Isaac Hickman, Progenitor of "Jewish Choctaws" - I don't see any evidence of Jewish background on this profile

Unfortunately, DNA Consultants and Donald Panther Yates, have been shown to be mistaken about the claim that the Melungeons had Jewish ancestry. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon

"...The paper on the Melungeon DNA Project, published by Paul Heinegg, Jack Goins, and Roberta Estes in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, shows that ancestry of the sample is primarily European and African, with only one person having a Native American paternal haplotype. There is no genetic evidence to support the Turkish or Jewish ancestry theories.[5]..."

Yates writes about the Choctaws and his "Jewish" ancestors in https://dnaconsultants.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Jewish-Indian.... If he is the source of the Jewish Choctaw information, I would be very careful.

I see mtDNA referenced on Isaac Hickman's profile. mtDNA mutates very slowly, thus a very diverse set of modern descendants may be in the same mtDNA haplogroup, with their shared ancestor 10,000 years ago. I would not rely on mtDNA evidence as proof of someone being Jewish unless their subgroup was a known recent Jewish subgroup.

So can you be more explicit about what the sources are and what is the basis for the claim for this gentleman? There were few Jews in the Americans in the 17th century, the first likely being in Recife, Brazil.

As far as the J1 mtDNA claim goes:

Within Europe, >2% frequency distribution of mtDNA J is as follows:[11]

J* = Ireland — 12%, England-Wales — 11%, Scotland — 9%, Orkney — 8%, Germany — 7%, Russia (European) — 7%, Iceland — 7%, Austria-Switzerland — 5%, Finland-Estonia — 5%, Spain-Portugal — 4%, France-Italy — 3%

J1a = Austria-Switzerland — 3%

J1b1 = Scotland — 4%

As far as the autosomal DNA claim goes, due to recombination, there would be no trace of Jewish DNA inherited by living descendants after 200 - 250 years maximum, especially since they would be marrying out from the early 1700s forward. I have this straight from the mouth of Bennett Grinspan, CEO of Family Tree DNA, at a conference in New Mexico a few years ago.

Also, as far as mtDNA goes, a large percentage of the mtDNA found in Ashkenazi Jewish people tested derives not from Near Eastern but from European women. In the Middle Ages Jewish traders came into Europe from the Near East unaccompanied and married local women.

But again, a J1 mtDNA is in no way indicative of having had a "recent" Jewish ancestor, or any Jewish ancestor for that matter. The ancestor likely lived well before there was a Jewish religion.

Private - Have you read my comments fully? I am referring to the Overview (About) of the profile of Isaac Hickman which cites mtDNA J1 and autosomal DNA as evidence of Jewish ancestry.

Now you are talking about Y-DNA which is not the same thing as in the profile of this person.

As for the Y-DNA haplogroup J, millions of non-Jewish individuals from all over Western Europe and elsewhere fall into this haplogroup due to the ancient Near Eastern people having migrated into Europe. These people came to Europe before there was a Jewish religion or a Jewish people.

You will have to give very detailed and persuasive Y-DNA evidence to convince anyone of the claim that this man was Jewish, much more than what has been presented so far. I'm listening. I do a lot of research into Y-DNA of Jewish families myself and would love to hear your evidence, but it needs to be actual evidence of belonging to a known Jewish subgroup of a Y-DNA haplogroup, not vague statements.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by "their atDNA to Brazil which is a C-1 West Asian". atDNA is inherited from both the mother and the father and it does not go back much more than 200 years and is not "typed" so C-1 and West Asian seem to be misused in your statement.

David - I'll look for it.

From: https://www.carolana.com/SC/Counties/History_of_Williamsburg_W_W_Bo...

About Williamsberg early settlers: "Practically all of the original settlers in Williamsburg Township were of the Congregational or Presbyterian
faith and their exceeding enthusiasm was shown in the promotion of Presbyterian principles. Although many of them inclined to the Church of Scotland as "reformed" by John Calvin and John Knox, yet in heart they were adherents of the untouched ancient doctrines..."

William, Sarah, and Mary's baptisms are recorded in "The
Register Book for the Parish Prince Frederick Winyaw," which can be found online.

Here is the Overview section:

Team N8V Interviews - Decade of 2010-2020 Summary:
A few descendant lines from Isaac Hickman were known locally as the "Jewish Choctaw"in the area of Bogue Chitto and over to West Poplarville, MS. The Bok Chito clan of which was the fil Montubby line went to Oklahoma Choctaw Nation and the ones left in the Bogue Chitto area of La/MS (West lower side of MS) and are still generationally descendants known to continuej in low numbers, in MS. We followed the Spurgeon/Holden community story of the transfer community that ended up in SC together, as a group from UK to Westroners and then to SC's, The Edisto Natchez Tribe, et al, in part, hailed from the first synagogue community in England but protected by the Poyntz blue bloods whose Spurgeon community was also supportive of translator Tyndale and hid him so he could get his translation of the Bible done; but, the offending parties caught up with him in the Netherlands and killed him. This was a group in England connected to the Spurgeon family and also to the supported group for the first and still remaining synogogue, the oldest continuous in England. Some of this line became Methodist ministers. This group's atdna studies are able to explain their customs with their J1 mtdna groups' and the trace amounts are usually tied to the Finish Trace Amounts that show on the majority of this group as they picked up Yakut from the Force Labor Movement of 1730 out of New Sweeden and this group then picked up Natives along the way enroute to Indian Territory area of the Western Choctaw Div. enumerated by Douglas Cooper on his 1855 rolls as the Pearl River Clan of the Bogue Chitto band. There is quite a mix of Pentecostal-Jewish-AnaBaptist ways of this group to this day.

