Good things do occasionally come to those who wait

The last couple weeks have been such a roller coaster ride. I took a short trip to Utah for the annual company retreat, which was amazing; turned in some projects for work where we were able to find quite a bit of info for a few clients; spent some time as a family doing service for others; and biggest of all, today was the third birthday of my son Levi, who left us two months after he was born. I can't begin to describe the range of emotion that goes along with all of those activities, but it honestly was a little exhausting. So to have some time to just sit back and explore my own family history for a bit is, for me, the ultimate in relaxation.

And I've got some great discoveries to share! At the retreat last week, we had some free time on Friday morning, and management asked us what we'd like to do. Some folks said they wanted to collaborate on a work project, as those are fun to do - you really get to see your coworkers in action, watch brainstorms happen on the spot. Someone said they wanted to do their own family history, which I totally agreed with - seems I have so little time for it anymore, between trying to fit in two jobs, two church callings, family responsibilities, and everything else. But then I thought - what if we did both? What if we collaborated on each other's family history brick walls? The idea of having these awesome minds I work with helping me tackle my family history problems was exciting, so I suggested it, and the response was really positive, so we did just that. Three other coworkers and me brought genealogy problems to be solved, and the company split into four teams. The problem my team and I tackled was the origins of my fourth-great-grandparents, George Donald McDonald and Jane Dobson. Both were born in England, though they apparently immigrated separately (Jane around 1830 as a five-year-old, George I don't know when) and raised their family in Ontario. I had no siblings, no parents, no extended family for either of them, and with a name like McDonald, I hadn't ever tried to find them amongst all the other McDonalds out there.

My awesome team helped me in several ways - scoured church records for evidence of them (didn't find anything), traced the lines of my ancestors' other kids and tracked down living McDonalds who could be invited to do a Y-DNA test; and helped me identify genetic matches on my Dobson side with some big clues as to Jane's parents, siblings, and point of origin in England!! Needless to say, I was over the moon about all of this! I still need to go in and verify the paper trail for my apparent Dobson relatives to make sure everything checks out on their end, but if it does, then I can finally link that side of my tree to its Old World origins. That was on my bucket list of genealogy problems to solve, so I am super stoked on that.

The other breakthrough came just today. A little over 2 1/2 years ago, I upgraded my paternal grandfather's mitochondrial DNA test to a full sequence test - I really wanted to see what it said about grandpa's mother's mother's mother's line. FTDNA had trouble processing it, and at one point they even asked for another DNA sample (which we provided). They tried and tried again and again, but for some reason they said it just wasn't working. Eventually, after months and months of unsuccessful tests, they said they had one last option - a last ditch, all or nothing final effort. There was no guarantee of success, and if it failed to read his DNA, there would be no refund, and no timeline for when or if it would succeed. On the other hand, I could take the refund, but get no results, and I would not be able to resubmit another test (because they said they'd already lost money on this one from having re-run it so much). I weighed the options, and figured I had nothing to lose by trying the rescue program, as they called it, because it was the only option that offered me what I wanted most - the full haplogroup of my grandfather's mtDNA, and the opportunity to find matches on that line. So I opted for the rescue.

I checked in on the progress every six months or so, but the answer was always the same - we don't know if it will work, and we don't know when we'll know the results. Then today a little before dinner, I got a few emails from FTDNA - the results were in!!! I now know that my great-grandma's mtDNA haplogroup is U5b2a1a1. The cool thing is, he has seven perfect matches that show their mtDNA line's origins - one is in the US, one in Poland, and four in Germany. That fits perfectly for where his mother's line is from - they were Germans living in what is now Ukraine. Grandpa's mom was Augusta Joseph, who was born Uljanowka. Her mom was Pauline Rosenke, born in Zhitomir, in the Volhynia region of what is now Ukraine. Pauline's mom was Marie Siebert, though that's all I know about her. So whatever connection my grandpa has to these matches is through Marie. But even just knowing her line was apparently German for at least a ways back is really cool - drives home just how German his mom's side really was. That's information that was worth waiting 2 1/2 years for.

Pauline Rosenke's birth record

So now I've got some new answers to old problems, new tools to work with, and more answers to find. Which is exactly why I love genealogy - you get the satisfaction of solving difficult puzzles, only to realize you just expanded the size of the original puzzle, and there's still work to do. It never ends, and that's a great thing!

