Grahams of Cumberland part 3: The DNA thing

In part one, I started out with ‘my’ John Graham, born c1750.

While assuming we are descended from the border reiver Grahams, a couple of lovely relatives long wondered if there was any chance ‘our Grahams’ were connected somehow to the great names of Menteith and Montrose.

It’s a question many others have posed.  

The possibilities

Today’s Cumbrian Grahams might be descended (variously) from: 

1. the notorious reiver Lang Will
2. Graham women whose husbands took the name because the Grahams were a stronger clan. Their offspring would be related to the women’s brothers (etc), but have a different male-line ancestry.
3. people who were tenants or poor neighbours and took the surname
4. the ‘other sort’ of Grahams already living on the border when Lang Will moved there

Given today’s Grahams could be any of the above:

• Who were Lang Will’s parents?  
• Was he related to the Menteith/Montrose Grahams?
• Who were ‘the other sort of Grahams’?

DNA

First of all, I don’t really understand it. I’m not a scientist.

But I do have questions. 

1. If a living descendant of John Smith shares a DNA haplogroup thing with a 14thC John Smith whose body has been dug up and tested – does that mean ALL male living descendants will for sure have it?

I – M253 (etc)

More than 700 men with Graham parentage have taken part in a DNA study. 

1. Men with confirmed descent from the Mentheith/Montrose lines, and therefore (probably/possibly) from William (1097-1139) all share something called I – M253.
2. But Grahams whose known ancestors came originally from the Borders have J1-L1253.
3. Another ‘big group’ have R1b.
4. And some don’t have any of these. I think these have to be descendants of the tenants etc who took the name without being related.

More than 700 test subjects 

It sounds a lot, but is 700+ test subjects a really good sample, scientifically speaking?

In 1606, the King’s commissioners sent:

‘a list of 150 Grahams who have submitted themselves…’

Not all of those were Grahams by birth.

One man, born in 1540, having three sons by 1580 who each had three sons by 1620… a conservative calculation puts that at 60,049 men by 1940.

Could the JL lot all be descended from a family of brothers who took the name Graham?

Playing away

It would be naive to think all Graham wives were 100% faithful to their husbands. 

Alicia Graham’s book says:

‘researchers hope that the illegitimacy rates are low enough to allow the productive study of paternal lines’

I’m not sure ‘hope’ is rigorously scientific!

If just one wife (either branch) sought comfort elsewhere, it could mean the whole Menteith/Montrose male line differs from their Dalkeith line cousins.

Possibly, maybe

There are a lot of hazy ‘reason to believes’ guesses in the early history of the Menteith/Montrose and Dalkeith lines.

It isn’t even 100% certain that William (1097-1139) WAS the father of the two original branches.

Back to I – M253

This is a haplogroup, and it isn’t it an ‘exclusive Graham thing’.

There are 65,038 DNA tested descendants, and they specified that their earliest known origins are from: Sweden, England, United States, and 123 other countries.

Source

I-M253 is apparently found in 38-39% of Swedish men, 37% of Norwegian men, 34.8 of Danish men… you get the picture.

Questions

So, some confirmed descendants of the Menteith/Montrose Grahams have I-M253.

The bulk of the Graham test subjects do not.

1. Is it a given, after a thousand years, that all male descendants of William Graham (1097-1139, presumed father of the two original branches) would have I-M253? 
2. What if William Graham wasn’t Norman? There are other theories. And no cast-iron proof.
3. What if a wife down one line ‘played away’?
4. What if Peter (Dalkeith branch) and Alan (Menteith/Montose branch) weren’t brothers, but related in some other way?

J1-L1253

As well as something about Neolithic goat-herders, J1-L1253 ‘appears to be limited to Britain and Ireland’.

AND, crucially:

its presence in modern testers from the British Isles is indicative of “Border reiver” heritage

This book continues that all this:

favours the idea that Lang Will was himself a J1.

And: 

If the “noble Grahams” belong to Y-haplogroup I1, then Lang Will cannot have been descended from the elder line of William de Grame.

Sort of convincing. Except ‘favours the idea’ isn’t concrete proof (you’d have to dig Lang Will up for that!). 

Plus the caveats I’ve already raised.

R1b

R1b: ‘is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 80% of the population in Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, western Wales…’

The book says:

The (R1b) Grahams of Canonbie and Netherby cannot have been descendants (or blood relatives) of a J1 Lang Will.

So either Lang Will wasn’t J1 after all. OR the Netherby and Canonbie test subjects weren’t related to him…

I think it means the R1b lot were the ‘other sort of Grahams’ living on the English side of the border when Lang Will arrived.

However

As interesting as all this Syrian archer (don’t ask!)/Viking stuff is…

• Lang Will Graham was of Mosskessen.
• Earlier generations of Dalkeith Grahams (presumed descended from William) were of Mosskessen
• In Elizabethan times, the Grahams of Montrose and Menteith considered the Border Grahams to be kinsmen. Via Lang Will, they ‘claimed interest of the service of all Grames as descended out of their houses.”
• When applying for arms, Lang Will’s descendants claimed kin back.

‘My cousins’

In June 1605, John Graham, Earl of Montrose wrote to the English commissioners who were busy deporting reiver Grahams and basically stealing their lands and possessions. 

“Although you have determined to transport certain of my cousins to Newcastle on Saturday night, there to remain in ward, I entreat you to permit Richard Graham, son of Walter of Netherby, to remain with me. I will be answerable for him to the King, to the Council, and to you.“

Whatever DNA they shared, or didn’t, Montrose considered the Netherby Grahams to be kin.

Conclusion

1. Personally, I don’t have any sense of belonging to any group from the Stone Age. Who does?!
2. Neither the surviving records, nor DNA testing, can 100% for sure fill in the gaps between living Grahams and people from the 1500s (or earlier).

Whether my John Graham was a descendant of Lang Will’s lot, the Netherby lot, the noble lot, or simply of some farmer who’d thrown his lot in with the reiver clan and taken the name, I remain none the wiser.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter.

In the 1500s, there was a reiver clan called Graham, comprising Lang Will’s Scottish gang and ‘another sort’ on the English side of the border. While further up in Scotland, there were Graham earls and lords, who played important roles in the history of that nation, and who counted the border Grahams as kin. And there were farmers and ‘poor cottagers’ and others who rode as their footsoldiers and took their protection, and name, and were loyal to the clan. (Except when fighting each other!).

It wasn’t neolithic haplogroups that bound them together.

It was the name.

And that remains far more relatable, far easier to share loyalty to, than 1/3 of the male population of Denmark.