Kokernot DNA analysis

I wrote two different introductions to a discussion of a DNA analysis of David Kokernot descendants. Here is the one I discarded:

Two Kokernot males, a continent apart. Each scraped the inside of his mouth with a piece of cardboard and placed it into a glass tube labeled with his personal serial number. Each performed the ritual a second time, for a backup, and placed the tubes into a package already stamped and addressed to a DNA testing laboratory in Houston. The laboratory responded two months later with a string of thirty-seven numbers for each—holding, perhaps, the solution to a mystery.

Part of David Kokernot’s story reveals itself to anyone carefully searching in documents and accounts of his time. His life was, of course, shaped partly by his childhood circumstances and by the customs and values passed to him by his ancestors. Those customs and values become more difficult to discover the further back in time the biographer searches. Written records reveal the exact location of David’s childhood home in Amsterdam, provide the names of his parents and grandparents, and even hint at their occupations, but beyond that the view is murky. We know the family were Ashkenazi Jews and, therefore, relative newcomers to Amsterdam. But were they Europeans converted to Judaism, or part of the great Diaspora from the Middle East? Had they arrived in Amsterdam from England, or perhaps France or Eastern Europe? Written records say nothing, and there lies the mystery.

DNA analysis, like a time machine, may hold the answer. Spencer Wells calls DNA the “personal history book [carried] around inside us.” If so, its language is not plain English and those thirty-seven numbers represent only a short paragraph or two of a long book indeed. Nevertheless, scientists are decoding the book. DNA analysis of David Kokernot's descendants illuminates two periods in the murky past, the first about four to five hundred years ago, and the second about ten to twenty thousand years ago. Ten or twenty millennia ago certainly represents a beginning, so that is where this story begins.

Mischevous Editor

"No one will ever love your words as much as you do," said someone I've forgotten. The meaning, of course, is that a person other than the author will make the best critical evaluation of that author's writing. That evaluation is the job of an editor. Well, an excellent editor has made just such an evaluation of my well loved writing. Her eleven page critique suggests substantial deletions in some areas, and reordering and expansion in others. The task looks daunting, but I cannot disagree with her inputs. So I'm doing it.

I hate to see the information in the deletions simply evaporate, so I will post the deleted content to this blog, probably with added content to provide context. The first will be the story of the Van Ostern family, like the Kokernots Jews from Amsterdam who emigrated to New Orleans. David Kokernot's brother, Louis, married the oldest Van Ostern daughter, Nancy, and both families initially prospered in the dry goods business. Find the details here.

Locking through from the North Sea

When David Kokernot's ancestors on his mother's side arrived in Amsterdam from Hamburg in 1710 they probably entered the city through this lock. Passage from Hamburg via the North Sea could be accomplished in a small vessel because the route was protected by barrier islands. From the North Sea they entered and crossed the Zuiderzee, then the Oudezijds Voorburgwal canal by way of this lock. The lock chamber is about 150 yards long and about fifteen feet wide. The Amsterdam side is shown here. The other end of the chamber connects, ultimately, to the North Sea. I had to ponder the operation of those gates before I understood their operation, for they never opened or closed during the week I was there.

The unique feature of this lock, or any in Amsterdam, is it can lift or lower a vessel, coming or going. Most locks only operate with one side higher than the other. Take the Ballard Locks in Seattle, which lower vessels from Lake Union to Puget Sound or raise them going the other direction. Puget Sound is always lower than Lake Union, even at high tide. Mitered lock gates hold back the waters of Lake Union like this: Puget Sound>....lock chamber.....>Lake Union, where > represents a pair of swinging lock gates. The higher water to the right of the gates holds them shut. Only when water is allowed to fill the chamber through another passageway can the gates swing open.

In Amsterdam, however, the canals could be either above or below the Zuiderzee side, depending on the tides. Therefore, two sets of lock gates, swinging in opposite directions, are required. High water on the right side requires this configuration: >. Low water on the right requires this: <. You can see one side of the gates in the photo here, recessed into the chamber wall. Each is hinged to swing in the opposite direction from the other.

In the early twentieth century a dike was placed across the Zuiderzee, isolating it from the North Sea. It was filled with fresh water from the Amstel, was renamed the IJsselmeer, and sees no tidal swings. The water level is equalized on each side of this lock and the gates are simply kept open.

David Kokernot's Boyhood Home in Amsterdam

Amsterdam Jews in the eighteenth century celebrated their marriages at their synagogue, rarely bothering to register them with the civil authorities. After the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the authorities insisted that all marriages be registered in the same manner as those in the Dutch Reformed Church. On January 29, 1808, David Kokernot's parents complied, even though they had already been married for several years--David's older brother was about eight years old.

"There appeared Levie Moses, from Amsterdam, a Jew aged 25 years, on the Kerkstraat, by the Magere Brug, No 6, accompanied by his mother Rebecca Moses..." reads their marriage intention announcement. These documents always give the residence street, or at least the neighborhood, of the bride and groom, and sometimes the actual address appears, like here. Kerkstraat (Church Street) crosses the Amstel River via the Magere (the Dutch say "MA-her-uh") Brug (bridge), but number 6 is nowhere near that crossing, probably because addresses have been renumbered since 1808.

The Dutch are fastidious record keepers, and a visit to the Amsterdam Archives cleared up the numbering. One shelf there contains volumes of computer printouts listing every address in the city, before and after the renumbering done in 1853. Kerkstraat 6 had become Kerkstraat 623 that year. Another shelf contains volumes detailing the changes of 1875. Kerkstraat 623 became Kerstraat 449 that year, and remains so to this date. It was an easy walk over to Kerkstraat, and, indeed, 449 was a half dozen doors from the Magere Brug.

Amsterdam has many hundreds of bridges, but the Magere Brug is probably its most famous. It appears in the Bond flick Diamonds Are Forever, as well as almost all picture books of the city. The drawbridge is manually raised by the dual counterbalanced beams that resemble the oil well pump jacks so common in California and Texas. The 1691 original bridge had only a single draw span.