Genes Day Friday - My LivingDNA results are in!

When last I wrote about LivingDNA, I had just gotten the email saying testing had begun. At the time, they gave me an estimated completion date of September 13. Imagine my surprise when I checked my email this morning and saw that my results were ready! They have seriously overdelivered at every step of the process so far, so I've got high expectations for these results now.

So I logged in to see what they had to say. The Ancestry section has three options - Family Ancestry, Fatherline, and Motherline. Each section gives you a little tour of the info provided (though Fatherline tour said "motherline" instead of "fatherline" on each section, probably just a typo). The infographics were cool, easy to follow, and gave you the option to explore more. What I liked best is that both Fatherline and Motherline lead with the information you really want - your haplogroup (and subclade for Y-DNA). My mtDNA haplogroup is H, no surprise there. FTDNA's full sequence test listed the haplogroup as H3v-T16093C, so I wonder if LivingDNA did a full sequence test, or just lots of SNPs. FTDNA gave me a list of differences from both RSRS and rCRS values, and the list from LivingDNA only has one value in common with rCRS. So I'm guessing they did a SNP test rather than a full sequence, which is fine. They got the haplogroup right, so I'm not doubting their data, just wondering what their list of differences means in comparison with my FTDNA values. I'll have to look into this.

Looking at the Y-DNA info, once again they lead with the info you want first - haplogroup and subclade. They put me in haplogroup R-U106, subclade R-Z159. Back when I did my paternal grandfather's Y-DNA test at FTDNA in 2012, I had to purchase the Z159 SNP test, so to see that this SNP is included at LivingDNA is awesome. The coverage map for the Y-DNA is interesting, because it shows where in the world your haplogroup is predominantly from. For my haplogroup, the top country of origin is England. That matches what I've seen at FTDNA, where most of my grandpa's 12 marker matches are from England. Interestingly, Ireland isn't even on the list of countries my haplogroup is from. I'm sure there are U106 descendants in Ireland, but maybe the haplogroup shows up in less than 7% of the male population? That adds to my suspicion that my Gibsons were pretty recent transplants to Ireland and originally came from England or Scotland (Scotland shows up in the list at 15%, by the way).

Then there's the autosomal results, or Family Ancestry as they call it here. This part works kind of like 23andMe, where they have Complete, Standard, and Cautious levels Complete means they've assigned every percent of your DNA to areas where it's most similar to. Standard is their "best guess" level of assignment, with some areas still labeled "unassigned". Cautious is the level where they have the most certainty. The Great Britain and Ireland section of my Complete view down to the sub-regional level looks like this:

Most of these are areas I know very little about. I know Aberdeenshire is in Scotland, but for some reason, when I click on it, it highlights Ireland as well. But between these areas, I have ancestry from all of Ireland, most of England, and chunks of Scotland and Wales. Pretty awesome! I realize that this is the speculatory level, and not all of these areas may actually be in my family tree. So I took a look at the cautious level as well, and this is what I saw:

This is a lot more conservative in terms of pinpointing the areas of Great Britain my ancestors came from. But I still have most of England, all of Ireland, and chunks of Scotland and Wales highlighted. I'm very much excited by this! I took a class on English and Welsh family history at BYU, as well as one on Irish and Scottish family history. The history of all these countries is fascinating, and it looks like I might have ties to them all!

Some other interesting points from the ethnicity breakdowns:

On the cautious level, only my ancestry in Great Britain is identified by place - everything else is labeled European. When I first logged in, there was a notice or disclaimer that said basically "You're one of the first to take this test, and your results will be refined as we add more tests to our database." So hopefully as their database grows, the cautious level will become more certain for non-UK areas. Even though I took this test specifically with the intention of gaining more insight into my UK roots, I do hope that Europeans from other areas, especially France and Scandinavia, will test as well. I just like seeing the information get better in all areas basically.

Also, all three levels showed me as having 1.7% "Chuvashian-related ancestry." I have never heard of Chuvashia or Chuvashian before, so I had to look it up. According to Wikipedia, Chuvashia, or the Chuvash Republic, is part of Russia and home to the Chuvash people, a Turkic ethnic group. Apparently their history goes back to at least the 7th and 8th centuries AD. I'm thinking that my Joseph ancestors, who lived in Poland and Ukraine (or where those countries are now, anyways) are where my Chuvashian ancestors came into my family tree. None of my other branches were anywhere near there in the last couple hundred years.

