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5.0 Genetic Genealogy, DNA Assessment
As I said in the introduction, there are currently at least 26,000 persons in the Netherlands that go by the surname Brouwer. This makes up about 0.15% of the 16.5 million population. They are widely distributed but with a concentration in the Amsterdam area of North Holland. The vast majority of these people are not genetically related within a genealogical time frame, either to each other or to our single family of interest, Jan Brouwer of Flatlands. The reason for this is that in 1811 Napoleon forced all inhabitants to register with a surname: According to the decree, in part: “Those of our subjects of the Departments of the former Holland… who until now have not had fixed surnames and given names, must adopt them during the year, and declare them before the officers of the civil registry… where they reside…
Those having known surnames… will be excepted. They who wish to conserve their names will nevertheless be required to declare them.”
Some family names were related to personal qualities, personal appearance, towns or regions of origin, or occupation at the time, i.e. -- “brouwer” -- nothing really to do with their ancestral lineage, and in the 1600s the “patronymic” system, where the father’s first name became the son’s last name, had begun to turn into surnames. In 1811 They were allowed to maintain these if they desired. So finding a relation to Jan Brouwer in today’s Netherlands based solely on the name Brouwer is an impossible undertaking. How then can we sample the population and filter out the vast majority; find some that are in fact genetically related to Jan and then attempt to trace their genealogical line back to a common ancestor? Hoping, thus, to locate their family origin, the town, village, or region that Jan and Jannetje left from when they came to America in 1657. And even more ambitious, from that information, try to find even earlier ancestors. Isn’t it in fact a Quixotic undertaking? It will be difficult. Nevertheless, let’s begin.
5.1 Exploiting Jan Brouwer’s Genetic haplotype signature and Haplogroup I2b1. Having collected matching Y-DNA samples from 22 participants in the Brewer Surname DNA project, most of whom trace their line of descent to Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, we are able to determine the ancestral DNA signature of Jan and discover his haplogroup: I2b1. See the 22 sample markers at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/BrewerDNA/default.aspx?section=yresults and the explanation of Haplotype and Haplogroup provided on the Haplogroup12B1c page. Having determined the genetic signature of Jan Brouwer, it is simple to determine if anyone in europe with the surname Brouwer, or a variant, is related to Jan Brouwer of Flatlands by comparing their DNA signature with his. They must first of all match haplogroup I2b1. Then they must match his full 37 marker signature (his haplotype) to within 3 markers, i.e. match 34 out of 37 markers.
Haplogroup Distribution chart for I2: I2b is about 13,000 years old. The branches I2b1a and I2b1b diverged about 3,000 years ago in Britain and northern Germany. It is somewhat more rare in the Netherlands and Frisia where the dominant halogroup is R1b. See chart below which estimates the distribution of I2b some 2000 years ago.
I2b in Northern Germany is shown along the border of the Netherlands and Frisia which is marked in the center of the chart by the dominant haplogroup R-S21 (which stands for R1b-S21 a defining mutation that occurred 3,000 years ago either in Frisia or Central Europe). This is an advantage for us, because with I2b being relatively rare, it is easier to filter out the majority of Brouwer families that have R1b from our I2b1b with a less expensive Y-DNA test involving only 12 markers. If the 12 marker test shows the correct haplogroup, and those 12 markers match Jan Brouwer, only then is it necessary to increase the number of markers to 37 to decide if a truly related descendant has been located.
