Magical Genealogy and a Family That was Way Too Close with Cairelle Crow

Cairelle

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[00:01:37] Ashley: Welcome, everybody, to Dine with the Divine. I'm your host, Ashley, and together we'll be exploring the magical, the mystical, and everything in between. On today's episode, we're going to talk all about genealogy and a very tight knit family. Oh, I hope everyone's having a wonderful day, and if you're [00:02:00] not, I hope it gets better soon.

[00:02:01] We have a fantastic guest today. Today, we have Carol Crow, and she is a priestess in service to the ancient and timeless, who expresses herself through many names. She has walked a goddess path for the last 35 years, exploring, learning, and growing.

[00:02:20] Her journey is multifaceted. As one often finds in Maven women of a certain age. She is a genealogist dedicated to connecting people to their ancestral truth by teaching them how to research their own sacred genealogy. With over two decades of research experience in traditional and genetic genealogy, she presents lectures and educational workshops locally, nationally, and internationally, and is the author of The Magic in Your Genes, which is a primer on ways to bring together the science of DNA.

[00:02:50] and genealogy with a dedicated magical practice. When she's not riding a Mardi Gras float in her native New Orleans, or roaming the world in search of grandmothers, quirky art, and [00:03:00] stone circles, Carol is home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. So, how are

[00:03:07] Cairelle: you doing today? I'm great. After that, I didn't realize it was so long until you read it.

[00:03:14] The bio. I just want to put, she's from Virginia.

[00:03:21] It's felt long enough. It's felt long enough. That's fine. I was like, damn, that's wordy. Okay. I think it's,

[00:03:31] Ashley: I think it's quite a good bio. I like it. It goes through everything. Look, you've done a lot of stuff. I mean, you've got to tell the world about it. So it's

[00:03:38] Cairelle: fine. I liken bios to Medical histories, like when you're 30, your medical history I don't really don't have one yet. And then I realized recently, I've started to collect diagnoses and surgical procedures.

[00:03:51] And I'm like, Wait a minute, I've turned into one of those

[00:03:55] Ashley: people.

[00:03:57] Cairelle: A long list of things I've done in a [00:04:00] long, not a, it's not a long medical history, but it feels long to me. So yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no, you're good. And accumulate. Yeah. Exactly. Which is a good thing.

[00:04:10] Ashley: Yeah. The first thing I ask everybody on this podcast is about how did you start your journey with your spirituality?

[00:04:20] Cairelle: That is my grandmother. So growing up in New Orleans, it's very quirky, no matter what religious path you walk. But I grew up Catholic, my grandmother was raised Presbyterian, but she went to the Catholic church a lot. So, I went to Catholic school. And, in New Orleans people are very familiar with Marie Laveau and voodoo.

[00:04:47] But, a lot of people, well, it's become more popular hoodoo.

[00:04:56] It's like a working class folk magic that just [00:05:00] permeates the city. And I didn't realize when I was growing up that it was anything different than anybody else might have done. So we went to church and then we'd go to a botanica and she got potions and all, stuff. And she had an altar in her house and, Mary was on it.

[00:05:19] MaRy and, but, she did things there and prayed for people and people would put stuff on there they'd leave things, little petitions and she also read cards so I was seven, six, seven, eight years old, I'd lived with her a lot when I was a kid and she'd have people come in and she'd give card readings at the kitchen table and she used a regular playing deck.

[00:05:45] So, no tarot and she would record it on a little cassette recorder and I would make coffee or whatever. And sometimes she'd, she'd give me a little signal, like she'd do that. And I knew that I was supposed to go get the broom and turn it [00:06:00] upside down against the wall behind the person so they would leave.

[00:06:03] So, there were all of these little things that I grew up with that I didn't realize were. so different from what mainstream America might have considered, that to be a little odd. And it was just part of my upbringing. And then as a late teenager I decided I did not like the Catholic Church because women could not be in positions of authority or to preach or to be helpful to people, to, there were no Positions for women really and it made me angry.

[00:06:38] Of course, you're a young woman trying to find your place in the world and you get told that you can't do things. And so I was like, that's not for me. And then I was like, well, what is for me? And then it was then that I officially discovered that there was a goddess spirituality and the divine feminine.

[00:06:56] And so I slowly started to walk that [00:07:00] path. And yeah, so that's, that's how, how I started. And it's just, like you do, you meander and roam around and, new Orleans always had a big influence on. How I did things and yeah, that's that was the beginning of it. And yeah.

[00:07:17] Ashley: That's beautiful. I love

[00:07:19] Cairelle: that. I, I love it, too. I love that my grandmother brought me, and she would have never called herself a witch or anything like that. She was just doing the practical magic that people do in their day to day life. I mean, that, that was just... How she did it. So, but I love that I have that familial connection and that she brought me into this path without even realizing it just by living her life and doing the things that she did, I mean, I, she cut my, back when everybody cut their own hair, she would cut my hair at certain moon phases.

[00:07:58] When the moon is [00:08:00] growing, when it's waxing, if you want your hair to grow, you cut it. But if you don't want it to grow so fast, you cut it when the moon is waning, those kind of little superstitious things. And, she would plant things, flowers by the moon and certain things by moon and moon phases.

[00:08:15] And yeah, so all these little, this little bits of information were just ingrained in me from very early. And I think, I think that's the case for a lot of people and they don't realize it until they actually start to sit down and think about. How magical they truly are and the magic that they were surrounded with growing up because they think it's this It's this unattainable thing or it's something high up on a shelf That you have to reach up and grab for and I always tell people stop and sit with what you know now Mm hmm.

[00:08:46] What do you know now? What did you bring with you from where you came from? What's there? God guarantee there's something there. Oh, yeah

[00:08:59] Ashley: aNd we've talked [00:09:00] about this before, but a lot of people think of things their parents told them, or their grandparents, or aunts, uncles, whomever, told them in their family, and it's like a su you think it's just like a superstition, to oh, in my family, we always do X, Y, and Z and other people may not do that in their family, maybe the people you know, so people sometimes just think, Oh, it's just a weird thing that we do I don't know why we, do certain things like moon phases, or I don't know why we, throw holy water in the house before we leave, or different kinds of stuff, so I think it is always worth, when you get older, if you're interested, ask, well, even if you're not, I just think it's interesting to like, why do we do that?

[00:09:41] There's so many things you do because... Exactly. Yeah, and sometimes it'll just be the answer is well, I don't know, we always did that. It's well, where, where's

[00:09:49] Cairelle: that from? What, who decided

[00:09:51] Ashley: we were going to do that? It's always fascinating to look into that.

[00:09:55] Cairelle: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think, I think it's attaching [00:10:00] to that magic that you come with is really important.

[00:10:03] It's a great way to anchor your, that's your base and everything can build on that. You don't have to stick with it, but it's still, it's still, you come with what you come with. That's, that's just the is. So how you walk in the door is how you walk in the door and so why not use what's there?

[00:10:24] There's, I mean, there's beautiful ancestral teachings and, and things that come through lineage and in different areas of the country and, and there's just, there's magic everywhere. People think, Oh, New Orleans and, they want to do that. And I'm like, well, that's great, but look at North Carolina.

[00:10:41] Look at Appalachia, look, up in New England and just, there's just, there's magic everywhere. Yeah. There's no place in this world where there is not magic. So if you're from somewhere, you are a magical person. Mm hmm. That's it. That's true. So, [00:11:00]

[00:11:01] Ashley: also, so you taught, we were talking about all this stuff, looking at your roots and then we talked about your, like you wrote a book all about this.

