Genealogy

Ludwig van Beethoven’s genome has been sequenced for the first time by an international team of scientists using five genetically matching locks of the well-known composer’s hair.

The research, led by the University of Cambridge, the Beethoven Center San Jose and American Beethoven Society, KU Leuven, FamilyTreeDNA, the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn, the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, uncovers important information about the composer’s health and poses new questions about his recent ancestry and cause of death.

In 1802, Beethoven asked his doctor to describe his illness and to make this record public. The great man’s health and cause of death have been debated ever since, but without the benefit of genetic research.

Research published in Current Biology shows that DNA from five locks of hair—all dating from the last seven years of Beethoven’s life—originate from a single individual matching the composer’s documented ancestry. By combining genetic data with closely examined provenance histories, researchers conclude these five locks are “almost certainly authentic.”

The study’s primary aim is to shed light on…

New York City officials named a murder victim previously only known as “the girl with the scorpion tattoo” on Tuesday, more than 31 years after her body was discovered in a field on the East Shore of Staten Island in 1991.

After her cold case was reopened in 2019, 30-year-old Christine Belusko of Clifton, New Jersey was finally identified using new forensic genealogical technology, Richmond County District Attorney Michael E. McMahon explained at a Tuesday press conference. 

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“Today we want to speak about the case of the girl with the scorpion tattoo,” McMahon said. “This is a story about a brutal and depraved murder — depraved acts of violence that killed this young girl in her prime.”

On Sept. 20, 1991, Belusko’s body was found by two employees of a psychiatric hospital who initially mistook her for a mannequin, according to the New York Times. Her corpse was face-up, handcuffed, and burned. Coroners attributed her death to strangulation and 17 blows to her head likely delivered by a hammer found underneath her body.

Press conference held by the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office Photo: Staten Island District Attorney’s Office

A vial of the victim’s blood and a sample of her tissue was held for years by the New York City Medical Examiner’s office in the hopes that future technology might determine…

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — My family history journey ended with me at Mt. Airy in Warsaw — now a working farm, formerly a plantation — meeting with a descendant of the family who owned mine.

But my genealogical research began the way it does for many, with family history, myth, lore, the need to separate fact from fiction and the challenge of where to start.

“When you’re doing this sort of research, you can’t just look in one spot,” said Lydia Neuroth, archivist for the Library of Virginia. “You have to look in so many other places.”

While Neuroth acknowledges that’s certainly the case for all genealogical research, it is even more so for African-Americans. A hurdle she’s trying to overcome in her work as the project manager for Virginia Untold, which provides digital access to records that document some of the lived experiences of enslaved and free Black and multiracial people in the library’s collections.

“It’s because they’re treated very much like property,” Neuroth said. “So they don’t show up in the documentary record like people that were treated as human beings were. And that’s certainly one of the huge challenges. Enslaved people were not creating their own record either. The documentary record is created by primarily white people that were in power, and so enslaved people don’t have the opportunity to create any sort of…

OPA-LOCKA – Ten North Group (previously Opa-locka Community Development Corporation) is pleased to present Genius Species, a group exhibition on Black feminist thought curated by artist-scholar Anya Wallace. Genius Species is on view at The Arts & Recreation Center (The ARC) in Opa-locka, FL from March 25 through May 31, 2023. There will be an opening reception on March 24.

In honor of Women’s History Month, Genius Species seeks to create a genus of Human genius and to celebrate the effects of the Black Woman’s planetary existence. Influenced by scholars such as Evelyn Hammonds, Toni Morrison and popular icons as Aretha Franklin and Nicki Minaj, Genius Species investigates the cultural, political, social, sexual currency that is Black Womanhood and Girlhood, and the ripple effects of its lived experience(s) across both time and space.

Wallace curates a restorative and playful art environment featuring the work of Christina Edwards, Grace Hampton, Ciara Newton, Briana Pizarro, Ebony Y. Rhodes, T. Thompson and Sarah Stefana Smith. The works in the exhibition span various mediums—painting, sculpture, drawing, weaving—and emphasize materials—rope, netting, feathers, wood, rubber—as tactics for expression and exploration into issues surrounding race, nationality, class, gender, orientation, religion and education.