DNA Detectives - Mysteries of History - U.S. News Online
"Haven't got a clue? Maybe DNA will do Regular folks and history buffs play detective
BY NANCY SHUTE
Brent Kennedy is a man with a past, and he doesn't think it lies in the misty green hills conjured by his Celtic surname. Kennedy believes he's a Melungeon, one of a dark-skinned clan of enigmatic origin that has long been reviled by their Appalachian neighbors. The Wise, Va., college administrator is so intent on finding his roots that he's having his DNA analyzed for clues.
'I grew up learning in school that we're all Scots-Irish,' says black-haired, blue-eyed Kennedy, born and raised in this tiny town perched high in the coal-mining country of Southwest Virginia. He thinks the genes will reveal a different lesson-one of Turks, Portuguese, and Sephardic Jews, who sailed to the New World in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, stayed, and assimilated, and whose history was expunged by the burgeoning Anglo-Saxon majority.
Kennedy's quest is intensely personal. But around the world, the remarkable technology that allows for DNA fingerprinting is being deployed to answer some of history's legendary conundrums. Indeed, DNA analysis has become so sensitive that it's possible to identify an individual from the cellular spoor left on a discarded cocktail napkin.
That level of specificity has made the urge to exhume the past so overwhelming it seems no corpse can rest in peace. In 1995, George Washington University law professor James E. Starrs used DNA to show that the body in a Kearney, Mo., grave could be outlaw Jesse James. It could also be a James family member, so Bud Hardcastle, an amateur historian and used car dealer in Purcell, Okla., got a court order to dig up the Granbury, Texas, grave of J. Frank Dalton, who he thinks is t"
BY NANCY SHUTE
Brent Kennedy is a man with a past, and he doesn't think it lies in the misty green hills conjured by his Celtic surname. Kennedy believes he's a Melungeon, one of a dark-skinned clan of enigmatic origin that has long been reviled by their Appalachian neighbors. The Wise, Va., college administrator is so intent on finding his roots that he's having his DNA analyzed for clues.
'I grew up learning in school that we're all Scots-Irish,' says black-haired, blue-eyed Kennedy, born and raised in this tiny town perched high in the coal-mining country of Southwest Virginia. He thinks the genes will reveal a different lesson-one of Turks, Portuguese, and Sephardic Jews, who sailed to the New World in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, stayed, and assimilated, and whose history was expunged by the burgeoning Anglo-Saxon majority.
Kennedy's quest is intensely personal. But around the world, the remarkable technology that allows for DNA fingerprinting is being deployed to answer some of history's legendary conundrums. Indeed, DNA analysis has become so sensitive that it's possible to identify an individual from the cellular spoor left on a discarded cocktail napkin.
That level of specificity has made the urge to exhume the past so overwhelming it seems no corpse can rest in peace. In 1995, George Washington University law professor James E. Starrs used DNA to show that the body in a Kearney, Mo., grave could be outlaw Jesse James. It could also be a James family member, so Bud Hardcastle, an amateur historian and used car dealer in Purcell, Okla., got a court order to dig up the Granbury, Texas, grave of J. Frank Dalton, who he thinks is t"
posted by Helen Campbell @ 7:34 PM
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