The Father of Michael Oliver Jenkins

Our ancestors once believed they would take their secrets to the grave. I guess the jokes on them because little did they know that they were leaving pieces of the answers behind in DNA that would be passed to each of us to be unlocked generations later.

It's been a long journey trying to solve the mystery of the parentage of Michael Oliver Jenkins. To follow the research, please read my previous posts from the last several months.

Many years ago, M.O. Jenkins was interviewed by a granddaughter where he recounts that his grandfather was Joseph Jenkins and that he had an Aunt Margarett "Peggy" Froneberger who helped raise him. With a great deal of research, I found these family members and started putting the paper trail together, but what we didn't know at the time is whether the Jenkins were his paternal or maternal family. Though many of us suspected and assumed that since he was raised by the Jenkins, it was more likely that his mother was a Jenkins. About ten years ago I wrote a book based on this paper trail and ending with my research that Hugh Jenkins was the father of Joseph Jenkins and my belief that the Jenkins were the same Jenkins family from Lancaster County, PA and possibly descended from a Jenkins believed to be from Wales. I'll get back to that research soon. 

Backing up to the mystery. Knowing who the grandparents of M.O. were allowed me to take the line back to Pennsylvania, but I still didn't have an answer as to who the parents of M.O. were, and it would take DNA to solve that mystery. 

Fast forward to 2022. I was contacted by a distant cousin who had just done her DNA and discovered that she was related to my father on his Jenkins line. We started comparing notes and I suddenly wanted to do the happy dance because her father was still alive and was a direct male descendant of M.O. Jenkins. After years of searching and being unsuccessful, I finally had a living male descendant of M.O. Jenkins and even better, he was willing to do a Y-DNA test for us. I anxiously waited for his results to come back, and when I was finally able to talk to her about the result, I was more confused than anything.

After a while this newfound cousin shared the login information with me so that I could see her dad's test firsthand. Well, that helped some, but I still wasn't certain. Though there were some matches with the surname of Jenkins, we were also seeing matches with other surnames like Wiggington and Williams. Though I'm sure with a great deal of work and sorting through these matches, I would have solved this on my own, I was impatient; so I upgraded his test to the Big Y DNA test. Viola! We had an answer. It was very clear then when I could see where he fell in the block tree and that he is a part of a new immerging variant Haplogroup, that he was most certainly a Jenkins! But wait! That meant his father was a Jenkins! I swear M.O. must be truly trying to keep us in suspense. How on earth am I going to solve who his mother is? Oh, someday I will! 

First things first. I need to now focus on his paternal line and strengthen my paper trail with the DNA. One of the ways I did that was by looking at Joseph's wife, Elizabeth Hambright, the daughter of Fredrick Hambright. If Elizabeth is an ancestor of M.O. then her siblings' descendants should show up as DNA matches to my father, and boy did they ever. We have many very strong DNA matches to Fredrick Hambright and his descendants. This further solidified Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright as the grandparents of M.O. Jenkins. 

Now that we know from Y-DNA that M.O. is a Jenkins through his paternal line and we know that Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright of Lincoln, NC are his confirmed grandparents by DNA, we need to determine which one of Joseph and Elizabeth's sons are the father of M.O. Jenkins. This should be easy as they only had two sons, David and Hugh, right? Think again. M.O. I'm convinced you were a joker in life because this joke never ends!

I started with David's line and traced down each descending line and matched up all DNA matches to my father. As the saga continues every one that has done a DNA test came in around the same cm's shared with my father as any who descended from the other children of Joesph and Elizabeth. Oh, wait there were two descendants of Susan Jenkins whose cm's were about double that of any of the other cousins. That threw me off for a while, until I did some triangulation to their other matches, to discover that these two matches also shared matches with my dad's Hoyle and Swofford line, which married into my dad's Jenkins line after M.O. Endogamy sure can make this DNA fun, but at least it gave me an answer to that anomaly that made sense. 

Now that David seems to be ruled out, that leaves only Hugh Jenkins as the possible father of M.O. This is where the joke is on me, Hugh had no known children by which we can compare the DNA of his descendants. But then that brings me to his father's will. I just can't stop thinking about the words in his father's will..... "to my son Hugh......if he has children born in lawful wedlock." He never said anything like this of any of the other children. Was this Joseph's way of saying that M.O. was Hugh's son and he was aware of him, but that this child due to no fault of his own, would not be entitled to inherit from his estate because he was a bastard child. We may never know 100% for certain if Hugh was the father of M.O. but all the pieces seem to be pointing to the father of Michael Oliver Jenkins being Hugh Jenkins the son of Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright. 

Ok, so the jokes still on us to some degree, but I'm sure that with technology and time, we will unlock the final pieces of the puzzle. Now, will it ever be possible to discover who M.O.'s mother was? Only time will tell, but I'll keep working at this.