You can see how this is confusing. Who is this talking about??

The fundamental problem I'm seeing is that, based on the sources added today, the profile is relying on oral statements by people living in the 21st Century. (And we don't know who the interviewees are, when the interviews were conducted, under what format, etc. -- was it documented and done in accordance with best practices?)

Oral history 331 years removed from a person's birth can be noted -- the profile could say something like "Some descendants today hold a belief that this person was of Jewish origin; here's a link to the full oral history report, which conforms to oral history best practices because X," etc. etc. -- but we can't treat it as fact. So if there are no actual documented sources for this assertion, we'll need to do something like that with this profile -- just say it's one theory, it has no documentation, but some people (again: who, where, how?) assert it.

For what it's worth, Barnett Elzas made no mention of Hickman in his The Jews of South Carolina, and he was much closer to the time period than people giving oral interviews today were. So that has to be considered as well.

It's not impossible that Isaac Hickman had Jewish ancestry, it's just unlikely, given that he settled early in Williamsburg with a predominantly Congregational and Presbyterian group of settlers and baptized his children (documented in a primary source).

DNA evidence, and I can't tell from David's comments or from the Overview, if such DNA evidence exists, cannot be relied upon unless there is a descendant of Isaac Hickman whose genetic distance in a major Y-DNA test is very close to a known Jewish men. By major Y-DNA test I mean done by a reputable company and preferred the Big Y test.

Autosomal DNA tests are not helpful here, since no or very little autosomal DNA will remain after 331 years.

mtDNA is also not helpful since the shared ancestor would be thousands of years in the past, if not 10,000 years.

Going to tag Erin Ishimoticha just in case she wants to weigh in. (No expectations, Erin! Just a courtesy tag.)

I am completely striking out with finding any scholarly articles, published genealogies, or other resources mentioning Jewish Choctaws from that era. Elzes and other scholars have done amazing work for more than a century regarding the Jewish history of South Carolina, and yet a Choctaw connection has seemingly never come up.

Also striking out with finding anything about an Edisto Natchez Tribe having connections to a synagogue in England.

Pointing out one other thing, then I'll stop for now.

The citations list is impossibly vague. For example, one citation is "Tulane Library's book on Acolapissa Choctaw" -- which book? The Tulane University Libraries' catalogue says they don't have one. There are no Tulane journals mentioning the Acolapissa. WorldCat shows no books in any library in the world from Tulane University Press about the Acolapissa. What's the actual title?

Good morning, all. It looks like the profile has been significantly updated since last night.

I'm going to draw attention to the new list of sources in particular. Here's what we're now showing:

Community Study Summary as of 2020. - Decade of 23andMe Results by 100 AM State Paper Spanish Land Grant Claimant Cousins.

Bogue Chito Community atDna Study - DNA Detectives' Tushanna Corkern, Isogg Standard Genetic Genealogist.

Choctaw Genesis, a Nebraska Publisher, a current book that references a no longer published book in the Tulane Louisiana Room, the book highlighted how this groups' earlier language was influenced in the Bok Chito clan. (You will not find it on an online catalogue).

Tulanes' Jewish Studies Program should refer to the work of the following.

Local Community Interviews in decade of 2010 - 20 by Rachelle Roby, team lead of 100s who helped.

Ceremonial Studies Summary by Team N8V, 2016. (You won't find it anywhere but right here, as a summary).

For the first two, where can we see those studies? DNA Detectives is CeCe Moore's organization. The only references to them having a researcher named Tushanna Corkern are on Geni profiles. I find no publications under Corkern's name.

For Choctaw Genesis, Patricia Galloway's book doesn't mention Hickman. It has two passing mentions (p. 156; p. 291) to the Acolapissa being neighbors of the Choctaw; it says the name "Acolapissa" and nothing more. There is one minor, clearly metaphorical mention (p. 334) of how the Choctaw migration led by two brothers was like that of the Jews leaving Egypt led by two brothers. It does not mention Tulane, its library, or a book being in it; it includes Tulane nowhere in the citations. So basically, there is nothing in Choctaw Genesis that is relevant to Isaac Hickman or his background. (I own the book as a full PDF, but I'm linking the Google Books page since that's free to everyone and you can use the text search tool there.) Which specific page number is being cited?