[00:11:10] Well, about like genealogy. So one thing that I think is so interesting is that like, when I think of genealogy, I think of finding your roots, right? Like that guy on that show going into everybody's records and stuff. But what I think is so interesting about you is you also look at it from like a DNA standpoint and then you add your own like magical practices into it.

[00:11:38] What inspired you to do that with like your genealogy studies? To combine the two.

[00:11:44] Cairelle: Oh yeah, so I began genealogy again my grandmother. I was 11 or 12 liked a boy at school, told her, I said, I'll let you know. And she said, who's his grandmother? And I was like, I don't[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] know. I went to school and asked him and I mean, who knows their grandma's like name when they're 11? I did, but a lot of kids don't. And he's I don't know. So he went home, his mom sent him back with a piece of paper. I brought it to my grandmother and she said, you can't like him. He's your cousin. And she recognized it.

[00:12:17] Now he was not a close cousin. I was like, what? I knew all my cousins. I have a very, I have 26 cousins. So my grandmother had six children. They all had less. We had lots of kids in our first cousins. But beyond that, I didn't realize there was such a thing as a second cousin or third. Okay. Yeah, he was further out, but you know, and so she drew a tree for me.

[00:12:39] I was instantly fascinated by this. It looked like a spider web to me and I was thinking to myself, we are all connected. And I realized even at that young age about how, how interconnected everyone is. So fast forward, I, my uncle, my mom's second oldest brother was researching the family and I worked with him for several years on that[00:13:00] paper, paper trail genealogy, I call it.

[00:13:02] My husband is adopted. And knew nothing about his family of origin. And in 2006, National Geographic had a geneographic project in which you could send in a DNA sample and they would tell you about your deep ancestral roots. And so I was like, Oh, that's exciting. So we sent it in and basically he's a white man from Europe.

[00:13:21] So, I wasn't really impressed. I was like, Okay, that's cool. And I put it aside and then didn't realize until later that that test morphed into a Y DNA test at Family Tree DNA. Well then I saw Ancestry not Ancestry, 23andMe and I said, Oh, they have a health history.

[00:13:39] You don't have one. We have children and grandchildren. This was in 2013. I said, let's do that. So his results came back and it showed that he was a carrier for cystic fibrosis. And I was like, okay, hold the farm now. We got to find the medical history. Of course, I'm a registered nurse. I had been, you know how important that is for preventative care.

[00:13:58] And yeah, yeah. And I was like, [00:14:00] okay, we got to find out some information, so tested him on ancestry and it took me about 14 months, but I found his birth mother. He was a DNA and lovely lady had been looking for him for many years. And my mother became fascinated with the ethnicity estimate, like most people are.

[00:14:23] They want to see that map that says I'm 23 percent Irish and 17 percent African from here, Nigeria, or whatever it is that fascinates you when you look at those things, you and the collective, right? You personally. And so she did her test and I got her test back and my cousin was on there.

[00:14:44] His results had also just come back and he didn't match her in the way that he should have for him to be a nephew of a full sibling. Hmm. So his, her match with him was only half of what it should be. And long story short, that meant that [00:15:00] either my mother or my cousin's father was not the child of one of their parents.

[00:15:07] My mother has five older brothers. They're both mom and dad, same mom and dad, their whole lives. And a longer story short, it turns out that my mother was not the child of the man she thought was her father and, and I'm not finished yet. So my dad also tested. I tested my dad. We were not very close. He my mother and he divorced when I was four.

[00:15:33] Not a big part of my life, but genealogy brought us back together because I was trying to collect these family stories and correct misconceptions that I had been told when I was a kid. Like I was Native American and all this BS, so, his test results came back and I noticed some discrepancies in that.

[00:15:50] But I wasn't able to ask him about it because he went in for a diagnostic procedure. and went into respiratory failure and died a few days later. Oh my goodness. [00:16:00] So sorry. So, but long story short, I found out that my father is not the son of the man he thought was his father. So both of my parents were what's called a non paternity event.

[00:16:12] And their father was not actually their biological father. So basically this tree that I had spent years building was chopped off at the... And just imagine taking both your grandfathers off your tree. Yeah. It cuts away, cuts away about half of it. And my mother was so destroyed it, she was so devastated and I said, I've got to solve this.

[00:16:35] And she said, I don't want to know. And of course she eventually would. So I've got to work. And I said, okay, before I had done all this genealogy work, I was a mess. I didn't have good record keeping. It was slapdash. I'd write things on scraps of paper. I copied trees without verifying things. all the mistakes that, novice genealogists will make.

[00:16:58] And I said, I've got to crack down and [00:17:00] really get serious. So I had started, and I started this back when I was doing, looking for my husband's family of origin. And I realized how much magic I was pulling into this. I had, I would talk to these people. I'd put these people in my altar and, I made a little mirror It's like a scrying mirror inside of a frame as a kind of a place to a Connection or a portal I guess to reach out to these people who were unknown to me that I wanted so desperately to find and I just developed this practice and For me, it was great because it made me feel like I was Doing everything that I could do to find the people that I thought were important for my family to heal The fractures that it had, this, the fractures that this tree had suffered, my tree had suffered terribly and I wanted to heal this.

[00:17:57] So after about, it took [00:18:00] me again about 14 months and I figured out who my mother's biological father was and my dad's was much more difficult. It took me almost five years. Wow. I did not think I was going to solve that. But it took me five years and It, that practice sustained me through that, um, and so, and then I, I've worked with other people along the way, my, my grandson's other grandmother is adopted.

[00:18:27] I worked to help her find her birth family and she found out through the brother that she'd met that her birth mother had told him all about her and she died tragically But she left him, she told him, if she ever shows up, you tell her what happened and how much I wanted to keep. And so these words were very healing to her.

[00:18:50] Yeah. In this, it's really important for me, genealogy can be very exclusive [00:19:00] and that it is not as easy for people in certain demographics to access that people who are adopted people who are descended from enslaved persons. People who are removed from their genetic family for any reason, whether they've been ostracized or they've had to remove themselves because of dynamics that are really painful.

[00:19:21] And these people can feel really set apart from genealogy because it's so much more difficult to access these things and build. I walked into genealogy as a straight white woman who grew up with her, a family of origin. That is a breeze. That is a breeze to sail into, right? I mean, it's there.

[00:19:38] I got all my records. I can get my birth certificate. Just to be, I don't think people realize that just knowing who gave birth to you. is a really powerful tool in genealogy. Yeah. When you have that taken away. So, DNA really opened up a lot of doors. And, and I realized that so much when my own personal [00:20:00] tree got hit with these surprises.

[00:20:03] And then also helping my husband find his family so we could get an accurate medical history. And have, it's important for our own children, yeah. So there's so much healing in it. And I was like, you know what? I see people that struggle with their identity. And identity is like their heritage.

[00:20:24] Yeah. And, and they feel like that's, I can't do that. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. DNA opens the door. It levels a playing field for so in so many ways. And I just thought it was really important to get that out there. And I really wanted to drive home the point to the genealogy is for everybody.

[00:20:44] You get to create your tree and the way you want to create it, not all families are man marries woman with two children and That's it. We have there's a whole communities of people that live together and have families [00:21:00] and bonds that are not the Historical way that genealogy has recorded things.

[00:21:07] So if genealogy is the story of humanity Then unless you have everybody's story and the way that they live it in their own truth, then it's not accurate. And that's, that is the thing that I wanted to bring home with this book is that you can access what you want to access. It's not always easy.

