The Legacy of African Americans who labored at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland

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Catoctin Furnace, Frederick County, Maryland

 

Catoctin Furnace operated in Maryland in the 18th and 19th centuries using both free and enslaved African American labor. Harney et al. analyzed DNA from 27 individuals from an African American cemetery that was excavated 40 years ago during highway construction (see the Perspective by Jackson). The authors found genetic evidence of biological family groups, modern-day African populations with whom they may have shared ancestry, and even possible distant relatives in the United States through identity-by-descent comparisons with consenting customers of 23andMe. This study demonstrates that when studied responsibly with input from stakeholders, long-buried DNA can be used to uncover obfuscated or forgotten histories of marginalized individuals.

 Corinne Simonti wrote the above abstract of the study by Harney et al. which can be seen at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4995. 

"Despite the hardship evident in the remains, the new genetic work shows how strong the will to survive, have children, and be united with family was among enslaved people," said Fatimah L.C. Jackson, a biological anthropologist at Howard University. “Accurate and comprehensive genomics has the capacity to liberate contemporary descendants and honor ancestors.”

https://www.wbur.org/

 Thank you to Shannon Christmas for writing to ISOGG about this paper. After reading it, I was surprised and pleased to hear it discussed on the radio in a story they called New research finds DNA ties between enslaved iron forge workers and Americans alive today. Click the title to hear the story. 

After responding in the ISOGG group with the radio link, Ann Turner replied with links to two 23andMe blog posts, and another article with a lot of local background and much discussion about the ethics and processes the research group from the Smithsonian and their partners followed. 

The blog posts:

Ann said, "There have been many news articles about the study. STAT news had some additional interviews with a company called My True Ancestry, which has downloaded the dataset from the Reich laboratory and claims to find connections. Do note the caveats in the STAT article, though."

The STAT article, "IN THE LAB: ‘Ancient DNA’ tools and 23andMe database uncover African American ancestries of thousands" by Usha Lee McFarling is really fascinating, and I hope the readers of this blog will click into each of the links. Many have loads of linked sources, even!

A tip of the hat to MaryLynn's excellent blog last week about DPLA - guess where the top image was found.

I very much hope that 23andMe finds a way to share the news to the "nearly 42,000 people in the database were related to one or more of the people buried at the Catoctin Furnace cemetery" -- they have not yet done so. Research by descendants of enslaved people is already laborious, based as it is on records (if they exist or are accessible to researchers) of the buyers, sellers and enslavers. It would be a boon to these researchers and to all historians if a fuller picture of our past was revealed to those whose relatives took part in it by a reputable company.


Valorie Zimmerman




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