My Beautiful Genome

by Lone Frank

  To test this, Skorecki went to the geneticist Michael Hammer. At that time, in the 1990s, Hammer was working with Y chromosomes in a lab at the University of Arizona, and took up the task with the curiosity of a researcher. Hammer did a detailed study of the Y chromosomes in Skorecki and a bunch of other Kohanim, and in 1997 published the results in Nature. The article became something of a sensation, for there was, in fact, a clear and close relationship, indicating a common descent in these men. Hammer found a characteristic pattern of markers on the Y chromosome that recurred in no less than 98.5 per cent of the men studied, all of whom had the surname Cohen. The pattern was promptly dubbed the Cohen modal haplotype, or simply CMH.

  This was proof that the concept held water – you could use Y chromosomes to do genealogical analysis. But the leap from the academic arena to the free market did not come until 2000, when the US firm, FamilyTreeDNA, became the first to offer a commercial test of male descent. At around the same time, the British company, Oxford Ancestors, began touting a test of mitochondrial DNA. Soon, a veritable underbrush of genealogical concerns grew. By 2006, the turnover in businesses offering genealogical tests was sixty million dollars, and it is estimated that around a million people have already purchased a test, a number that is increasing by almost a hundred thousand individuals every year.

  Genealogy is dependent on being able to compare gene sequences and markers, and this can happen either directly, between selected individuals who want their kinship tested, or by comparing a person to various databases. And the more data that are included in the database, the greater the chance there is that new clients will find unknown relatives and reconstruct a broader family history.

  Amateur genealogists comprise an odd subculture, spending their holidays riffling through birth certificates and making rubbings of gravestones. Some might even call them fanatical. In the genetic age, there are hobbyists who take an obsession with their origins so far that they will dig into their own genome and that of others to map the past and to get an overview of the present. They learn to read DNA sequences the way the rest of us read the Sunday paper, and they are not shy about contacting complete strangers with the same last name and asking them for a bit of their DNA to check whether they are related.

  If these strangers are reluctant, these genealogists have been known to go to great lengths to gather evidence. There are accounts of people merrily stealing DNA left behind by potential relatives and having it tested without their consent. Like the nice, elderly lady from Florida, who happily admitted to the New York Times that she tracked down a man she suspected of being a descendant of her great-great-great-grandfather’s brother, in order to snatch a Styrofoam cup from which he had drunk coffee. Or the one who just as proudly bragged about how she pinched a hair – root and all – from a dead great-aunt who was on display at a funeral home.

  “I UNDERSTAND THEM very well,” says Bennett Greenspan, on the phone from Texas. The director of FamilyTreeDNA, the oldest and largest enterprise in the industry, admits that they do, from time to time, get illicit samples for analysis. With a nod and a wink, and for a little extra fee, they have extracted usable DNA from fingernail clippings, toothbrushes, and the backs of licked postage stamps.

  “Why do people do this sort of thing?” he says, puzzled, when I ask. “Well, it’s not hard to understand – they wonder where they come from and want certainty.”

  Greenspan knows, because he himself has roots in the amateur genealogical movement. In his sixties, with a bald pate and round glasses, he has managed to make his hobby into his livelihood. By 2009, the lab in Houston had conducted over half a million DNA tests, and the company’s database now contains sequences from 176,000 Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA from 106,000 individuals.

  “But we are always expanding the repertoire,” Greenspan hurries to point out.

  Thus, customers can submit orders to have their chromosomes tested far beyond the usual handful of markers. Among other things, FamilyTreeDNA has begun to sequence entire mitochondrial genomes, with all of their more than sixteen thousand bases, to go beyond the known mutations and, hopefully, discover some new ones. It is a way of getting closer to the present and capturing genetic events that might have happened a few generations ago in someone’s great-grandmother. Mutations that only relatively few people share and which, therefore, are very specific.

