The Proeger Family · DNA evidence

What the DNA says

Earl's own DNA results, set beside the paper record. Aggregate percentages only; no living relative is named.

What the DNA says · Earl's side

Independent evidence

What the DNA says

Everything else in this record is paper. On 13 September 2026 a different kind of evidence arrived: Earl's own autosomal ancestry results DNA evidence S46. It is set apart deliberately. A DNA percentage is not a document and cannot be confirmed on this page's meaning of the word — nobody retrieved and read a record. What it can do is test the shape of the tree from outside the archive, and on one question it did exactly that — a day before the records caught up with it.

The headline has changed: the Azores is now a record, not a DNA result

Updated 16 September 2026. On 13 September this section carried the strongest statement anyone could make about the family's origin: 18.3% Portuguese & Galician out of 21.6% Spanish & Portuguese overall — the order of magnitude one substantially Portuguese grandparent produces S46. It was an inference, and it was labelled one.

It is now documented. Earl's paternal great-great-grandfather Frank Silva Sr is recorded in the 1900 federal census as born June 1863 in "Azores Port", arrived 1888 S47, and again in the 1940 census with his birthplace written plainly as "Azores" S50. His wife Annie is "Azores Port" on the same 1900 page. Two enumerations, forty years apart, by different enumerators. The Azorean origin is Confirmed by record. The DNA got there first and got it right — but it is no longer what carries it.

⚠️ What the DNA still carries alone — and this is the line that must not blur. Within that 18.3% component the results name the Pico and Faial Islands S46. Until 15 September 2026 no record retrieved named any island — every census and index says the archipelago and stops there. On that day a record caught up with half of it: Frank Silva Sr's November 1946 obituary calls him "a native of Fayal, the Azores" S67, corroborated by the two Portuguese fraternal-lodge registers of 1896, which write Fayal against a Francisco da Silva who fits him on age, trade, wife and township S64S65. So the Azores is Confirmed and so is the island — Faial Confirmed, on a document rather than a percentage. Pico is not. It remains a DNA inference alone, stays tagged DNA evidence, and is not promoted on this page, today or by anyone reading it later.

There is a second thing the DNA still cannot do, and it is worth keeping next to the first: it cannot name a parent. Every individual link on the Silva line rests on a census relationship column or a vital record — Son, Granddaughter, Father Of Bride — not on a percentage.

The composition, in full

DNA evidence

Autosomal ancestry estimate · read 13 September 2026

  • European — 99.2%
  • Western European — 47.0% · the largest single component
  • British & Irish — 28.9%
  • Spanish & Portuguese — 21.6%, of which Portuguese & Galician 18.3% and Andalusian, Asturian & Castilian 3.3%
  • Nordic — 1.2%
  • Italian & Maltese — 0.5% · not accounted for by any line in this record
  • Western Asian & North African — 0.8% · Egyptian & Southern Levantine. Likewise unaccounted for, and at this size an estimate rather than a lead
These are aggregate percentages for one person and identify nobody. They are reproduced here exactly as the report gives them, including the two small components the paper tree does not explain — a rounded-off table would have been easier to read and less honest.

How the rest of the numbers line up against the paper

47.0% Western European ↔ the Proeger German line. Julius Karl Proeger was born at Kirchberg an der Jagst, Oberamt Gerabronn, Württemberg in 1844 S69 and Minnie Margaret Kochendoerfer in Germany in 1847, and both are buried in Pittsburgh S19S44. The largest component in the test is the line this record documents most deeply.

28.9% British & Irish ↔ the Bowles, Wright and Brock lines. Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and Texas — Owsley County, Laurel County, Sumner County, Callahan County S22S23. Colonial-stock American families of that geography read as British and Irish, and they are most of the maternal half of this chart.

⚠️ The Coffmans have been moved out of that bucket, and it is worth saying why. This section used to file them under British & Irish on the strength of the Virginia geography alone. The 1940 Kauffman-Coffman genealogy S66 makes them Swiss-German Kauffmans of the Shenandoah Valley who anglicised to Coffman — which is also why the Page County clerks indexed them KAUFMAN S82. The composition has a band that fits them far better: Swiss and Southwestern German, 20.8% S46, which had otherwise been read as the Proeger and Kochendoerfer half alone. A surname that was anglicised on arrival will sort itself into the wrong continent if you file it by the county it ended up in.