[00:21:29] There's a lot of struggles with fine, especially for people who are searching or whatever. It can be a hard path. But there's healing there. There's healing. There's so much healing there. You can. Look at the, I've got shitty people in my family tree, I just, I mean, I'm from the South, I'm from the South, I have a one known line of people who enslaved other people, I hate it, I hate it, but, I'm not going to tuck that up in the [00:22:00] closet, I did for a while, I was like, Oh, I can't, I can't, that's terrible, I can't, and I'm like, I didn't do it, but but perpetuate the vibe if I don't drag that shit out into the sunlight, the sunlight, the stench off of it.

[00:22:18] So, it's out there. Yeah, I descend from people who enslaved other people and the cousins that I match to surnames that have the same names as my tree. But you know, there are people of color and I'm not. I mean, I know where that is. And so. I've worked with several people, here's my tree, here's what I know, what do you know?

[00:22:42] Let's piece it together. Because everyone deserves access to their past and their heritage and to be able to put their story together in the best way that they can. And that's, that's what I can do. And I commit to myself that I'm going to be open to listening [00:23:00] to ways that I can do more. And.

[00:23:03] I control my narrative. Other people speak to their experiences and it's my job to listen to that. So, it's just, there's so much power in information and to me, genealogy and DNA testing offers you information and you get to, you get to run that show. Yeah.

[00:23:25] Ashley: That's awesome. Wow, you . That's so cool.

[00:23:31] Cairelle: my spiel. Yeah. And so that's why I started the class that I started because a lot of people know how to do genealogy. There's a lady in our, in the class and she's probably better at genealogy than I am. I have a feeling she is. 'cause I need to pick her brain. Yeah. . But I want people to, I want people to have a concrete way to do their, to start their own healing process.

[00:23:50] Mm-Hmm. with their own lineage. Start tweaking those lines, because what you bring forward into the world, is what's important I [00:24:00] grew up, feeling like oh, I can't tell anybody about that And this ancestry and now I have two grandsons who not only know about it. They know it was it was Terrible and horrible and they're being raised in a way that that shit doesn't happen again.

[00:24:15] Yeah in that, in that, the privilege that they walk through the world with just by being young white men and, all of these things. And so, there's no shame in it for them but there's a way of being that has adjusted this lineage. They, them as young white men are not the young white men that I descended from who perpetuated these things.

[00:24:41] And so the lineage has shifted. Yeah. And I think that's so important. So important. Yeah,

[00:24:51] Ashley: yeah, I mean, I am in your class and I have not even gotten started yet, but like the very base, like [00:25:00] the very base of I always, I like genealogy. I like to hear and I always joke that I think I like genealogy just was like, I'm nosy.

[00:25:08] Like I'm very, I want to know everybody's business. Yeah. Like I'm not going to tell your business. I just want to know for myself. I'm like,

[00:25:17] Cairelle: I'm like, I can, I, I, I jive with that. Absolutely. I am nosy. I'm nosy. This is the perfect path for a nosy person who just wants to know, not to share, but just to know.

[00:25:31] Yeah,

[00:25:31] Ashley: exactly. I am like a steal safe. If you call me a secret and really tell me, don't tell anybody. I won't tell anybody. But I need to know what the secret is because I need to be like, I'm also a dramatic person. I need to react. I need to be like, oh my God. That's crazy. Like I'm the first, if you ever see those memes and things on the internet of somebody like in their backyard hoovering, while like the neighbors are arguing like, acting.

[00:25:55] That's me. Cause I'm like, what's going on over there?[00:26:00]

[00:26:01] I've done very base level nothing looked into stuff. This is like a free weekend on Ancestry or something. So I like, went on to see what I could find. And I found my grandfather's So my grandma, my grandfather emigrated to England from Jamaica. I found his name on the shit manifesto.

[00:26:24] And I knew my grandfather. He was great. But just seeing, and he, he passed away now, but just seeing his name there was, like, one of the coolest things I ever saw. I remember running to my mom Mom, I found your dad, but his name's on the, on the shit manifesto. And It was so exciting. And then it was so cool.

[00:26:44] I was able to find my mom didn't even know his parents names and we found his parents names. And my mom was like so excited. She's Oh, even my mom was like, Oh my God, like my great grandma's name is Isabel. Didn't know that. And my [00:27:00] mom's Oh my gosh, if I had known that, maybe I would have given you or your sister like that middle name and stuff, but like just little things that we found.

[00:27:08] And then We started asking other family members about stuff and we found out little tidbits, but and then it's so funny because I got to a point because I found my grandfather's parents and then when I tried to find his dad's parents so I couldn't go really any farther because they like because of names and because of like previously enslaved people like I don't know if their names were their names and there were some, I found a bunch of women's names who they matched like my great grandpa's names, but they didn't have fathers on them.

[00:27:47] So I don't know what the situation, they could have been, in illicit relationships with whoever they were with. I don't know. So it's so weird. You get to a point and you're like, huh, and then that's where all the DNA stuff would then probably come even more in [00:28:00] handy. Because like you're saying, everybody's family has stuff that you don't, there's a point where we don't remember, like you just remember, we're going to remember, and there's somebody in your family who will not remember that far back, so and people like, like with your family, there's lots of situations, probably in every single family, if you go far back enough, there's somebody who was maybe raised by someone else or somebody who doesn't know that's not their parent or whatever the case may be, or was raised in a community of people, I've seen that, where people, somebody was raised in a community, and they were And then so that they'll literally be like, well, I don't know exactly who my mom or my dad was, but I was just raised with all these other people and that was just the situation.

[00:28:38] So it's, it's the DNA part I think is so interesting. I like just so cool that you have combined that with like magic. I love that. Cause it's so magical. It's so cool.

[00:28:51] Cairelle: I love it. It's, it's important. It's important. Yeah, I just. I just love it so [00:29:00] much. I love the power that it can give somebody, and that's the thing.

[00:29:04] When you empower people they just do better. They can, they, they feel, they believe that they can do better, right? I mean, in terms of being in control of their lives and, um, just that, just, just that little bit, just Just, I, I talked with, I talked with several people in different marginalized communities about what genealogy and DNA meant to them, and, one person told me, he said, for he uses the word court, the uses the word queer.

[00:29:43] So, for queer people, for queer people, DNA is the only way many are able to know anything about their heritage.

[00:29:52] Ashley: Mm hmm. That's, mm,

[00:29:54] Cairelle: that's a very good point. Or in adopted people, it's the same thing. We knew nothing about my husband at [00:30:00] all. He was just a guy. I mean, it's just, I didn't know, my my sister's daughter is biracial, um, mixed is what she, she says I'm mixed, that's what she calls herself, her father is a black man, and she said, but I don't know what I am, and I said, well, let's do a test.

[00:30:21] And she's Oh, I don't know. Well, she was, I don't remember the exact situation, but she was friends with these people who would go do these ministry trips. I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, they go over to Africa. They're on some mission. Mission thing and they brought back some clothing from Nigeria and my niece saw that and fell in love with it.

[00:30:48] She said, I love that so much. I would love, I don't know why these people had it. It was for some kind of exhibit or something like that. Anyway, they told this child that if she put that on, she would be appropriating culture. And I [00:31:00] was like, excuse me. Oh no, ma'am, we're going to do this DNA test for you.

[00:31:05] And that is her highest percentage, is Nigerian. Wow! Interesting! It was so validating for her. Because my, my sister told me, she's we think, we think that, he's got an African heritage, but I don't know. We don't know, I mean, cause she, they, or she wasn't close with her father either.

