DNA TESTING

As you can see by the information displayed on this website, I have been able to trace our ancestry back several generations, to the early 1800’s.

On the Murphy half, I have been able to trace back to Matthew and Catherine Murphy, and Miles and Jane Murphy, who were probably born before 1810 in Enniscorthy, Ireland. On the Bogner half of the chart, I have been able to trace back to Friedrich Bittlingmeier, born in the German state of Baden around 1720, and Thomas Homberger, who was born in the early part of the 17th Century in the German state of Hessen.

It is very difficult to go beyond this timeline because very few, if any, civil records exist before 1820 in Germany or Ireland. To go further back, I will have to find church records that recorded births, marriages and deaths. Dealing with the church, especially in Europe, for such ancient information is daunting, if not impossible. Very recently, however, I have had some limited success with early church records, thanks to Tom and Kathryn Peters.

There is, however, another method: DNA testing. We all have DNA in the cells of our bodies that we inherit from our parents, but only males have the nuclear DNA, called y-chromosome or yDNA, that is passed only from father to son.

There is another form of DNA called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA for short. The mtDNA is passed from a mother to all of her children, male and female, but only females can pass it to their children. I have the mtDNA that I inherited from my mother, Jacqueline Bogner.

Jacqueline inherited her mtDNA from her mother, Margaret Bittlingmeier. Margaret got it from her mother, Anna Bauer. Anna got it from her mother, Margaret Greuter. And Margaret got it from her mother, Margaret Surbeck. This ancestral line traces back to Germany and Switzerland.