They weren’t sure what percentage of Native Americans have undergone DNA testing. The second strand of my conversation with the genetic genealogists had to do with DNA sampling from Native American tribes. The article NATIVE AMERICAN DNA Is Just Not That Into You ( ) delves into this in far greater detail. Apparently, it doesn’t take very long for Native American DNA to wash out of DNA results when it comes to non Native Americans. Basically, whatever Native American ancestry I have was so far back in time that only a minuscule amount is present in my autosomal DNA results. The team explained a fairly complex theory about Native American DNA inheritance. Could this mean that maybe some of the family stories about Native Americans in the other branches of my family weren’t bedtime stories after all? Naturally, I wanted to know how this was possible. I have such a negligible amount of Native American results in my DNA, it’s pretty much non-existent. I had to phone up my genetic genealogists in the UK. Mike was right (not that I had any doubts, Mike!). Once I began reading, the pieces rapidly fell into place. One source was the Patawomeck Tides, a newsletter that tribe sends its members ( ). She’s my 12x great grandmother via Ka Oke “Jane” Powhatan, her daughter by her first husband, Kocoum. Turns out, it’s the one family line with a verified, bona fide, Native American Ancestor. To put this into perspective, my Sheffey line is the one family line I have that never, and I mean never, laid any claims to Native American ancestry. He then sent me some links to some essential reading just to seal the deal. My reply was classic, and worthy of Larry Wilmore: Whaaaaaat? Wait, what!?! Can you say that again, one more time?
The Mary Martin in my tree was the grand-daughter of Pocahontas. The Mary Martin who was the ancestor of Margaret Clark wasn’t a Quaker. And then proceeded to tell me that I had already found the right Mary Martin. I told him that I knew about the Mary who was part Native American…and that I knew nothing about my Mary, who would have been a Quaker. Naturally, I relayed my frustration about the difficulty I was having in researching Mary Martin. I phoned him in due course and he picked my brains about what I had uncovered at that point in my research. He said he had some family history information about my Fugates and Clarks – and would I like to chat on the phone about them? Like I ever need an invitation to talk about family history stuff. Two days after I made that decision, a DNA cousin, whom I will call Mike, reached out to me on. I became so frustrated that I made the decision to put Mary Martin on the back burner. But you’re not my ancestor! Please get out of my way!” At one point, I just looked at my laptop and said “Enough already. And began to get more than a little annoyed because this Mary that I kept coming across wasn’t the Mary I was seeking. Nor were there any indications that her father’s Martin family were Quakers. There were no references to this Anglo-Native American Mary being a Quaker. The problem was, I keep coming across a Mary Martin, born in Baltimore County, Maryland, who was always described as being ‘part-Indian’. Naturally, I was keen to connect Mary Martin to the other known Martin branches in my family tree. They also spread out throughout Virginia. While they were largely based in Chester and Delaware Counties in Pennsylvania, there were members of this Quaker family who migrated to Baltimore County, Maryland. I have a sizeable group of Quaker Martins in my family tree. Mary Martin is part of Margaret’s enormous white Fugate-Clark family.Īs soon as I saw the surname Martin, I was all excited. I discovered a new Martin family line when I began triangulating my DNA results in order to identify the white father of my enslaved 2x great grandmother, Margaret Clark (please see the image above). Yet another lady in my tree has revealed something remarkable. I never get tired of saying that it’s been the women in my family tree who have revealed my most profound and memorable genealogy surprises.
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