Tea at Trianon: DNA of Enslaved Iron Workers illuminates African American History

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 20, 2023

DNA of Enslaved Iron Workers illuminates African American History

From Reuters:

Not far from Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, lies the remnants of an iron forge called Catoctin Furnace founded in the late 18th century, an important site for understanding the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in early U.S. history. The site now also is providing unique insight into African American history thanks to research involving DNA obtained from the remains of 27 individuals buried in a cemetery for enslaved people at Catoctin Furnace. The study reveals the ancestry of some of the enslaved people who toiled there in the decades after the nation's founding and identified thousands of living relatives, many still in Maryland. The cemetery was used from 1774-1850. The remains, held at the Smithsonian Institution since being excavated in the 1970s due to highway construction, were of 16 males and 11 females, ranging from infants to adults over age 60. They were found to have descended from just a few African populations, in particular West Africa's Wolof and Mandinka peoples and Central Africa's Kongo people, and have strong genetic connections to present-day populations in Senegal, Gambia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Read more.)

From Nature:

Starting in the 1770s, hundreds of enslaved and free African Americans lived and worked at an industrial iron forge in Maryland. Dozens died at the Catoctin Furnace, their remains and lives largely forgotten until 1979, when part of the site was excavated to make way for a highway.
Now, in a landmark study, researchers have analysed DNA from more than two dozen people who were buried at the Catoctin Furnace and used that information to identify tens of thousands of living descendants whose data were in a consumer genetics database.
The study¹, published on 3 August in Science, could open the floodgates to linking the genomes of historical people to their present-day descendants — some direct, but most very distant. This approach could be especially resonant for African Americans and members of other populations around the world who trace some of their ancestry to enslaved people, say researchers.
“Each time we are able to find an enslaved ancestor, we are defeating the purpose of slavery. The purpose of slavery was to rob us of that information,” says Henry Louis Gates Jr, a scholar of African and African American studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was part of the effort. “This is a major development in the history of the use of genetics to trace ancestry.”
None of the Catoctin Furnace descendants identified in the study — customers of the personal genetics company 23andMe in South San Francisco, California, who had consented to the use of their data in research — have yet been informed of their connections. Providing this information raises important ethical questions, say scientists. (Read more.)