One thing that really stands out - no French ancestry. I should have somewhere around 13% French ancestry, as my maternal grandmother is 1/2 French-Canadian. I don't know if they are lumping French and German together, but the standard level shows me as having 2.8% German ancestry, and 39.5% Scandinavian. Mathematically, I should have about 16% Scandinavian ancestry, and a LOT more German than 3%. I have German ancestry from all four grandparents - my paternal grandfather is half German, my paternal grandmother is somewhere between half and 3/4 German, my maternal grandmother was 1/4 German, and my maternal grandfather was 1/8 German. I know that gets watered down a little bit before it gets to me, but not to the extent of 3%. I'm curious to see how these numbers will adjust in the future as the database grows.

So that's my first glace at my LivingDNA test results. LOTS of information!! So much to take in. I really want to look more closely at the English ancestry, and go through my family tree and see where my likely English and Welsh ancestors are. Also, I thought there was going to be matching to cousins, but I don't see that option yet. Maybe that will be opened up later on. When they open that up, I hope they include a chromosome browser. I would love to see one that mixes both ethnicity and common segments, so I can see the DNA I share with someone AND what the projected ethnicity of that segment is. Wouldn't that be awesome?

All in all, I am totally satisfied that I took this test. $99 was a huge deal, and even the current discount price of $119 is more than reasonable for all this data. For a relatively new DNA testing company, these guys have really hit the ground running. Can't wait to see what refinements and improvements are in store.

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday - Amelia Beilstein

This is my 3rd-great-grandmother, Amelia Waechter. She was a first-generation American, the first child and daughter of German immigrants George Waechter and his wife Margaret (last name unknown). She was born in East Liverpool, Columbiana County, Ohio on June 18, 1854. She married Jacob Beilstein at the ripe old age of 19 in Pennsylvania.

She moved around a lot over the years. Her father moved the family to Pennsylvania sometime between her 6th and 8th birthdays. After she and Jacob were married, they moved to Illinois, Nebraska, back to Pennsylvania (where Jacob died), back to Nebraska, Montana, back to Nebraska again, then finally back to Montana, where she passed away at the age of 81.

One of my goals is to find where in Europe her parents were from, and to find her mother's maiden name. Her youngest sister, Annie, lived long enough to receive a Social Security Number, and submitted an application and received benefits from the SSA. I've sent for her SS-5, but my application was apparently lost (though they did manage to cash the check somehow). I need to follow up with them on that. She did have 10 siblings, so I could try tracking down more marriage and death records for them as well. Always more to do than I have time to do!

A Beilstein connection I hadn't considered

A few years ago, I started reading a historical fiction series about the Revolutionary War period. It was my first time digging into the story of the Revolutionary War, going beyond the "we fought the British, we won, moving on" summary I got in school (yes, one of my college history classes went into more detail, but I don't remember much of that, except that it was something of a shock to realize we didn't go straight to revolution, but actually fought for rights within the British Empire for years first). But anyways, one of the things that really stood out in the story was the role played by the Hessian solders hired by the British. They were portrayed as merciless mercenaries, professional thugs basically, hired to slaughter the Patriot army. It told about one battle in particular (can't recall the one offhand), where the Hessians overran the Patriots, and the Patriots caught by the Hessians tried to surrender, only to be massacred by the Hessians while in the act of surrendering. They were also quoted as telling their British commanders that they could frighten the Patriots into losing by showing them the bayonet, because "they cannot stand the bayonet." So yeah, the Hessians were obviously cruel and vicious and so on. Bad guys who did what they were hired to do in as bloody a way as possible.

Cut to today, when I was poking around my Beilstein line, finally going after some documentation on the info I was given years ago. I started with the immigrant ancestor on that line, my 3rd-great-grandfather, Jacob Beilstein. According to a pedigree chart given to me, he was born in Hesse-Darmstadt in Germany in 1851. So I thought I'd go looking to confirm that.

The earliest record from the States that I have on Jacob is the 1860 census, where he's listed as a 9-year-old boy in the household of Frederick and Maria Beilstein (who are obviously not his parents, given they are ages 26 and 23, and that he is listed last in the family, under Fred and Maria, their 1-year-old daughter Sophia, a 50-year-old Sophia Beilstein, and 13-year-old Christian Beilstein). Jacob's birthplace is listed as the Grand Duchy of Hessen. I knew FamilySearch had a big database of German BMDs (birth, marriage, and death records) so I thought I'd start there. Searching FamilySearch led me to a birth record confirming that he was born 5 January 1851 in Groß-Bieberau, Starkenburg, Hesse-Darmstadt.

