Ben Franklin’s DNA Is on a Wish List

An amateur genealogist wants to create a way for people to find out whether they’re descended from Benjamin Franklin and he needs some DNA to do it.

One possibility would be digging up Franklin’s bones, which have been buried for 212 years near Independence Hall. Since that seems unlikely, L. David Rober is focusing instead on men with well-documented ties to the statesman and inventor.

Roper says all he needs from the candidates is a simple, $150 analysis of their Y chromosomes -- genetic material handed down from fathers to sons.

Y chromosomes change infrequently from generation to generation. Even after two centuries, males related to Franklin would have nearly identical ones, Roper said.

“This is as close as we can get to Benjamin’s DNA without exhuming him or finding one of his teeth,” said Roper, a retired Virginia Tech physics professor who lives in Blacksburg, Va.

Roper said he doesn’t know of any practical use for his research, though it could smash or support a bit of family mythology. His mother is a Franklin and he plans to test himself.

In the decades after his death, rumors flew that Franklin, a printer and philosopher who persuaded France to enter the Revolutionary War and helped craft the Constitution, may have fathered several children out of wedlock.

“I got a call from a guy who thinks he is descended from an illegitimate son of Benjamin’s,” Roper said. “Who knows? Maybe it’s true. This would tell us.”

Donors would pay the $150 fee, which would go to the lab that does the testing.

DNA sampling is painless, requiring only a few cells swabbed from the inside of the cheek, but it does have limitations, said Dr. Scott Woodward, a Brigham Young University professor and expert on molecular genealogy.

Y chromosomes only reveal whether someone is related to another person, not whether he is directly descended from him, he said. The tests don’t work for women, who have no Y chromosome and whose X chromosomes change more frequently from generation to generation.