[00:31:26] She's not close with the family. And so it was so validating for her to have a picture. Of herself and an estimate, of course, but yeah, and it was so validating for her to be able to say to herself that that feeling that she felt when she saw that traditional clothing from a place where she more than likely has people, you know, and so that connection was made for her and then she embraced it, she changed the way she does her hair.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] She, she's really embraced. The, the her that she wants to be. And I think that that test that we did was helpful for that. And that's what I want for anybody is for them to feel connected to themselves. And I mean, nobody else is like you, even identical twins. It's a genetic differences, but there are little, with the switching mechanisms that happen when DNA is trained, when it's replicating and, even, even identical twins have genetic differences.

[00:32:31] So there is. I guess statistically, it's probably possible for two people to be exactly alike, but I just, I can't even, you're you, there is nobody else like you. I like the, I like the healing that genealogy can bring when we look at direct maternal lineage and direct maternal lineage, a lot of women find empowerment in [00:33:00] researching their direct maternal lines.

[00:33:02] Mother to mother to mother to mother with no breaks. And then you stop and think about that for a second. The, so we all get mitochondrial DNA from our mother or our birth parent or X, X parents. All people get that from their mother. Only women slash X, X people can pass this down to their children to give birth.

[00:33:25] Now of course this is excluding three parent individuals, people who have mitochondrial transfers and all that sciencey stuff that I don't know. too much about. So that's like outside of the scope of this, outside of the scope of this discussion. But when you stop and think about the fact that the woman whose mitochondrial DNA, all of humanity descends from lived 150 to 200, 000 years ago, and how many mothers have birthed daughters since that time, how many [00:34:00] grandmothers you have in that line, the fact that you're here.

[00:34:05] And you have this direct maternal lineage back hundreds that just thousands of generations of women who have birthed and birthed and birthed and you are the end of a long chain of power. Yeah. Power. Yes. Right back to the cradle of humanity in Africa to this one woman who was not the only woman alive at the time.

[00:34:33] A lot of people make that mistake. But she's the only woman whose particular mitochondrial DNA has not ended, like my particular mitochondrial line probably ends because I have two daughters. One of them is not having children. The other one has only had sons. So I don't have a granddaughter. So now there's so many other people in the world that have my particular haplogroup, but you can see how it would end if it is [00:35:00] lines don't have the person who's going to pass it down, then it just fades away.

[00:35:04] And over time that can happen. So, and it's the same for men. You look at these male lines, so, so many generations of, of man to, father to son, to son, to son, to son. And there's power in that, there's power in that. That's where men. To get the, the whole surname since in, in our country and so many other countries is the names are passed down through the male line, but you know, there's been so much focus on that on men having sons and whatnot, but women have daughters, and we have that lineage as well.

[00:35:38] So a lot of women are finding that power in that because it mitochondrial DNA is your, I mean, that's the boss lady right there for yourself. That's the boss. And that's the power. And so when I started thinking about the different kinds of DNA we contain in us, um, and about the different kinds of magic that come to [00:36:00] us in all these different ways.

[00:36:01] X DNA, it is, it's a little complicated. It but to me, it reminded me the way it flows down through the tree, like a zigzag pattern. It was like rivers. And a coming down, and, the mitochondrial DNA, that's your, that's your crown, that's your power. That's your, that's the, you wear that on your head, this maternal ancestry.

[00:36:22] And for me, the Y DNA was the staff, the tall, supportive, sturdy, staff, not the same as the staff, which is very nature, but that staff and just, it's just so, it was so much. And I was like, God, I've got to, I've got to write all this down. And then it just, it became this book, so, and my editor, yeah, my editor was like, this is something.

[00:36:52] And I was like, yes it is, but here we are, but yeah, so this is like my little, my little love note to the world, I guess, is, [00:37:00] you can heal yourself. You can, even if you're not going to. Be a parent, even if you don't actually have biological children in this world, you still are going to be an ancestor.

[00:37:13] You influence people in your day to day life, who do have children. And so when you empower someone else, you contribute to the betterment of humanity. When you give to someone else, when you help them make it through something, when you are supportive, when they feel loved, and then their body is healthy because Their mental state is in a better place, and they give birth to a child who doesn't carry so much trauma.

[00:37:41] Mm hmm. You're part of that. Yeah. You're part of that. So this whole ancestor thing is for everybody. Just like genealogy is for everybody. Yes.

[00:37:55] Ashley: Well, we're going to talk about genealogy, not that much, in a little [00:38:00] bit also, because... You just did like the best rundown we could ever ask for so We

[00:38:05] Cairelle: are going to talk about it again a little bit once Once I start talking I get on a roll and then that yeah, I could tie.

[00:38:12] Ashley: No, it was perfect No, no, no, because I think you said made so much sense and I think There's a lot of people who think Oh, I could never, I can't do this research, it's going to be too hard. I've, people who are adopted, people who are from other countries, whatever the case may be, people who are distant from their family for whatever reason.

[00:38:30] But you saying all that, I think will inspire a lot of people to go down that rabbit hole now. Hey, maybe I can. I think we'll pick up your book and then read about it and then maybe we'll be able to figure it out. Okay, so since this is Dine with the Divine, we are going to have our Dish of the Week this week.

[00:38:49] And since you hail from New Orleans, one of my favorite places I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't know how people get anything done there. Because it's just like [00:39:00] a fun city. I mean, obviously I'm a tourist, so it's different. But also, I don't know how anybody is not, not everyone there isn't morbidly obese because food is delicious.

[00:39:12] So we're

[00:39:13] Cairelle: going to talk about... I am obese. I am, I, I'm, I'm a fat ass. I admit it. I just have gripped, I have gripped the reality. Of it, and yeah, New Orleans has contributed to that in many ways. It is, it is a, whoo! Yeah.

[00:39:31] Ashley: It's a foodie's paradise. It's a foodie's paradise, Yes. So, I'm just going to mention some New Orleans foods.

[00:39:41] Obviously, everybody, I'll put a list in the show notes, but there's all these different things that a lot of you have probably heard of. I know some of them we've talked about on the show before, but some of the things New Orleans are famous for. So, New Orleans is near the, what is that, the Gulf of Mexico also.

[00:39:57] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And it has [00:40:00] a lot of swamps and stuff. And those, well, not New Orleans, but the state of Louisiana has a lot of swamps. So there's a lot going on. There's a lot of sea and ocean stuff, foods going on here. It's a

[00:40:10] Cairelle: watery place, yes. Yes.

[00:40:13] Ashley: Also, side note, I'm terrified of... Alligators.

[00:40:17] So, when I was in New Orleans, I was like, obviously in the city, but I was like, oh no, I'm so afraid that there's gonna be an alligator somewhere. Because all I ever heard of the bayou which I know is not the same, it's a different part of Louisiana, is like, of alligators. There's just alligators everywhere.

[00:40:35] Trying to kill

[00:40:36] Cairelle: everybody. I'm so scared. There are, there are alligators in the city of New Orleans. Bayou St. John is a bayou. It runs, yeah, so, yeah, there are alligators. But, you're unlikely to encounter one in the French Quarter. If that's where you go. And side note, and side note, they do climb fences. No!

[00:40:59] What?! [00:41:00] No! Oh

[00:41:00] Ashley: no!

[00:41:04] I'm even more scared now! Oh my god!

[00:41:10] Cairelle: But they they're, yeah. Generally, I don't know, I don't, they look for small things. If you have a toddler or a dog. Be mindful.

[00:41:20] Ashley: Keep your toddler and your dog inside. oKay. Well, let's stop talking about alligators because I'm thoroughly going to poop myself. So, let's talk about some foods from New Orleans.

