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!

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!

Genealogy Blog Party - Thankful

The theme for the Genealogy Blog Party this month is thankful. The genealogy resource I'm thankful for today is mailing lists. One of the things I love most about the genealogy community is how much we help each other out, how often random strangers will come upon a request for help, drop what they're doing, and jump in with both feet to help someone find the answers and info they're looking for. I see this all the time in the mailing lists I've been on. Here are some examples.

The DNA-Newbie mailing list is where I turned for help when I first got into genetic genealogy five years ago. I met awesome people like CeCe Moore who answered my questions, pointed me to books and other resources, and helped me understand what I was looking at with all these test results.

The Alsace-Lorraine mailing list helped me find one of the most amazing websites out there, with literally hundreds of years of documents of my German/French ancestors from this part of Europe. Below are some of the ancestors I was able to find with these records.

The German Bohemia mailing list has some of the nicest, most helpful people on the planet. They answered my questions, dug into social and political history to explain obscure words, and helped me decipher the difficult German script, an example of which is below.

 

 

The Quebec genealogy mailing list helped me identify where in Quebec my French-Canadians were from, and helped me learn to navigate the French-Canadian records on Ancestry and other sites. Their help was crucial in solving a DNA problem I had with my French-Canadian ancestors, and finding the info would have taken much, much more time without their help.

 

The German-Volhynia-Poland mailing list helped me find records of my Germans in Russia, which led to one of the biggest brick wall busts in my genealogy career so far. I never would have guessed to look in church records written in Polish, kept by the Russian government, to look for my German ancestors without their expertise.

 

 

I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to mind right away. I am a firm believer in the power of mailing lists, so if you are stuck on a line or an ancestor, find a mailing list that covers your topic. There may be someone with the answers you need just waiting to help! 

Family History Month - post 14

This is a picture of my grandpa's aunt Olga Joseph and her first husband, Gustav Haft. Gus, as he went by, was from the same area of Volhynia that Olga and her family were from, though they married in Canada before moving to the US. My grandpa says he could speak 7 languages, and was a really friendly guy. He could also play the fiddle like you couldn't believe, and would have parties in their home where they would roll up the carpet and dance until very late. Gus died in 1949, and Olga remarried to a guy named Mike McKeown (who also lost a spouse), but he died just shy of three years later.

 

 

Nearly Wordless Wednesday - My ancestral hometowns





After blogging about my Gibson ancestors' hometown, I thought it'd be fun to browse Google Earth and mark the locations of other ancestral hometowns I've discovered in my research. Here they are!

 

 

Gross-Bieberau, Germany - My 3rd-great-grandfather Jacob Beilstein was born here in 1851.

 

Evanger, Norway - My 3rd-great-grandfather Johannes Sjursen Bergstad was born here in 1832.

 

Paris, France - My 9th-great-grandmother, Claude Demise, was born here in 1650. Other ancestors were born here as well.

Kepa Kikolska, Poland - My 3rd-great-grandfather Ludwig Heinrich Joseph was born here in 1836.

Reischewo, Poland - My 3rd-great-grandmother Justine Witt (Ludwig's wife) was born here in 1842.

 

Rosshaupt, Bohemia (now Rozvadov, Czech Republic) - My 2nd-great-grandmother Maria Zitzmann was born here in 1876

  

Uljanowka, Ukraine - My great-grandmother Augusta Joseph was born here in 1892. Her grandparents, Ludwig and Justine Joseph, moved here around 1865 from their native Poland.

My favorite family history documents

I recently saw a Tweet from FamilySearch asking people what their favorite family history document was. That was a really interesting question to think about, and the more I thought about it, the more favorites I came up with. It was impossible to narrow down to just one document, so here are my top five favorites, in no particular order.

