Can DNA upset the "apple cart" of paper genealogies?

Question

I recently discovered that the DNA of my Bass cousin (4th cousin) paper and Family Finder confirmed is R-S1051. Which is, according to the R1b project, Scottish. It was believed that his (and my Bass) cousin were descended from a son of John Basse and Mary Jordan, name of Richard Bass m.1st Jane Bryant, 2nd Mary Burwell. 

The existence of Richard and his two wives is documented. It was believed that his (and my Bass ancestor) were descended from his second wife Mary Burwell.

However DNA tells another story. My cousin's DNA is R-S1051  R1b1a1a2a1a2c1a9  which is considered to be Scottish.

The DNA of those who claim descent from Richard Basse's first wife Jane Bryant is R-L47  R1b1a1a2a1a1c2b1, which is considered to be English (actually Frisian).

Said Richard Basse was the son of John Basse of London, a proslytizer, son of Nathaniel Basse and Mary Jordan, who set sail to the Virginia Colony to convert the "heathens", he married the daughter of a Christianized Indian weroance (chief), and virtually all Bass families of the south claim descent from this couple.

However DNA is upsetting the DNA apple cart. There are even Bass's who claim this ancestry, but are of Haplogroup A, with which they share ancestry to the Khoi or San people of South Africa., 

It is known that at least one free African joined or was taken in by the Bass family and took the Bass surname.

Also the descendants of John Basse and his Indian bride (Elizabeth) could not legally marry in Virginia because of miscegenation laws and had to move to NC.

After the slave revolt of Nat Turner, laws were passed that permitted the re enslavement of free blacks, and there are records of whole Bass families applying to the court, and succeeding, for recognition as Indians and not mulatto's or coloreds (1833)

So many cherished family trees will have to be redone (including mine), there is an off chance of an NPE somewhere along the line, but as it stands, without an NPE,  R-S1051, which has at least six claimants in the Bass Family project is mutually exclusive of R- L47 which has three claimants in the Bass family project. Logic has it that R-L47 would be the proper lineage of a man who was born in London, not my R-S1051.

It very well could be the cased that said John Basse the proslytizer, was actually of Scottish origin,

But my research of on line lineages, including the Lost Colony site, reveals the possibility of a lot of overturned apple carts.

Such a pain, to have to now recconstruct a branch of the tree..Drats.

 

Answer 1

I agree - as DNA analysis continues to improve (and more and more people continue to test - which will build a huge database of DNA evidence), established family lines will be challenged and eventually corrected.

Answer 2

There are real NPEs, where the paperwork doesn't tell the true story.  And there are pseudo-NPEs, where somebody has jumped to a shaky conclusion.

With British parish registers, there are loads of those.  You just look for a baptism in the area and timeframe you expect, and hope it's the right person.  Sometimes it isn't.

DNA projects tend to be weak on paperwork.  They just take everybody's claimed origins on trust.  But some of those people have just copied somebody else's mistake off the internet.  Some of them just found a tree and adopted it.

Double-check the paperwork, blind, without being influenced by the DNA.

Ignore ethnic labels like Scottish.  There are stray genes in every population, but they could have arrived at any time in history.  For all you know, your Scottish haplogroup could have been taken to Londinium by one of Agricola's prisoners.

Comments

Thanks Horace:

I had to read you response twice to understand what you meant by pseudo NPE. That is a person believed to be an ancestor in a tree, is not.

This is a big problem in most families up to the mid 18th Century, especially in America. There was a naming tradition where children were named after ancestors, uncles, aunts, even brothers and sisters. Thus you wind up with a limited number of given names, and often more than one, of approximately the same age, living in the same county or town.

In the Bass family of which I am concerned, the names John, Andrew, Richard, Uriah, William were as common as salt.  It was thought that one could trace a lineage, at least back to it's root in America, by the given name. Apparently not.

There seems to be two parallel DNA lines that were infatuated with the same given names. Which is in itself unusual.

I am now looking at an NPE, perhaps the 2nd wife of Richard Basse (Mary Burwell) she might have come into the marriage with child, either coming into the world,or already in the world.

However, I think that I traced down the lineage of three others whose DNA matches my cousin, and their lines diverge with his (and mine) with the birth of two sons of John Basse 1616-1699 and his wife Elizabeth  John Basse and Elizabeth "Keziah" Tucker, "ye dafter of the Weroance Robin" of the Nansemond Tribe, cannot be as claimed,because of haplogroup differences.. 

It is obvious that respected and almost sacrosanct genealogies are erroneous. 

The much sought after and esteemed lineage of John Basse and Elizabeth Keziah Tucker, diverge DNA wise with the their "sons" (or her sons,not his) Richard and William Basse. If the two separate lineages are correct. Or if Richard Basse's second wife (Mary Burwell)was the mother of a child that wasn't his then the lines diverge at that point.

The unthinkable, to some, is that the virtually "sainted" Elizabeth Keziah Tucker, daughter of the Weroance of the Nansemond Tribe, had a child, by someone other than her husband, John Basse, an Anglican missionary, who came to Virginia in 1636 with the aim of converting the "heathens"

And a third option is that all Bass family trees are fiction, at least from some point backwards.