Copyright 2010: 
A Bit of a Surprise
Chaplain Reg writes?
Ever wondered where you come from?
Wonder where your ancestors came from?
How far back you can trace them?
What’s available to try and trace them?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a free service to everyone not just members of the church which allows you to trace your ancestors via the data base the church has collected over many years. This was at one time all held on microfiche but now has been transferred onto computers thus allowing anyone to access the database in searching for your family. There are people who will help you to start on your search and show you how to use the computers and other means to trace back in time. Some people I know have traced back to 1066 and some just a little bit further it all depends on how lucky you are with the search and what information has been given in the history of time. If you happen to come across a Royal Line then most of the work has already been done for you others, like me need quite a bit of research and luck to trace back where your routes are.
When I first went to the Basque area of France in 1975 as part of a visit by the Royal Navy I thought what a wonderful place this was. I have always loved the sea and mountains but had up to this time never found both so near together with the mountains almost reaching down to the sea it struck me as a very beautiful place to be.
Years went buy and I found myself on holiday in the Basque area of France again but this 
time I was with my family so had more time to go exploring the area. I really did feel at home and upon leaving the area to drive back home promised myself that I would return and see more of the area, not just in France but also Spain.
I have returned several times since then. Each time searching out some place I have read about in a book I might have read. The whole area is to me one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and on leaving to come home always want to return as soon as I can. Weird but true!
When John Cooke and I done our charity ride Euroride 2002 we spent a few days in the Basque area. I wanted to show John around and it was a good way of getting ready to ride 13 capital cities in 12 days. On leaving Biarritz heading towards Lisbon John and I were passing through the early morning mist in the valleys and were climbing up the mountains on very good roads with not too much traffic. We headed to a town draped in Basque history called St-Jean-Pied-de-port. This is where a lot of Pilgrims start there walk of St James finishing in Santiago De Compostela after walking there way across the Pyrenees. Well it’s a long story but John took the wrong road out of St-Jean and we ended up with fully laden touring bikes on a mountain track oh what joy! Anyway I digress – we were once again in the Basque area and I loved it.
Some little time later I started to research the Basque area and culture as I felt sort of affinity. This was after a journey up one of the hills just outside San Sebastian or Donostia in the Basque language. As I climbed up the road towards the top of the climb I went through a tunnel and then the road turned 45 degrees to the left. The valley dropped down and the view was one of the most fantastic I had ever seen. Parking the car up and standing on the roadside I was a little overcome by the beauty of the picture in front of me. There was no noise save a cowbell chiming somewhere down in the valley. There was an issue of smoke coming from the copse of woods just over to my left and some smoke from a very small cabin, which looked like a Sheppard’s retreat.
I had tears in my eyes and had a very odd feeling come over me it felt like this was the place I should be. I could not explain why but I honestly felt at home and very comfortable in this place.
On retuning home I continued to look into everything Basque, much to the amusement of my wife. I have studied over the years how the Basque language is like no other and shares none of the usual traits of other European languages. The Basque people have for many, many years tried to have gain their independence both from France and Spain without much success but they do have their own government and tax system. The Basque language, which was banned for many years under Franco, is once again being taught in schools. This proud people are once again being allowed to display their history and you will always see the Basque Flag flying from flagstaff or from balconies of apartments around the town. There are still problems with some groups like ETA but you will see the flag flying everywhere from small fishing boats to the official government buildings like the centre of government in Gernika, the same Gernika that the Germans practiced their bombing on just before the 2nd world war destroying most of the town in the process and killing many as it was a day light raid on market day where lots of people living out of the town came to sell their goods.
So what has all the above to do with me?
Well I came across an article whereby you could send your DNA away for Dr Oppenheimer of Oxford University to trace where your ancestry came from. You had to send a sample away and within a few weeks you would receive a certificate with the history of your DNA – Where your came from.