1. The marriage certificate for Christ Hoffman and Mary Sitzman (Maria Zitzmann)
When I got started in family history, I was dismayed to find out my great-great-grandmother Mary Sitzman had left this world with sealed lips as to where she and her family came from. Her daughter Rosie said nothing, and her granddaughter, my grandma Blossom, knew nothing. Years of searching based on the few clues I did have yielded nothing. This marriage record proved the key to blowing that brick wall to smithereens. Mary gave her birth town as Rosshaupt, a tiny village in western Bohemia (now called Rozvadov and part of the Czech Republic), and that one clue led to many, many, many discoveries. I've now got information on Mary's ancestors going back to 1700s and even 1600s on some lines. All from one little marriage record! It taught me that seemingly insurmountable brick walls can be overcome, even with one simple document.

2. 1910 US-Canadian border crossing of Samuel and Helena Joseph
For years, all we knew about my great-grandmother Augusta (Joseph) Gibson's family was that they came from "Germany". They were Germans, spoke German, and came to Canada before moving to Montana. Records pointed to Berlin and "Toran", Germany, but those leads proved to be dead ends. Then a few years ago, at a Family History Fair up in Bellevue, I was going over my recent discovery of this border crossing Augusta's father Samuel Joseph and sister Helena made in 1910 (Sam and Helena are listed on lines 17-18). It lists a lot of great information - relatives in the country they are leaving, name of person and address they are going to, when they first came to Canada, name of the ship, and (best of all) birthplace. Sam's birthplace was listed as "Gitomar, Russia", and Helena's as "Ulanowka, Russia". I went to the display table for the SGGEE and asked their representative to help me figure out what these places were. She figured out Gitomar was actually Zhitomir, a pretty big city in the Volhynia region of what's now Ukraine. Ulanowka is a smaller village a few miles west of Zhitomir. Boy was I excited! That piece of info led me to other discoveries, allowing me to trace Sam's family back to his grandparents in Poland. This was the first time I'd ever traced a line of my family back to their point of origin in the old world, and it felt great! This was my first real breakthrough, and I still feel the deepest genealogical connection to my Joseph ancestors, largely in part to this discovery.

 

3. Bergstad family Bible page
Several years ago, I got a phone call from someone who said they were related to me. They'd gotten my cell number from an old genealogy website I'd put up, and wanted to send me some info on my/our Bergstad ancestors. I was really excited, but didn't want to get my hopes up too much, because she wouldn't say exactly what she was sending. The package arrived, and the contents knocked my socks off! Picture after picture after picture of my ancestors and their families, with people identified clearly; typewritten histories of various people; and this - a scan of a page from the Bergstad family Bible! This was the first time I'd ever heard of there being a family Bible on any of my ancestral lines. This page covers one generation, and I don't know whose handwriting it is, but it's all in Norwegian, and doesn't even mention the Bergstad name (which first appears as their surname in 1880). It was fascinating to see them listed in the old Norwegian patronymic style. It just drove it home in my mind that these were new Americans, still living their old culture in their new home.

 

 4. Harris family photos
When I was 19, I was serving a mission for my church in Japan, when I got a letter from my Grandma Sally Crawford. In it, she sent me a pedigree chart she put together of her ancestors, the first of any genealogy-related document I'd ever seen for my family. Attached to the unfamiliar names were actual photos, including the two above (Thomas W. Harris on the left, Frank and Charlotte (Scribner) Harris on the right). I'd never heard of these people or seen these pictures, and I had a sudden, intense desire to know more about them. I had to wait a couple years until my mission was finished, but when I got home, I delved right into researching my family tree, even making a presentation on the subject in college just a couple months later. It was fascinating stuff, and I'm even more captivated by it 17 years later.

5. John Gibson family - 1881 New Brunswick census
If I absolutely had to pick one favorite document, this would be it. This was my very first discovery in family history research. My mom told me my paternal great-great-grandparents, John and Catherine (Cain) Gibson came from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and that my great-grandfather John Frederick Gibson was born there about 1884. I somehow found there were records for the area for the 1881 census. I pulled out the microfilm for Saint John, sat down at a microfilm reader and started cranking. Within just a few minutes, I found them! I thought to myself "this genealogy stuff is easy!" If I only knew... I am glad that first discovery came so readily, because it encouraged me to start really researching my family history.

So there you have it, my top five favorite family history documents. Let me know what your favorites are and why.