[00:41:29] So we got a gumbo that's a classic. Everyone's heard of gumbo. It's like a stew. You can put lots of different stuff in it. Depends on what you want to put in it. Yep. Then, then we have this thing called, well, not this thing, but okay, we have, they eat a lot of crawfish, which, okay, is a crawfish technically like a small lobster?

[00:41:50] I don't understand what a crawfish really

[00:41:52] Cairelle: is. It looks like a small lobster. Basically, it's just, it's a shelled creature that [00:42:00] lives in, in the water. I mean, I don't know, I don't know how the whole crawfish thing got started. But I will tell you this, it is a point of pride with my husband, that our daughter makes Crawf Boyle's Crawfish better than he does.

[00:42:15] She is in control of the family Crawfish boil. Do not mess with her, don't touch her spices, don't touch her potatoes or her garlic or her corn or anything else that's going in there. She has got it on lock. She is, don't mess with a girl's crawfish routine. It is good crawfish. So there, there can be really bad crawfish when you go to peel it, if it sticks and stuff like that.

[00:42:39] It has to be boiled a certain way and has to be spiced a certain way. Sometimes it's too bland. Anyway, yeah, crawfish is a thing. They are delicious. I also have terrible feelings of guilt because you throw them in the water alive. And I remember being a kid and [00:43:00] crying because you could hear the clanging on the lid of the pot.

[00:43:05] I didn't eat crawfish for a long time. But yeah, it's a, but you know, if you're, if you eat anything with eyes, you got to look at your you got to look at your conscience and then, take responsibility for what you're doing. So, I'm a hypocrite. I eat them and I feel bad about it, but damn, they're good.

[00:43:25] It's okay. I do love them.

[00:43:29] Ashley: Yeah. I'm also not a vegetarian or vegan, so I mean, I can't say anything about that. I eat meats and fishes and all those types of things, so. It's cool if you don't want to eat that, I get it. But if you do, you can, it's fine. You just gotta reason with your conscience. So then we have, we have jambalaya, which is a rice dish, so you can put sausage in it, it's, it's like uh, different types of meats in it, it's I don't know how to, it reminds me a lot of African jollof rice a little [00:44:00] bit, but it tastes completely different.

[00:44:01] Yeah.

[00:44:04] Cairelle: Yeah, there's probably a history there though. So a lot of the food in New Orleans culturally has, has so many sources, it's got Native American sources, it's got African, sources and, and just, of course from, the Caribbean, there's so much influence in that as well. And then of course, England and, wherever else people came from, but yeah, it's got such a, yeah.

[00:44:28] Crazy history. Yeah.

[00:44:30] Ashley: Yes. Jambalaya is a big thing people love. Red beans and rice. Ooh, I ate red beans and rice four days in a row when I was down. I was like, I guess I'm eating all this sausage. But it's delicious. It's it's literally, it's red beans, like kidney beans and rice. But it has all sorts of beautiful seasoning in it.

[00:44:49] And then there's usually sausage in it. And it's really, really tasty and delicious. Yes.

[00:44:54] Cairelle: There are no tomatoes in gumbo. bY the way. Okay. I just wanna, I, [00:45:00] that came to mind. I just had to put that out there. There's no tomatoes and gumbo. Okay, go ahead. No tomatoes in

[00:45:05] Ashley: gumbo. . Okay. . You heard it here first folks.

[00:45:08] There's no tomatoes and gumbo. Don't do it. And then we have beignets, which are like, I don't, I think I'm saying it right, beignet. You are beyes. Yeah, it's beye, right? Okay. Beignet, which is like a fancy donut. It's like a fancy New Orleans donut. It's like usually square. And it has powdered sugar on it sometimes and it's very, very tasty.

[00:45:28] Again, it's fancier than a donut and a little, it's better than your standard donut,

[00:45:33] Cairelle: like way better. It's like a puffed up when you, when you fry it, it puffs up. So there's like air and inside and. Yeah, it's delicious. It is so, so, so good. It's so good. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely delicious.

[00:45:49] Ashley: Yeah. And then you can also get a po boy which is a sandwich that has lots of stuff in it.

[00:45:59] So you can [00:46:00] have Like lettuce, tomato, pickles, then you have roast beef, then you have fried shrimp, oysters, and you can put different sauce on it or mayonnaise, and it's usually between two pieces of French bread. It's super, super good. You can get one, in New Orleans, I feel like it's like one of those things, it's like a, not, it's not a street food.

[00:46:19] But there's a bunch, it's like going to Philly and trying to get a cheesesteak. Everyone's gonna say, no, this is the best cheesesteak place, but It's what they're known for there. So you don't,

[00:46:27] Cairelle: you can't get a bad one. Right. There are different places in New Orleans. People have their favorites for po'boys.

[00:46:33] My favorite is Parkway Bakery and Tavern. It's a mixed thing. And to me, they have the best shrimp po'boy ever. And I also have, get catfish and fried oyster po'boys as well. And there are recipes for po'boys to die for.

[00:46:50] Ashley: OKay. Yeah. And then we have, this is something else I learned about I learned about when I was in New Orleans, was King Cake.

[00:46:59] [00:47:00] Yes. So King Cake, it's like a Mardi Gras situation, so it's something that you do around Mardi Gras. And in the cake is a little baby Jesus, and whoever gets the baby Jesus I think is like the king of the party or something like that.

[00:47:16] Cairelle: So it's, it's, it's started out as representing so it represents the biblical story of the three Kings who bring gifts to baby Jesus, right?

[00:47:29] So this is three colors, purple, green, and gold. They're royalty colors. That's the colors of Mardi Gras. So these cakes, the little plastic baby is just whoever gets it has to bring the next cake. Oh, that's what it is. Okay. Yeah, so I'm like rolling up we would have king cake parties every week, Friends houses and stuff and then whoever got the baby had to bring the cake the next week to the next party and don't choke on that baby, though Well now they used to stick them in the [00:48:00] cake nowadays The baby comes with the cake and you put it in there yourself, which kind of sucks because then somebody knows where it is You know, but you would see like your work and everything.

[00:48:10] You'd see a piece of cake and a baby ass hanging out of a piece. And somebody got that back in there cause they don't want to bring the next cake, right? And then cakes have also gotten really complicated over the years. Now they're stuffed with like cream cheese and fillings and stuff like that.

[00:48:25] I like the old traditional king cake from McKenzie's. I am boring. I like a straight king cake with no filling. It's like a sweet bread with sugar on top. So, that is... And, I have to say, do not eat king cake outside of Mardi Gras season. Mardi Gras season begins on January 6th. That is Epiphany in the Catholic calendar.

[00:48:49] Right, or 12th night. Right, 12 days of Christmas. Then you can eat king cake. Mardi Gras is a season, it's not a day. It is a day, but it's also a season. [00:49:00] You are only allowed to eat king cake from January 6th until Fat Tuesday, which Mardi Gras is. Once Ash Wednesday hits, throw that shit in the trash and don't do it until next year because you mess up the damn Saints football season.

[00:49:13] You're in for your football season. You gotta eat all kinds of shit happens. Termites. If you did people selling king cake year round, it is wrong. That is the devil's work. Do you hear me? Oh no!

[00:49:26] Ashley: Everybody! Pay

[00:49:30] Cairelle: attention! Don't eat King Cake outside of the season.

[00:49:34] Ashley: Oh my god! Don't eat King Cake. Don't mess up the Saints playing season, guys.

[00:49:38] It's not

[00:49:39] Cairelle: cool. Exactly.

[00:49:41] Ashley: And then the last one I'm going to mention is my favorite Pralines, or we had, we had somebody else who came on the podcast as a guest who's also from New Orleans, and he said people in New Orleans say Pralines.

