Uncle Minnie

My maternal grandmother passed away last year. She was 101. She didn't tell me many stories when I was growing up, in contrast to my paternal grandmother, but she did tell me a few here and there when I was an adult and would visit my hometown every few years. When I was researching my family tree, I interviewed her for information, and at one point in that conversation, she told me about her "Uncle Minnie."

Minnie Howard was the daughter of the sister of my great great grandmother. It was her mother who was my aunt - my great great aunt and, therefore, Uncle Minnie was, in fact, my first cousin thrice removed.  

Uncle Minnie was born in 1896. She lived all of her life in Alabama. And, according to my grandmother, Uncle Minnie was called "Uncle" because she wore men's clothes and dated a woman.

According to the 1930 United States Federal Census, Uncle Minnie was living with her mother in Perry County, Alabama, in a home they owned. She was 34 years old, though the Census form lists her birth year incorrectly. She's listed as the head of the household, as single, and as working as a farmer. The census says she didn't attend school but that she could read and write. At the top of the census form, for everyone listed on that particular form, it says that the "township or other division of county" for where she lived is Scott or Scotts Beat, District 4 in Perry County. There is no Scotts or Scotts Beat listed on any modern maps of Alabama, but after a lot of searching, I found some obituary online for someone I don't know that says "Scott's Beat" is "about eight miles west of Marion."

I never asked more questions about her when my grandmother said why she was called "Uncle Minnie" because I was so shocked that my grandmother was talking about such a thing - my brain completely froze. My grandmother was deeply religious - she was a Baptist and her husband, my grandfather, was a Methodist and after more than 75 years of marriage, on his deathbed, she STILL tried to get him dunked! But there she was, telling me matter-of-factly that my first cousin thrice removed dressed as a man and dated a woman - no judgment, no condemnation. She could have been telling me her hair was blond and had a mule named Daisy.

I like to imagine Uncle Minnie at 30 or so, in a formal men's suit, hair slicked back, looking like Marlene Dietrich. Maybe she's wearing a beret. Elegant. Mysterious. But the reality is that, as a farmer in very rural Alabama, she was probably in denim overalls and boots most of the time, not at all elegant, maybe even being perceived as a man by people who saw her and didn't know her. Further contributing to the denim overalls and boots theory is that she died February 14, 1971, gored to death by a cow that she was trying to separate from a calf. The article says she was "one of the largest cotton and cattle farmers in this part of the state, operating a farm of almost a thousand acres, partly in Hale County and the remainder in Perry." 

Uncle Minnie died at 65. She's buried at Mount Hermon United Methodist Church Cemetery in Mount Hermon, Hale County, Alabama.

With no legal spouse and no children, I'm afraid she's going to be lost to history - as most of us are. But I don't want her to be. Even if she didn't look like Marlene Dietrich.

Studying Ancestors: getting beyond birth dates and grave sites

In September 1908, at 30 years old, in rural Kentucky, my great-grandmother had her first child, a son, Walter. He was born on the 8th and died on the 12th. I don't know why he died.

In early August 1909, my great-grandmother had her second child, also a son. She named him Otto, after a friend of the family. A year later, in late October, she strapped little Otto to her back so she could work in the fields. And sometime later, she took little Otto off her back, and he was dead.

I don't know if she and my great-grandfather were still sharecroppers then when Otto died or if by then they had their own farm, but I know that she had to work, just as millions of women before her and after her have had to work. She had no choice but to strap that baby to her back and go into the fields. The horror of that moment is not something I think I could have survived. She did survive it. She had nine more children, eight of whom survived infancy, including my paternal grandmother. She had her last child at 44.

I knew my great-grandmother - I was 10 when she died. To me, she was a quiet, sober woman who I never saw smile or laugh. I'm not sure she ever said a word to me. I admit to being afraid of her, sitting in silence, speaking only to fuss at my beloved great-grandfather who was constantly joking and making fun for his great-grandchildren. She was very frail by the time I knew her, and my grandmother, her daughter, directed me to brush her hair once. I stood behind her wheelchair, brushing that long, long gray hair, terrified I'd hurt her. It was only after she was gone that I learned of the story of Otto and the other two children - Walter and Edgar - that died so young. Her father died when she was just 6 years old, and as I understand it, she had to leave home quite young to work for some other family. She then moved to Henderson, Kentucky, more than 60 miles away, to work for another family. She married so late in life - what hardships did she experience before then, being a single woman in her teens and 20s working as a servant? She lost three babies, she had to feed her family when the Depression hit, and she struggled with a paralysis that left her wheelchair-bound for more than half her life - she lived to 98. No wonder she never smiled.

