Toba Eruption

Toba Eruption

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I don’t follow closely, but one of the truisms of human genetics has been the impact of the Toba Eruption.

DNA studies seem to show modern humans are descended from a smaller than expected number of people. We seem to have lost some of the genetic diversity we would be expected to have.

One possible explanation is that there was a point in human history, maybe about 50 thousand to 100 thousand years ago, when the number of humans dropped dramatically. The cause of the drop was perhaps the eruption of the Toba Supervolcano about 75 thousand years ago. Fun, fun.

But no. Now they’re thinking maybe not.

I’m sad to lose such an interesting theory, but it is what it is.

Rachel (Roberson) Horne

Rachel (Roberson) Horne

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Rachel Roberson has consumed a lot of my genealogical research time. She is supposed to have been Indian, or perhaps part Indian. I’ve wanted to find some answers but now years of research have given me so much information it seems almost impossible to say anything helpful.

She was Rachel (Roberson) Horne (1847-1944), my grandmother’s grandmother. More exactly, my father’s mother’s father’s mother. Traditions in different branches of the family tell me she smoked a corncob pipe, and she taught beading and basket weaving to her daughters and granddaughters. Rachel’s sympathies were with the South during the Civil War (“She was one of the onriest Rebels there was”).

My genealogy correspondents seem to be aware William Horne’s wife was Indian, but none of them have had any further information except to attribute his nomadic life and extreme poverty to her influence.

The 1850 and 1860 censuses show Rachel as the daughter of Rufus and Elizabeth (Lomax) Roberson. She is said to have had a brother Thomas Skidmore Roberson, as well as an unnamed sister who married a Lakota man. That marriage is implied to have been the origin of the connection between our family and the family of Pete Catches.

There is a curious tradition that Rachel was sold by her parents. It’s not clear whether she is supposed to have been sold to the Robersons by her Indian parents, or she is supposed to have been sold by the Robersons to Wiliam Horne as a wife.

Rachel is shown on censuses as the only child of Rufus and Elizabeth Roberson. This might support the tradition she was adopted but DNA triangulation seems to show she was probably their biological daughter. Her descendants have autosomal matches with descendants of Rufus Roberson’s brothers Benjamin and Craig.

I’ve found no evidence of the brother or sister Rachel is said to have had, except a magazine clipping of a picture of a Lakota boy in traditional dress on which my father wrote, “This is the grandson of Rachel Horn’s sister.” The clipping seems to be from a 1960s or 70s magazine such as Life or Look. I’m relatively certain the boy pictured is Pete Catches, Jr.

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Were They Pawnee?

Were They Pawnee?

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

According to a tradition current among some of my cousins, my great great grandmother Rachel (Roberson) Horne (1847-1944) was Pawnee. I don’t think so. Nothing else points in that direction.

I asked my grandmother Evelyn (Horn) Miller one year at Powwow about our Indian ancestry. She said she had always assumed they were Pawnee. A few years later she told her daughter Fern she had lately changed her mind. She now believed they were Cherokee because they owned slaves, which is something the Cherokees did.

I think the idea Rachel was Pawnee was probably just an assumption based on geography. Rachel’s parents lived in Atchison County, Missouri, just across the Missouri River from the Nemaha Half Breed Reservation (established 1830, dissolved 1860), as well as from land ceded by the Pawnee in 1833. Rachel’s family settled in this area in 1839.

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When Grandma Ran Away

When Grandma Ran Away

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Grandma Vivian (Luce) Swanstrom ran away from home when she was 25.

Her parents had great ambitions for her, but she had other ideas. They sent her to finishing school in Denver, but she didn’t like it. She came home to the ranch at Big Piney after the first semester, and refused to go back. She was an accomplished pianist, so her parents sent her to University of Wyoming to study music. She decided she wanted to be an actress. Her father told her he’d rather see her dead. That was the end of university.

Her next choice was to become a nurse, like her heroes Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. Her parents didn’t like that idea either.

