Appel Botha: The abc of a three hundred year old divorce case
pmid:23948326 doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2013.06.008 Historical Article Research Support Non-U.S. Gov't Jaco M Greeff J Christoff Erasmus Chromosomes Human Y / genetics Divorce / history* Female Forensic Genetics / history* Genealogy and Heraldry Haplotypes History 17th Century History 18th Century Humans Male Microsatellite Repeats Paternity Pedigree South Africa PubMed Abstract NIH NLM NCBI National Institutes of Health National Center for Biotechnology Information National Library of Medicine MEDLINE
In 1683 Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. Today, 330 years later, the living patrilineal descendants of Maria's four sons, number in excess of 76,000 people. Curiously, none of them carry the surname Cornelitz - in fact, they are all called Botha and include former President …
https://cdn.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/coreutils/nwds/img/favicons/favicon.ico
PubMed
In 1683 Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. Today, 330 years later, the living patrilineal descendants of Maria's four sons, number in excess of 76,000 people. Curiously, none of them carry the surname Cornelitz - in fact, they are all called Botha and include former President P.W. Botha, general Louis Botha and Minister Pik Botha. The reason for this anomaly is also the reason why Jan got divorced from Maria in 1700. According to Maria's testimonies she did indeed have a long term relationship with Frederik Botha, but in her defence she claimed that her husband was impotent and that he actually encouraged her. Other witnesses, presumably prompted by Jan, gave testimonies that implied that Maria was in fact licentious. We combined haplotyping with the AmpFℓSTR(®) Yfiler™ kit with deep-rooting genealogies to show that Maria's first son was actually fathered by Ferdinandus Appel and that roughly half the living Bothas (38,000 people) actually descend from Ferdinandus Appel while the remaining three sons all stem from the same father, presumably Frederik Botha, and this implies that Maria's husband did not father any of her sons.