I don't fantasize about the past in the USA, or anywhere else, as some kind of idyllic, magical time. I think about all the children that died like my infant great Uncle. Or from filthy water. Or from malnutrition. I think about girls and women who never even had time to dream because they were too busy trying to survive. Poverty isn't some simpler lifestyle where life was easier: poverty is death in infancy, death in childbirth, death in the fields, death in a mine. It's lack of choices, lack of even time for imagining anything better. As I drove through rural Afghanistan in 2007, where people worked in fields and with animals under a very, very hot sun, a fellow aid worker remarked how beautiful the lifestyle was, how it was a shame to bring them aid and development if it meant they would have to give up their beautiful, simple life. I almost threw him out of the SUV.

I think about my great-grandparents and the various women I've tried to help as a humanitarian worker at least once a day, usually when I'm running the kitchen faucet to cook, or when I'm camping and I'm walking with a container to a communal faucet or pump. I make no apologies for wanting every person in the world to have that access, and nor any apologies for not mourning the "simple" life we'll lose if that happens. Good riddance.

Rethinking "indigenous" & DNA results

When Ancestry.com said that most of my DNA was a match with the people of Scotland and Ireland, I was thrilled! These are countries I love very much. I love their folk music in particular - yes, even bagpipes. I've spent a few weeks in each place and, in particular, I have loved visiting the megalithic cairns and stone circles of the regions. I don't think these neolithic stone structures are magical, but I do think they are amazing: ancient people trying to figure out the timing of the seasons, trying to predict the weather and, perhaps, harness the power of nature and the stars. I thought, wow, the next time I see those stone circles in Kilmartin, I'm going to relish that my ancestors were involved in building them!

Welp, not so fast. Not only because DNA tests are wildly misinterpreted and inaccurate with regards to what we think they are telling us (more on that later), but also because the people I'm descended from did not build those cairns and stone circles.

It was brown-eyed, brown-haired people with faces that are similar to those in Italy or Tunisia or the Middle East that built the stone monuments you see in Irish tourism ads. The genetic profile of these early Irish settlers indisputably originates in the Middle East. Their closest modern relatives — genetically — are the inhabitants of the Italian island of Sardinia. Nearly all of their tools and implements were made from natural products like stone and wood. They were farmers and they were lactose intolerant - they could not drink milk into adulthood without a lot of indigestive discomfort.

However, their DNA is almost entirely absent from the population of modern Ireland and Scotland - this absence indicates that at some point, these people, these stone circle builders, lost out to a new and very different population. In fact, they disappeared from most of Europe, except for Sardinia. For some reason, the descendants of those early Neolithic farmers were left undisturbed on Sardinia.

The DNA of the people that replaced these stone circle builders, the DNA held by the people we call Irish and Scottish today, appears to have originated in the steppes of what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. These newcomers had lactase persistence - they could drink milk into adulthood (as can I - looooove milk).

The genetic record indicates that the local population of stone circle builders was killed rather than that they integrated with the invaders - that may have been a result of war or a result of diseases brought by the newcomers for which the locals had no natural immunity. We may never know.

Here is the article from PRI that explains more. And here is a BBC article that explains it as well.

I still love those cairns and stone circles of Scotland, Ireland, Northern France and parts of England. I wanted so much to be descended from the creators of those. But I'm not - and neither are most of the people of Scotland and Ireland now.

And that brings me to another point: DNA tests. They are a lot of fun, they are based on science, but they are also subject to human interpretation, and I've been just as guilty of misinterpreting what they say as anyone. DNA tests do NOT tell you where your DNA comes from in the past - the tests tell you where on Earth your DNA is from TODAY.

My DNA results say my closest DNA matches are to the people of Ireland and Scotland NOW - not the people of Neolithic times that built those stone circles.

DNA testing companies chose a small number of people in a region to identify as their baseline genetic markers. That means that if there’s only a small number of, say, Central-Eastern African DNA samples that your DNA has been matched against, it’s less likely you’ll get a strong Central-Eastern African match, even if, in fact, you have ancestors from that region. That means that, in fact, you could be American Indian even if your DNA results don't say so.

And with all that said... I wonder... What is heritage? What is my heritage? What isn't my heritage? Is it only through being a direct descendant of a culture that I get to call that culture "mine", or does that kind of ownership or affiliation come from being brought up in that culture?

I don't know.

Other blogs on heritage, culture and who we think we are:

Ethnic, cultural, gender identity - good luck with your definitions

What does it mean to be "white" in the USA?

What is Southern heritage? What is worth celebrating?