[00:49:53] Cairelle: Crawlings. Crawlings. Okay. Crawlings.

[00:49:56] Ashley: I'm going to say Pralines because I'm a Yankee.

[00:49:59] I'm from New [00:50:00] Jersey. Like so. But I said this before too. I went to New Orleans with one of my best friends. And me and him spent every day just walking around. Like we saw all the cool stuff. Like architecture and went on a ghost tour and all the really touristy stuff. But then. In between doing activities, we like, just go to every shop that has praline samples and just eat them.

[00:50:25] So, I think in total, I was there for four days.

[00:50:28] Cairelle: You probably went to Aunt Sally's, um, Yeah, oh, I remember that one. Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm. So good. So good. So good. It's just, it's like

[00:50:39] Ashley: hard caramel molasses situation. It's very, very nice. Okay, so this is the part of the podcast where I'm gonna plug myself real quick.

[00:50:49] So, if you enjoy this show, you can keep listening. This is Dine with the Divine. We're Dine with the Divine on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads. If you really like the [00:51:00] show, I'd really appreciate it if you give me a rating. Five stars, always preferred. Or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you listen on there.

[00:51:10] And then if you have any questions, suggestions, comments, feel free to email me at dinewithadevinepod at gmail. com. You can also give me a tip that's in the show notes if you really, really like the show and you want to give me a couple bucks. Okay, next is our next section. So we're just going to talk briefly about some things that you already touched about on, about genealogy.

[00:51:33] But for anybody who's what is genealogy? What are you talking about? So genealogy, I'll give you Wikipedia's definition because we love Wikipedia Yeah, so genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineage. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members.

[00:51:58] The results are often displayed in [00:52:00] charts or written as narratives. And the field of family history is broader than just genealogy and covers not just lineage, but also family and community history and biography. So, a couple reasons people might want to do genealogy. Sometimes people just Carol was talking about for her husband.

[00:52:17] People have medical issues. They need to find out like the medical history of their family or they just want to find out what's going on, who their people are. There's community and religious obligations. There are some communities that are very strict about not strict, but there's some communities that are very in like in one community I know is like Mormons really love genealogy.

[00:52:39] They're very into figuring out who's who and where their lineage comes from. There's an example here that I have that is In New Zealand Maori people, they have a whole thing where they, it's really, really encouraged to find out who you are through your lineage and through your tribe.

[00:52:57] So then people, some people want to establish [00:53:00] identity. So this could also be people who are part of royal families that historically in the past, they want to keep records. Most royal families have the privilege, because they were rich of always knowing where they, who they were from.

[00:53:13] And, because they were a big part of history, people were always writing down who the hell they were. So that must be nice. And it used to be, back in the day, it was important to establish who was going to rule, depending on the rules of that country or that place. For legal and forensic research, some lawyers are involved in probate cases that they do genealogy to local, to locate heirs of different types of property.

[00:53:36] Detectives may even do their own geneal, their own genealogy research or hire people to help them with DNA evidence to identify victims of crimes or the perpetrators of crimes. Sometimes because of research, and sometimes it even says here because of like discrimination, things like that ok.[00:54:00]

[00:54:00] So then, the other thing I just wanted to touch on before we get to our story is,

[00:54:09] some of the ways people thought used The types of information genealogists use. So there's a bunch of different stuff. So the first one we talked a lot about already. We talked about DNA, which is a really, really big one. Because like you said, Carol, DNA is, it links us all. So it's great. So then we have family names.

[00:54:27] That's one of the first and most common and one people use. So if you are lucky enough to have that family name, you can try to trace it back. But that gets hairy, right? Especially when we think about The easiest example I can think about is people coming, people who came to the United States through Ellis Island.

[00:54:44] A lot of their names, if the officer who was checking them in couldn't pronounce their names, they changed them. That happened a lot. If they were coming from a country where maybe it was a little bit more difficult for them to say their name, they could change the name, they could simplify it. So [00:55:00] sometimes people...

[00:55:01] And then there's people who came, and I know this actually happened in a lot of Irish families. Sometimes they would change their names on purpose to make it sound less Irish, because it was hard for people to get hired and things like that if they had very Irish sounding names, because of the discrimination and things like that.

[00:55:20] And then there's people, there's sometimes where families just, Change their name back then. Now I'm saying back then, which isn't that long ago that, that long ago, but before computers and before like Facebook and social media, it was a lot easier to get lost. Like people could just Oh yeah. Be like, I don't, yeah.

[00:55:39] Cairelle: People could just be like, oh yeah, my dad, my dad did that. So yeah. My father was born with one surname. Mm-Hmm. his, well, the man we thought with his father was terrible. My grandmother remarried. He just took his stepfather's name. That's the last name I have. My [00:56:00] maiden name belonged to my step grandfather.

[00:56:03] It wasn't even legal until my parents decided to get married and my dad was in the Navy. And they were like, he brought his papers in and they're like, why are you in here as Ted Clayton? That's not you. And he's that's my stepdad. And he had to choose. And so his father's name was was George Rail, R A I L.

[00:56:24] And he asked my mother, he said, Do you want to be Susan Rail or do you want to be Susan Clayton? And she loved my grandpa, he's my grandpa. I was not related to him in any way, but she loved him so much. He was such a nice guy. And she, my mother was very thin and she said, that's all I need is for them to be Susan Rail, skinny as a rail, so she went with Clayton and the Navy legalized him in 1966.

[00:56:53] aNd he'd been carrying that name for years.

[00:56:57] Ashley: Yeah. [00:57:00]

[00:57:00] Cairelle: It's I'm, I'm Ted Clayton now, and I was like, Where, what do you mean? He just, he was like, you just did it. You could just go and, I don't know, establish one little piece of paper somewhere. And at times it was so different. They were so different.

[00:57:13] And you could just be whoever.

[00:57:16] Ashley: 100%. Even, even you see movies and stuff, and people just like, and I always think of the Titanic, right? When Rose gets back to, when Rose gets to America, she just decides to be somebody else. She takes Jack's last name, if everyone knows what I'm talking about, if you've seen Titanic, but she just takes Jack's last name, and that's it.

[00:57:34] Nobody else referred to him because, she's my name's Rose Dawson now, and she's like, all right, cool,

[00:57:39] Cairelle: and that was her name. So, yeah. Yeah. And so that's the thing. You just become this person, so it's not that easy anymore. Mm-Hmm. . But yeah, you could, names were, I have an ancestor who came over from Italy to New Orleans and he was placed with a French family who did not speak English.

[00:57:57] And he didn't speak eng, he didn't speak French. So [00:58:00] there must not have lot, been a lot of communication going on. And his name is recorded as St. Blanc, S-T-B-L-A-N-C. Mm-Hmm. St. Blanc. But his name was Sablon, S A B L O N E, Sablon. And so he said, in Italian, Sablon. But, and they came out and said, so now we have this Italian family with this very French name.

[00:58:21] I'm like, there's no Saint Laurent history family anywhere. Where did this name come from? I'm looking, I'm like, this is not right. And then I figured it out. I looked at his, his immigration paper and where he landed and the family he stayed with. It was French, and you could see in there, you could see in there, they didn't speak much English.

[00:58:41] Mm hmm. And so that's the only thing I've been able to figure out, was just the change. That happened a lot with Louisiana and the names, too, with the people coming in that were German, and that have French. Louisiana is all about its French ancestry, and they've got a lot of German ancestry here.