I always believed that my ancestry came from Scotland as my family history was written in family Bibles which my Grandfather had access to before they were lost in a fire. So anticipating this I sent away my sample and sat back and waited. A little time later the results came through and I was surprised and a very excited to learn that my ancestors came from the Basque area of France and Spain. Wow was this the reason I had always felt so at home in that area, was my heart feeling happy at being in the place of my fathers?
It is a long way back when my ancestors left that area and made the one way trip to new lands but nevertheless I know knew where I came from and was moved to start searching and researching more about the land I have become very fond of.
Below is a rather long article about Dr Oppenheimer and his theory of the start of the English race, as we have become known. As you can imagine it has caused quite a stir and challenges what has been written before but does give good argument and plenty of information to get your started. Hope you find it of interest.
‘Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands’ 
Stephen Oppenheimer
The Basques (Basque: Euskaldunak) are an indigenous people [4] who inhabit parts of both Spain and France.
The name Basque derives from Medieval French and ultimately from the ancient tribe of the Vascones,[5] described by Ancient Greek historian Strabo as living south of the western Pyrenees and north of the Ebro River, in modern day Navarre and northern Aragon. This tribal name, of unknown etymology, was extended in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages to cover all Basque-speaking people on either side of the Pyrenees.
Basques are now mainly found in an area known as the Basque Country, located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. This consists of four provinces in Spain and two in France.
The Basques are known in local languages as:
Euskaldunak ("Basque speakers", also used loosely to describe all ethnic Basques) or euskotarrak ("Natives of the Basque Country", a rarely used neologism) in Basque
Vascos in Spanish
Basques in French
Bascos in Gascon
This article discusses the Basques as an ethnic group or, as some view them, a nation, in contrast to other ethnic groups living in the Basque area. The history of the Basque region as covered here will focus on how that history bears on the Basques as a people.
Recent genetic studies (Stephen Oppenheimer) have shown that about 75% of the people of the British Isles have bloodlines that can be traced to inhabitants of the Basque areas of Spain and France based on Y-chromosome and mtDNA analysis. The originators of these genes are thought to have travelled up the Atlantic Coast in the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic period.
A similar proportion of the remaining, Romance speaking, inhabitants of the whole Iberian peninsula (both Spain and Portugal) share similar percentages of haplogroup R1b to the people of the British Isles as well as very similar mtDNA ancestry.
Since much British genetic material dates to the first settlement of Britain following the ice ages, all subsequent invasions/migrations/immigrations occurred on a relatively small scale and did not replace Britain's population.
Celtic origins derive from southern France and northern Spain.
The Central European theory for Celtic origins has no basis.
Some genetic evidence in support of Renfrew's theory of Indo-European origins comes from farming.
Genetic evidence suggests that the division between the West and the East of England does not begin with the Anglo-Saxon invasion but originates with two main routes of genetic flow — one up the Atlantic coast, the other from neighboring areas of Continental Europe.
Scandinavian influences, stronger than suspected, may outweigh West Germanic influence.
A genetic difference exists between the Saxon areas of England and the Anglian areas. (Oppenheimer suggests that the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasion actually mostly consisted of an Anglian incursion.)
An early introduction of English to Britain might explain the lack of Celtic influence on early English and the genetic split between East and West.
Classical sources differentiate between Gallic/Celtic and Belgae. Some sources suggest the Belgae have a German origin. Various archaeological and linguistic evidence make for a weaker case for Celtic presence in Belgic and Eastern England than in Gallic/Celtic or western Britain.
In Origins of the British (2006), Stephen Oppenheimer states (pages 375 and 378):
By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland.
On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from northwest Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipe-out theory... ...75-95% of British Isles (genetic) matches derive from Iberia... Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the British Isles have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples...
In page 367 Oppenheimer states in relation to Zoë H Rosser's pan-European genetic distance map:
In Rosser's work, the closest population to the Basques is in Cornwall, followed closely by Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, East Anglia and then northern France.
The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?
Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.
Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.
The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of south-western Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.
Note: How does genetic tracking work?
The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past.
Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.
Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.
So there you are if your still awake I hope you enjoyed this article either way drop me an email and let me know.
Ride Safe
Reg