Donald Panther-Yates

Donald Panther-Yates (also published as Donald N. Yates or Donald Neal Yates) is an American genealogist, author and DNA investigator. Yates was born July 9, 1950 in a north Georgia town where his grandparents were farmers and his father ran a grocery store. He was the fourth of five children. His genealogical memoir The Bear Went Over the Mountain^{[disambiguation needed ]} (Cherokee Press, 1995) (footnote to Panthers Lodge e-book edition) draws on stories (“an exalted type of gossip”), courthouse records and then-scarce family history publications in the days before the Internet, as well as literary sources like W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South.In various state chapters, ranging from Virginia to Georgia, Alabama and Florida, sketches of pioneer life are inspired in part by the writers of the 1930s Work Projects Administration series, when the Federal government hired out-of-work writers to pen travel and history guides, just as it commissioned painters to produce murals in post offices across the country.

“One reason why the South has such a store of family history and culture is that families lived in close proximity to each other for generation after generation,” Yates writes in the preface to The Bear Went Over the Mountain. “Sunday afternoon visits, dinner on the grounds, weddings and funerals provided occasions for affirming a rich oral tradition. When I moved to the North (where I have lived for most of my life), I realized what I had lost. I am persuaded no Southerner who has not experienced exile from the mother culture can adequately represent it” (p. xv).

Appendix III, “Southern Language,” surveys the roots of Appalachian storytelling and comments on a number of proverbs and sayings Yates recalls from his youth.

“Traditional Southern long stories, endless table talk at coffee-shops, marathon political speeches and hours-long Baptist sermons are of a piece,” suggests Phillip B. Anderson, a professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas. “The truth is, your Southerner really does like language—not as a tool or a means of communication, but as a way of expressing and creating” (p. 249).

In midlife, Yates rediscovered his Native American genealogy and made numerous contributions to American Indian, and in particular, Cherokee studies. In one article, he demonstrates that most of the figures depicted in William Verelst’s 1734 painting titled “An Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians” (now in the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington but also seen hanging in copies in the Georgia Capitol and other official buildings) were probably those of Cherokees who visited the court of king George III in 1730 through the arrangements of Sir Alexander Cumming. The article is dedicated “to the memory of Attakullakulla, my 6th-great-grandfather,” one of the Cherokees identified in the painting. Correspondences are also suggested with Kollannah (Kalanu, Raven, “war chief,” perhaps a [[young Oconostota, Tathtowe (Tistoe, “fire-maker”), Clogoittah and Kittigusta (Skalilosken, “speaker”).

Yates contributed the Southeast entries on ceremony and ritual, mourning and burial, oral traditions and spiritual and ceremonial practitioners in American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia, ed. Suzanne J. Crawford & Dennis Francis Kelley, 3 vols., Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

In 2002, Yates and his wife Teresa returned to Judaism at Mickve Israel in Savannah, Ga. He delivered a talk titled “Remarks on My Return to Judaism” to the congregation on December 28. In reprinting it, the synagogue made a distinction between a conversion and a welcoming back ceremony. Yates and his wife “were ‘welcomed back’ to Judaism,” it said, “though they also fulfilled all the requirements for conversion.” Of genealogical interest, several prominent Melungeon families are named in the speech:

My Coopers were Melungeon. Teresa’s Rameys were Melungeon. My Blevinses were Melungeon. Teresa’s Goods were Melungeon. My Sizemores were Melungeon. Teresa’s Whiteheads were Melungeon. Every single surname in our family tree was Melungeon, and all the Melungeons were intermarried. When we plotted our genealogy chart it looked more like a telephone pole than a tree. It only had one branch, and that was the same as the main trunk. Everybody married cousins, it seemed.

Yates and Cooper families are mentioned in the cemetery and marriage records of Beth Elohim in Charleston as well as Mickve Israel (cite Malcolm Stern, Americans of Jewish Descent pp. xx). The yahrzeit of Yates’ mother Bessie Louise Cooper Yates, a descendant of Cherokee chief Black Fox and Daniel Boone’s scout William Cooper who died January 7, 2006, (footnote Rootsweb genealongy online?) is commemorated at Mickve Israel.

In 2003, Yates started a DNA testing service, now DNA Consultants located in Phoenix. The genetics genealogy company has maintained a blog reviewing scientific advances and news on DNA testing and popular genetics since 2005. Yates continues to publish books and articles in history and ethnic studies, many co-authored with Elizabeth C. Hirschman, a professor at Rutgers University of Melungeon and Choctaw-Cherokee descent like himself. He was noted in 2008 for his testimony in a probate case where Alice Elizabeth Tiffin a.k.a. Eliza Presley has claimed that she is Elvis Presley's half-sister and sought to be declared the daughter of Vernon Presley.

More information: Rootsweb genealogy

Published Works

Books

• The Bear Went Over The Mountain. 1995 Panther's Lodge
• The Eighth Arrow: Right, Wrong and Confused Paths According to Tihanama Elder Wisdom. 1997 Panther's Lodge
• Los Lunas Mystery Stone and Other Sacred Sites of New Mexico. Sun Publishing Co., 2006
• When Scotland was Jewish: DNA evidence, archeology, analysis of migrations, and public and family records show twelfth century Semitic roots. with Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, McFarland, 2007: ISBN 0786428007
• Visits to Sacred Sites. Panther's Lodge 2007

Articles

• A Discussion of William Verelst's 'Trustees of Georgia' Painting'. Journal of Cherokee studies 1997
• “DNA Haplotyping and Diversity: An Anthropogenealogical Method for Researching Lineages and Family Ethnicity,” International Journal of the Humanities ISBN 2:2043-55. Guide to finding matches in world databanks and interpreting genetic information in terms of history and recent emigration studies.
• Romancing the gene: making myth from 'hard science'. with Elizabeth C. Hirschman from Handbook for Qualitative Research Methods in marketing, editors Russel W. Belk, John F. Sherry. Emerald Group Publishing, 2007: ISBN 9780762314461

References

• http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/oct/08/vernon-presleys-estate-reopened-womans-claim-shes-/
• http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/oct/11/dna-lab-owner-elvis-is-not-dead/
• http://www.news.appstate.edu/2010/12/02/appalachian-journal-4/
• http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/03/10/daily15.html
• http://dnaconsultants.com/Detailed/36.html

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