DNA reveals the truth about Bonnie Prince Charlie

Started by Justin Durand on Saturday, December 28, 2013
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Profiles Mentioned:

  • Antonio David. National Galleries. Public Domain.
  • Alan fitzFlaad, Sheriff of Shropshire is your 25th great grandfather. You → Duane W. Lehr your father → Myrtle Vivian (Lockhart) Lehr his mother → JOHN W. LOCKHART 4 her father → John Lockhart, 3 his father → William L. Lockhart his father → William Andrew Lockhart his father → James Horatio Lockhart his father → James Horatio Lockhart, Capt. his father → Robert Lockhart, of Leidlock/ Ledloch his father → Sir Allan Lockhart of Cleghorn, Kt. his father → Mrs Countess Dirleton Lockhart his mother → James Hamilton of Stanehouse, Provost of Edinburgh her father → Isabel Weir his mother → Agnes Weir, of Somerset her mother → John "of Carnwath" Somerville, 3rd Lord Somerville her father → Janet Mowat his mother → NN Mowat her mother → Alice FitzAlan, Countess of Kent her mother → Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel her father → Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel his father → Richard FitzAlan, 8th Earl Arundel his father → John FitzAlan, 7th Earl of Arundel his father → John FitzAlan, 6th Earl of Arundel his father → John FitzAlan, Lord of Clun & Oswestry, Earl of Arundel his father → William FitzAlan, Sheriff of Shropshire his father → William FitzAlan, Sr., Lord of Oswestry, High Sheriff of Shropshire his father → Alan fitzFlaad, Sheriff of Shropshire his father

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Showing all 29 posts
12/28/2013 at 10:20 AM

DNA reveals the truth about Charles Edward Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charlie"
The duke’s genetic marker is thought to take the story back to south-west England, suggesting that the Stewarts were originally Cornishmen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9211247/DNA-reveals-the-truth-ab...

I wonder what happens to the traditional descent from Flaald fitz Flaald, Seneschal de Dol-de-Bretagne and the ancient Kings of Brittany.

(No Name)
12/29/2013 at 4:43 AM

Interesting article. Thank-you for posting.

12/29/2013 at 7:45 AM

Very interesting

Private User
12/30/2013 at 3:51 AM

Well, note that there is no information about what is actually tested and what their "conclusion" is based on.

There is a lot of overinterpretation of DNA-results' meaning out there, even in serious research, and mostly due to too little of the genome being analysed ...

12/30/2013 at 5:43 AM

How very interesting. Am so interested in the Cornish and Brittany connections. Bonnie Prince Charlie is my 9th cousin 8 times removed.
Look forward to updates.
Daphne Elaine Beames

Private User
12/30/2013 at 6:35 AM

@Charles Edward Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charlie" is my 10th cousin seven times removed Judy Rice

Private User
12/30/2013 at 9:39 AM
12/30/2013 at 10:29 AM

Anne, this is Scotland's DNA Project. The newspaper piece is mostly fluff, but the project itself is an academic project working to identify the populations that formed modern Scotland.

http://www.scotlandsdna.com/about/research-study-participant-inform...

Private
12/30/2013 at 11:07 AM

9th cousin 7 times removed.

1/2/2014 at 11:53 AM

Here's an article along the same lines, about a Scottish family with African descent. Thomas Jefferson thrown in for good measure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6293333.stm

Private User
1/3/2014 at 7:49 AM

I know someone in New York City, a retired NYPD detective, who descends from an African who fled to Scotland. (He is now my cousin's family driver) He knows his family story. Very interesting!

Private
1/18/2014 at 5:41 PM

Great story, I seem to be related to everyone on Moms side, on my Dads Scotland almost entirely, and maybe one African.

10/29/2014 at 11:18 PM

what is the importance of Bretagne connection is it celtic ?

11/1/2014 at 9:00 AM

the head of the medieval clan is about to try to make old brittany back into its own country (currently part of france)

11/1/2014 at 9:01 AM
11/1/2014 at 9:01 AM

Charles Edward Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charlie" - 7th cousin 8 times removed ?

11/1/2014 at 2:37 PM

Flaald, Seneschal de Dol en Bretagne is my 27th great grandfather.

