Who is this person?

[L Verge]

One of my minors in college was French and involved art, music, literature, and culture - more than just the language. Lautrec was one of my favorite subjects. He was very talented and very troubled. I believe that, about twenty-five years ago, geneticists proved that Lautrec's "dwarfism" and other defects were more likely due to the fact that his parents were first cousins.

Similar genetic finds are inherent here in Southern Maryland. The first women did not come to the English settlement in Jamestown until 1619. As a result, some of the men began to habitate with Native American women. They moved farther and farther away from the settlement due to discrimination, and when Maryland was settled, Father Andrew White found five or six of these families living in the new colony. He baptized the women and children and married the couples. However, the stigma remained. This caused further inbreeding among these families.

They also accepted their black brethren who sought refuge among them, and the bloodlines now carried three races of people who lived peacefully in little settlements of their own - and continued to marry and have children within those same bloodlines. They gave themselves the name of Wesorts (as in we sorts of people). I have also heard them called Wedems when I was a child (we-dem kinda people). Oswell Swann, who conducted Booth and Herold to the Cox home on April 15-16 was a Wesort.

In the 1950s, the Public Health Service did a huge study of the Wesorts of Southern Maryland as well as similar intermarriage situations along the east coast. In the 1960s and 70s, I taught quite a few of these children (300+ years after Jamestown's migration). Genetics had created freckles on black faces, strong Indian hair on both black and white, no teeth or stubs of teeth only, problems with eyesight, lack of fingernails, and smooth cafe au lait skin on many who otherwise appeared white.

A number of years ago, I was contacted by health officers in North Carolina who were conducting similar genetic studies on members of the Surratt family! A branch of "our" Surratts left Maryland in the mid-1700s and settled in North Carolina, where they evidently became rather clannish (perhaps because of their French Hugenot background) and intermarried - all within the Caucasian race, however. The most prevalent problem among these people has been poor eyesight. They have a certain name attached to their clans, but I can never remember what it is!

Those of us who have studied cultural trends know that intermarriage within bloodlines was a frequent occurrence well into the 20th century here in America. I was very impressed when I read that the practice has the official name of parental consanguination (hope I spelled that right) when dealing with the effects on descendants.

I bet that Eva never thought I'd come up with a biology lesson to go along with her very difficult guessing game...