Monday, May 28, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
It’s accepted that John Hawes married a granddaughter of John Howland, Desire Gorham, thus making John and Desire Hawes’ children descendants of the Mayflower.
They had a son John Hawes, who left New England and popped up in North Carolina. Same person? If so, his issue could join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Historian General Ann S. Lainhart and Assistant Historian General Alicia Williams recently accepted this line — on the basis of a Hawes DNA study of the Hawes Y chromosome.
I didn’t necessarily expect a lineage society to accept DNA studies as proof this soon, but I know Ann Lainhart to be a thorough and fair researcher. This use of DNA to join a lineage society is certainly a major step in such research.
Lainhart notes in an article in the June 2006 issue of The Mayflower Quarterly, available in a number of Maine libraries, that the Myles Standish family and the Pilgrim Edward Doty Society are starting Y-line DNA projects. That’s the male line, also known as the surname line. For information, visit
mylesstandish.org and
edward-doty.org
For information on a variety of DNA studies being conducted, Lainhart suggests checking the International Society of Genetic Genealogy at
ISOGG.org
In the same issue of The Mayflower Quarterly are two articles of interest by Jack Hailman, professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. They are: "On Inheriting Mayflower Genes: A Lesson in Genetics" and "Y-DNA Testing and Jargon De-mystified."
At this point there are two types of DNA studies that are being done on a wide basis. One is the Y-line, the male line which follows the father’s father’s father’s father’s father, and so on. Only males can be tested for this.
The other is the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down by the mother. It’s also known as the mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, and so on.
Both males and females carry the mitochondrial DNA from mom, so either can be tested for it. But only women pass it on to the next generation. My sons cannot pass on my mitochondrial DNA, which came from my mother, but my niece — my sister’s daughter — can.