11/1/2014 at 2:41 PM

Charles Edward Stuart "Bonnie Prince Charlie" is my 8th cousin 10 times removed.

7/2/2020 at 4:46 PM

Wow. As a proven Royal Stewart / Stuart descendant this is interesting. Of note, Brittany and South West England are both areas that were inhabited by Celts.

Private User
9/27/2020 at 4:46 PM

Considering all the trafficking back and forth between Cornwall and Brittany, a Cornish remote ancestor is not all that unlikely - somewhere well pastward of Alan fitzFlaald, Sheriff of Shropshire.

I agree Private User. Well I feel left out (not really) so just want to say he is my 7th cousin 9 times removed and I am 43% Scottish. :)

9/27/2020 at 10:36 PM

They say Brittany was called Armorica in Roman times, and acquired the name Little Britain in the Dark Ages as a result of immigration from Devon and Cornwall following the economic collapse in Britain in the 5th century.

9/27/2020 at 10:40 PM

Keri - you're a lot more Scottish than Bonnie Prince Charlie then. He had hardly a drop of Scottish blood.

Yep I think so but I am also just as much English Brian Johnson

8/1/2022 at 2:31 AM

As any true Scientist will tell you.... DNA in most cases is unreliable, at best, after 4 or 5 generations (roughly 100-120 years).. after 5 generations, the new influx of genes amounts to approximately 105 new set of chromosones, that is quite a new mixture... after 10 generations the new mix amounts to more than 1050 new sets.... after nearly 1000 years as is the case here with Flaaid fitz Flaaid.... the new influx amounts to close to 4000 new genetic combinations....................hardly a reliable statistic.

Private User
8/1/2022 at 7:04 AM

Charles, you are talking about autosomal DNA, which is only one of the three general types of DNA used in genealogical research.

Y-DNA traces male-to-male-to-male, and is reasonably accurate within historical times (but it won't show you any female ancestors).

mtDNA traces female-to-female-to-female with even greater accuracy for longer than that, but won't show any male ancestors.

You'll sometimes hear people screaming about the reliability of Y-DNA - they are usually people who have had a cherished piece of family lore disproven by a Y-DNA mismatch, so of course they don't want to believe it.

Both Y and mtDNA are limited to direct-line-only (which means there are ancestors they can miss), and are vulnerable to discontinuities - Y more than mt, because maternity is usually a given, while paternity may not be so obvious.

The most famous, and frustrating, case of Y-DNA mismatch in recent years is Richard III versus the five Somerset cousins. On paper they should have all matched, being stipulated as all descendants of Edward III. In the lab, not only did *none* of the Somersets match Richard, but one of the five didn't match the other four!

Seems there was hanky-panky in at last two places, one relatively recent (the odd-one-out Somerset) and one or more - who knows where, when or whom?

8/3/2022 at 2:43 AM

The latter part I can relate to.... simply because my siblings and I share the same parents... however between them and me there is no DNA of any type that matches whether of the Y or the mt.....nothing matches between me and them... I match my parents to a degree as do they, but out Make-up, genetically, is completely different...the Y and the mt DNA are good PROVIDING those genes are passed from one generation to the other... but one cannot be guaranteed they will be passed.

I'm not saying DNA is not a reliable source.... only to a degree it is.... genetically I can, for example, can be traced to my parents.. I have markers of both.... my siblings are the same... However, we have no genetics markers, no DNA, that relate us....so I don't think one can determine "hanky panky" based on a mis-match of siblings... we fhad a family scientist friend do the testing... not once... but thrice.....based on your theory, I would be either adopted or one of my parents cheated on the other.....neither of which is the case.

If what you are telling me is accurate, then you are telling me that (be that male-to-male, female-to-female, male-to-female or female-to-male) the same genetic marker is passed down from generation to generation, without skipping one member, for over 600 years? Given the influx of new genes and markers each generation, the likelihood that will happen diminishes with each generation

And though I comprehend completely what you are saying, I stand firm that far too many people put faith lock, stock and barrel in DNA testing when there are so many additional factors involved. I DNA to be a guide but not a where-with-all.......if what you are saying is completely true then my mother would have HAD to have cheated on my father.... and that never happened nor did he ever cheat on her.......based on my tests, my siblings,none of the three tests are a guarantee..... a guide yes, a guarantee? No.