1.2% Nordic — a test the tree could have failed, and did not

There is a Norwegian line in this record: Gertie Selma Selland, born 1903 at Clear Lake, South Dakota, and the Sellands above her S40S41. It belongs to Kristin, not to Earl — it comes down her mother's side, through the Peters and Selland families of Deuel County.

So a test of Earl's DNA should show very little Nordic ancestry. It shows 1.2%. That is the prediction, and it is worth stating precisely because it could have come out the other way. A large Nordic reading here would have meant something in this record was wrong — a line attached to the wrong spouse, or a branch on the wrong side of the family. It did not. The negative result is evidence too, and it is the only part of this section that tested the structure of the tree rather than an origin.

The relative matches are not published, and will not be

The same test returns a list of roughly 1,500 DNA relatives. The closest predicted relationship on it is aunt-level, at about 10% shared DNA. That single sentence is the entirety of what this page will ever say about that list.

Every one of those matches is a living person who took a DNA test for their own reasons and never agreed to appear in anybody's family record. No name, no initials, no individual percentage, no segment count and no description specific enough to identify one of them is published here. The export stays in the private research directory and is not copied onto this site. This is the same rule the rest of the page runs on — living people are named only where they are the family's own, and here not even that.

Haplogroups — the surname line and the thinnest paper stretch

Read from Earl's own 23andMe account on 17 September 2026 S100S101:

  • Paternal Y haplogroup: I-S17250 (I1, Northern European / Scandinavian-Germanic). Follows the Proeger / Prüger surname line — Julius Karl Proeger, b. Gerabronn 1844, sailed Hamburg 1865. ⚠️ Worth noting rather than assuming: I1 is characteristically Northern European and Scandinavian-Germanic, not the R1b one would casually predict for a Swabian family. It is entirely at home in Germany, but it is a real fact about the male line that the paper record cannot supply.
  • Maternal mtDNA haplogroup: J1c1. Follows Nancy Coffman → Louise Timberman → Nancy Martin → Nannie Chenault — once the thinnest stretch of the paper trail above Louise; Nannie's own death certificate now dates her S208.

FamilyTreeDNA: Free autosomal transfer completed (kit B1297203). Y/mtDNA haplogroups = Unknown — a free transfer does not call these; it requires a paid Y-DNA test (~$119–169).

GEDmatch: Kit XR8748234 + GEDCOM 8422618 uploaded. Tools pending batch processing.

GEDmatch "Are Your Parents Related?" — the result is clean

Kit XR8748234. Largest segment = 0 cM. No runs of homozygosity. Earl's parents — William Leonard Proeger and Nancy Martin Coffman — are not related to each other S102.

⚠️ This does NOT test the Silva/Rose endogamy question. Both the Silva and Rose lines sit on Earl's father's side — Aileane Marie Silva was his father's mother, and Mildred Rose her mother. A Silva×Rose connection therefore lands entirely within one parent's ancestry and produces no ROH in Earl at all. The test that would answer it requires Earl's father's kit — the single highest-value DNA move still pending.

What the DNA says · Sources

Citations

Sources cited on this page

19 of the record's sources are cited here. The numbering is the record's own; the full list, with where else each is cited, is at Sources.