I wanted to learn more about Groß-Bieberau, so I Google searched it, and found this little Wikipedia page. And I mean little - the whole entry is two and a half sentences (really, the last sentence isn't even complete). It does manage to say that Groß-Bieberau is a town in Hesse, Germany, with a link to a page on Hesse, so I went there.

Once there, two sentences immediately struck me - "The English name "Hesse" comes from the Hessian dialects...An inhabitant of Hesse is called a Hessian."

A Hessian. My Beilsteins were Hessians.

Being a linguist, I should have clued in the Hessians might be from Hesse a little earlier, but for some reason it never dawned on me. But now it's got me wondering - were any of my people among the Hessians that were rented by the British? Do I have any relatives, perhaps even direct ancestors, that were involved in that bloody battle I mentioned earlier? Jacob went to school in America, and must have learned about the American Revolution as a boy. What was he taught about the Hessians? Being only 80 years removed from the war, did he have any stories of relatives who fought on the German side? What did he think about or feel towards them?

Unless I find a journal written by him or his children, I'll never know the answers to those questions in this life. But it does make me want to learn more about my Beilsteins, and find out whether they had any military service back in Hesse. Perhaps I'll get lucky and find out they were ordinary civilians. Either way, I'm really interested in finding out!

My first time researching a FAN of an ancestor

John Edward Ferdinand Schmidt von der Launitz (aka John Launitz) was born in Tivoli, Italy about 1829. He seems to have been a very smart fellow, as he was reportedly fluent in German, English, French, and Italian. The son of Edward Schmidt von der Launtiz and Francesca Ferriri, he attended school in Germany between 1838 and 1850, and emigrated to the US in the mid 1850s. He studied theology in Pennsylvania from 1857-1860, and while studying, he married Anna Katherine Rado in 1859. That was a banner year for John, as that was also the year he founded the First German Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. He remained its sole pastor until his death in 1913. It was while he was serving as pastor for this church that he came into contact with my third-great-grandparents, Jacob Beilstein and Amelia Wachter.

I don't know the full extent of the relationship between John Launitz and my ancestors, but I do know one thing at least - he was the minister who performed their marriage. I know this because his name is written (in tough-to-read handwriting) in the bottom right corner of their marriage certificate.

Marriage certificate for Jacob Beilstein and Emilie Wachter

Here is Jacob and Amelia's marriage certificate. Because the version I have is a copy of a copy (at least, perhaps even one or two more generations removed from an original), it's hard to read some of the writing. I find it fascinating that it's all written in German, despite the fact that the marriage was performed in Pennsylvania in 1873.

It took a couple hours of searching Google, Ancestry, and FamilySearch using various combinations of John's name to find out who he was. His first name is written Johann on the certificate, and I couldn't tell if the surname was Lumitz, Bumitz, Lurnitz, or several other possibilities. I got some help from Kerry Scott (of Clue Wagon fame) and Dear Myrtle in finding the church in Pittsburgh. But after finding out his name was listed in American records as John Launitz, I found a whole plethora of records on the minister himself. He appears in an old copy of Who's Who in Pennsylvania (whence most of the biographical info above is taken), several books about the church he founded, not to mention city directories, census records, and other normal genealogical fare. Almost makes me wish I was related to him!

I've known about Elizabeth Shown Mills' teaching about researching the FANs (friends, associates, and neighbors) of our ancestors for years, but never really put it into practice until now. It was really fascinating to study, even briefly, the life of someone who knew my ancestors but was not directly related to them. I wonder if they attended his church and heard him preach. Was he chosen to perform their marriage because they believed what he did, or was it more of a matter of convenience? My Germans from Russia were apparently Lutheran (that's the church they attended in Manitoba), and my Germans from Bohemia were all apparently Catholic. It would be pretty cool to find out my Beilstein-Waechter Germans were Presbyterians! I'm still trying to find out if the church is still in existence to see if they have anything else on my ancestors. Having had previous success with German church records in Manitoba, I would love to see what this church might offer.

First German Presbyterian Church, from the book
Allegheny City, 1840-1907