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!

Progress is progress right?

I haven’t had a lot of time lately to work on my own family history so I made a special effort to get some time in last night. I wanted to check at least one of my grandparents’ DNA tests and see if they had any new important matches (ideally one that would help me break through one of my brick walls). Since my paternal granoda’s Gibson and Cain lines remain my most stubborn brick walls, I checked his account at 23andMe.

His closest matches are descendants of his maternal uncle, Elmer Joseph. Then there are a few matches on his father's side, descendants of his aunt Annie Condon and uncle Thomas Gibson (one of which turned out to be an adoptee). Then there's a mix of maternal and paternal matches that are a little more distant - descendants of his maternal granduncle Gottlieb Joseph and paternal granduncle Anthony Cain. There's a whole group of descendants descended from his grandaunt Tina (Joseph) (Leistiko) Levick, seems that branch of my family got into DNA testing! There are a couple that I know which side of grandpa's ancestry they belong to, but I don't know exactly how yet (mostly because they haven't responded so I don't know anything about their ancestry).

As I worked through these matches, it struck me how much I've learned about my grandpa's ancestry since he did his first DNA test back in 2012. The fact that I can pinpoint where a lot of these matches fit in my grandpa's family tree is amazing to me. I didn't have as much luck with his matches at FamilyTreeDNA. Part of that is because his matches at FTDNA are much more distant, and their common ancestors are back further than I can go at this point. Because of that, I've spent most of my efforts on grandpa's matches at other websites, like 23andMe and Ancestry.

Ancestry has made some great improvements in their DNA offering, with the addition of color-coded groups and Thrulines to help see where you and your matches may be related (provided you have public and searchable trees attached and linked to your test). There are a lot of matches here related to Tina Levick, more than are at 23andMe, and quite a few Gibson and Cain matches too. I'm hopeful that I will eventually break through the brick wall on my Cain side and find where in Ireland Dennis Cain was from as told in Irish records. My biggest breakthrough so far thanks to Ancestry was help in identifying the maiden name of my grandpa's great-grandmother Pauline. We thought it was Rosen, based on the death certificate of grandpa's mother, Augusta (Joseph) (Staffen) Gibson, but it turned out to be Rosenke. That led me to find Pauline's parents in German records in Volhynia, which I still can't believe I found. I need to pursue that some more at some point. Along with about a billion other leads...

One exciting lead I followed just today was from a match at Ancestry, who turned out to be a Gibson match. She is a descendant of Sarah Gibson, a sister of my grandpa's grandfather John Gibson. Sarah Gibson married James Harris, a native of Nova Scotia who was 17 years older than she was, and they had six children that I know of. One of her grandchildren, George Aubrey Harris, left Canada in 1922 and sailed to Boston, where he married Gladys Moriarty and raised his family. As a fan of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories, I loved the fact that I now have Moriarty relatives. I even found an old postcard of the ship he sailed to Boston on, the SS Governor Dingley. 

I wish I had more time to work on this, and I do get frustrated at these stubborn brick wall ancestors sometimes. But I'm grateful for all I've learned so far and I'm excited to see what else there is still to learn. 

What difference can one DNA test make?

When I got into DNA testing and genetic genealogy a few years ago, I learned about the "fishing in all ponds" philosophy. Basically, you test everyone you can, everywhere you can. The more tests you have out there, the more hooks in the water you have so to speak, and the more matches you're likely to make. So I tested my three living grandparents and my mom (my maternal grandfather passed away before I was born) at 23andMe, and transferred their data to FamilyTreeDNA, and then to MyHeritage. I tested my wife, my sister, a maternal aunt and myself at Ancestry, and counted myself covered. As mysteries began to unfold and my desire to see what DNA could really tell me grew, I tested additional relatives - my maternal aunt and uncle, my wife's parents, some more distant cousins, all at 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA (I even sprung for one for a guy in Ireland I met through a mailing list, though he turned out to not be a match). Through these tests, I've found some amazing people, and learned incredible things about my family's past and present. Then, as I've started to do more genetic genealogy as a career, I've come to see AncestryDNA in a whole new light - the light of "we have 14 million people who have taken our test." For those who are adopted or for whatever other reason have no knowledge of their parents or other close relatives, AncestryDNA has become an absolutely essential test, primarily because of the sheer number of people who have tested there. The tools they offer are pretty good (though I would really love a chromosome browser) but since DNA testing is often a numbers game, you need to test where the chances of finding a match are greatest.