Her parents didn’t believe women should work outside the home. They wanted her to marry a rancher. Someone nearby. Someone with money. Someone who could give her a comfortable life.

They arranged a marriage for her, then another, then another. She was engaged five times. She broke off every one. She ended the engagement with “the Alexander boy” by throwing his ring back in his face.

Grandma plotted her escape. She was taking a correspondence course in millinery. She told her parents she was going to spend the weekend at the house in town so she could get some ribbons she needed. Secretly, she packed her saddlebags with everything she planned to take with her. Her cover story would give her a few days to make her escape–as long as her mother stayed at the ranch that weekend.

In town, Grandma boarded her horse at the livery stable, then caught the stage coach to Opal. She kept (and I still have) her stage ticket. In Opal, she caught the train for Rock Springs.

The plan worked. Grandma got away.

In Rock Springs, she went to the hospital to see if they would hire her as a cook. The gods were with her. They didn’t have any openings in the kitchen, but they were looking for young women to enroll in their nurses’ training program.

Grandma was in. She was able to live in nurse’s quarters while she trained. Later, she boarded with Mrs. Josephine Swanstrom, a Swedish woman she knew from back home.

This was 1926. Grandma graduated in 1927. She worked as a nurse in Rock Springs, with a few breaks here and there, until they forced her to retire. In 1966, I think. After that, she snuck in a few more years working as a nurse in Rawlins until bureaucracy caught up with her, they figured out her age, and she really did have to retire.

Did her parents ever forgive her for running away? Grandma never said, but I think they must have. When the story of her life resumes, Grandma has a 1927 DeSoto Roadster, yellow with red wheels, that her dad gave her. That says forgiveness to me.

Follow the Route

A few days I was looking at an old 1903 map of Wyoming. I realized it was showing me Grandma’s route. The ranch at New Fork to Big Piney to Opal to Rock Springs:

If you want to follow along, open the map. You’ll want to enlarge it for easier viewing.

We’re looking at the map on the right, along the left edge. Big Piney should be easy to find. It’s almost right on the county line. The Luce ranch was east of Big Piney, in the area between New Fork and Big Piney. The stage (postal) route runs south from Big Piney to Opal, then the railroad runs east from Opal through Green River to Rock Springs.

Jewish Khazars

Jewish Khazars

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Are Ashkenazi Jews descended from the Khazars? It’s a hot question. Many people, both Jews and non-Jews, have thought so, but nowadays it has become anti-Semitic to say it. I’m not exactly sure when it became taboo to question scientific research.

At one time, many years ago, I thought Arthur Koestler made a slam-dunk case for the Ashkenazi as descendants (primarily) of the Khazars (The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage, 1976). “Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland & formed the cradle of Western Jewry.”

Then, after more reading, I decided there is room for doubt.

Then I read Eran Elahik and was back onboard.

Back and forth.

It’s been a few years now. It feels like it’s time for me to re-visit this question, but I’m not making any headway.

Last time I jumped in, I was struck by one specific problem–no one is really sure how to resolve a basic problem with the DNA. There is no good proxy for the DNA of the ancient Khazars. Choose this group and evidence “proves” the Eastern European Jews must Khazars. Choose that group and clearly they are not. all this back and forth comes out of a problem with DNA.

That choice is grounded in politics, not science, no matter how dressed up it is.

Here’s an example that seems to be a well-considered dismissal. Until you notice all the strawman arguments and leaps of logic. I was looking for science, not diatribe.

The main argument against the Khazar Hypothesis is that if Jews are descendants of the Khazars then their occupation of Palestine is illegitimate. Anyone who believes it is trying to de-legitimize Israel, and is therefore anti-Semitic.

That strikes me as a particularly specious argument. I can see how it gets emotional play, but really, it’s already a stretch to think that Jews have enhanced rights to the territory their ancestors left 2 thousand years ago. You don’t need a link to the Khazars.

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