VP Sara has NO Jewish Bloodline!

The online blog Politiko, in a recent post, once more displayed the laziness that many journalists and pseudo-journalists in the Philippines today are wont to be. They rehashed an already debunked claim that the former wife of former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, Elizabeth Abellana Zimmerman, was the child of a Jewish refugee in World War II. Using this "Jewish connection", Politiko and several other columnists have criticized Vice-President Sara Z. Duterte for opposing the request of the American government to temporarily provide shelter to 50,000 Afghans who are former employees of the US government during their occupation of Afghanistan while they fix their papers. The media has reminded VP Sara that her maternal family, the Zimmermans, benefitted from the benevolence of the Philippine government when her Jewish ancestor was one of German Jewish refugees who found refuge in the country during the Holocaust, so why is she opposing giving safe haven to the Afghans? But the question is, were the Zimmermans REALLY Jewish refugees during World War II, to begin with? 

When Vice-President Sara Duterte's father was elected President in 2016, one of the first state visits he made was to Israel. Our relationship with the State of Israel has always been quite special due to the refuge we gave to more than a thousand Jews escaping the Holocaust in Europe. It must be remembered that President Manuel L. Quezon opened our country’s doors to Jewish refugees from Europe during World War II and in so doing saved the lives of more than one thousand and three hundred Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Because of President Quezon’s bold move, known as the Philippines’s Open Door policy, his memory would forever be remembered and known to the Jewish people. He also guaranteed that the world will forever remember that Filipinos have always represented the spirit of compassion, solidarity, and humanity for a very long time, long before the Philippines had official immigration laws or became a State party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, being among the first to voluntarily provide asylum to successive waves of refugees fleeing persecution.

President Manuel L. Quezon with some Jewish refugees in Manila (from The Times of Israel)

So, naturally, their reception for President Duterte and then Mayor Inday Sara was more than just perfunctory; in fact, the Israelis were more than welcoming due to a claim made by PRRD that his former wife, and the mother of his three children, was the daughter of one of the Jewish refugees aaved by President Manuel L. Quezon's Operation Open Doors. The Israelis embraced Duterte and his daughter like one of their own, especially since the Israeli media made such a big deal of the so-called Jewish connection with a Philippine President. 

President Duterte and daughter Sara visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 2018 (from The Times of Israel).

But all the hoopla about the Zimmermans being Jewish was nothing but the usual unverified oral history in a Filipino family plus the Philippine media's laziness to conduct a simple fact check of PRRD's claims of his former wife's Jewishness. While President Duterte cannot be blamed for believing in the Zimmerman family's oral history, we can put the blame of the media's refusal or inability to verify facts. Here are the facts: Elizabeth A. Zimmerman, the ex-wife of PRRD, was the daughter of two Filipinos: Godofredo Baldazo Zimmerman and Purisima Abellana. Elizabeth Zimmerman's father was born on November 18, 1916 in Hilongos, Leyte, Philippines, baptized on November 25, and died on June 26, 1993 in Davao City, Davao del Sur, Philippines. He was the son of George John Zimmerman and Cristeta Baldazo. Although he used Zimmerman as a last name all his life, both his birth and baptismal records list him under his mother's last name - Baldazo. His birth register in Hilongos, Leyte, while identifying him as illegitimate, does provide the name of his father: Geo. J. Zimmerman.

George John Zimmerman, the grandfather of Elizabeth, was born on January 17, 1890 in Peoria County, Illinois, USA to German immigrants, Michael August Zimmerman and Maria Augusta Wenzel.  Michael August Zimmermann, son of Andreas Zimmermann and Marie, was born on July 4, 1857 in Bayern, Germany and died on July 27, 1925 in Peoria, Peoria County, Illinois, USA. He married Maria Augusta Wenzel on July 12, 1883 in Peoria, Peoria County, Illinois, USA. Michael Zimmermann arrived in the United States in 1882. Michael Zimmermann was a tavern owner and true to his surname, also a carpenter. 