  “That’s when it really becomes genealogy!” Greenspan says. Then, he shares the genesis story of his nice little business. In 1999, he lost his job, and didn’t really know what he was going to do now he was unemployed. He had been dabbling for some time with a project to find related Greenspans, and map his family tree. His somewhat frustrated wife suggested that he do something serious about it and stay out of her kitchen. Bennett Greenspan took up the challenge but quickly ran into a brick wall. He found a man in Argentina who had the same last name as his cousin in the United States, but was unable to prove any kinship.

  “The paper trail dried up,” he recalls with a heavy sigh. New tools were needed and, because Greenspan had heard about Michael Hammer’s academic studies of Y chromosomes among the Kohanim, he knocked on Hammer’s door in Arizona. When he realized how efficient DNA was in tracing connections, it was clear that this was every genealogist’s wet dream.

  “Unfortunately, my own project is going rather poorly,” he says today. He has tested dozens of Greenspans from home and abroad but has not found any he is related to.

  “I’m like the shoemaker who has lots of holes in his own shoes.”

  “What about Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve?” I ask, and receive an audible sigh.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he says with a slight pain in his voice. “I’ve tried, really tried, to get him to provide some DNA for a test, but he just won’t do it. Maybe, that’s for the best – he’s a little too rightwing for my tastes.”

  He relates that, among those who look for genetic assistance from FamilyTreeDNA, Scots constitute by far the largest group.

  “They are obsessed with learning what clan they belong to – it’s very important to know whether you are a McDonnel or a McArthur or something else. Then come the Irish, the British, and the Ashkenazi Jews.”

  But, Greenspan assures me, he certainly gets inquiries from my fellow Scandinavians.

  “If I have to explain why genetic genealogy is so interesting, it is because it provides a very personal experience of history and our connection backwards. There are stories and oral traditions in all families. Here in the US, it might be something about a great-great-grandmother who might have been a full-blood Cherokee or a great-grandfather who was black and, in Europe, it might be something about Jewish ancestors. As families, we all have our own creation myths, and a genetic test can ultimately confirm or destroy these myths.”

  Greenspan chuckles amiably into the phone.

  “It’s quite amusing,” he says, “when I have to tell a man from Arizona who is Catholic and figures he is Spanish that he actually seems to come from Jewish ancestors.”

  The amusement is entirely on Greenspan’s side, because I have a hard time imagining that situation.

  “But it’s not at all improbable, if you think about world history. The Spanish Inquisition chased a lot of Sephardic Jews out of Spain and forced others to convert to Catholicism. Some of the latter ones later ended up leaving the country, and their current descendants in the US, of course, consider themselves to be Hispanic.”

  “But do the people themselves also think it’s funny to have their creation myths lying in ruins?”

  “Not always. Some say ‘well, that’s that, then’ and get on with their lives, while others take it very hard. Let me give you an example: A Jewish man who is deeply religious and believes he belongs among the Kohanim but finds out from us that he has the wrong haplotype. I’ve seen that sort of thing develop into a terrible identity crisis. There are also African Americans who get a shock when their Y chromosome tells them that they are S
cots, because of a single white forefather. Everybody knows, of course, that black Americans mixed with whites, but to see it so directly in your genome is sometimes disturbing. Some have such a hard time with the results that they demand another test, because they are convinced we have made a mistake.”

  “And …?”

  “We never have.”

  But, in some way or other, an otherwise impeccable test can be considered a mistake. In the end, it provides a completely warped picture of reality, because it tests one line in a long series. If we go ten generations back, we have 1024 forefathers and foremothers, each of whom has, potentially, contributed equally to our total genome. Our chromosomes are a shuffled deck, bearing small calling cards from all our ancestors. But from the whole bunch, only a single man has donated the Y chromosome to be tested, and only a single woman has passed on her mitochondria with their circular DNA. What you test for your ancestry is your mother’s mother’s mother or your father’s father’s father and so on, while everyone else is eradicated.

  “Yes,” observes Greenspan, slightly troubled. “It’s true that we come from many lines. I myself am a Newman or a Klein, if I focus on a different grandparent. People exaggerate the significance of one of the given surnames you come from, right? Of course, I am a mixture of many families, but my identity is certainly connected to the last name Greenspan.”

