John Beagle

The first 23andMe reports are coming in and I am finally finding out a bit about my heritage. According to 23andme I am mostly British, Irish, French and German.

23andMe, Inc. is the leading personal genetics company. Founded in 2006 by Linda Avey, Paul Cusenza, and Anne Wojcicki, the mission of the company is to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome. 23andMe has more than one million customers worldwide, with over 80 percent consented to participate in research.

Here is the ancestry report that was generated from my DNA.

Click on image to enlarge.

This is the first step in finding out about who I am and where my heritage lies. I was adopted in 1959, born in 1957, my adopting family loved me and wasn’t interested in finding out about my birth parents. Now that I am getting older I have become interested in finding anything I can about my personal history. I tried to find out who my birth parents are however since I as born in New York, the records were sealed and are not available for me to see.

23andMe offers additional insights by collecting big data on its over 1 million participants. More than 80% have opted in. So far 23andMe claims to have collected 320 million survey responses they call ‘phenotypic data points.’

Here is information on my Haplogroup:

Maternal Haplogroup

Maternal haplogroups are families of mitochondrial DNA types that all trace back to a single mutation at a specific place and time. By looking at the geographic distribution of mtDNA types, we learn how our ancient female ancestors migrated throughout the world.

Haplogroup: H
Age: more than 40,000 years
Region: Europe, Near East, Central Asia

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Paternal Haplogroup

Paternal haplogroups are families of Y chromosomes that all trace back to a single mutation at a specific place and time. By looking at the geographic distribution of these related lineages, we learn how our ancient male ancestors migrated throughout the world.

R1b1b2a1a1 is a subgroup of R1b1b2, which branches from R1b.

Haplogroup: R1b1b2
Age: 17,000 years
Region: Europe

Other reports include Sleep Movement, Facial Features, Hair, Physical Characteristics, Physical Responses, Skin, Taste and Smell, Neanderthal Ancestry, Muscle Composition, genetic disorder results and much, much more. Very interesting and well worth the expense in my opinion.

People ask me about the Ghinggis Khaan banner on my office wall.

That banner is a gift from Ankhaa and Dembee two little 16 year old boys who stayed in our home while they were performing at Middfest International, an annual festivity celebrating various countries in the world. Ankhaa and Dembee are from Mongolia and their talent was the Horsehead Fiddle.

Now I’m not famous, but I was adopted like millions of others. And proud of it too!

Abortion wasn’t always used in the past as frequently as today. Adoption kept many important hearts beating. And I might add… to the benefit of society.

Here is a partial list of people who share a common adoption thread with me:

Art Linkletter – Linkletter was born Gordon Arthur Kelly in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Happy Man (1960), he revealed that he had no contact with his natural parents or his sister or two brothers since he was abandoned when only a few weeks old. He was adopted by Mary (née Metzler) and Fulton John Linkletter, an evangelical preacher.

Dave Thomas – Dave Thomas was born on July 2, 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey to a young unmarried woman he never knew. He was adopted at 6 weeks by Rex and Auleva Thomas, and as an adult would become a well-known advocate for adoption, founding the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

Debbie Harry – Harry was born in Miami, Florida and adopted by Catherine Harry and Richard Smith, gift shop proprietors in Hawthorne, New Jersey.

Faith Hill – Hill was born in Ridgeland, Mississippi, north of Jackson, Mississippi. She was adopted as an infant, and named Audrey Faith Perry. She was raised in the nearby town of Star, 25 miles outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Her adoptive parents raised their two biological sons along with Hill in a devout Christian environment.

George Washington Carver – Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Newton County, near Crystal Place, now known as Diamond, Missouri, possibly in 1864 or 1865, though the exact date is not known. His master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant who had purchased George’s parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700.

Jesus – Adopted by Joseph the carpenter, Jesus was miraculously conceived in his mother’s womb by the Holy Spirit, when his mother Mary was still a virgin.

Michael Reagan – He was born in Los Angeles, California, to Irene Flaugher, an unwed woman from Kentucky who became pregnant through an affair with an army corporal named John Bourgholtzer. He was adopted by Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman shortly after his birth.

Moses – in the Exodus account, the birth of Moses occurred at a time when an unnamed Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months. When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nile River in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch. Moses’ sister Miriam observed the progress of the tiny boat until it reached a place where Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing with her handmaidens. It is said that she spotted the baby in the basket and had her handmaiden fetch it for her. Miriam came forward and asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she would like a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. Thereafter, Jochebed was employed as the child’s nurse. He grew up and was brought to Pharaoh’s daughter and became her son and a younger brother to the future Pharaoh of Egypt.

Nancy Reagan – Anne Frances Robbins was born on July 6, 1921 as the only child of car salesman Kenneth Seymour Robbins and his actress wife, Edith Luckett. In 1929, her mother married Loyal Davis, a prominent, politically conservative neurosurgeon who moved the family to Chicago. Nancy and her stepfather got along very well; she would later write that he was “a man of great integrity who exemplified old-fashioned values”. He formally adopted her in 1935, and she would always refer to him as her father.

President Gerald Ford – Dorothy married Grand Rapids businessman Gerald Rudolff Ford on February 1, 1917. They then called her first son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr., although he was not formally adopted by Ford. Gerald Ford, Jr. formally changed his name in 1935, in honor of his stepfather, the only father he really had. Ford’s mother and stepfather did not tell him of his biological father until shortly before he turned fifteen in 1928. Ford described his biological father as “a carefree, well-to-do man who didn’t really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son”.

President William Jefferson Clinton – Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born. His mother Virginia Dell Cassidy traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after he was born. She left Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. In 1950, Bill’s mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother.

Steve Jobs – Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on 24 February 1955, to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian born Abdulfattah “John” Jandali (Arabic: عبدالفتاح جندلي‎), who were both unmarried at the time. He was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs. When asked about his “adoptive parents,” Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs “were my parents.” He later stated in his authorized biography that they “were my parents 1,000%.