Michael A. Zimmerman

For most of his life, George John Zimmerman worked for Gordon & Ferguson Co. He prepared in Peoria H. S. and earned his AB in Business in Concordia College at the University of Illinois. He was a Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Kappa Chi. He worked with Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. in Chicago; as a Supervising Teacher in Hilongos, Leyte; and was already with Gordon & Fergusan, in St. Paul in 1918. After the birth of his illegitimate child Godofredo in Leyte in 1916, he returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War I. His military registration card describes him as "tall", "slender", with brown hair and brown eyes. By World War II, he was already employed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa and was already married to Josephine Johnson. He is further described as standing 5'11" in height and weighing 155 lbs. 

Sometime after returning to the United States, George Zimmerman married Josephine Mathilde Johnson and they had 3 daughters: Helen May Zimmerman (married name Allyn), Georgiana Zimmerman (married name Ginn), and Josephine Zimmerman (married name Moseley). Descendants of George's daughters are scattered in Washington, Minnesota, and South Carolina.

The Zimmerman lineage of VP Sara comes from Unterlangau, Bavaria, Germany, and German and Jewish genealogists have written that "Zimmermann" (and its variant Zimmerman) is the German equivalent of the English surname carpenter, as it is derived from the profession. The fact that there ARE German Jews with the name Zimmermann does not make it Jewish in origin. Also, census data from the district of Oberviechtach between 1900 and 1939, of which Unterlangau was a part, shows that the district's population was overwhelmingly Catholic back then, with just a single-digit number of Jews. Furthermore, US census and other records list Michael Zimmerman and his family as congregants of the Lutheran Church.

The Zimmermans as Lutherans

And of course, DNA testing in both the Philippine Zimmermans and their half-relatives in the US have further disproven the Jewish claim. Results from their ancestral breakdown clearly do not show any Jewish heritage. A German-Jewish grandfather (as claimed by Filipino journalists) would have shown up as 25% Ashkenazi Jew, great-grandfather as roughly 12%. But the family's DNA result shows 0%, which means a non-Jewish ethnicity. 

The politics of welcoming the Afghan employees of the US government is not the subject of this article. But journalists and columnists must always make sure that before they use genealogical tidbit to make a political point, they must first do a fact check of the information they simply rehash, otherwise they'd end up looking lazy and stupid. The funny and sad thing is that the "Jewish connection" of the Dutertes came from PRRD's unverified oral history, which the Israeli media simply accepted, and then which became the source of Philippine media, as well. So much for journalistic integrity. 

I Am Southeast Asian, North Slavic, Sardinian, Dravidian, and 10 more Ethnicities...How About You?

This is not my first article on genetic genealogy. In fact, I have already posted a rather long article on my maternal grandfather's Y-DNA story, which was mostly taken from the report I got from National Geographic's Genographic Project. Today, I will simply and briefly discuss on my latest discoveries about genetics and ethnic makeup, but I plan to write a more indepth article on genetic genealogy in general and about further discussion on my own genetic genealogy.

Having researched my family history since 1994 and after already exhausting all available written documents about my family's history, I decided to expand my quest for my ancestors by trying out genetic genealogy. While this has been in the market for some years now, it was only in the late 2010s that the tests became more readily available at a much affordable rates. And, as more and more people became interested in using DNA to trace one's family history deeper into time, more companies came up with better test results at a much faster timeline. So, I decided that the fastest way for me to get results on my family's genetics was through asking a sibling of my parents in the United States to do it since many of the genetic genealogy companies are found there. Take note, however, that these tests would only show their approximate ethnic breakdown which may be slightly or very different if I were to test my mother or father instead. However, since I am not interested for now to know MY own specific genetic breakdown and simply wanted to get an idea of where both my families are from, I was okay with that caveat.

So in 2014 I asked my mom's brother, and he graciously agreed to do so, to take the National Geographic Genographic test, the results of which I already discussed in an earlier post. When Ancestry had a sale on DNA testing late 2016, I once again requested the same uncle to take the test. An uncle is better than an aunt because, in the weird world of genetics, a man has both Y-DNA and mtDNA, meaning males inherit the Y-DNA from his father and the mtDNA from his mother, while a woman does not inherit the Y-DNA. So up until last year I already had an idea of what approximately made up half of my genes. Late in 2017, when MyHeritage had a sale on their DNA testing I requested a brother of my dad to take the test. Again, like my mom's brother, my paternal uncle also agreed to take the test immediately. The results came as the new year was starting, so what better way to start 2018 than discuss these results.