  Immediately, he is intrigued by my own surname.

  “You think of yourself as a ‘Frank,’ right? Your identity is in some way wrapped up in your last name?”

  When I think about it, it sort of is. My birth certificate reads Frank Pedersen, and Frank was originally just a middle name. But it was my mother’s maiden name and when she divorced my father, taking me and my little brother with her, Dad’s Pedersen was amputated without much ado. A pain-free little visit to the municipal courthouse. What did I think back then, at twelve years old? I can hardly remember. Not much more than that Pedersen was such a common name in Denmark, and wasn’t it more sophisticated to be called Frank? In time, it has become an identity, because it is the by-line of all my articles, and the author’s name on the cover of my books. I almost think of it as a graphic identity more than a familial one.

  “You say that you’re an ‘ordinary’ ethnic Dane, but don’t you want to investigate whether there might be any trace of an Ashkenazi Jewish background? Frank, after all, sounds very Jewish, and I can help you.”

  That’s very kind, I say.

  “We now have 165,000 men in our database from 180 countries, and we will be able to see whether you are just western European or whether there might be some Ashkenazi ancestry mixed in. But you’ll have to test your father.”

  I don’t tell him that’s impossible. Instead, I explain that my last name is my mother’s.

  “Aha. So, we have to get hold of a Y chromosome from your mother’s side. Does she have brothers?”

  My uncle is still alive, but I doubt it is possible to get him to provide a cheek swab.

  “I haven’t spoken to him in almost fifteen years,” I explain.

  “Oh, you can deal with that. Just go for it.”

  Greenspan, of course, is used to much pushier characters, but I promise to try.

  “Excellent. Just let me know.”

  I WONDER IF I have what it takes to be a tough-as-nails family researcher. Could I survive in that world? Could I bring myself to procure a bit of “abandoned” DNA from my uncle – from the edge of a glass, maybe, or a cigarette butt?

  As a first step, I pull myself together and call him. That is strange enough all by itself. After almost fifteen years – except for a two-minute phone conversation three years earlier – I don’t really know what to say. But then he picks up the phone, and it seems as if we had just spoken together the previous week.

  “Hello, little Lone!”

  As if I were still the schoolgirl who came with my parents to visit at Christmas and a couple of times every summer. But he keeps tabs on things. He was always the one who was interested in the family, and he apparently enjoys the assignment. Holding the phone, he gets the family album down from a shelf. It lists the maiden names and birthdates of grandmothers and great-grandmothers – things I never knew anything about. While my uncle reads them aloud and makes comments at his end, I start sketching out a crude family tree at mine.

  I know my parents’ data, but it surprises me that my grandmother on my mother’s side was born in 1912 in Birkerød on the island of Zealand. I had always thought we were pure mainland Jutlanders, but apparently not. I have a few pictures of her mother, my great-grandmother, and I can remember my mother talking about her as “little Granny Hansen.” She was a tiny woman, with round cheeks and hair parted immaculately down the middle. In old age, she lived with my grandparents, and within the family she was never called anything but her husband’s surname.

  “She was born in 1868 as Gjertrud Rosenlund,” I hear my uncle say. Rosenlund. A very beautiful name. Not hard and brash like Frank, which has something unhelpfully masculine about it. Rosenlund – which means rose garden – is much softer, and, while I let the name roll over my tongue a few times, I think about Bennett Greenspan. When it comes right down to it, I could just as easily consider myself a Rosenlund. I carry just as many genes from my long dead great-grandmother as I do from my great-grandfather Frank, from the same generation, who just happened to give me my last name.

  “But we don’t have that name from him,” I suddenly hear, though I don’t understand. My maternal grandfather was named Frank, so his father must also have been named Frank? Right?

  “No, his name was Sørensen. Hans Peter Sørensen, born in 1883 in Gjellerup.”

