The Wendel Family Tree is in The Bible

I couldn’t help him.

Not with all my family tree charts, genealogy how-to books, and CDs of the Social Security Death Index. Oh, I had ideas, and methods, but none of that helped. My ancestors were traced back 200 years, and I couldn’t get his to the first generation. His mother.

My first husband started searching for his birth mother when he was a teenager. Together, we searched on and off thru the 18 years of our marriage, in between the babies, jobs, and houses.

These are the facts we had after decades of research:

His birth name, birthdate of 1962, birthplace of Manhattan, all confirmed.

A letter with “non-identifying information” from the adoption agency: she was a tall brown-eyed brunette Protestant, he a tall blue-eyed blonde Catholic.

We knew people who had found their birth mothers, who had found “non-identifying information” to be complete fabrication, lies made up by the agency to entice adoptive parents to choose certain children. So we didn’t know how much, or which parts, of the letter to believe, but it was all we had.

This was all my husband knew when he died.

When our oldest son turned 18, DNA testing had just come out, so I had him tested. I thought there might be some legal question about testing minors. The only test available at the time was Y-DNA, which follows the Y (male) chromosome, so that’s what we did.

It would be Birth Father we would find.

The DNA Results

It was spring break when the results came back. Spring break, when the sun first rises early enough to meet me in bed. I had two halcyon days to myself because each kid was off visiting. Two full days with no job, no meals, no bedtime, nothing to do but soak up DNA results of an ancestor I started searching for 25 years before.

Spring, new beginnings. I stared out the window at green until the new growth told my brain it was time to grow something new. I clicked on the email link.

Right away I saw “Your Ancestors Invented Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent,” background on the first civilization in Mesopotamia 40,000 years ago. I thought that was just general info.

Next I saw my son’s name on top. The paragraph said my son has J1 haplotype, which is mostly found today in people living in Syria, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and among Bedouins. It must be a mistake, I thought. We had imagined Birth Father to be Scandinavian.

not my husband, I thought it would take me more than a week to figure out how to photoshop that, stock photo, from https://www.pexels.com/search/bedouin/

Enter brain: an image of my husband in a Bedouin headdress riding across the desert on a camel. I knew it was absolutely correct. My black-haired olive-skinned husband had a father who was no more blonde and blue-eyed than Barack Obama’s father.

That was the first day. I spent the rest of it wandering in and out of the house in a daze, staring at the sun until the tears spilled, smelling cut grass until my thoughts began to click, letting the sun’s warmth ease my muscles until they absorbed the truth.

That result threw away everything we thought we knew. Was the whole adoption story a lie?

A Cousin in England

The next morning, everything changed again. I was surprised with a message from a man in England. He and my son had the same patrilineal ancestor, 4 or 5 generations back. He was a kohanim Jew, and his family had escaped persecution in Poland for safety in England. He had a fascinating story. His great-grandparents realized the danger of living in Poland, so they applied for emigration for their family. Their visas were granted, but at the last minute, their oldest child, a teenager, was denied permission. So they left their son, this Englishman’s grandfather, with his aunt and uncle, while the rest of the family went. Sometime in the next year, their village was attacked, and the teenage son ran and hid in the forest. Finally his visa was approved and he emigrated too.

Our common ancestor would have lived in Poland around 1850. We exchanged pictures, and although the Englishman didn’t look like my husband, the grandfather who hid in the forest matched him exactly. It took my breath away.

not the real grandfather, but a stock photo from https://www.migrationmuseum.org/jewish-migration-to-manchester-in-the-late-1800s-bbc-bitesize/

A Jewish birth father in Manhattan in 1962 sounded a lot more plausible than a Jordanian or an Iraqi. Once I thought about it, more likely, statistically speaking, than a Scandinavian. I hired a genealogist in Poland.

“What is a kohanim Jew?” I asked my son’s 4th cousin in England, “and how do you know you are one?”

My children are descended from Moses's brother Aaron on their paternal line. Yes, that Moses.

photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron

Haplogroups

The kids have all tested now, and the DNA shows they have Cohen Modal Haplotype. I have yet to find a definition of haplogroup/type that I understand, so I can only explain that we all belong to a haplogroup from our mother and a different one from our father. Our maternal haplogroup is passed down from our mother’s mother’s mother etc., while our paternal haplogroup comes from our father’s father’s father’s father, as far back as humanity goes.

Haplogroups mutate over generations. Imagine your mother’s grandmother on her mother’s side. My maternal haplogroup is H1C. My children, my mother, my mother’s sister, her children, her daughter’s child, all have H1C haplogroup. Our ancestor H spread her daughters throughout Europe in a warm period before the last Ice Age. When the Ice Age started up again, daughters named H1 traveled south ahead of the glaciers, and ended up in Spain. When the earth warmed again, only their granddaughters named H1C migrated north again thru Europe. Since the furthest maternal great-grandmother I know, Hannah Helm, was born in Helmsley, England in 1725, this fits.

Now imagine your paternal line, your father’s father’s father. It is probably the same line as where your surname comes from, which makes it easier to imagine. Does that man come from the same place as your mother’s mother’s mom? Since we live in a nation of immigrants, not likely.

Kohanim

The DNA write-up said that people of J1 haplotype were also kohanim Jews (this data is constantly being refined). It said that Jews originate in Judea/Israel, from where they were expelled in the first century AD. Ashkenazi Jews migrated all over Europe, but continued to intermarry. Their genes remained almost completely separate from the natives of the countries they lived in.

I had never heard of kohanim, so I looked it up, and confirmed it with one of my husband’s best friends who is Jewish. Kohanim, the plural of kohan/cohen, are like holy royalty, he said. The 12 tribes of Israel, which correspond with Abraham’s 12 sons, each have a certain occupation. The descendants of Levi, Levites, are priests. Specifically, kohanim are all descended from Moses’s brother Aaron, who was a Levite. Kohen descent is passed from father to son. They have a special hand sign blessing, spreading the hands like a W, which Leonard Nimoy used as Spock in Star Trek.

photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohen

Our Englishman cousin knows that he is a kohen because his paternal grandfather has the blessing on his tombstone. He has the J1 haplotype, as he and my son share a paternal ancestor. Are they both descended from the Aaron in the Bible?

This part gives me chills every time I tell it.

To keep kohanim safe from disease, they are not allowed to do things like enter a graveyard or sit shiva. To keep their bloodline pure, they are not allowed to marry widows or divorcees. When DNA testing came out, they tested men who said they were kohanim living all over the world, the US, Israel, Europe, South America.

Over 90% of them are descended from one man. That man lived 3000 years ago.

Aaron.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J-M267

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_H_(mtDNA)

https://www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog/mtdna-haplogroup-h

The DNA test my son took in 2009, and the results report, is no longer available.