An Unknown First Cousin!

 

Surprising DNA Results

When I teach a beginning genetic genealogy class for my Jewish Genealogy Society, I always tell the students to test at more than one site and warn them that sometimes DNA results can be surprising. 

Although I have had my DNA results at both Family Tree DNA and My Heritage for a long time, I had never tested at Ancestry DNA. They had a good sale on tests last fall so I bought one and sent it in, not expecting results for a while due to the holiday crush.  When they finally notified me in January that my results were ready, I clicked on the link, expecting to see thousands of matches, including several that were known second cousins and below that I knew had tested there.  What I did not expect was to see a match that was so large that it had to be a first cousin (I ruled out a grandparent due to my age).  I won't use his name but just call him GRH.  I was pretty sure that I knew all of my first cousins so after I re-started my heart, I ran down the possible parents of this person and the likelihood that they were the parent. My father's much older brothers? Not likely.  My mother's sister?  From what I knew of her this was possible but not likely either.  Then it hit me. My mother had a brother, Jerry, who died at age 20 (before I was born) when his Army Air Corps plane crashed.  I wrote about him here.  

The story I heard from my mother was that Jerry had possibly fathered a child with a non-Jewish girl near his base before the crash and that my grandmother had been in contact with her but for whatever reason, contact was lost.  I looked at his ethnicity data and sure enough, he was 50% Ashkenazi Jewish.  My next best match, who appeared to be GRH's son, was 25% AJ. Could this person be Jerry Lieberman's son?

After several false starts, I finally contacted GRH a few days ago.  He confirmed that Jerry Lieberman was his birth father.  His mother had married and her husband raised GRH as his son.  GRH did not find out the true story until that man's death when GRH was about ten and his mother told him the story. He remembered seeing Jerry's mother (our grandmother) once when she came out to where he was living, and he knew that he had received gifts from his grandparents' Baby Furniture store.

We had a great FaceTime chat and it seems that we have a lot of interests in common.  I hope that I will get to meet my new first cousin sometime in person.  Meanwhile, we are exchanging photos and family information.  

Cousins who would like to know more should contact me offline.

Meanwhile, never be surprised at what your DNA results may show!

DNA Testing and My Family Tree

It's that time of year again and I just ended another whirwind of genealogy activity at the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies annual conference.  This year it was in Orlando FL. As usual, the schedule was packed with great sessions on all sorts of topics, but a highlight was a full track on the latest innovation in genealogy, using DNA to help build your tree.

You've probably seen the commercials for the DNA testing companies on TV.  "Find out where your ancestors come from", "Find your lost cousins."  Maybe you were intrigued.  (To my cousins:  If you have tested or are interested in doing so, please PM me!).  This can be really interesting but unfortunately, traditional techniques of using DNA to find relatives do not work well for Ashkenazic Jews.  It's much harder.  We are an endogamous population; everyone is related to everyone else.  Everyone who tests comes up as a match to everyone else who tests.  This problem was not addressed at the outset by the companies performing the analyses for general consumers, but with advances in analysis and the advent of two companies and many researchers that put a focus on Ashkenazi Jews, DNA analysis has been added to our toolbox.

I have been trying to incorporate DNA results into my research.  It can be especially useful where traditional document based research can't confirm a suspected relationship.  I have several places in my tree where everyone agrees that two branches are related but we don't know exactly how.  I have written about some, "the Other Roth Family" here, and the "Tepper Zimmerman" connection here.  My research indicates a common ancestor for these branches, or a family story says that a couple were close cousins, but there is no documentation.  That is where DNA may be able to help.

It takes a fair amount of work, and for many family members to test.  Because everyone has a 50/50 chance of inheriting any piece of DNA from either parent, after a few generations, the amount of shared DNA goes down significantly even among direct descendants.  In my family, I have almost reached the limits of reliable testing material since my missing connections are four or five generations back from me so it is important that as many of the oldest generations still alive test now so that their DNA is available for the future.  The test that I have found to be the most useful in my research is the autosomal DNA (or "Family Finder") test.  This isn't limited to only direct male line descendants (Y-DNA) and it can be more specific than MtDNA which can say that the person is in a direct maternal line, but not how far back the common ancestor is.

Over the past two years, I have been getting DNA tests from some relatives.  After the test (a quick cheek swab, no pain, no blood) either they administer the results themselves (look at matches, answer e-mails from potential matches, analyze the results etc) or I act as administrator for them.  At the conference, I  heard about how several companies now allow you to upload the results from one company to another and use their tools for analysis.  A representative from Family Tree DNA, the company I use, also told me how to group all of the kits that I administer into one private family project to streamline my analysis.  I've started that process and am looking forward to making my life easier.  When it is complete, I will also be able to invite others into the project, if I am not the administrator of their results.

I hope that with more family members testing, and more work on my part I may be able to confirm or deny some suspected relationships in my tree.  Several companies have sales on the tests going on right now so if you are interested in giving it a try, let me know.