I recently had occasion to revisit my DNA results and update the information I included
in my book Mama Said: The Mostly True Story of the Begue Family of Louisiana and
Mississippi which was published in 2012.
My husband and I and my brother did our first tests through the National Geographic
Genographic Project which is no longer available. This was before the explosion of autosomal
DNA testing. There were two tests available, mtDNA for women and Y-DNA for men. Results
would give you insight into your distant ancestors not your recent family tree. As an
anthropology major I found this population genetics interesting.
mtDNA Results
The mtDNA test looks at just two small areas of the whole mitochondrial DNA called the
Hypervariable Region 1 and the Hypervariable Region 2. They are more likely to have changes
although the rate of change is very slow. They show our deep ancestry measured in tens of
thousands of years. HVR1 changes happen about every 20,180 years and HVR2 changes happen
about every 5,138 years. This is not too helpful in filling out a family tree, but interesting to
anthropologists who are studying human migration patterns. People who have the same changes
are descended from the same ancient female ancestor and are in the same haplogroup.
The HVR1 changes are the ones that Dr. Brian Sykes wrote about in his book The Seven
Daughters of Eve. He wrote about the seven most common haplogroups in Europe known at
that time. There are now ten mtDNA Haplogroups identified in Europe among 36 identified
throughout the world.
When I got my test results back I discovered that my haplogroup is HV*, which you
could say was the maternal ancestor of both haplogroups H and V, the two most common
haplogroups in Europe. If you follow out the last line on my mother's ancestor chart, the
maternal line, the earliest female ancestor identified is Mary Elizabeth Obermayer, born
about 1800 in Hanover, now part of Germany. Our mitochondrial DNA came from her. It
was passed down to Bernardina Harmeyer who passed it down to Anna Hattaway who passed
it down to Sarah Gonzales. Sarah Gonzales married John Louis Begue and all of her children
and all of her female-line grandchildren will be in mtDNA Haplogroup HV*.
Mitochondrial results are expressed in differences from CRS, the Cambridge Reseach
Sequence. CRS was the first sample tested at Cambridge University and all later tests are
described as to how they differ from this first DNA sequence to be analyzed. Our sequence
is identical to CRS in the HVR1 region and has only one difference at marker 263G in the
HVR2 region. Haplogroup HV* is a west Eurasian haplogroup found throughout the Near
East, including Anatolia, the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, and the republic of
Georgia. It predates the beginning of farming in Europe.
About 30,000 years ago, some members of HV* moved north across the Caucasus
Mountains, west across Anatolia and into Europe with the Cro-Magnon people. Their arrival
marked the appearance of the Aurignacian culture. This culture was distinguished by
significant innovations in methods of manufacturing tools.
Colder temperatures and a drier global climate about 20,000 years ago drove early
Europeans south to warmer climates of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the Balkans where
they waited out the 5,000 year long cold spell. Population sizes and genetic diversity were
drastically reduced. When the ice sheets began to retreat about 15,000 years ago, HV* split
into two main subgroups, H and V, and recolonized Europe. Today these three haplogroups
make up almost 75% of all European lineages.
Y-DNA Results
The Y-DNA test looks at changes or mutations made in copying DNA, called Single
Nucleotide Polymorphisms, SNPs. These changes happen about every 500 generations.
Y-DNA tests also look at sequences of genes along the DNA strand. They are called Short
Tandem Repeats or STRs. As DNA is copied, changes or mutations occur in these STRs .
These changes happen about every 200 years or about every six generations. This makes
them a little more useful in a genealogical time frame.
I asked my male Begue cousin to take the Genographic Project Y-DNA test. His
Y-DNA came from his father, Gonzales Begue, who got it from his father, John Louis Begue,
who got it from John Blaise Bégué who got it from Jean Baptiste Bégué. So it will tell us
about the paternal line, the top line on our ancestor chart. The results show that our Bégué
line is Haplogroup I1a.(That is Capitol Letter I not Roman Numeral I.) Members of this
haplogroup carry the following Y chromosome markers: M168>M89>M170>M253.
This Haplogroup is now known as I-M253.
When geneticists identify a marker, they try to figure out when it first occurred and
in what geographic region of the world. The first of our Bégué markers, M168, mutated
about 50,000 years ago in northeast Africa. The man who gave rise to this marker was one
of a group of people that migrated into the Middle East. His descendants became the only
lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African
man living today.
The next marker, M89, arose from a man in the M168 group about 45,000 years ago
and is found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This man traveled with a group that
followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond.
Some of his descendants remained in the Middle East and others continued, some east into
the Central Asian steppes and some north into Anatolia and the Balkans. This is where our
Bégué ancestors split from my father's Booksh ancestors and my husband's Zimmerman
ancestors. The Bégué ancestor with marker M89 went north to the Balkans and the
Zimmerman and Booksh ancestor with marker M9 went east into the Central Asian steppes.
Booksh is Haplogroup R1a (M17), which is most common in Eastern Europe and
Zimmerman is R1b (M343), the most common Haplogroup in Western Europe.
The third mutation at Marker M170 characterizes our haplogroup I. It emerged
about 20,000 years ago in southeastern Europe at the height of the Ice Age. These people
had migrated into the Balkans and eventually spread into central Europe. The ancestor who
gave rise to this marker, was probably born in one of the refuge areas that people occupied
during the last of the Ice Age.
Marker M253 emerged about 15,000 years ago as populations moved north from
the ice free regions. As the ice melted, the group carrying this marker migrated north
and began to repopulate northern parts of Europe including Scandinavia. They carried
with them this unique genetic marker that defines our Haplogroup as I-M253. Today
this marker is found in highest frequencies in Scandinavian populations in Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is found in low frequency in the rest of Europe.
Our original Bégué ancestor may have been a Visigoth who settled in southern
Gaul around AD418. The Visigoths established their own kingdom with its capital at
Toulouse, not far from where our Jean Baptiste Bégué was born. Or he may have been
a Viking raider along the Atlantic Coast of France. He may have been one of the
Norsemen who settled in the area of France that came to be called Normandy. He may
have been a Breton with Viking genes who settled in Brittany. However he got there,
eventually some of his descendants migrated into the Pyrénées Mountains of Southern
France. For more information on our Begue Y-DNA Haplogroup see the Wikipedia
entry for Haplogroup I-M253.
We eventually transferred our results to the Family Tree DNA website and did further
testing there. See http:www.familytreedna.com/ They do mtDNA, Y-DNA
and autosomal testing.