Private User
8/3/2022 at 8:33 AM

Looks like you may be an example of the *extremely* rare phenomenon where one sibling got a completely different "deal" of genes than the other(s). If all your siblings are sisters and no brothers, that might explain the "no Y-DNA match" - women simply don't have a Y chromosome to receive or pass on. (On the other hand, many autosomal tests just don't look for Y chromosomes or mitochondrial information, so that's another possibility.)

The reason Y- DNA works for distant line testing is that it is passed down *on the Y chromosome only*, and is *never* involved in any remixing *at any time* - the only way it can change at all is by internal mutation (which is sometimes used to bracket approximately where one male line branched off from the parent stock, if there are enough male descendants to test). But the mutation rate averages somewhere around one step per century.

mt(mitochondrial)DNA is passed down on the maternal X chromosome *only* and is never remixed either. It has an even slower mutation rate (hardly at all in a millennium), which makes it useful for detecting remote ancestry but not so much for the kind of bracketing that's possible with Y-DNA.

Due to the method of transmission, neither Y nor mtDNA can "skip a generation". On the other hand, any break in same gender transmission will "lose" that information (e.g. all daughters and no sons means no Y-DNA passed on, while all sons and no daughters mans no mtDNA passed on). Otherwise, yes they can be passed on with little change for centuries and even millennia. A particular flavor of the Y-DNA haplotype R1b (R-M269) is associated with Niall of the Nine Hostages (fl. circa 4th century AD), but molecular studies indicated that it didn't originate with him - there was already a small(?) kin-group carrying the same haplotype.

To date various peerage and royal lineages in Europe have been investigated and identified - most of them, including the Bourbons of France, have turned out to be some variation of R-M269, which is very common all across Western Europe. (The Bourbons were a headscratcher and a disappointment to some theorists who believed, partly on the basis of some previous tests which turned out to be flawed, that the French royal haplotype "should" be G. On the other hand, the first of the Bourbon kings, Henri IV, was only ninth cousin to the last of the Valois kings, so the Capet-Valois question remains open.)

The Stuarts not only were another flavor of R-M269, there were enough volunteering descendants to start bracketing which line stemmed from whom. (It's not common to have that many available and willing.)

Discovery and identification of the remains of Richard III under that car park raised hopes of identifying the "Plantagenet Y-DNA" type - but since that depends on confirmation from living collaterals (Richard had no surviving children), and since the Tudors had done a wholesale job of eliminating male and even some female Plantagenet claimants, those hopes were dashed. (Richard turned out to be haplotype G, four Somersets were the ubiquitous R1b, and the fifth was an I.) Who *wasn't* whose "baby daddy" is a popular exercise in speculation - there's really only one possible "iffy" link on Richard's side (his paternal grandfather), while the Somerset side is rife with them, starting with John of Gaunt himself (who was rumored in his own time to have been illegitimate, a rumor which seriously annoyed him all his life) and continuing down the line.

Unfortunately there is zero chance of acquiring any ancestral DNA from John of Gaunt - his tomb and everything in it burned up in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Next-best bet would be the notorious "Princes in the Tower" (Richard's nephews), but the Crown has nixed any further investigation of those remains. Other options remain contingent on *finding* male Plantagenet remains in good enough condition - which hasn't happened yet.

A while back there were some hopes of detecting the Y-DNA haplotype of the old Dukes of Normandy and thus of William the Conqueror (which wouldn't help with the Plantagenets, as he was *not* a direct male-line ancestor), but the investigation was foiled because at some unknown time someone had played shell-and-pea with the Ducal remains, and the body in the sarcophagus wasn't who it was supposed to be.

We're not *sure* what the actual "royal Tudor" haplotype was (no lineal male descendants, no available ancestral DNA), but it is likely to have been yet another version of R-M269, as most (admittedly distant) collaterals have turned out to be that type.

To date no male Hanoverian descendants have volunteered for testing, so we don't know about them either.

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