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Twelve years ago, in 2000, the remains of the outlaw William Preston "Wild Bill" Longley, hanged in 1878 and buried in the Giddings City Cemetery in Fayette Co., TX, were exhumed by anthropologist Dr. Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in response to repeated claims by a man in Louisiana that he descended from Wild Bill; that Longley was in cahoots with the sheriff, didn't really die, but escaped to live a long life in Louisiana and raise a family there. Locating the correct grave was complicated by the fact that, over the years, the cemetery boundary and some markers had been moved some in fencing and cleanups. When Bill Longley's body was identified by a memento piece of jewely buried with him, the Y-chromosome DNA in his bones was too degraded by the passing of 122 years to test. So a tooth, which contains mitochrondrial DNA, was compared to that of a known great-grand-niece in Texas. The resulting match proved that Longley was indeed buried in the Giddings Cemetery and not in Louisiana. Longley's remains were returned to Texas by Dr. Owsley for reburial in the Giddings City Cemetery in July 2001. A private, family reburial service was conducted. Later the case was featured on a History Channel TV "historical mysteries" program moderated by Alan Alda. That Fall, three Longley men agreed to be tested and Dr. Owsley recommended FamilyTreeDNA Lab in Houston, Dr. Bennett Greenspan. Their three Y-chrome test kits were #1574, 1575, and 1576. One was a Dallas man who wasn't sure of his ancestry; another the great-grand nephew of "Wild Bill" Longley in Texas; and the third descended from Benjamin Longley of Baltimore, MD. Longley descendants sharing genealogical research on the Longley GenWeb website suspected their families might be related and hoped to determine a kinship. The human genome and DNA testing is a relatively new science; most of us hadn't heard of it in 2000, except possibly by police to identify suspects. Using DNA for genealogical purposes is even newer. In 2001 the book, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals our Genetic Ancestry, by Prof. Bryan Sykes, leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, published by W. W. Norton & Co., brought his research to the attention of scientists and nonscientists alike. After plotting the DNA of thousands of European and North American Caucasians he concluded that almost all of them descended from seven females who lived many thousands of years ago. All seven females descended from one woman he designated as Eve, as in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Sykes' book focused on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Females carry only the DNA of their mother and pass it to both sons and daughters. Males carry both the mitochondrial DNA of their mothers (matrilineage) and the Y-chromosome DNA of their father (patrilineage), but do not pass it to their daughters. Patrilineage is from son to father to father to father, ad infinitum. Matrilineage is from son or daughter to mother to mother to mother to mother, ad infinitum. It wasn't long, however, before further research revealed the greater specificity of Y-chrome testing. Initial Y-chrome DNA tests for genealogy were available only on 12 allelles (markers). Steady advancement in the technology increased testing capability to 25 markers, then to 37 markers, then to 67 markers, and currently to 111 markers. Initial matches on 12 markers sometimes broke down on the next set of makers, making the subjects' common ancestor longer ago. At present two of the original test subjects match a thousand other individuals tested on the first 12 markers, mostly with different surnames, meaning their common ancestor was hundreds of years ago before most European had surnames. Adopting surnames was a gradual process which began after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. By March 2012 with the most recent Longley test, more than 234,000 kits have been tested by FTDNA. Most participants have upgraded their test kit to 37 markers, several to 67 markers, but none to 111 markers. An amazing exact 37-marker match has been found to one of the original three test subjects. The red (maroon) markers on the Results chart are known as faster-moving (mutating) markers and we need a better map of the haplotree (what marker mutated from what parent haplogroup). We need more Longley males to be tested. Meanwhile, there is a Langley DNA Project as well. Logically, since our name was spelled both ways in old records, the projects should be combined, but theirs declined. |
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