Yorkshire Almanac John Revis, “a true Yorkshireman,” reacts to news that he bears an African-specific Y chromosome from an 18th-century ancestor

26 January 2007: John Revis, “a true Yorkshireman,” reacts to news that he bears an African-specific Y chromosome from an 18th-century ancestor

Mark Nicol and Ross Slater. 2007/01/27. Yorkshireman found to share DNA with African tribes. Daily Mail. London. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

John Revis has always considered himself a true Yorkshireman who was proud of his ancestry.

But he has been forced to confront an entirely different heritage – after scientists uncovered that he has exactly the same DNA imprint as a tribe of African warriors.

Scientists last week announced the discovery of the first proof that slaves brought to Britain by the Romans left behind a distinct genetic heritage.

This strand was revealed to exist among just seven men with a particular surname hailing from the North of England.

However, the academics refused to disclose the identities of any of those men included in the study.

Now The Mail on Sunday has discovered that all of those with the African lineage have the surname Revis.

Last night, John, 75, a retired surveyor living in Leicester, said: “I started looking into my family history and traced my ancestors back to the mid-1700s.

“One line went to the States and became very successful while my immediate line stayed in the North of England and were mostly bakers. There was nothing to suggest that I was African.”

John responded to a newspaper advert by Leicester University asking for people who have traced their ancestry to give DNA samples for a study on world populations.

He said: “The scientists took some of my DNA away for analysis and then one day they called me up and were very excited. They said I had a Y-chromosome that was extremely rare. I was flabbergasted. I had no idea that I was so culturally unique. But I am not going to start eating couscous and riding a camel.”

John is attempting to take the discovery in his stride. He added: “It was a shock to find out that, because I was so blond and blue-eyed when I was younger, people thought I was Nordic or German.

“But the researchers said that if my DNA were examined then people would assume they were looking at a North African man.

“I suspect there must have been some big Berber tribesman who came to Britain with the Romans and spread his seed all over Yorkshire.”

John is married with three children and six grandchildren. The news shocked his friends at Brookfield Bowls Club in Leicester.

He added: “It is a very white establishment which can be a little awkward in a multi-racial place such as Leicester.

“At least now they can say they have got one more ethnic-minority member but I doubt anyone would be able to pick me out. His wife Marlene was also taken aback.”

She said: “I can hardly believe it. John has always seemed very English to me. He likes his roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday. He has never asked me to cook anything unusual. My friends think our news is hilarious.

“The closest John ever came to the traditional Berber life was when he went camping with the Scouts. I don’t think we’ve been in a tent since we got married.’

Scientists from Leicester University made the finding during research sponsored by The Wellcome Trust. They were examining the relationship between the male, or Y, chromosome and surnames.

Like surnames, the Y-chromosome is passed from father to son, virtually unchanged through generations.

Professor Mark Jobling said: “We found John was in the A1 group of Y-chromosomes, which is very rare and highly west African-specific.

“This study has shown what it means to be British is complicated and always has been. Human migration history is very complex, particularly for an island nation such as ours. This study further debunks the idea that there are simple and distinct populations or races.”

Over time, the Y-chromosome accumulates small changes in DNA sequence, allowing scientists to study the relationships between different male lineages.

The surname Revis is believed to derive from Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire. Berber comes from the Latin word for Barbarian.

Fellow researcher Turi King said: “Our findings represent the first genetic evidence of Africans among ‘indigenous’ British people.”

She added that Africans were first recorded in northern England 1,800 years ago, brought by the Romans to help defend Hadrian’s Wall.

Ms King said: “The slave trade was responsible for the influx of Africans in the 16th and 17th Centuries. By the last third of the 18th Century there were 10,000 black people in Britain.

Previous studies of British genetic diversity had found no evidence of African Y-chromosome lineages.”

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

A classic tabloid tale (who approached whom? who did the talking?), inspired (but not limited) by the scientific article (King 2007/01/24).

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Comment

A classic tabloid tale (who approached whom? who did the talking?), inspired (but not limited) by the scientific article (King 2007/01/24).

Something to say? Get in touch

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16 February 1789: Thomas Paine writes to Thomas Jefferson telling of the “revolutionary” iron bridge being built to his design by the Walkers of Masbrough (Rotherham)

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Comment

John Keane:

Whether the bridge was ever erected over the Don is unknown. During April 1789, Paine and Yates supervised the erection of a three-ton rib arch, which was framed with wood and, Paine later told John Hall, test-loaded for twelve months with six tons of scrap iron. He wrote long preliminary accounts, which have been newly discovered, of the erection and test and forwarded them on May 25, 1789, to Sir Joseph Banks for submission to the Royal Society and to Sir George Staunton for submission to the Society of Arts. In June, Banks informed him that his report had been read and accepted by the Royal Society, but for some reason Staunton, an Irish baronet with diplomatic experience in Indian and Chinese affairs, delayed sending his copy to the Society of Arts until April 1790. The completed section of the bridge remained on display at Masborough. The last recorded viewing of it was by John Byng, whose journal entry for June 11, 1789, reads simply, “In Mr. Walker’s work-yard we survey’d an arch of an iron bridge just cast.” (Keane 1995)