With that thought burning in my mind the last few months, I decided to expand my AncestryDNA testing group to include my parents, my paternal grandfather, and my mom's cousin Renne't (there's a mystery ancestor in her line I want to identify). For Renne't, I'm really excited about finding matches on her mystery line, and figuring out who that guy was. For my mom, it's more about finding people with new info and maybe some stories or pictures. For my grandpa, it's all about finding close matches to help me get past some brick walls, primarily on his Gibson/Cain side. I'm stuck at his great-grandparents, and DNA seems to be my one hope in getting past them. I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for the last week or two, waiting for his results to come in. I even saw him during the day today, and when he asked about the test, all I could say was "it's almost there." Then, when I came home tonight, the results were ready! At last!!

I started to dig in and was immediately shocked - he had 3 matches at the 2nd cousin level I had never heard of, and 16 matches at the 3rd cousin level!! I started working on determining how these close matches were related to him. His closest 2nd cousin turned out to be a descendant of his grandfather Samuel Joseph's brother Heinrich Joseph. Another 2nd cousin is a Joseph relative, though I'm not sure how yet. The third is a Gibson/Cain match, so I'm thinking she is a descendant of John Gibson and Catherine Cain somehow. So far so good!

This is where it gets really exciting. As I was scrolling through his 3rd cousins, one of them has the last name of Rosenke. My jaw DROPPED. Rosenke is one of the variations Samuel Joseph's children gave in various records for their mother's maiden name, along with Rosen, Rozinko, and Rossenke. Sam's wife Pauline was probably from Volhynia, and I know she was born on 15 April 1868 (based on her death record), but I have no info on her parents, siblings, or any other relatives. So to see a DNA match with that name just made my heart jump. I checked and the match did not match with the more distant Joseph matches on Ancestry, which was good, as they shouldn't. I looked for shared Gibson matches, and didn't see any of those either. So I emailed the match, and am crossing my fingers for some good results.

In addition to the Rosenke connection, I found two matches with trees going back to Dennis Cain and Catherine Mulhearn, my grandpa's great-grandparents. I found another match with the Gibson surname, who I think is descended from my grandpa's uncle Thomas Gibson, who lived in Idaho. Then the one that got me most excited of all - a match with a Gibson ancestor from County Fermanagh, Ireland!! Her ancestor, Ann Gibson, was born in 1844 and married in County Fermanagh in 1866. Ann's father was Andrew Gibson, and he would have been about the same age as my grandpa's great-grandfather, Henry Gibson. This is the first time I've found anything about a connection to someone outside of Henry and his wife Ann (Stephenson) Gibson in the same place in Ireland my ancestors came from! There's a shared match that also descends from the same Ann Gibson. I emailed the matches, and while they may not have much info beyond their ancestor Ann, at least I have DNA matches with Gibson ancestry from the same location. That's a lot more than I had yesterday!

All of this came from one DNA test, and just the first couple hours of looking into the match list. I can't wait to see what there is to see when I really get into it! Plus my dad's results are pending, as are Renne't's, and with a little luck, I may get a couple of my dad's siblings to take a test for me as well, so my grandmother's DNA gets more representation on Ancestry.

So to answer the question I posed in the title - one DNA test can make ALL the difference. Even after 6 years of genetic genealogy research on my family, it seems I've only scratched the surface!