Distribution chart ref:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml,
5.2 The Netherlands Y-DNA project: This is a FTDNA hosted project found at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Netherlands/default.aspx?section=yresults The Group Administrator of the project, Yme Drost e-mail y.drost@home.nl welcomes both men and women with bloodlines in the Netherlands. The Goals are stated as “the mapping of the various (sub) haplogroups in the Netherlands and their interconnectedness. The reconstruction of family relationships is included therein.” There are 134 participants in the project, and the majority are, as would be expected, various sub groups of haplogroups “R”. There are currently six participants with I2b or I2b1 (~ 4%), but no Brouwer surnames, even though Brouwer is a very common (too common) surname in the Netherlands. There are five participants (lines 55 to 59) with Haplogroup I2b1, including myself Kit 44994 on line 59. I am the only Brouwer in the I2b1 group, and none have a matching haplotype signature--mismatching by 4 out of the first 12 markers. There is only one other Brouwer ancestor in the project (see line 81) but his Haplogroup is R1b1b2. The project itself is a valuable source of attracting “random” participants from all over the Netherlands and so may pick up Brouwers with a match to Jan Brouwer in the future.
5.3 Friesland and Frisian isles: There is another FTDNA hosted project in the Netherlands called the Frisian Waddenproject at:http://www.familytreedna.com/public/friesewadden/default.aspx?section=yresults The Group Administrator is Wibo Boswijk e-mail w.g.boswijk@planet.nl The project goal is to see who lived in Friesland and the Frisian isles around the Waddensea. There are currently 63 participants but there are no participants with matches to the Jan Brouwer haplogroup I2b1, excluding myself. There are 19 participants with haplogroup I1. The majority are once again found to be “R” haplotypes. According to Wibo, Haplogroup I1 seems to be most common in the northeastern part of Friesland but there are far too few participants to make that a scientific statement. R1b seems to be 50% of the Netherlands and “I” about 33%. “I2” seems less common. Price and questions about privacy keep genealogist in the Netherlands from DNA testing so there is not yet a large database of results.
As I have discussed earlier, Mr. Wibo Boswijk has been indispensable and extremely helpful in assisting my research into Jan Brouwer’s possible origins in Vlieland/Frieland. Wibo has asked Kees Stada, a genealogist and active promoter of Wibo’s DNA project who has a large database on all the inhabitants of the Wadden Islands, to check for Brouwer families of Vlieland or the Waddensea islands. It is hoped we can find living members of the Brouwer families willing to be tested for Y-DNA. After 1825 there no longer seems to be any Brouwers in Vlieland. The last one was apparently Jantje Ellertsz Brouwer, (born 1753) and overleden deceased12 maart March 1825, 71 jaaryear, vrouw married wife. On the other hand, in the islands of Ameland, Texel, and Terschelling the name still seems to be common. One of the problems with the name Brouwer is that it became a common frisian family name primarily after 1811 when Napoleon ordered everybody to choose a surname. And what could be simpler than to choose your own profession? Given there were many, many breweries on the islands, very few of these Brouwers were actually related genetically.
Another source of Friesland DNA is reported in the article “Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration Mol. Biol. Evol. 19(7):1008–1021. 2002 - 2002 by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. ISSN: 0737-4038 Faculteit Biologie, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.” The researchers collected DNA samples from 94 males in Friesland (northern Netherlands). They included an additional 177 samples collected in Friesland and Norway. The markers defined seven haplogroups and 150 haplotypes. The highest frequency in Friesland is what they designated as hg 1 == R1a. The Frisians tested fell into the following haplogroups: in Hpg 1 == R1a {20 ea. representing 55%} , Hpg 2 ==BR* (xDE,JR) {23 ea. representing 34%}; hpg 3 ==R1a1 { 7 ea. }, Hpg 9 == ‘J’ {1ea.}. Hpg 21 {1 ea.} NOTE: Jan’s Haplogroup “I” didn’t show up. While none of the surnames were reported, it hardly matters. Even if they were named Brouwer, they would not be related. When we compare the individual marker data provided by these researchers with that of the ancestral haplotype of Johannes Brouwer we find the following results for six markers (4 genetic distance mismatches in just six markers). Jan Brouwer’s results are compared in red. (DYS19 =14 [Jan=15], DYS388 =13 [Jan = 13] DYS390 = 24 [Jan = 23] , DYS391 = 10 [Jan = 10] , DYS392 = 12[ Jan = 12] DYS393 = 13 [Jan =15] ) None of these provide a significant relationship to Jan Brouwer.
