The DNA Doesn't Lie — And It Just Turned Everything Upside Down
I've been chasing the parentage of my third great grandfather, Michael Oliver Jenkins, for nearly twenty years. Twenty years! And if you've followed along here at all, you know this particular brick wall has had me banging my head against it more times than I can count. I even wrote a book about him — a book where I had to be very upfront about the fact that most of what we thought we knew about his origins was conjecture. That's how uncertain everything was.
Well. Things have changed.
A while back, a lovely young woman named Amanda Jenkins reached out to me on Ancestry. She'd found my dad's DNA results and all the research I'd posted, and she was curious about the family and all the rumors swirling around M.O. Jenkins' birth. When I looked at her tree, I just about fell out of my chair. Her father, Michael D. Jenkins, was a direct male descendant of M.O. — and he was still living. I explained to her that what I really needed more than anything was a Y-DNA test on a direct male descendant, and she didn't hesitate for a second. She got her dad to take the test, and in just a couple of months, we had results.
I have to tell you, every time I write the name Michael D. Jenkins I smile a little, because here we are trying to solve the mystery of Michael Oliver Jenkins' birth, and the man who steps up to take the test that cracks the case is also named Michael. Whether or not he was named after M.O., I can't say. But I love that connection.
What the Y-DNA Told Us
Here's where everything flipped on its head.
For years the working theory was that the Jenkins family who raised M.O. — Joseph Jenkins and his family — were connected to him through his mother's side. The thinking was that his mother was somehow a Jenkins, or related to them, and that's why this family took him in. He even referred to Joseph as his grandfather and Joseph's daughter Margaret as his Aunt Margaret. It all seemed to fit.
The Y-DNA says otherwise.
M.O. Jenkins carried Jenkins DNA on his paternal line. He was a Jenkins through his father. That means the family who raised him wasn't his mother's family at all — they were his father's people.
That changes everything.
Confirming the Grandparents
Once I understood what the Y-DNA was telling me, I had to go back and look at the autosomal DNA with fresh eyes. The question shifted from who were his mother's family to how does the family who raised him fit into his paternal line?
I started looking carefully at the DNA connections to descendants of Joseph Jenkins and his wife Elizabeth Hambright. And what I found was remarkable. My father's DNA matches descendants of not just Joseph and Elizabeth, but multiple siblings of Elizabeth — all of them tracing back to her father, Colonel Frederick Hambright. That's too many Hambright matches to be coincidental. There's no reasonable way to explain that many shared connections to the Hambright family unless M.O. is descended from Elizabeth.
Then I went back one more generation and looked at the DNA connections to Frederick Hambright's other descendants. Still there. Still connecting.
I'm now convinced — as convinced as DNA evidence can make you, which I'll admit isn't the same as a signed document, but it's pretty compelling — that Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright are the confirmed grandparents of Michael Oliver Jenkins.
So Who Was His Father?
This is where it gets interesting. And honestly, a little heartbreaking when you look at the paper trail alongside it.
Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright had two sons: Hugh and David.
David was born in 1786 and married Nancy Carpenter in October of 1811. He was already married by the time M.O. would have been conceived around 1820. That doesn't rule him out — married men have fathered children they weren't supposed to — but it does make the story a complicated one.
Hugh, though. Hugh is the one who keeps catching my attention.
When Joseph Jenkins wrote his will in 1821, the language he used for Hugh versus David is striking. To David, he leaves property simply "to him and his heirs." But to Hugh, he leaves property "during the term of his natural life and if he has children born in lawful wedlock then to him his heirs…and if he has no heirs…"
Born in lawful wedlock.
By 1821, David clearly already had children — he and Nancy had been married for ten years. But Joseph felt the need to specifically say that Hugh's inheritance would only pass to children born in lawful wedlock. Why put that language in a will unless you had reason to believe there might be children who were not born in lawful wedlock?
M.O. Jenkins was born in 1820 and raised right there among this family. He carried their last name. He called Joseph his grandfather. And yet he appears in none of these wills — not Joseph's, not Hugh's. Not a single mention.
The DNA now confirms he was a Jenkins. But his own family's legal documents pretend he doesn't exist.
I can't help but think about what that must have felt like for him.
His Mother Is Still a Mystery
I want to be clear about what we don't know, because this research has humbled me more than once and I'm not about to get ahead of myself again.
We do not know who M.O. Jenkins' mother was. We know Joseph and Elizabeth are his grandparents. We know the father was either Hugh or David. But his mother? She remains a complete mystery, and if I'm being honest, she may stay that way for a while. The paper trail in Lincoln County, NC for this period is thin — birth records in North Carolina didn't start until 1913, and an 1797 fire didn't help things any.
So the picture we have right now is this: M.O. Jenkins was born around 1820, most likely the illegitimate son of either Hugh or David Jenkins. When his mother — whoever she was — couldn't or didn't raise him, it was his father's family who stepped in. Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright took in their grandson and raised him as their own. He called Joseph grandfather because Joseph was his grandfather.
After nearly twenty years of research, that's not a small thing to finally be able to say.
I have a long way to go still. Hugh or David — that's the next question. And somewhere out there, M.O.'s mother is waiting to be found. I haven't given up on her.
But for now, I'm going to sit with this one for a bit.
And this time, I'm not deleting my post because some certified genealogist comes along doubting my connection. I know there is no paper trail to this, and we have had family trying to find the paper trail for over 100 years. It doesn't exist. DNA was our last hope. So unless someone can show me proof that my DNA research is wrong, then this post is staying up and I'm going to claim Joseph Jenkins and Elizabeth Hambright as my ancestors. I have eaten enough humble pie over this and gone back and checked, double, and triple checked my research. I even spent a year in Diahan Southard DNA course to make sure I understood the DNA research.
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