Anglesey Bone Setters DNA Project
Prosiect DNA Meddygon Esgyrn Môn
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A project part-funded by the Welsh
Government's Sustainable Development Fund
via Anglesey County
Council's Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Office
One
dark, stormy night about 1743, a ship is said to have become
wrecked off the treacherous north Anglesey coast.
The only survivors of that wreck, rescued by a local smuggler
named Dannie Lukie, were two boys of about 11 years old.
They were said to speak an unknown language.
Where had they come from?
The geographical origins of the boys has long
been a mystery, with notions of a Spanish nationality
commonly found, theorising that they may have been in
transit to or from Scotland during the Jacobite rebellion of
1745.
One of the boys - given the name Matthew by locals, died
soon after his rescue. The other, now named Evan
Thomas by his adoptive family in Llanfairynghornwy,
flourished and demonstrated a remarkable ability at healing
the broken bones of animals. Evan later applied his
great skill to human bones, and became much sought-after by
the common people and gentry alike. Evan's later
descendants became fully-qualified doctors and spawned a new
branch of medicine we now call orthopaedics. A useful
summary of the various sons and their professions can be
found
here.
A BBC 'Coast' video clip giving the
background to the bone setters story can be viewed here
(please scroll to 'extract 3'.)
Origins - The Evidence
There is no surviving record of the geographical origins
of Evan Thomas. The most widely-held belief has
always been of a Spanish origin, and the historical events
of the period, coupled to a foreign language might lend
some credibility to this. But it is far from
conclusive. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office
has no record of a shipwreck within a 5 mile radius (about
78 square miles) of the Skerries, the area where the wreck
was said to have occurred. However, the UKHO staff
kindly supplied information to this project from a book
that showed a record of two wrecks between the period of
1730 and 1745. One is of a 'Barbadoes Packet' in
1743. The other, rather tantalisingly, is of a
'sailing ship, unidentified, probably Spanish'. The
frustrating thing is, we have no means of knowing for sure
on what basis that presumption of being 'probably Spanish'
was made. Was it due to the type of ship, or simply
down to the expectation of considerable Spanish shipping
in the area at the time? And, of course,
simply being a passenger on a Spanish ship didn't
necessarily mean the boys were themselves Spanish.
It is notable, from a reliability of historical accounts
point of view, that a book about the bone setters, written
in the 1930s, is specific in saying the boys were not of a
dark complexion. Yet, by today, almost all modern
accounts have it that they did have a dark
complexion! The disagreement seems to stem simply
from a misreading or a 'wishful' reading of the book's
text!
Until this project's initial findings in 2011, there was
no hard evidence for where Evan Thomas and Matthew came
from. Now we have a rapidly-developing picture -
based on scientific evidence - that makes a
Spanish/Iberian origin increasingly unlikely.
DNA - Unlocking the Past
Today, the analysis of genetic information has
developed very quickly into a sophisticated and reliable
means of uncovering all sorts of information about
humans and their origins. From just one cheek
swab, we can work out the route that a person's remote
ancestors took in their long journey out of the cradle
of civilisation in Africa.
But DNA analysis can tell
us the more recent story of a person's genetic
origins. In particular, the Y-chromosome, encoding
the instructions for the male sex, is a permanent record
of mutations in the DNA, passed down largely unchanged
from father to son.
First Step - Finding a Living Male Descendant
For this project to have any chance of success, we had
to find a living, direct male descandant of Evan Thomas,
the shipwreck survivor. This was to be a difficult
task, admirably undertaken to the highest standards of
proof by Helen Osborn of Osborn Family
Research.
After a few months of examining wills and various birth,
death and marriage certificates, Helen was able to provide
the first names of direct descandants who were likely to
be still alive today. The final detective work
involved contacting members of the family who were likely
to have knowledge of the whearabouts of this
descendant. Sure enough, within 24 hours of
contacting the family, we were visiting Mr. Thomas David
('Dafydd') Evans in Moelfre, Anglesey to tell him all
about this project! For those who wonder about
the surname of today's descendant being Evans and not
Thomas, this is a result of the historical way in which
sons were named after their father in Wales. So, for
example, Richard, son of Evan Thomas became Richard ap
Evan, which becomed the more modern version of Richard
Evans. In Nordic countries, this principle gives
rise to, for example, Peterson (son of Peter) and
Eiriksdottir (daughter of Eirik).
Next Step - Sampling and Analysing
Descendant Y-Chromosome DNA
Our direct male descendant, 'Dafydd' Evans, kindly
provided saliva samples for the initial DNA analysis and
for more detailed analysis, blood samples taken with the
kind assistance of Dr. Dyfrig ap Dafydd of Meddygfa Coed y
Glyn Surgery, Llangefni. Comparisons with Dafydd's
second cousin, Dr. Richard Anwyl Evans of NSW, Australia
were also undertaken. The initial science outcomes
are detailed in the report, below.
Latest Project News
9/10/ 2011 The
project receives excellent coverage
by BBC Wales
October 2011
Following a blood sample being taken during spring, 2011,
a full sequencing (reading) of Dafydd's Y chromosome DNA
has been undertaken by Illumina partners, Macrogen of
Seoul, South Korea. The data has just been received
(end of October 2011) by Dr. Wilson on a hard disk drive
containing an uncompressed data volume of some 300
gigabytes! 43 new markers have been
found. The data continues to be analysed and
compared with sequences from the target geographic area to
narrow-down further the likely point of origin - and
possibly even the original family surname - of Evan
Thomas. Curernt indications are that the DNA we have
is very rare amongst existing genetic databases.