Concluding thoughts: As noted in the above mentioned DNA sites, there have been only 374 persons from the Netherlands with Y-DNA signatures made publicly available -- or rather, that I have been able to find. That is a pathetic sampling of the current population of the Netherlands, which is 16.5 million. In addition, there have been no Y-DNA submitted from those with the Brouwer surname -- out of 26,000 (~0.15% of the population). We have a long way to go before getting signatures of the Brouwer families, and if the statistics of the haplogroups is correctly estimated, maybe only 4% of any signatures we do acquire from Brouwer participants will be of the correct I2b1 haplogroup and therefore to even be considered as a potential Jan Brouwer descendant. It looks like pretty long odds in front of us. However, to put things into perspective, there are about 104,000 people in the U.S. with surname Brewer (about 0.042% of the population) and the Brewer surname project has tested only133 Brewer individuals (0.13 %), of which, because of strong genealogical data assisting us, 22 (16%) are genetically related to Jan Brouwer. If the Netherlands DNA projects were equal in attracting Brouwers, we might acquire (.0013 * 26,000) = 34 Brouwers tested and 4% of those might indeed be the single relation we seek (.04 * 34 ~ 1). Daunting numbers to reflect on. One can not rely on random participation of Brouwers in the DNA programs to produce results. It is clear that standard genealogical search is necessary to improve the odds and then we can use DNA to validate what may only be conjectured from paper trails. Because there were only 2 million inhabitants in the Netherlands in the 1600-1700 period, if the same proportion of the population then (0.15%) were Brouwers, there were only about 3,000 Brouwers in all of the Netherlands, with fewer in Friesland or Amsterdam, (Today there are about 2,500 in Amsterdam alone out of the city population of 739,000, but in 1652 the population of Amsterdam was only 170,000 -- with perhaps fewer than 100 Brouwers) so maybe the genealogical search might have better luck -- at least eliminating or filtering out from the total those that do not reasonably match what we know of Jan Brouwer (dates, age, marriage, daughter, etc.).
5.4 A Quick First Look at German DNA
The German Y-DNA Project at http://www.german-dna.net/Germany%20Project%20Results%20by%20Haplogroup%20-%20I.htm is a large collection from all over Germany. This genetic genealogy project for German (Deutsch) ancestry is open to any direct male Y-DNA with earliest known ancestry source within Germany. The goals are to assemble in a public place a region/area grouped and sorted representation of German ancestral DNA and associated surnames and haplogroups for genetic genealogy purposes. This site was created on 3 Dec 2005.
The largest haplogroup frequency is R1b with 49% of the participants. Haplogroup “I” is next with 20%. I reviewed Haplogroups I2b and I2b1, with a total of 51 persons.
None have the surname Brouwer, Brauer or variants.
It has been suggested, for example by Harry Macy, Jr., of the NYG&B, that since Jan does not appear on record with a patronymic there is a good chance that he was German rather than Dutch in origin. While it is true that in 17th century Netherlands the patronymic tradition was used extensively, still, it does not lead to the conclusion that Jan was not Dutch. Using a patronymic only has meaning when there is a chance of mixing people up. So with the common name Jan you certainly need a patronymic in every town. And with a common family name like Brouwer and there are, for example, cousins in the same region, you still need your patronymic. However, when you emigrate to a region where your name is more specific you can easily drop the patronymic. The fact that records in New Amsterdam fail to reflect a patronymic really doesn't say anything about being Dutch. If he were Jan Jansen Brouwer in the Netherlands, he just didn't need his patronymic in New Amsterdam. None the less, it is reasonable to maintain an open mind about his possible origins and at least explore the German conjecture.
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The search for the european origins of Jan Brouwer of Flatlands continues .........
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