[00:58:58] I mean, we have the German coast [00:59:00] for a reason in Louisiana. And so, German names were switched to French. There's a Germ. There's a French name called Le Branch. Le Branch, lab Branch. Mm-Hmm. Is a name here in, in Louisiana. But the name that they have to if there is a man out there with that surname and he's, he's doing his YDNA, he's gonna come across the name Zweig, Z-W-E-I-G, that went from ZY to lab branch, because Z means twig or stick or branch.

[00:59:29] And so when they were trying to, wow. And so it became the branch. LaBranche. And that's the name it switched to and I'm like, how the, how is anybody going to ever make that leap from, like Smith and Smythe and Smith with an E or Smith with a Y or whatever. Yeah. Spelling variations are one thing, but to go from Zwyve to LaBranche.

[00:59:52] I know. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:59:56] Ashley: then, yeah. So then also you have given names, right? And then [01:00:00] given names are different in different countries. In Latin America, people will have names of their father, their father's father, their mother's mother, their mother's father. They have very depending on where you're from in Latin America, I think the traditions are different.

[01:00:13] I'm not an expert on that. But, they can have very long names and, so that can get confusing too, if they don't know who's whose name. I know they have a whole order to it, but it's a whole thing. And then, also some people don't change their names. Some people do change their names.

[01:00:31] Some people don't do it legally. And then people have place names. And when I think of place names, I think of remember in The Godfather, the guy, when he gets to the United States, he just changes his name to the name of where he came from. He doesn't use the same last name. He just, I forget the name they use in The Godfather.

[01:00:49] But, yeah, he

[01:00:50] Cairelle: just uses... That was common with French too, the place names. So they're called, in French, they're called, people say dit. D I T. But it's, and it would be like Jean [01:01:00] Boudreau de Laplace. Yeah. Jean Boudreau from Laplace. Yeah. And when they would come, families would take one or the other, but they're all from the same line, but they have different names because they would take the place name instead of the surname.

[01:01:16] And like you said, the Latin countries, they do the name, like Maria Gonzalez Lopez. Gonzalez is her father's name. Lopez is her mother's family name. So when they come to a country where that last name in the list is the surname, they end up with the mother's surname and not the father's surname on their record.

[01:01:36] And so it's flipped around. I've done some research for people that come from countries in Central America, in Mexico, and it made me insane. I was like, Oh my God, no, no. I know. And then

[01:01:52] Ashley: there's also people, and that actually too, it happens in Arab countries with Al. So some people will have Al in their name and [01:02:00] Al indicates that this person, it's like their name. The second part of that is where they're from. It could just be their town. Yeah, it's just not necessarily like their last name.

[01:02:10] So they have place names. Then dates get, get weird because dates aren't always accurate. And remember that the whole world does not use the same calendar. Jewish people use a different calendar. In China they use a different calendar. And a lot of different Asian countries use different calendars.

[01:02:27] So, when you see a date or you see an age, even ages are counted differently in different countries. So, ages aren't always accurate. Sometimes if people are born in rural settings, you don't actually know when they were born. They may have not really reported it. And some people have the names of Shoemaker.

[01:02:49] Somebody might just start, they might just start calling him so and so shoemaker because he was a shoemaker. That may have not actually been his last name. So, that's just some of the things that people [01:03:00] run into when they're doing genealogy work. And I just wanted to mention those things because I thought they were interesting.

[01:03:06] Okay, so we're going to get to our story time. Our last section, my favorite section, and we're going to talk about a family, a royal family, who is very, very close genetically. Too close, actually, and ended up causing a lot of problems. Okay, so we're going to talk about the Habsburg family. If you remember, everybody go back to high school history, because you've heard about these people before.

[01:03:29] They ruled parts of Austria, Hungary. for hundreds of years, okay? So the history of the Habsburg monarchy, it actually starts with this one guy named Rudolf, and he was the king of Germany in 1273, and then he got he acquired Austria in 1282. 1273, I think I said. I hope I didn't say 17. 1273. Then in 1282, he got Austria.

[01:03:55] Then in 1482, one of his descendants, who's named [01:04:00] Maximilian, He got the Netherlands through marriage. And then it kept going. And then his grandson, Charles V, he inherited the Spanish throne and all of its colonial possessions. So at that time I'm not sure how much was owned by the Spanish. I can't remember.

[01:04:17] So... Anyway, it kept going, kept going. And then it became the Habsburg Empire. So you can look all through European history, you'll see the Habsburg name everywhere. It was a very popular dynasty. In 1556, this guy named Charles, he left he left the throne. And he left it to his son, there was two people left now, to take the throne.

[01:04:38] It was this guy named Philip II, his son, or his brother, whose name was Ferdinand, who was his lieutenant in Hungary and Bohemia. And then the Spanish branch became extinct in 1700, they had to give that up. The Austrian branch... which was ruled the Holy Roman Empire Hungary Bohemia Bohemia was like part [01:05:00] of Germany at the time and some other places split itself off in 1564 but then you reunited 101 years later okay that's a little short history now let's get to where like it really gets hairy so what we're going to be talking about today is the Spanish part of the family and the Spanish part there's this guy and his name is Charles II of Spain so he was born November 6th 1661.

[01:05:22] And he was the only surviving son of Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria. And they were an uncle and a niece. So it was an uncle who married his niece, okay? So this happened a lot in European history. This is a big thing. And if everybody remembers okay, okay, keep this on the side. Let's go real quick to Russia.

[01:05:44] Everybody get in your car. We're going. So we get to Russia. Remember now, the Romanovs, the last ruling family of Russia. The son I think his name is Alexi, he had hemophilia, okay? So that's a blood clotting disease, so it, it, I think it's only [01:06:00] men who can get hemophilia, I believe. So it's a blood clotting disease, and

[01:06:05] it was something that was a lot in royal families of Europe, because their DNA was all so close, and they were all only marrying each other a lot of these royal men would end up having hemophilia. And other diseases because their DNA wasn't spread out enough. Everyone was too close. So, like I said, it was pretty popular.

[01:06:24] So back to our friends Charles II. So, it was popular that they did this, and people wanted to keep their families and their money in the same family. But the Habsburgs were, like, very extreme with it. So, okay, sorry, I know I'm jumping around with timelines

[01:06:39] of 11 marriages contracted by the Spanish monarch between 1450 and 1661, the vast majority contain some element of consanguinuity, which is the sharing of a common ancestor. And while Philip and Mariana were one of the two unions between [01:07:00] uncle and niece. So, you guys, out of 11 marriages, Most of them, the people who got married, contained one common ancestor.

[01:07:08] It's too many. It's just, it's too much. So, also, Charles II, his grandma was also his aunt. Weird. Okay, so one thing that also happened at this time, and this was like racism was the Spanish had this thing called limpieza de sangre. Which also meant blood purity. Because, remember how in the south of Spain, there were some Jewish people and some Muslim people, and then the Spanish tried to get rid of them?

[01:07:36] Well, they did. They got rid of them. They pushed them out of Spain. Like in the Zamoras and all that kind of stuff. As people got more racist they had to prove that they weren't Jewish and they weren't Muslim. So, in keeping the people in the family, you were proving like, oh no no no, we don't, We're not one of them.

[01:07:55] So that was it was also part of racism that they kept together so,[01:08:00] Charles the second had a lot of problems. Okay, so He his dad died when he was three and his mom was Queen Regent till he could come of age Okay, but he survived a childhood attack of measles chickenpox rubella and smallpox All of those can kill you, by the way, all of those diseases.

[01:08:19] That's why we get vaccinated for all of them now. Especially back then. And so one thing that Charles had was this thing that they called the Hapsburg Jaw that a lot of people had. They had these long jaws. And you can see tons of paintings of them. This was like a thing for the Hapsburgs. Again, they all were intermarried.