  1. S19FindAGrave memorials 85739377 (Julius Karl Proeger, 1844–1924) and 85739357 (Minnie Margaret Kochendoerfer Proeger, memorialised 1848–1912; the year is superseded by [S137]), Smithfield East End Cemetery, Pittsburgh — findagrave.com/memorial/85739377.
  2. S22FindAGrave memorial 63936320, William Anderson Bowles (1858–1936), Potosi Cemetery — findagrave.com/memorial/63936320.
  3. S23FindAGrave memorial 63936483, Iona Belle Brock Bowles (1865–1947), Potosi Cemetery — findagrave.com/memorial/63936483.
  4. S40Obituaries of Dorothy's siblings — LaRoy J. "Pete" Peters (d. 25 January 2021), Miller Funeral Home, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, millerfh.com; and Betty Jane Sanders (d. 10 September 2013), Pitts Chapel, Bolivar, Missouri, via Legacy.com. A third, Shirley Darlene Peltier's (May 2026), names the same parents. Two funeral homes, two states, eight years apart, both spelling the mother's maiden name Selland. Betty's names "Dorothy Walker of Fort Worth, TX" as a sibling, which is what proves it is this family and not a same-name collision.
  5. S41FindAGrave memorials 70460076 and 70460158 — Benjamin L. Peters (1905–1993), plot Block C Lot 16 Grave E2, and Selma Selland Peters (1903–1991), Grave E1, the adjacent plot — Lakeview Cemetery, Clear Lake, Deuel County, South Dakota. Headstone transcriptions. Benjamin's SSA death date and the stone agree exactly. Family links on FindAGrave are contributor-asserted and are corroboration only; the obituaries at S40 carry the finding on their own.
  6. S44California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800–1994, via FamilySearch — William Leonard Proeger, death 14 December 1955, Los Angeles; birth 1876; parents: Julius Proeger. A state vital record, not a user tree. It is the document that promotes the join between Earl's great-grandfather and Julius Karl Proeger from Probable to Confirmed. The separate California Death Index 1940–1997 entry for the same man gives the same death date and a birth of 22 March 1876 in Pennsylvania, but abbreviates the parent field to the surname alone.
  7. S46Autosomal DNA — Ancestry Composition report, 23andMe, Earl's own test, read 13 September 2026 (report version dated 15 September 2025). Supplies the percentages quoted in What the DNA says: European 99.2% · Western European 47.0% · British & Irish 28.9% · Spanish & Portuguese 21.6%, of which Portuguese & Galician 18.3% (Pico and Faial Islands) · Nordic 1.2% · Italian & Maltese 0.5% · Western Asian & North African 0.8%. Not a document, and not treated as one — everything drawn from it carries DNA evidence and nothing on this page is promoted to Confirmed on its strength. The account is deliberately not linked and no login is given. The same account holds a DNA Relatives match list of roughly 1,500 living people; none of it is reproduced, cited or linked here, in aggregate or otherwise, beyond the single sentence in that section, and the raw export is held in the private research directory only.
  8. S47US Census, 1900 — Washington Township, ED 404, Alameda County, California; household 278, sheet 14B line 75. FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:M9P7-T13. The single most important document on the Silva line. Frank Sr: age 37, born June 1863, birthplace "Azores Port", arrival 1888, Head, married 13 years — and his own father's and mother's birthplace, both "Azores Port," which is the sixth generation. His wife Annie, 34, "Azores Port"; daughter Mary, 4; son Frank, 3, California. ⚠️ Indexed under the Anglicised spelling "Frank Silver", which is why he was invisible to earlier searches.
  9. S50US Census, 1940 — Washington Judicial Township, Niles, ED 1-180, Alameda County. FamilySearch ark:/61903/1:1:K9Q4-7JC. Frank Silva, age 76, birthplace "Azores", Head, Widowed, residence in 1935 "Same House." The second of two federal enumerations forty years apart that name the archipelago — and, like the first, it names no island. Niles is a few miles from Mission San Jose, which is the "Mission San" birthplace on Aileane's own NUMIDENT.
  10. S64UPEC Council No. 10 "Amor do Proximo", Mission San Jose — membership register, 1891–1913. União Portuguesa do Estado da California; PDF scan of the LDS microfilm hosted by Azores GenWeb, file mission-san-jose_2-10.pdf (the file is Council No. 10 only, despite its name). Page 21, member No. 66, February 1896: Francisco da Silva, 33, lavrador, [M.S.J.], Paiz Fayal — a struck Portugal beneath; page 22, heir certificate 2223: Anna da Silva. Re-read at 200 dpi on 15 September 2026. The first record of any kind to name an island for this family. Age within a year of Frank Sr's June 1863, a farmer, wife Anna, in the family's township. Probable, not Confirmed: the row carries no birth date, no parish and no parents, and "Francisco da Silva" is a common name in this colony. It is read with S65, not alone.