  The explanation comes from a law, passed after the World War II, which allowed people to take their mother’s maiden name. My maternal grandfather did, because he wanted to open a bakery in a small town that already had a baker called Sørensen. So, the name Frank came to me through my great-grandmother, Ane Johanne Frank, born in 1886 in Silkeborg. A tall, desiccated woman, who let me ransack her purse for big, copper two-cent pieces, when I visited her in the 1960s.

  “Interesting, huh?” my uncle says. So it is, but unfortunately it makes Bennett Greenspan’s offer to search for any Ashkenazi descent impossible. For the Y chromosome that I would otherwise try to persuade my uncle to donate comes from great-grandpa Sørensen and does not belong to the original Frank family.

  “You can also save yourself the trouble, because it’s not a Jewish name,” my uncle says. “If we go another generation back to Ane Johanne’s father, he came – or so it appears – to Denmark as a ‘potato German’.”

  For a moment or two, I can hear him leafing back and forth.

  “Here he is: Johannes Michael Frank, married to Ane Marie Sørensen, who was born in 1852 at Sunds.”

  Potato German? There’s not much glamor in that. I get the tale of a small group of German colonists who emigrated to Denmark around 1760, from the area around Pfalz and Hessen, to cultivate the heath of central Jutland. When the grain crop failed, they threw themselves into potatoes, introduced as a new and exciting crop to Denmark, and they became known as experts in cultivating the starchy, brown tubers. Thus, my roots were solidly in immigrants and farming stock. I shudder at the thought that it is not impossible, after all, that I am related in some convoluted way to the pale Eberhardt at the counter in the Frankfurt airport.

  But what if my parents had never been divorced? Would I have experienced myself as a Pedersen and researched my father’s side of the family?

  So, I call my father’s aunt, who is over eighty but sharp as ever, and the person who keeps tabs on that part of the family. Aunt Anna is the sister of my deceased paternal grandmother. She can, of course, rattle off when their parents, that is, yet another set of my great-grandparents, were born, and where it happened. They were both born Pedersens, so marriage changed nothing. It appears that Anna is also well informed about her sister’s family-in-law – which also goes by the nam
e Pedersen.

  “Your paternal grandfather’s father, Peter Pedersen from Skæring, him I liked,” says Anna, sounding as though she means it. “There was something luminous about him.”

  On the other hand, his wife, Ane Katrine, whose maiden name and birthplace have been lost, no one really cared for. My father’s account of his grandmother was no cozy bedtime story. This bony little woman was a slavedriver, who guided husband and six children with a hard hand. In her old age, she kept a son and a daughter at home on the farm, so they could take care of the business. When she died, at over ninety, the two children were so old that it no longer made sense to begin their own lives. They moved into a little house in one corner of the farm and lived out their last years there.

  “Yes, they were a bit peculiar, those Skæring folk,” affirms Anna. “And there was something about that southern blood of theirs. At any rate, people talked about one of the Spanish soldiers who were in the country during the Napoleonic Wars and went around burning and pillaging the south of Jutland.”

  Here, I begin to get a little interested. I myself have utterly ordinary dark-blonde hair and fair skin that, at most, acquires a yellowish hue in the summer. But there is something else in my father’s family, if you look. My grandfather was very dark, almost olive-skinned, and had a nearly Roman hook to his nose. Of his three sons, one is fair-skinned and ruddy, while the other two are very dark. My father was raven-headed in his youth and his skin turned copper in the first rays of the spring sun. He could easily have passed for Middle Eastern or, at least Mediterranean.

  You can test for that, I think, after hanging up. If my father was descended directly from this Spanish freebooter, it might appear in his Y chromosome, which is the same Y chromosome he passed on to my little brother. And since my little brother and I both received our mitochondrial DNA from my mother, I can make do with testing him to get all the pieces of my ancestry. I pick up the telephone again and, for once, get hold of him immediately. As a lawyer, he is not the brightest bulb as far as science goes, so I explain slowly and carefully what I want and why. At first, there is silence.