Clifford and Louise Hullinger and later Beth and Craig Hullinger visited our lovely Swiss ancestral hometowns in Canton Aargau west of Zurich. In 1984 Beth and Craig met our cousin Elizabeth Hollinger in Switzerland, and in 2003 we saw Elizabeth again and met her son Christof and his wife Elizabeth. They were all very nice and brilliant. We compared our genealogies and determined that we were 13th cousins once removed.
In October 2010 Craig Hullinger took a genetic test to determine our "Y" Chromosome haplogroup. The "Y" Chromosome determines sex and is passed from father to son with minimal changes. It can be used to prove relationships among males and determine ancient originations. All male descendants and ancestors and cousins of John Hullinger will have identical or nearly identical "Y" haplogroup DNA. The test requires a simple swab of the inside of your mouth. The lab determined that our haplogroup is J.
The test showed that our Swiss Hullinger genealogy was accurate. Our "Y" chromosome is closely related to four other Hullinger / Hollinger men who who also took the DNA test.
I have contacted these cousins by email. Over time we should be able to determine our exact relationship by comparing our written genealogies.
The test also shows the number of Swiss matches against the total number of Swiss and European "Y" Haplogroups tested. This result is quite low - only 2 Swiss cousins out of 1,618 Swiss tested. It is also rare in the rest of Europe. This indicates that our J haplogroup is a recent and rare haplogroup in Europe.This implies that we are probably a later migration into Switzerland and Europe.
Our haplogroup is J which is from the middle east. The maps below show the origination and migration path of men with the "J" Haplogroup.
The Map below from Wikipedia shows current concentrations of men with the "J" Haplogroup. Note that the highest concentration is in the middle east which probably shows where it originated.
Our Haplogroup is actually J2, a subdivision of J, which split from J and probably originated in the fertile crescent. It split from J 18,500 +/- 3,500 years ago.
"Haplogroup J2 is found mainly in the Fertile Crescent, the Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans, Italy, the Mediterranean littoral, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and South Asia. More specifically it is found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, and more frequently in Iraqis 29.7% , Lebanese 25%, Palestinians16.8%, Syrians 22.5% , India 7%, Sephardic Jews 29%, Kurds 28.4%, Saudi Arabia 15.92%, Jordan 14.3%, Oman 10-15%, UAE 10.4%, Yemen 9.7%, in Israel, in Palestine, and in Turkey."
Very interesting. We are descended from a Hollinger in Switzerland and are shown by the DNA test to be related to four other Hullinger / Hollinger men who descended from a common Swiss ancestor.
But our deeper ancestry is from the middle east. Our J-2 ancestor migrated into Switzerland. Most of the middle east was part of the Roman Empire, and he could have immigrated, been a slave, or a soldier.