  11. S65IDES Council No. 1, Mission San Jose — membership register, book 2, 1889–1946. Irmandade do Divino Espírito Santo; PDF scan of the LDS microfilm hosted by Azores GenWeb, file ides_council_1_bk2.pdf. Page 21, member No. 178 (admitted 15 November 1896, suspended 3 October 1897): Francisco da Silva, 33, cazado, trabalhador, mission San Jose, Naturalidade Faial. Page 79, member No. 220, 5 April 1914: Frank Silva, 16, [solteiro], [trabalhador], San Jose / Mission, Naturalidade Mission; page 80, heir certificate 16362: Anna L. Silva, Mãi (mother), San Jose / Mission. Re-read at 200 dpi on 15 September 2026. The 1896 row is the same man as S64 in the neighbouring lodge — same name, age, town, marital state and island. The 1914 row is Frank T. Silva Jr: 16 in April 1914 fits 2 December 1897 exactly, he is California-born ("Mission"), and he names Anna L. Silva — the exact form on her death index and headstone — as his mother, in the same book. That pairing is what made Faial a strong inference from these books alone; neither book carries a birth date, so neither settles it. His 1946 obituary [S67] does, and it names these same two lodges — which is also what confirms that these rows are him.
  12. S66Charles Fahs Kauffman, A Genealogy and History of the Kauffman-Coffman Families of North America, 1584 to 1937 (York, PA, 1940), 834 pp. Free scan held at Archive.org, Allen County Public Library copy. Searched twice, to opposite effect. On 15 September 2026 the full text was searched for "Page County," "Luray," "David Coffman," "David Kaufman," "Dee," and "Emily": the Luray branch is present (D-series, ~55 Shenandoah and ~58 Rockingham mentions), but no match to Dee Coffman (b. 1857) or to his parents by those names was found, and the Page County wall was broken through the vital registers instead [S82]. On 16 September, with David Carl Coffman's name and dates in hand from his gravestone [S83], a second search on the new names reached entry FI1a, p. 562, which gives his exact dates (13 Dec 1812 – 25 Jan 1883) and names his father Samuel Coffman (b. 1779) and his mother Susanna Coffman (22 Jul 1779 – 25 Apr 1865), with Martin "Hawkbill" Coffman (d. 1809) a generation above, citing his will at Shenandoah Co. Will Bk. H, p. 338. A compiled secondary source, and the two generations it supplies are tagged Probable, not Confirmed. A 1940 published genealogy is a scholar's reading of records, not a record; the will it cites has not been read here. ⚠️ SAMUEL IS NOW CONFIRMED as David C.'s father by two Library of Virginia registers (his 1871 marriage licence and 1883 death register, both naming "Saml. Coffman"). The 1814 death date is unsourced and probably wrong: the 1820 census shows him still heading a household, and a Samuel Kauffman estate appears in Page County probate — Page County did not exist until 1831. The Martin "Hawkbill" Coffman will cited as "Will Bk. H, p. 338, 1809" does not match Shenandoah County's actual records (1805 will, Will Book E/F, seven sons without a Samuel). Martin as Samuel's father is Unsupported as stated. The book also disagrees with the gravestones on two dates: it gives Emily's birth as 17 April where the stone reads 7 April, and her death as 1867 where the stone and the Page County register say 1868. The stones are followed.
  13. S67Frank Silva Sr — obituary, November 1946. Syndicated death notice datelined Mission San Jose, Nov. 28, retrieved 15 September 2026 as two independent OCR captures of the same text on Newspapers.com (Publisher Extra, via Ancestry All Access), image ids 205259611 and 205515816. "Frank Silva, 83, resident of this community for more than 50 years and former farmer and grocer, died at the San Jose Hospital yesterday… interment will be at St. Joseph's Cemetery… He was a native of Fayal, the Azores, and was a member of IDES Lodge No. 1, St. Anthony's Sodality and the UPEC Lodge. He was the husband of the late Anna L. Silva, the foster father of Frank S. Vargas, father of the late Frank Silva Jr. and Mamie Silva and grandfather of Aileen Roberts of Philadelphia." The record that confirmed the island. Not one indexed field: it independently corroborates every axis the lodge registers rested on — age 83 (b. ~1863), Mission San José, both lodges, wife Anna L., son Frank Jr — and adds the granddaughter by her married name. The second capture's OCR reads "Azures" for Azores: a scanning slip, not a variant place. It also overturns the "d. Santa Barbara County" reading this page had taken from the California Death Index; the index is simply incomplete for Alameda County.
