>my great x 2 grandmother was Mary Francis Henderson,
>who was 1/4th Cherokee and it is said that her mother
>(name unknown) was on the Trail of Tears. They lived
>in SW Missouri in Barry County and Mary Francis was
>born in 1843. She married a great grandson of Fereby,
>by the way.
>
>Eddie Davis
>ecdavis@atlascomm.net

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Replies:

  • Re: Testing for Indian DNA -- Dana Clark-Graham, 09:32:54 11/20/15 Fri
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