Paine’s contemporary, John Adolphus:

Paine now employed himself with great assiduity building his bridge. For this end, he made a journey to Rotherham in Yorkshire, in order to superintend the casting of the iron by Mr Walker. While thus occupied at Rotherham, his French familiarity is said not to have much pleased the English ladies, and their displeasure induced Mr Walker to turn Paine out of his house. The bridge, however, was at length erected in a close at [Lisson Green, London]; being an arch constructed of iron, one hundred and ten feet in the span, five feet from the spring, and twenty two feet in breadth. It was erected chiefly at the charge of Mr. Walker; but the project had cost the projector a large sum, which was mostly furnished by Mr Whiteside. The bridge was shown for some time at the Yorkshire Stingo [a London pub], for a shilling. As this was not the first iron bridge which was known to the English, it is not easy to discover why the projector, who had a model, should incur so great an expense, merely to make a show (Adolphus 1799).

The Walkers probably made more money working for Paine’s enemies:

The Walker companies made a variety of iron and steel products, including household items such as kettles, irons and fireplaces. They were particularly renowned for making cannon. They secured a contract from local landowner the Marquis of Rockingham [!!!!] who was Prime Minister (1765-1766 and 1782), to supply cannon to the British during the American Wars of Independence, and the wars against France. Between 1774 and 1815 they made 13,000 tons of cannon, including 80 of the 105 cannon on board HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.

The fuller version of Paine’s letter cited by Foner includes the following technical detail, which may be more interesting in some ways than my excerpt, and which I suspect is plagiarised from Billy Yates, just as some of Paine’s big bridge design concepts were plagiarised from the French (as was, it seems, part of The Rights of Man):

These circumstances determined me to begin an arch of 90 feet with an elevation of 5 feet. This extent I could manage within doors by working half the arch at a time. Having found a short wall suited to my purpose, I set off a center and five feet for the height of the arch, and forty five feet each way for the extent, then suspended a cord and left it to stretch itself for a day, then took off the ordinates at every foot (for one half the arch only). Having already calculated the ordinates of an arch of a circle of the same extent I compared them together and found scarcely any certain distinguishable difference, the reason of this is that however considerable the difference may be when the segment is a semi-circle that difference is contained between the 1st and 60th is 70 degrees reckoning from the bases of the arch, and above that the catenary appears to me to unite with the arch of the circle or exceedingly nearly thereto so that I conclude that the treatises on catenarian arches apply to the semi-circle or a very large portion of it. I annex a sketch to help out my meaning. [See diagram on p. 1039.]

Having taken my measurements I transferred them to the working floor. 1st I set off half the line divided into feet; 2d the ordinates upon it; 3rd drove nails at the extremity of every ordinate; 4th bent a bar of wood over them corresponding to the swinging cord on the wall, above this first bar, and at the distance the blocks would occupy, I set off all the other bars and struck the radii through the whole number; which marked the places where the holes were to be cut and consequently the wooden bars became patterns for the iron bars.

I had calculated on drilling the holes for which I had allowed 8 sterling each in my private estimation, but I found, when at the works, that I could punch a square, or oblong square hole for 1 or 1 4 each. This was gratifying to me, not only because it was under my estimation, but because it took away less of the bar in breadth than a round hole of the same capacity would do, and made the work in every respect stronger and firmer. I was very unwilling to cut the bar longitudinally, and for the same reasons you mention therefore did not do it, yet I was apprehensive of difficulty in getting the work together owing to diverging of the bolts, but this I think I have completely got over by putting the work together with wood bolts, and then driving them out with the iron ones.

Having made all my patterns of bars, and a pattern for my blocks, and chosen my iron 3 inches by ¾ we began punching the holes. To do this it is necessary the iron bar be treated hot. When this was mentioned to me I pondered a little on the effects of heat, and instead of marking the iron bar when cold from the wood pattern, I first treated it and then marked and punched it, and that only one hole at a time; by this method the changes of atmospherical heat and cold are prevented operating on the bars while they are under the operation, as it is always the same season to the bar whether the season of the year be summer or winter, and as the wood patterns is laid to the bar for every fresh hole, there can be no accumulation of error, if any, would happen, and the square hole I I can be corrected by a file whereas the round one could not.

A great part of our time, as you will naturally suppose was taken up in preparations, but after we began to work we went on rapidly, and that without any mistake, or anything to alter or amend. The foreman of the works is a relation to the proprietors, an excellent mechanic, and who fell into all my ideas with great ease and penetration. I stayed at the works till one half the rib, 45 feet, was completed and framed horizontally together, and came up to London at the meeting of Parliament on the 4th of December. The foreman, whom, as I told him, I should appoint “President of the Board of Works in my absence,” wrote me word that he has got the other half together with much less trouble than the first. He is now preparing for erecting, and I for returning.
(Paine 1945)

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