Nov 10

I had my DNA tested a few months ago, using the Paternal Lineage Y-46 method through Ancestry.com. I compared my results to some info I found on the Frisian peoples and to a couple of other individuals who joined my Fonda DNA Group on Ancestry.com. There is not yet enough DNA data to find any direct relatives, and the test only applies to males using the Y-chromosome method. I know there is mitochondrial DNA testing which works with the female DNA components, but of course genealogy is based on male heredity.  Note: I have now entered my data in GeneTree, Y-Search, and SMGF which are all free access.

From what little I know so far it seems that it is a question of probabilities, because every geographic or ethnic area has a mix of different genetic types (haplogroups). If I were to make a strict interpretation of my (our) DNA profile, being Haplogroup I1, widely known as Anglo-Saxon… as opposed to the predominant Frisian DNA profile, being Haplogroup R1b, widely known as Basque… I would say that we were not indigenous to Northern Holland, at least not as far back as the main Frisian population.

Jan Van Goyen (1596-1656) – River Landscape With Fishermen

This is consistent with all that we have known, since tradition holds that the Fonda’s were not native Dutch… and lends support to the latest theory presented in the new book, “Famous Frisians in America” on pages 111-112, which states that:

“This means that the trail leading to the origins of the name Fonda ends in Eagum. In the Genealogysk Jierboek. (Genealogical Yearbook), the village historian D. F. van der Meer from Reduzum has suggested that Jilles Douwes could be the son of the Eagumer farmer Douwe Everts. This possibility presented itself after he had been informed by the author of the present contribution that there is a marriage certificate of Jilles Douwes and Hester Douwes in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives. However, there was no Jilles among the children of Douwe Everts originally tracked down by Van der Meer in the archives. In his publication in the Yearbook, he himself took the liberty of inserting the name of Jilles among those of Douwe Everts’ other children. In this way, the notion was created that the forefather of the Fondas came from Hornemastate in Eagum, Douwe Everts’ farm. In 1988 the same notion also found its way into the article ‘Amsterdam Records of the Fonda Family’ by Robert C. Cooney Jr. in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. However, that finding – that Jilles was the son of Douwe Everts – has been recorded with far too much certainty. A number of facts speak against this suggestion. Douwe Everts was a farmer with voting rights. This means that he was almost certainly a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. However, Jilles Douwes and Hester – given that they chose Old Testament names for two of their children (Abraham and Sarah) – may well have been members of a non-conformist denomination. In this connection, it is also striking that Hester does not appear in any of the church registers in New Amsterdam.”

 

Dutch Poldering Mills

“According to Van der Meer, Jelle Fonda (Jilles Douwes) must have been a son of Douwe Everts. Eagum was a very small village. But that is by no means proof that he descended from Douwe Everts. The oldest register of births, deaths and marriages, the Quotisatiekohier of 1749 (a century after Jilles Douwes), says there were 47 people living in or near the village, and 19 children under the age of 13. They included five farmers and one independent woman farmer, a widow with no profession, a schoolmaster, and three working-class families. The latter category is particularly difficult to place in a historical sense, especially when it comes to the archives dating from before the French era. There is much to be said for the suggestion that Jelle Fonda came from this group. The fact that on the occasion of his marriage he is registered as a ‘journeyman smithy’ indicates that he was a craftsman, and thus did not belong to the group made up of ’tillers of the soil’. Mention is also made of the fact that his parents gave their written consent to the marriage. This means that they could read and write. As could Jelle Fonda and his wife Hester, in view of the signatures which appear at the bottom of the document. In the period 1632-1633, eight years before he married in Diemen, the lake known as Wargastermeer was impoldered. The primary financier of this project was the Amsterdam merchant Paulus Jansz Kley (1582-1655). Obviously he required an army of diggers and other workmen, including craftsmen. It is quite possible that Jilles Douwes was one of them. Indeed, it may well have been through the mediation of Kley that Jilles moved to Amsterdam, and he may even have helped him to get a job there. He was literate and he had a trade. Moreover, he was anxious to get ahead in the world.

In conclusion, according to this account, here is what we know…  Jilles Fonda was a journeyman smithy, who hired on to a big earthworks project near Eagum in 1632-1633 (he would have been 16-17 years old)… he then moved to Amsterdam, got married in 1641 (age 25), started a family (he became an innkeeper and blacksmith)… and then took the voyage to America in 1651 (age 35) with his young family of five.

This still does not settle the question of the origin of Jilles Fonda, but at least it moves the ball forward a bit.

Albert Mark Fonda
admin
November 2009

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Nov 05

According to Wikipedia, the Frisian people are characterized by the R1b subclade U106 DNA profile:

Dutch Provinces

“Based on Y-DNA studies, it is believed the Frisian Y-DNA Haplogroup to be from the Haplogroup U106/S21 and its downstream subclades. Reference Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA). U106 is defined as R1b1b2a1a by Family Tree DNA. U106 subclades include R1a1b1b2a1a1, R1a1b1b2a1a2, R1a1b1b2a1a3, and R1a1b1b2a1a4.”