Presenting, my APPROXIMATE ethnic breakdown!

An approximation of my genetic breakdown

Take note, this is not a very scientific way of estimating genetic results. As I will discuss more later, it is a quirk in the passing down of genes that though we get genetic materials from both our mother and father, the percentage may not always be the case. So, if your mother is Filipino and your father is Indian, it does not automatically mean you are half Filipino and half Indian, per se. It is a reality that you may only get a quarter of your father's Indian genes and have more Filipino genes from your mother.  While for the sake of simple illustration you can quantify it as such, current technology has not made it possible to give us the exact breakdown of our parents' ethnicities.

But again, this post is an introductory post of sorts so I will dispense with the scientific realities and discuss my genetic results like any regular, non-scietific person.

What the image below, which is an enlarged portion of the image above, shows is that I am approximately almost exclusively Asian. 

A huge percentage of my approximate genetic breakdown is East Asian at 90%. My East Asian ethnicity is both from my maternal and paternal families, broken down into Southeast Asian, Taiwanese, and Central Chinese from both of my parents, and Cambodian/Thai, Japanese/Korean, and Siberian exclusively from my maternal family.

Around 4.35% of who I am is West Eurasian. That means partly being Central Asian (which includes Indus Valley and Mid-Turkic), North Slavic, and Sardinian. Then around 1.15% of my West Eurasian ethnicity is, according to DNALand, "ambiguous". This just means that they cannot compare this portion of my mom's genetic material to any existing gene pool in their database. As later articles on other genetic companies' results will show, this "ambiguous" percentage has disappeared.

Both sides of the family also gave me Native Oceanian genes. Then, less than 1% Dravidian and another less than 1% ambiguoss ethnicity I received from my father's genes.

Based on the percentages I have shown, I simply averaged the genetic percentages of my mother and father's sides. 

As many genetic experts will tell you, these percentages are not accurate but are simply approximation. I promise to discuss more on genetic genealogy as this has become quite a fast-growing tool for many Filipino genealogists. For now, suffice it to say that I had fun calculating my probable and approximate genetic breakdown. Discovering one's ancestry breakdown, even just an approximation, is a spiritual experience. The world becomes smaller and smaller as you delve deeper into your roots. Finding that you have genetic similarities with people from other nations makes you realize that humanity really is but one big family. Despite the vastness of our planet, I would never feel alone anymore.

Happy New Year!

Note: The presentation above is based on the results given by DNALand. As discussed, I will add more to my discussion on genetic genealogy in the next few weeks.

From Africa's Adam to Argao: The Genetic History of the Lucero Family

Finally, my genetic genealogy report, at least for one of the possible thousands of my ancestral lines, has become available. Thanks to my mother's older brother, my uncle Dario in the US, I am now able to chart the journey of my Lucero ancestry through the male line. Or in the case of genetics, using the Y-chromosome.

I wanted to trace my Lucero genes first because, personally, I have always been more attached to my maternal family. And since my Lucero ancestry is maternal, I had to make use of an uncle to provide the sample for genetic testing as the Y-chromosome, if we remember our basic genetics class in college, is passed through the male line only. Thus, my Lucero grandfather, Jesus Birondo Lucero, passed on his Lucero Y-chromosomes to all my mom's brothers but not to his daughters, which include my mom. Finally, since among all my familial lines it is the Lucero history that I have fully documented so it has become obvious which line I should begin with.

The Lucero history spans several generatiions, and I am in the 9th generation if I count from the oldest historically verifiable ancestor we have, while I am in the 12th generation if I add the three ancestors that are purely based on oral history. US social historian Michael Cullinane, who has read my history of the Luceros, has always insisted that the Lucero Hispanic line is paternal, while I have always subscribed to the family lore that it is maternal. Here is what I know of my Lucero ancestry:

I am the son of Fely D. Lucero, who is the daughter of Jesus Birondo Lucero, whose father was Isidro Ceballos Lucero, whose father was Bonifacio Jose Bayot Lucero, whose father was Jose Francisco Cabrera Lucero, whose father was Justiniano Francisco de Sta. Cruz Lucero, whose father, Hermenegildo Francisco Lucero, was the son of Francisca Yldefonza. The only record that shows the farthest traceable Lucero is the death certificate of Justiniano's sister Mauricia Francisca Lucero vda. de Taguenca-Cabrera where Francisca Yldefonza is listed. No surname is given and the husband is written off as padre de noconocido (father not known).