[01:08:36] So they had the same kind of physical feature. It was a long, it was a large protruding jaw. that many of the members of the family had and it affected Charles II so badly that he couldn't swallow food unless he chewed it really, really well. One of the other problems he had was called Combined Pituitary Hormone Deficiency, which is caused by one of the genes, and it only affects 1 in [01:09:00] 8, 000 people, and it's caused by a lack of important hormones from the pituitary gland.

[01:09:04] So, he had all these issues. He had weak muscles, infertility, impotence, digestive issues. He also had this thing called distal renal tubular acidosis, which meant his kidneys couldn't get rid of acid. So it led to he had bloody urine and again rickets, which I don't know what the technical term for rickets is.

[01:09:26] I'll put it in the show notes. I'm sorry. And he had a very big head. So he also had some type of intellectual disability, but back then they didn't really know what it was. So they didn't like, they didn't have a name for it. He also had really, really terrible bouts of depression.

[01:09:43] So now, he got, he was getting older. This is all when he was a baby, by the way. He didn't get older yet. So then he got older, and they're like, Oh, Charles, you need to get married and have a baby! They were like, we have to find somebody to marry you. So they found this lady named Maria Louise, and she married Charles II.

[01:09:59] But [01:10:00] she couldn't get pregnant, and nobody could figure it out why. She just couldn't get pregnant. And then, they did an autopsy, well when Charles died later on, they did an autopsy and found that one of his testes was atrophied. Okay? And also, he became ill again in 1700.

[01:10:15] No longer able to eat. And then in November of 1700, five days before his 39th birthday, he died and they did an autopsy and they found that his heart was the size of a peppercorn, which is pretty small. His lungs were corroded. His intestines had rotted and were gangrenous. He had a single testicle that was black as coal, apparently, and his head was full of water.

[01:10:38] So that's called hydrocephalus where it is. And it's also associated with childhood measles. So he, Charles was also very physically disabled at the end. Again, he had an intellectual disability and he was very disfigured. He had a large tongue, he couldn't talk. He was bald by 35 and he died having [01:11:00] epileptic seizures.

[01:11:01] He could never produce an air and this was not good. So the thing is, that they said in the end was that, Because the Habsburgs had all been intermarrying, intermarrying, it ended with Charles. And Charles was the last one in the dynasty, but he was the one who had the most medical problems.

[01:11:17] Because they were like, you can't keep marrying all this stuff, the people together, and just expect the kid to not have all these issues. So Charles II, here we go. Oh, here's the thing, and there was this guy, I think his name was Dr. Alvarez, or I don't know if he was a doctor, but this is the article I wrote.

[01:11:37] He said, okay, you get some DNA from your mom, and you get some DNA from your dad, and both DNA have some damage because that's just what happens, but normally, you have two people who have enough good DNA that when you put it together, it'll be fine. The person they make will be okay. But the thing was, if you have, [01:12:00] so Charles II carried identical copies for more than a quarter of his genes.

[01:12:06] So his genome was 25 percent homogenous, um, which is wrong right, Carol?

[01:12:13] Cairelle: Yeah, no, that's, yeah, that's wrong. So eventually you start to get the same thing. I mean, the diversity in reproduction is always a good thing. Yeah. I mean, it's the same for animals,

[01:12:28] Ashley: yeah, they were like, it's, this is really bad.

[01:12:30] So that's what they did when they tested him and they looked at his family tree. And then they also, the analysis that this guy Alvarez also did, he talked about how the inbreeding in the Spanish Hapsburgs caused so much of a problem that if you look at the line, the women in this line had a disproportion, even for the time, right, the 1600s, 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, disproportionately were losing babies and having miscarriages.

[01:12:56] And they think it's because of all the inbreeding. [01:13:00] And so, So of 34 children, half died before their 10th birthday, and 10 died before their first. So even in the poorest villages at the time, most of whom, um, obviously these people were really poor, or they didn't have a lot, they would only lose one in five babies.

[01:13:18] So they had a very, very high rate of miscarriage, and just these kids dying when they were really, really young because of inbreeding. So... That's the story of the Hapsburgs. I always heard that, I remember when I was in school, learning about the Hapsburg jaw and then how they said it was because of everybody kept marrying each other and it was just too, too

[01:13:38] Cairelle: much.

[01:13:39] Ashley: So yeah, I thought that was super interesting, speaking of genealogy and DNA.

[01:13:44] Cairelle: Okay! Yeah, they were, they were very yeah.

[01:13:50] Ashley: They didn't want to let go of that

[01:13:51] Cairelle: crown.

[01:13:54] Ashley: We're holding on for dear

[01:13:55] Cairelle: life to this crown. I think that's how they kept, they felt like they kept their [01:14:00] power. That was messed up. Yeah, messed up.

[01:14:05] So

[01:14:06] Ashley: I don't know if they realized back then. I Mean, I feel like they should have at this point. I'm sure at this point they realized that like inbreeding was bad. Somebody knew it's not like it's the 17, 1800s. It wasn't 10, 000 years ago. This is not that long ago, yeah. I think their racism and greed was just so much that they were like, we can't do it.

[01:14:30] We got to all of their, and also their classes and they wouldn't, this is the time when people weren't allowed to marry somebody outside the world class. So if they married a commoner, it was, it was bad, so it's

[01:14:42] Cairelle: sad, right? Yeah, exactly.

[01:14:46] Ashley: Yes. And it caused this poor guy, Charles the second, so I have to suffer a lot of his life, . So. That brings us to the end of the show. So thank you so much, Pearl, for being here. I really appreciate it. It was [01:15:00] fun. I love talking about the book and this stuff. So yeah. Yes. Anytime. And I just want you to share whatever you want to share about wherever people can find you on the internet.

[01:15:12] Cairelle: yOu can find me on social media. Let's see. I'm on Instagram and threads. Not on Facebook too much, but my handle is I am Carol. I-A-M-C-A-I-R-E-L-L-E. Mm-Hmm, . And my website is carol.com. C-A-I-R-E-L-L e.com. Mm-Hmm, . And yeah. And then I have a genealogy priestess.com is my training class that just started.

[01:15:39] Mm-Hmm? . Yeah. That's it. Yay.

[01:15:43] Ashley: Awesome. Yay. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to do this class. Honestly, I was like, so nervous, but then I, cause I also think I was like, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm not smart enough because I started reading your book. I was like, I don't think I'm smart enough. Yes.[01:16:00]

[01:16:03] Cairelle: There's so much information out there. Everybody can do this. And if you have a hard time, there are groups out there that are so supportive. And yeah. Do it. Do it, do it. Everybody's smart enough and everybody can everybody's important enough. Yeah. Your story, yeah, your story matters.

[01:16:21] Everybody's story matters. If you're listening to this, your story matters. Your life matters. So, yeah, make your mark. Leave a little legacy behind with your stories. Yeah.

[01:16:37] Ashley: Awesome. Alright, so now you guys all know where to find Carol, and I just want to thank her again, and I want to thank all of you for listening.

[01:16:45] Again, this is Dine with the Divine. We're on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Facebook, I think. I get confused sometimes, but I think that's where we are. And if you really enjoy this show, like I said, if you don't mind, give us a rating, give us a review. We love it here. And [01:17:00] if you have any suggestions for episodes or comments or anything you want to tell me, feel free to message me on one of those apps or email me at diamonddivinepod at gmail.

[01:17:10] com. And if you want to follow me, Ashley, I'm at SankofaHS. That's S A N K O F A H S and Sankofa Healing Sanctuary on Facebook. Thank you so much for being here and have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time. Bye

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