Further, the page on Haplogroup R1b indicates the following genetic origin of this group:

“R1b’s frequency is highest in the populations of Atlantic Europe and, due to European emigration, in North America, South America, and Australia. In Ireland and the Basque Country its frequency exceeds 90% and approaches 100% in Western Ireland.[4] The incidence of R1b is 70% or more in parts of northern and western England, northern Spain, northern Portugal, western France, Wales, Scotland. R1b’s incidence declines gradually with distance from these areas but it is still common across the central areas of Europe. R1b is the most frequent haplogroup in Germany, and is common in southern Scandinavia and in Italy.”

Being a Fonda, I had my DNA tested and I am in Haplogroup I1, which has the following description:

Map of the early Nordic Bronze Age, where I1 first became prominent. The Nordic Bronze Age is often considered ancestral to the Germanic peoples.

“Haplogroup I1 is a Y chromosome haplogroup occurring at greatest frequency in Scandinavia, associated with the mutations identified as M253, M307, P30, and P40. These are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It is a subclade of Haplogroup I. Before a reclassification in 2008,[1] the group was known as Haplogroup I1a.[2] Some individuals and organizations continue to use the I1a designation.”

“The group displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak of approximately 40 percent among the populations of western Finland and more than 50 percent in the province of Satakunta,[3] around 35 percent in southern Norway, southwestern Sweden especially on the island of Gotland, and Denmark, with rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic sphere of influence.”

“I1 Anglo-Saxon (I1-AS) has its peak gradient in the Germanic lowland countries: northern Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, as well as England and old Norman regions of France.”

I assume that all the Fonda’s descended from Jellis Douw Fonda would also be Haplogroup I1 (unless my parents didn’t tell me something… lol).  If you would like to get tested, go to the Fonda DNA Group on Ancestry.com and order the Paternal Lineage (Y-46) test.  This test is only valid for males.  I do not know if you must be a member of ancestry.com to join the DNA project.  If there are other DNA comparison groups which are available I would be glad to transfer my results for comparison.  I believe that ancestry.com shares its data with other DNA databases.  Note: I have now entered my data on Y-Search, which is free access.

So far, we only have three Y-46 tests.  The other two are from a Slovenian Fonda and an Italian Fondi who are both R1b’s.

Some further interesting commentary:

“In the book Blood of the Isles, published in North America as Saxons, Vikings & Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, author Bryan Sykes gave the name of the Nordic deity Wodan to represent the clan patriarch of I1, as he did for mitochondrial haplogroups in a previous book, The Seven Daughters of Eve. Every male identified as I1 is a descendant of this man.”

“Another writer, Stephen Oppenheimer, discussed I1 in his book The Origins of the British. Although somewhat controversial, Oppenheimer, unlike Sykes, argued that Anglo-Saxons did not have much impact on the genetic makeup of the British Isles. Instead he theorized that the vast majority of British ancestry originated in a paleolithic Iberian people, traced to modern-day Basque populations, represented by the predominance of Haplogroup R1b in the United Kingdom today.[44] A similar, more broad-based argument was made by Ellen Levy-Coffman in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy.[45] The book When Scotland Was Jewish is another example. These are direct challenges to previous studies led by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Siiri Rootsi and others.[46] Cavalli-Sforza has studied the connections between migration patterns and blood groups. There has been some discussion of this on a mailing list at RootsWeb.[47]”

Useful links:
Y-Search (A Free Public Service from Family Tree DNA)
Family Tree DNA – Genetic testing to answer your genealogy questions
Whit Athey’s Haplogroup Predictor
Eupedia: Geographic spread and ethnic origins of European haplogroups

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Aug 21

Visit the Fonda DNA Group and be one of the first to compare your chromosomes!

By comparing your DNA Ancestry test results with others, you can determine to what extent you are related. For example, the more closely your result set matches another’s, the narrower the range of generations between the two of you and your common ancestor.

What can DNA do for Genealogy?

What can DNA do for Genealogy?

The type of testing performed by DNA Ancestry is limited to areas of DNA that have the greatest application to genealogy which reveal insight into family relatedness. The portion of DNA tested is within the non-coding regions and do not provide distinguishing information about an individual such as hair color.

DNA Strands

While DNA testing in general has a promising future as a tool for predicting one’s chances for developing disease such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cancer; DNA Ancestry does not perform medical diagnostic testing on any of its DNA samples.

DNA Ancestry protects your privacy by allowing you to make your DNA results anonymous. Doing so hides your Ancestry.com username, but allows your DNA results to still be matched with others in the DNA Ancestry database. So even if you have chosen to keep your username hidden, you can still discover genetic cousins and, if the match is close enough, contact them safely and anonymously.

As the DNA Ancestry database grows, we will automatically compare your result against each new entry. If a close match is found, you will receive an e-mail with a link to a page that describes how your two test results match. You can now begin communicating with your genetic cousin using Ancestry.com’s Connection Service as the first step towards comparing the genealogies of your two families.

Links: Eye on DNA – How will it change your life?; Family Tree DNA Tutorial; Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation; The Genetic Genealogist;

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