Lopo Vaz Sampayo Portuguese crypto-Jewish Governor of India
My mother told me many years ago long before the advent of dna testing or the internet that her father's paternal ancestors came to Norfolk in England from Spain. He thought they had been Spanish Jews or Gypsies. They had arrived in Norfolk from Spain in the 16th century and in 1843 my mother's great-grandfather James had left home as a 16 year old boy for a life in Western Australia.
In order to find out my grandfather's y-dna I had my cousin tested and we at first were told it was R1b SRY2627 which is a Spanish y-dna which I believe to descend from the Tribe of Simeon that moved into southern France and Northern Spain. Over time with more studies SRY2627 was found to be a subclade of R1b DF27 which is the marker for the Tribe of Simeon. SRY2627 is a Jewish branch of the Tribe of Simeon. Deeper dna testing demonstrated that my cousin was R1b FGC11245 which descends from R1b CTS4299. Another Norfolk family called Muse was also CTS4299 that was descended from the Spanish crypto-Jew Bartholmew Mewes (aka Moses (Mousa) Bertran) and was a brother of my grandfather's ancestor Llorens (Luria) Bertran (aka Laurence Bartram b.1538). Their parents were Yochanan Luria (b.1505 Spain) and Antonina Judith Henriquez Bertran of Alayor on Minorca Island near Spain.
The R1b Jewish project reveals a small cluster of Jewish families from Hungary descended from the Schonberg or Schoenberg family that belonged to the brother clade of CTS4299. This group was R1b BY16148. This Schoenberg family descended from the Spanish Jewish family of Belmonte. Both Schonberg and Belmonte mean Beautiful Mountain or Hill. Abraham Schonberg or Schoenberg was born in Norpad in Hungary in 1812 and his grandfather was Jacob Abraham Belmonte (aka Franz van Schoonenberg) of Amsterdam (born 1757).
R1b FGC11245 mutation has obviously occurred in the Bartram family within the last 500 years (unlike the riduculous estimates found on the y-trees based on an evolutionary or molecular clock dating methodology). R1b CTS4299 was formed some time before 1550 but after 1300. The most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of the Bartram, Muse and Schonberg families was Yechiel Luria (b.1300) of Portugal. Thus Yechiel Luria (aka Joao Peres) belonged to the subclade R1b Z207 of R1b DF27. The Parrish family of Norwich in Norfolk descends from Llorens Bertran and his wife Angela Peres a Spanish crypto-Jewish couple. Parrish is an English version of the surname Peres. The Parrish family is also of R1b FGC11245 y-dna.
Jacob Abraham Belmonte's ancestor Guido Emanuel Belmonte was also known as Guido Schonenberg who was born in 1560. They took the name Belmonte from their ancestress Simcha Belmonte (Guiomar de Eca) who was married to Lopo Vaz Sampayo (1473-1538) 6th Portuguese Governor of India. Strangely he is also my 14 x great-grandfather on my father's maternal side. My paternal grandmother on her father's side descends from Esther Belmonte (b.1663). Lopo in turned on his direct male line descended from Vasco Pires de Sampaio (born 1360) 1st Senhor de Vila Flor whose father was Pedro (Pinchas) de Sotomayor. Pedro was the son of Joao Peres whose Jewish name was Yechiel Luria and was also the ancestor of Yochanan Luria (b.1505) of Minorca from whom my maternal grandfather descends.
Yechiel Luria (b.1300) was descended from Moses Aaron Luria (b.1200) of Orleans in France. Moses was the grandson of Yechiel of Loire from which the surname Luria derives. Yechiel of Loire's wife was descended from the Jewish Davidic Kings of Narbonne and his mother from the Davidic Jewish Nasiim of Barcelona. Yechiel was the son of Isaac Bar Shimon (Ibn Shimon) and Chaya bat Yechiel. Chaya's father Yechiel descends from the Barcelona Nassim whose ancestor Hezekiah II ben David was a Babylonian Exilarch. Many claim Davidic status for the Luria family and they do have Davidic status through female Davidic lines but are of the Tribe of Simeon on their male lineage.
The descendants of SRY2627 are not the only Jewish cluster of DF27. The largest cluster is R1b FGC20747. Another Jewish cluster is found under ZZ51. There is also another small cluster under S16864. However the R1b Jewish project has mainly Ashkenazi Jews in these groups and there may be many Sephardi Jews who belong to DF27 and its subclades.
The Schoenberg's are Ashkenazi Jews who belong to SRY2627 but this is originally a Sephardi Jewish group. My ancestors who belonged to this group were of Sephardi origin. It is common for crypto-Jewish Sephardi families to marry into other crypto -Jewish or Jewish families. This was the case in my grandfather's family. His grandfather James married a crypto-Jewess whose father was of Sephardi Marrano ancestry and her mother a daughter of an Ashkenazi Rabbi. James' grandmother Anna Modin was born an Italian Jewess. My grandfather himself married a wife who was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish origin.
These few DF27 clusters are Jewish and many of their descendants were crypto-Jews and are today Catholics or Christians. Not all DF27 is Jewish. The majority of DF27 is from the paganised Tribe of Simeon who embraced the Christian religion at a latter date. They are not Jews and are not of Jewish ancestry but they are Israelites from the Lost Tribes. Not all Belmonte's are descendants of the Tribe of Simeon as they have taken their surname Belmonte from their mother just as the family discussed here took it from a female ancestress. So one would expect a number of clusters of Belmonte in any future Belmonte dna project. The Belmonte surname was taken from the Portuguese town of Belmonte which has been a centre of Jewish and crypto-Jewish activity since medieval times. In recent years many of its members have returned openly to their Jewish heritage.
The largest group of y-dna found among Western European Jews, Spanish Jews and Sephardi crypto-Jews is R1b y-dna but they are often left out of the estimates for the amount or percentage for R1b found among Jews as they are automatically assumed to be descended from converts. This is not always the case. The R1b Jewish project is mainly made up of those families of Ashkenazi Jewish background who have no known convert in their male line. There is also a R1b Cohane project which has demonstrated that claimants to Cohen status belong to a two R1b Z2103 subclades that goes back to Temple times.
Beth Eliyahu Synagogue in Belmonte today