For the Tulane's Jewish Studies program reference, I'm not quite sure what that means. It's a 14-person department -- who there is referring to what here? For what it's worth, their American Jewish Studies website makes no mention of Hickman or the Choctaw.

Who/what is is Team N8V? I find no reference to them anywhere. Where are there studies available?

For "You won't find it anywhere but here" -- then any information from that source is not usable. A valid oral history must be accessible to all parties, with transcripts (at bare minimum) and/or full recordings (preferred) available in a public repository. We don't have that here, not even remotely. And again, even if we did, it's 331 years later, well beyond the point where oral history can be treated as factual, especially when no scholars of Jewish South Carolina have ever identified Hickman or Jewish Choctaws as a subject.

David, before you update the profile again, please engage in the conversation here. Open collaboration will help us avoid issues like this. Thanks.

Hatte noted the issue with DNA Consultants above. Where is Corkern's study published?

I look forward to reading the study and seeing how Corkern was able to pinpoint a trace amount of (I'm assuming Jewish and Native American?) projected ethnicity that far back.

I can ask the Southeastern Louisiana University library about any oral histories they have in their collection, but since I assume they're properly cited in Corkern's study, I'll wait until we see that.

I would like to see the autosomal DNA claims because they are quite unusual. I deal all the time with people having trace amounts of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA, like 2%, and occasionally with a paper trail and significant research they are able to identify a Jewish great great grandparent.

This is different it seems, but I'd have to see the discussion of the DNA results to understand. Are they saying that all the people in the study had a slight percent of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA and they were able to trace the Hickman branch to Jewish people in England based on matches with descendants of those people? I bet not and if not, I have never heard of being able to claim being Jewish based on a trace amount of "Ashkenazi Jewish DNA" without having such an explanation. Trace amounts are often said to be artifacts of the vagaries of current statistical methods and population databases.

Even if they do share DNA, it's exceedingly difficult to pinpoint the origin of shared DNA when you are talking about three centuries. There are just many possible sources for the shared DNA.

I see the sources have changed again. We now show:

Community Study Summary as of 2020. - Decade of 23andMe Results by 100 AM State Paper Spanish Land Grant Claimant Cousins.

Bogue Chito Community atDna Study - DNA Detectives' Tushanna Corkern, Isogg Standard Genetic Genealogist.

Choctaw Genesis, a Nebraska Publisher, a current book that references a no longer published book in the Tulane Louisiana Room, the book highlighted how this groups' earlier language was influenced in the Bok Chito clan. (You will not find it on an online catalogue).

Tulanes' Jewish Studies Program should refer to the work of the following.

Local Community Interviews in decade of 2010 - 20 by Rachelle Roby, team lead of 100s who helped.

Ceremonial Studies Summary by Team N8V, 2016. (You won't find it anywhere but right here, as a summary, not taking the time to get Research Releases from all the current participants as 23andMe does the work for the trace comparisons and does the triangulations and the 1st - 5th cousins are not publishing their results at this time. ).

1) As I've already pointed out, I own the Choctaw Genesis book and it does not talk about Hickman, Jews, Acolapissa, Bok Chito, or anything else relevant here. Which pages are being cited?

2) Corkern does not work for DNA Detectives and there is no ISOGG-compliant study published anywhere that I can find attributed to them. If there is no published study, it cannot be cited. Autosomal DNA matches on 23andMe do not constitute a DNA study. A study is something that is published, shares its methodology, shares its dataset, etc. If the participants don't want to be part of a public data set, that's totally their right -- but it means any fruit from that tree isn't usable on Geni.

3) Anything like Team N8V's work that is not able to be shared cannot be cited. We can't do collaborative genealogy on a collaborative website if the information cannot be collaboratively shared.

4) Roby's interviews, if publicly available and meeting the field standards for oral history, could be used to support a statement in the profile along the lines of, "There are some descendants today who believe their ancestor came from the Jewish and Choctaw communities." But without those interviews being available, we can't even do that. And again, accounts from people in the 21st Century don't help us much when someone was born in the 17th Century.

We seem to be left with no viable sources for this profile and no evidence for the information on it. If we can't address these points, we need to remove this information from the profile and from those downstream of it.

Private, you said: "The SEU library interviews are on an online database and able to be heard." Excellent -- please share the link. I looked on the SEU library website and didn't find them.

Hey, you know what? I actually get to correct myself!

Choctaw Genesis actually does mention Bok Chitto -- it just uses the spelling "Bogue Chitto." But it doesn't talk about the community or anything like that; it's just an etymological reference to the name.

And! I had missed quick mentions of the Acolapissas on pp. 188-189, p. 203, and p. 310, basically just listing them as people in the region. But nothing remotely relevant to the profile in question.

So this is extra reason why we need the page number. I might miss it otherwise. ;)

Private -- I'm asking one final time that you please stop editing the profile without discussing first. Your unexplained changes are making it even harder to sort out what's going on here and what to do with the profile and its relationships.