Family lore has always claimed that Francisca Yldefonza was a Lucero who married an indio principalia and thus passed on her surname to her descendants. Indeed, at least 4 documents show that the Lucero surname has existed in Argao years prior to the Claveria surname decree of 1849, a clear indication that the Lucero name, at least in the town of Argao, is a last name that has been passed down and was not adopted based on the surname decree.

Because of these I have always believed in the family legend, and now that I have the result of our genetic genealogy I can now say with certainty that Francisca Yldefonza's husband was not Spanish at the very least. 

The journey of my genetic heritage, from Africa to China, then later down to the Philippines

Whatever the name of Francisca Yldefonza's husband, he was descended from a long line of males belonging to the Austronesian family. The genetic history of this unnamed husband of my ancestor is traced from the earliest known ancestor, back to a "genetic Y-chromosome Adam" who probably lived in Africa. Although he is given the name "Adam", he was not the only man at that time but this genetic Adam was the only one among the other males whose Y-chromosome has been passed down to all of mankind today. He was also not the first man and in fact geneticists believe that even this Adam had his own ancestors, only that we no longer have any way to trace the genetic lineage beyond this genetic Adam. From this genetic Adam I can trace my ancestry down to the modern times through several Y-chromosome markers.  These are:

M168 > P143 > M89 > L15 > M9 > M214 > M175

A marker, simply put, is a random, naturally occurring, usually harmless mutation in the Y-chromosome, making one branch of a genetic family tree unique from the rest. Because the Y-chromosome remains virtually unchanged through many generations then these markers can be traced easily as they, too, are passed from father to son.

M168, also known as the Eurasian Adam, lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. It is generally accepted that this first man who gave rise to the M168 marker lived about 50,000 years ago. He is called the Eurasian Adam because all modern males today who are not African descend from him.

Then about 5,000 years later one of Eurasian Adam's male descendants gave rise to the M89 marker, a marker which is present in 90 to 95% of all non-African males. This person lived somewhere in Northern Africa or the Middle East, and aside from stone tools people were already using wooden and ivory tools. 

My next ancestor, a man born around 40,000 years ago in Iran or southern Central Asia, gave rise to the M9 genetic marker which marked a new lineage diverging from the M89 Middle Eastern Clan. His descendants, of which I am one, spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet. This was already during the Upper Paleolithic era.

And then, about another 5,000 years after the birth of my M9 ancestor, a descendant gave rise to the M214 marker. This man was born and lived in Eurasia, likely east of the Aral Sea, and was most likely a hunter-gatherer. This man carrying M214 has become the direct patrilineal ancestor of a very large percentage of present-day humans.

Then finally, about 35,000 years ago my most recent ancestor, the one who gave rise to the the haplogroup O or the genetic marker M175, was born somewhere in Southeast or East Asia. This guy lived during the Ice Age and as I was reading the report by National Geographic's Genographic Project I can distinctly recall my history 1 lesson where a discussion was made about waves of migrants who crossed land bridges to the Philippines but were later unable to return home as these bridges melted or were submerged with water. One of them was my male-line ancestor, whose line continued on until it reached the coastal town of Argao, Cebu, and in the early 1700s one of their descendants married a Hispanic woman, Francisca Yldefonza Lucero, whose son Hermenegildo Jose Lucero married Florencia Visenta de Sta. Cruz and had a son, Justiniano Francisco Lucero, who married Casimira Manuela Hernaez Cabrerz, who were the parents of Jose Francisco Lucero, who married Ambrosia Villarde Bayot and had Bonifacio Jose Lucero, who married Severina Tiburciana Ceballos and who produced Isidro Ceballos Lucero, who married Anacleta Tan Birondo and whose son Jesus Birondo Lucero was the father of Fely Jesus Dolloso Lucero, my mother.

As I delve deeper into my genetic genealogy I can feel the echoes of my distant ancestors cheering that I am taking the time to tell their story. I am in awe of God's obvious hand in the history of my genetic ancestry. And I am further convinced that the wars and conflicts in the world are pointless as we all come from the same line. 

I can't wait to do genetic testing on my other lines soon!