  14. S69Carl Julius Prüger — Lutheran baptism, Kirchberg an der Jagst (Oberamt Gerabronn), Württemberg, 28 April 1844. Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500–1985 (Ancestry collection 61023), retrieved 16 September 2026. Born 15 April 1844, between 11 and 12 noon, baptised 28 April 1844 at Kirchberg an der Jagst, Oberamt Gerabronn, Württemberg — the register writes the place Gerabronn, Kirchberg u. Oa. (today Baden-Württemberg); father Georg Melchior Julius Prüger, Bürger und Schuhmachermeister dahier; mother Elisabeth Catharina geb. Lösch. Entry no. 22, original scan 5759 × 4607 px. The record that ended the "somewhere in Germany" wall on this line, and the origin of the Prüger spelling that was anglicised to Proeger in America. The identification rests on an exact birth-date match with S68, not on the name alone. ⚠ Superseded note, corrected 20 September 2026: this entry previously said the mother's name was lost in the binding fold and that her surname came from S68 alone. That was a limitation of a low-resolution screenshot, not of the record — at full resolution the line is legible, and the Schrift im Falz verdeckt flag on the film refers to a gutter this entry sits clear of. The register names the mother, and it is the best of the three readings of her given name — see S122. The parish is Kirchberg an der Jagst and the Oberamt is Gerabronn: the siblings' entries read Kirchberg (OA. Gerabronn), and Julius gave Kirchberg as his home to the Hamburg clerk in 1865.
  15. S82David Emily "Dee" Coffman — Page County, Virginia birth register, 8 August 1857. Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Birth Records 1853–1896, FamilySearch ARK 1:1:6K1Q-DYSJ, with the same original entry indexed twice more — Virginia, Births and Christenings 1584–1917, ARK 1:1:XT4Y-1S9, and Virginia, Vital Records 1715–1912, ARK 1:1:XSVY-N9PV. Retrieved 15 September 2026. The child is entered as David E. Kaufman; the parents as David C. and Emily M. The register indexes this family as KAUFMAN while every census writes COFFMAN — that spelling split is the whole reason the wall stood, because a search on Coffman against Page County returns nothing but Shenandoah drift. ⚠️ The three indexings disagree on the year: 1857 in the Bureau register, 1858 in the christenings collection. The page follows 1857, which the stated age of 80 on his 1938 death record and the family typescript both support. The register gives the parents by given name and middle initial only; "Thornhill" is not in this record and comes from the censuses and her gravestone.
  16. S10023andMe Paternal Haplogroup report — Y-DNA haplogroup I-S17250 (I1, Northern European / Scandinavian-Germanic). Read 17 September 2026 from Earl's own 23andMe account. Follows the PROEGER / Prüger surname line. I1 is not the R1b one would casually predict for a Swabian family.
  17. S10123andMe Maternal Haplogroup report — mtDNA haplogroup J1c1. Read 17 September 2026. Follows Nancy Coffman → Louise Timberman → Nancy Martin → Nannie Chenault — the thinnest stretch of the paper trail.
  18. S102GEDmatch "Are Your Parents Related?" — Kit XR8748234. Largest segment 0 cM, no runs of homozygosity. Read 17 September 2026. Earl's parents are NOT related to each other. ⚠️ This does NOT test the Silva/Rose endogamy question — both lines are on Earl's father's side. The test that would answer it requires Earl's father's kit.
  19. S208Tennessee death certificate, Sumner County, Reg. No. 41 — Mrs Nannie C. Martin, 14 April 1915. Ancestry record 320718. Read from the image at full resolution, 22 September 2026. Mrs Nannie C. Martin, widow, born 26 January 1844, died 14 April 1915, 10th Civil District, three miles east of Gallatin; father D. Chenault (Ky.); mother "Lizzie Eastberry" (Ky.); buried Gallatin Cemetery 16 April; informant J. [R.?] Martin. 🔑 A primary record of Nannie's birth and death. ⚠ The mother's surname is hard to read. Nannie's card now carries these dates, 26 January 1844 – 14 April 1915, replacing a user-tree estimate a decade too late.

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Compiled for the Proeger family

Living adults appear by name and relationship, with the year only: no full date of birth and no home town on any page that search engines index, and a living person’s own page is kept out of search engines. Minors appear by name only — no date of birth, no birth year, no age, no school, no place, no address, no other identifying detail. A minor may be named and may appear in a family photograph; nothing further about them is published. Where it is not established whether someone is an adult or a minor, the minor rule applies.

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